Twilightred

Blog Action Day

2008-10-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

Today is Blog Action Day, and I thought I would take a minute to contribute.

Admittedly my contact with poverty has always been safe and removed. I grew up in a relatively well-off household where my parents paid for an expensive education for myself and my brothers. I've lived in some poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles, but I've always had a stable job and was there more as a financial choice than necessity. I certainly saw the effects of poverty around me, but I was never affected. So although I've lived a very lucky life I do realise that poverty exists and finding the means to pay bills and feed your family is a huge problem for a large number of Americans.

I think a large part of the problem is the current administration and the years of trickle-down economic policy that have left the lower class withered and dying. That's why voting and choosing to vote for Barack Obama is one of the steps I'm taking to fight poverty. From tax relief, to expanding child support facilities for low-income families, encouraging investment in local communities, and investing in re-training programs for workers in industries that are either dying or being outsourced, Barack Obama has a plan of action to revitalize the working class which is and always has been the foundation of the American economy.

Secondly, my charity of choice is Kiva, which I was pleasantly surprised to see highlighted on the Blog Action Day site. Kiva is a service that provides microloans to entrepreneurs in developing areas, giving them the tools to lift themselves out of poverty. You can invest anywhere from $25 to $500 in a microloan that will be repaid by the recipient. I think it's such a brilliant idea because it squashes the idea that giving to a charity you're simply giving away your money. This is investment that gets directly to the people that need it and will help improve communities.

Many thanks to Clito for highlighting Blog Action Day and being a relentless source of optimism and change.

Viva

2008-05-31T09:46:00.000-07:00

- I'm back home in Vegas now, having a great time with my family. I went with my brother to see Love last night, the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage, and it was fantastic. They put together some expressive, elaborate set pieces to go with a number of the most famous Beatles songs (my personal favorite was "Something") and they brought together a lot of different elements from dancing to acrobatics to large puppet pieces to a narrative projected video. It made me want to dig through my mp3 collection for some Beatles again. Besides that I'm helping out today with a catering job for my mom's catering company. This is the biggest job of the year for her: every year she caters the graduation at my old high school, which is about 500-600 people. It's a couple of days of hectic work, and I'm sure by the end of the night tonight I'm going to be exhausted.

- The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee is meeting today to discuss allowing Michigan and Florida delegates a seat at the convention and the ability to have their say in the nomination. I'm a bit conflicted over whether they should be allowed back in. For one, they did break the laws on primaries set by the DNC and should be punished for it; two, Obama was not even on the Michigan primary ticket, leaving Hilary the unopposed candidate; and three, there is not enough time or resources to run another round of primaries in these states if they do decide to allow them, so delegates will have to make their decision through a muddled view of their constituents. On the bright side, the latest round of polls show Obama defeating McCain in November by 8% and Obama was here in Las Vegas on Wednesday! (I didn't know ahead of time so I couldn't go, but Twitter let me know about the event as it was happening.) He spoke about the housing crisis and his plan to help victims of predatory lending by fining predatory lenders, blanket changing the terms of those loans to fair terms, and then taking the money collected through the fines and putting it into a $10 billion foreclosure prevention fund to help the victims. I think it's a great move and it really hits at the heart of the problem, that people who took out these loans do not have the ability to repay them at this point and leaving them high and dry will only damage our economy.

She Said the Man in the Gaberdine Suit was a Spy

2008-05-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

- I had a really weird dream the other night. I dreamt I owned a Playstation 3 and was playing Guitar Hero 3 with Peter Moore in our apartment. Apparently this is what I get from reading Kotaku all day long.

- There's apparently a Battlestar Galactica mod for Homeworld 2 that looks fantastic. I've seen some videos of the game in motion and I really need to find a copy of that game too. There's also a mod for the space flight sim X3 for which I've only seen screenshots, but I do own that game so I'll definitely be checking out the mod. (I've been in desperate need of a space flight sim for years now, and I'm wondering why the game industry has left this genre barren for so long...)

Massive May Update

2008-05-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted on here. I've been busy, but also a lot has happened and I've been trying to find the time to write it all up. Here we go:

- Certainly the highlight of the past couple weeks was meeting Maxine Hong Kingston at the UCLA Festival of Books. She was there for a panel/interview in which she discussed her work, her style of storytelling, and the efforts she's made with her writing in changing the world around her. She spoke about how she tries to express oral storytelling in her writing; expressing oral storytelling traditions of myth and history that are intertwined and in many ways the same. She discussed the writing groups she's organized for veterans of war, encouraging them to express their memories, frustrations, and experiences in writing, and the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq, which she emphasized were still important even though they did not stop the invasion. After the talk I got to meet her in person and have her sign my copy of To Be the Poet. I've always loved her poetry and how through it she transmits reality, dreams and thoughts. It was an amazing moment to be able to speak to her face to face and convey how much her writing has meant to me.

- I've finished the Harry Potter series after a whirlwind marathon of books 5, 6, and 7. I've been reading the series for the past couple of years and wanted to catch up to the films. This time when I got through the fifth book, Stuart had the sixth and after powering through that one I had to read book seven. It wrapped up quite well; Rowling did a great job of expressing the danger and importance of the struggle against Voldemort, showing Harry maturing as he goes through these trials and challenges, and I was pleased with the way she wrapped up the series. All in all they're well written books and I was glad to go through that adventure, even if I see anything wand shaped now and want to cast spells with it...

- The new spring anime season has started and I've been reviewing quite a few of the new shows. There's so much coming out this season; I've watched about nine shows so far, there's at least five more I want to check out, and that's not even half of all the new shows coming out. The real stars of this season so far have been Kaiba, an adventure series with this gorgeous Little Prince/French science-fiction-looking animation, and Soul Eater, a wacky action show that has overtones of FLCL in its humor.

- I saw Iron Man last weekend with Vince, Evan, and Mahea. Frickin awesome. They really nailed the character and the story, with Robert Downey Jr playing a spot-on drinking, womanizing, playboy Tony Stark. Jon Favreau, the director, was the main force behind this fantastic adaptation, going so far as to bring in some of the best Iron Man comic book writers to work on the story. It's also the first outing from Marvel Studios, the official cinematic arm of Marvel Comics, and is a promising start to their production career.

- I'm becoming fairly adept at navigating the L.A. public transit system now that my car's gone. Last weekend I managed to get all the way to Redondo Beach and back via bus and rail. Of course I would have a much more difficult time without the L.A. Metro Trip Planning site. All in all it hasn't been a terrible experience, and I wish I had taken advantage of it sooner; I've seen a lot of cool places and shops along the bus routes that I'd like to visit, stuff I wouldn't have noticed driving.

- I've also gotten much more familiar with RSS Feeds and nearer-to-the-cutting-edge web technology. RSS Owl is totally my go to app now to keep up with Lifehacker and the other Gawker blogs, get news about everything from beer to new web apps, and updates from my favorite miscellaneous blogs. I've checked out Twitter and plan to use it in live-blogging anime episodes as I watch, and have tied in all my various web presences to FriendFeed. The future is here!

Nico and Fred on the Nature of Language

2008-04-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

Nico: what's an aide?
Fred: That's like a person who's an assistant
Nico: so a bitch
Fred: "an assistant or helper, esp. a confidential one."
Fred: LOL
Fred: I suppose so
Fred: Ahhh "1777, short for aide-de-camp (1670), from Fr., lit. "camp assistant."
Nico: woah
Fred: Vive la France!
Nico: alors
Fred: I was gonna type out the fake French laugh sound, but I didn't know how to transcribe it
Nico: hough?
Nico: houghoughoughough

Super Mario and My Fear of Black Holes

2008-04-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

http://view.break.com/487616 - Watch more free videos

I caught this video on Kotaku. An underground garage, a ton of empty wine bottles, and an RC car combine to play the Mario theme. Incredible.

Then there's this particular news story I read on io9 about the Hadron Colider. I forgot their startup date was this May. Some of the experiments performed in this gigantic machine will create small black holes that SHOULD disappear as quickly as they were formed, state the scientists behind the machine, but others are worried that may not be the case. It may just be that when I was a kid I read a science fiction novel about a miniature black hole appearing in the center of the Earth and slowly devouring the planet from the inside out, but this seriously freaks me out. Add on top of that meat grown in vats hitting the market in the near future (which I first heard from Stuart) and my irrational Luddism is completely acting up; daydreams of moving to a cabin in the woods and living out the rest of my life as a mountain man with only my books to keep me company.

Addendum: I saw this rather touching article on Gawker about a cartoonist who took his mom's high school yearbook and reproduced it entirely in cartoon portraits. Even MORE awesome is a link from that article to another artist who reproduced a yearbook class from 1925 all in ink and watercolor portraits that are gorgeous.

April 1st YouTube Mashup

2008-04-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

IGN's Legend of Zelda Trailer
IGN posted an article about a Legend of Zelda film in production from "Rainfall Films" starring a cast of unknowns. This has got to be the most elaborate, costly, video game-related April Fool's joke ever, and I really wish this were real...

David Hasselhoff - Hooked on a Feeling
Not an April Fool's video, but I can't believe this didn't get meme'd sooner. David Hasselhoff flies around the world, completely superimposed, with crappy graphics and even worse outfits.

Letterman Top Ten - Battlestar Galactica
I absolutely cannot wait for the season premiere on Friday, and I just got Razor through Netflix to watch before then. To promote the new season they had the entire main cast of BSG on Letterman to do the Top Ten list recently.

Damn Boots
Nomis Football created this commercial, a kind of Gondry-esque adventure through an aspiring footballer's dreams, for their new shoe line. This is somehow related to work, but I have no idea how because I haven't heard about any Nomis campaigns.

Dead Fantasy
The new video from the guy who did the Haloroid fan video, with Samus fighting Master Chief. This one features the girls of Final Fantasy X-2 fighting DOA characters. It's alright, some decent action and great rendering, but for some reason I can't put my finger on not as impressive as Haloroid.

In other April Fool's news, Kotaku was all about cake, Thinkgeek had some really cool gag items, and a large group of anime bloggers created fake inter-blog drama that was convincing in how far it reached and the number of blogs in on it.

Eri Nobuchika - Sketch for Summer

2008-03-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

I was surprised when I saw this video how I had never thought about it as a concept for a music video before. It captures quite well the elegant, panoramic experience of riding a train, and reminds me of Shinkansen rides between Nishinasuno and Tokyo with the sprawling countryside reaching out and all around.

Oh yeah, it's a great song too.

To Hulk or Not to Hulk

2008-03-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

As the only person on the face of the planet who enjoyed the first Hulk movie, I've been avoiding news on the new one. Beyond the teaser poster and the release date I didn't know anything about it. A news story on io9 today clued me into the fact that Ed Norton has the lead role. From there I found that the cast is rounded out by Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt, and with appearances by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. The director's relatively fresh. His previous works include: the two Transporter movies, to his detriment; but also Danny the Dog/Unleashed, a film I quite like.

The news story in question was a bit troubling. Norton, who rewrote the script as well as starring, wants to maintain his creative control over the final cut. The studio of course wants to take it out of his hands and given the box office success of the previous Hulk movie it's understandable. What's even more troubling is that this has happened once before with Norton, where he fought and seized final creative control over American History X from the director Tony Kaye. According to rumors, it was a complete mess beforehand, and if this is a trend then giving control of the film to the studio could be a very bad idea. As it typically is...

In the end, I've always had the utmost respect for Norton and his creative choices, so I feel confident saying the film will be better with his vision.

(Note: Looking at Edward Norton's IMDB page, I see he's rumored to be in some 2009 film called "Leaves of Grass"? There's no other info about the film aside from his possible involvement and one other actor. Could this be some kind of biopic of Walt Whitman? Interesting.)

Yuki - Joy

2008-03-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

My favorite Yuki song, she manages to distill her frenetic energy down into one driving melody. The awesomely choreographed video might have something to do with it too.

Out of the Informational Black Hole

2008-03-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

Wow Blog, how ya doing?? So...I've been busy for the past two weeks. Between moving, an engagement party, and a busy couple weeks at work, my head's been spinning. It's great to be writing again.

- Moving was the usual pain, but luckily I was able to get rid of quite a few things I'm no longer carting around. Dresser, desk, and bookshelves; dvd and video game cases too, which I realised I didn't need to take with me everywhere. I also managed to slim down extraneous books. What I did move wasn't a problem, as I had a lot of awesome help from Nico, Warren, John (and optional character Evan). Staying with Nico and Stuart has been great! I'm really enjoying hanging out with everyone and the communal shopping trips and nights out. Issa fun!

- The engagement party went well. Drove up on Friday to San Jose, which is about a five an a half hour drive. Everyone got in by 10 and I was surprised to see Matt's brother Ryan there, whom I hadn't seen since the end of high school. He'd grown up quite a bit and was actually a cool guy to hang around now. Saturday was the busy day. There was a brunch with family in the morning, then a trip to the wedding spot at the top of a windy, omg-I'm-gonna-hurl mountain road, and finally games and dance lessons that night. Got to sit down with Matt's friend Danny and hear about the entire backstory of the Lord of the Rings. It was a good time, really more of an event for the girls but I managed to have some fun.

- Work's been incredibly busy. Aside from reaching the heavy middle of two big campaigns, I've been leading a couple of important brainstorms for new projects coming up.

- I had a chance to see Be Kind Rewind this weekend, and it was just as fantastic as I imagined. They nailed a lot of the shots from the films they were lampooning, so the moments were even more hilarious than simply a lifted snippet of dialogue. I was happy to see there was some real heart to it too; a story about how vital history and local pride is, and how gentrification sometimes destroys neighborhoods and communities in the name of "progress".

- I'm about halfway through Salt: A World History now, and it's still good but I'm a bit tired of the format. I'll have to dig through something with a little plot next.

- I may be back on a bit of an anime track. When I've needed something to just briefly watch to unwind right before bed, I boot up an episode of Lucky Star or two. It's always those simple, fun series that are my go-to shows.

- I've been digging into some old, old music recently; stuff from high school that was my favorite back in the day. One of those bands is Gay Dad, and this happens to be one of my more favorite tracks off their album Leisurenoise:

Suneohair - Split

2008-02-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

It's a funny story how I came across Suneohair. I was introduced to them through the series Honey & Clover, which was a favorite of one my friends at my anime club. I never quite got into the series, because I've been tired of romance anime for quite a long time now. Nevertheless, it has a fantastic soundtrack with many great artists, including an opening by YUKI and several endings by Suneohair. So while I didn't get into the show, I did love the soundtrack, and at the time I was particularly interested in hunting down songs by Suga Shikao from the OST. Well, the first thing I did was go and download the OST, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get all of it, wasn't able to get more than one or two Suga Shikao tracks, but I did have the part with a large number of Suneohair tracks. I listened to those tracks and found song after song that grew on me, until Suneohair is one of my favorite J-Pop artists today. I really love the unique brand of spacey-sounding rock he produces, and his distinct, honest singing.

Super Massive Megathon Tuesday Post

2008-02-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

- I went with Clint from work to the 24/7 DIY Summit at USC this weekend, which was all about user created video content online. They had a really cool lecture about Anime Music Videos and all the most influential AMVs of the last ten years. (I had previously seen two.) A couple things I brought away from the lecture:

1. I went and downloaded all the AMV Hell compilations. Those are just too much fun.
2. I really need to watch RahXephon.
3. I really need to listen to Frou Frou.
4. I did not know that before the rise of YouTube, THE place to watch AMVs online was http://www.animemusicvideos.org/. Where was this page during high school??

Here's my favorite video from the lecture, which will answer for half of the points above. Bonus info: This is considered the most complicated AMV ever made, and when it came out there was a lot of conjecture that it actually drove people away from making AMVs because the standard kept getting pushed so high.

- That should serve as my first video of the week too. I've been trying to keep on a video posting schedule: 3 a week, Mon, Wed, Fri; so that I post on my blog at least somewhat regularly and get into the habit of writing here. It seems to be working so far.

My favorite day happens to be Wednesdays as that's inadvertently become the day I post J-Pop videos. I have a ton of YUKI videos I'm just dying to post; both for the songs and the videos...

- I started reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky last night. It's really a fascinating tale of how the important spice has influenced civilisations over the ages. The first chapter was all about salt in Ancient China and how it affected the change in ruling dynasties, philosophies, and spawned the harnessing and use of natural gas among other things. Very well written too; more a tale than a dry, factual account.

I'd really like to read The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket next.

- The Spitz chicken doner kabob is really just as good as the lamb/beef doner kabob, and I'm glad because it gives me a healthier option when I go there. I love me some spiced meats!

- Having drank Anchor Steam all weekend, imagine my surprise when I heard my coworker had, along with some friends, won a private party at the Anchor Steam Breweries in San Francisco this weekend.

- I'm going into moving-planning overdrive with only two weeks to go. Annnnnd the worrying starts.

Little Fat Man with the Pug-Nose Face!

2008-02-09T17:52:00.000-08:00

Many will know I have a fascination with David Bowie and his fantastic body of work. The Office is also one of my favorite TV shows of all time. Bowie made an appearance on Ricky Gervais' Extras, where Gervais' character runs into him at a party and asks him for some advice on fame, with disastrous results...

Shiina Ringo - Hatsukoi Shoujo

2008-02-07T01:11:00.000-08:00

This is a video from another of my favorite J-Pop artists: Shiina Ringo. You may remember I wrote a bit on my Nobiai blog a while back about her and her sideproject band, Tokyo Jihen. She tends to do quite boisterous and unique music, often in a big band sort of style. Ever since I heard this song on her album I really loved it. It's got a seductive, dark style about it, and I love that the video captures that mood so wonderfully.

Election Day

2008-02-04T21:30:00.000-08:00

Yay! Election time! That time of year, every four years, where we get to decide the direction our country goes in.

At first glance it might appear that I don't care about politics much. I don't often bring up the subject with my friends, I don't often blog about it, and a glance at the busiest shelves in my personal library reveal more flights of fancy than reason. I do care, and I do make strides to keep myself informed. I get my info from a couple different sources: Harper's, the intelligent debate in the Penny Arcade Debate & Discourse forum, and oddly enough through the political channels I've subscribed to on my StumbleUpon. I admit I could be more informed. I often stray away from books on political viewpoints, I tell myself because I have trouble digesting something that large. I could be more involved. I've written two letters to representatives at this point, but I should be getting involved in local politics, groups and rallies.

I'm hardly a paragon of political activity; there's a lot more I could be doing to have a say in how my life is run by the powers that be. Regardless, I'm proud of the fact that I vote.

I get upset with political apathy. (What an interesting paradox.) I hate the argument that your vote doesn't count. Single votes do count; particularly in a proportional system like the way the Democractic primaries operate, and even in a system where large blocks of political territory go to the majority winner that single vote still has the opportunity to be part of that majority, or the vote that decides a close contest. Even on a more philosophical, yet strangely fundamental, level voting is an opportunity to make your voice heard, to make your choice in the political system known.

Voting in the Presidential primaries and the general election may be the lower bar of political activity, but it is still an important part of the process. Presidents determine a large part of the political agenda for the next four years. They can veto legislation from becoming law, they appoint a number of positions, and like it or not they truly do act as a face and voice for America to the rest of the world.

I'm excited to be walking to the polls tomorrow and casting my choice for the next President. I'm even going to keep that silly little sticker.

High As...

2008-02-04T18:51:00.000-08:00

I think this is fairly appropriate post-weekend viewing.

Freeman's Mind

2008-02-01T18:31:00.000-08:00

One of the more hilarious machinima I've seen, and of course it helps to have played Half Life 1. Note that this is the first episode of the series...

Yuki - Biscuit

2008-01-30T22:41:00.000-08:00

I had a couple other funny videos I thought I should put up first, but when going through videos for J-Pop artists today, I came across one I just had to share. Yuki embodies everything wacky and fun I love about J-Pop (no wonder as she's one of the oldest J-Pop artists still around, starting back in 1991 as the vocalist of the legendary Judy and Mary). Her videos are often as nonsensical as her songs, but with this infectious, unrelenting bright energy I absolutely adore. The name of this song is Biscuit, to give you as much context as possible...

LasagnaCat

2008-01-28T20:18:00.000-08:00

One Man Left

2008-01-26T00:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a while since I've written, and with good reason.

- I got hit by the most deathly of sicknesses this past weekend. From Saturday morning on I was stuck in bed with: a splitting headache, so bad it felt like each hemisphere of my brain had its own massive headache; a delirious fever which gave me the single worst work-related nightmare I've had; a wet hacking cough; one sumabitch sore throat, and I should know as whenever I get sick it's ALWAYS with a sore throat; aches all over my body so I could really only lay on my back or stomach; chills, needed to have three blankets on me to stay warm; and the slightest bit of a runny nose. Saturday through Wednesday I was feeling this way, and as it didn't clear up by work on Tuesday, I went into the doctor's office that day. Got a preliminary look at, some antibiotics, some chest xrays, and orders to check back in a couple of days to see if the results were bronchitis. So needless to say, I had the most unfun MLK weekend ever.

- I've actually watched some sports lately! Two weeks ago I watched some of the playoff games for the Superbowl: San Diego vs Indianapolis, and then New York vs, I think, Dallas. It was exciting to watch these games with some friends in the apartment complex here, and I love yelling at little men on screen when I'm drunk too. Both games were big underdog games, which helped, where I followed along with being impressed that the longshot teams won.

- Oscars look to be very boring this year. I haven't really seen any of the movies that are up for nomination; I do need to see There Will Be Blood while it's still in theaters.

- I got 3:10 to Yuma in my latest Netflix batch. Just as good as I remember it, and the amazing soundtrack by Marco Beltrami is definitely a big part. I love well done Western soundtracks; it's the instrumentation. Something about the choice of using a lone, bombastic, wailing trumpet to represent the lone, hard gunslinger.

- Before I recently tried to go on a bit of a videogame diet, I've been playing tons and tons of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a first-person shooter with an alternate reality theme, where a second nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the near future and causes strange changes in the area around it. You play a man who's awoken not knowing who you are, only with a tattoo on your arm, and the name and picture of a man you're supposed to kill. You wander the post-apocalyptic wasteland scavenging and hunting to get by, barely escaping rogue military elements, mutants, and lawless bandits. You can either take on side missions to hunt down people, retrieve goods, or eliminate a band of enemies, or you can simply travel around, living in the wilderness as you will, only returning to the vestiges of society occasionally for supplies. I really love the atmosphere and mood of the game. It's so intense, I found myself adopting very cautious tactics, and constantly watching behind myself ingame, to make sure I wasn't about to be ambushed. If you've ever had a postapocalyptic fantasy, this is a great place to live it out.

- I've been really getting into, and have almost finished Flight of the Conchords. It's really one of those series you have to get into the rhythm of. Aside from the occasional hilarious song, I had to watch about seven or eight episodes before I saw one that just made me bust up laughing because I expected the characters to act one way and they totally blew those expectations away. I hope they get a second season, and I recommend the show to anyone who's a fan of silly songs.

- Evan got me House of Leaves for Christmas, and I started reading it while I was sick. Very Blair Witch Project-y, which I like.

- I'll most likely be posting tons of YouTube videos up here now, as this is my main distraction at work and I rarely get to share it. Plus I've found some funny ones.

- I've drank more orange juice and green tea in the past week than I think I have in the past three months.

Sometimes you have to post these things.

2008-01-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you do.

(9:40:04 AM) Fred: You have balls!
(9:40:05 AM) Ev: (Autoreply) Inservice day (He's away.)
(11:32:16 AM) Fred: Balls are your favorite
(11:32:19 AM) Fred: Not a day goes by
(11:32:24 AM) Fred: That balls aren't on your mind
(11:32:44 AM) Fred: I remember when we went out for hamburgers that time
(11:32:54 AM) Fred: And you asked the waitress if they had any burgers in ball form
(11:33:01 AM) Fred: Cause that's the only way you take your meat
(11:33:11 AM) Fred: Hot beef injection
(11:35:41 AM) Fred: And by that I mean the cock
(11:35:49 AM) Fred: With a side order of balls
(11:35:51 AM) Fred: Extra hairy
(11:45:59 AM) Fred: I bet that even if we had gotten a chance to get Taco Truck while you were out here
(11:46:18 AM) Fred: You would have asked Leo to dip his spicy Latin nuts in your tacos before serving them
(11:46:29 AM) Fred: for "extra flavor"
(11:46:38 AM) Fred: "!MAS SABOR!"

Time to Blow Doors Down, or My Belated New Year's Post

2008-01-07T15:15:00.000-08:00

- Fantastic New Year's. It really was fun seeing A Patch of Black play and back together again. Quite a rocking show. It was also good to see Lucas and Erin and laugh and have fun with friends I haven't seen for a while.

- New Year's Day was a combination of long needed apartment cleaning and diving headfirst into the bounty of games I bought on Steam. Valve had a huge holiday sale, and I couldn't help but snap up pretty much every game on there I wanted. Some highlights include:

Psychonauts - This fantastic 3rd person platformer plays like you'd expect a Ratchet and Clank/Sly Cooper/Spyro, etc. game should, but where it really shines is in the art direction and the wacky style. The humor is playful and dark, the whole world looks mishapen and eerily colorful, and the characters are all grossly exaggerated. It feels exactly like if Tim Burton made a platformer, which I love.
Darwinia - This one surprised me. An RTS-lite that takes place inside a virtual world, where you have to guide and protect sentient AI creatures from virii in a hostile environment, with 80s wireframe graphics. I wasn't expecting that much from it, as I was looking at the Infogames pack mainly for Uplink, but there's something seductively fun about its tone and world.
Geometry Wars - Another big surprise. A simple spin on classic arcade games like Asteroids and Centipede, you pilot a ship around and fire in eight directions to destroy increasing numbers of differently colored geometric shapes which fly at you in strange patterns. The draw is the fun difficulty, ooh-and-aah colors and explosions, and chill music.
Jagged Alliance 2 - A throw-back to my high school gaming days. This 1999 overhead turn-based squad shooter has you organizing and controlling a team of mercenaries, each with RPG-like increaseable skills, while micromanaging your mercenary roster, their supplies, and town militias, all to overthrow an island-nation dictator. Pretty fun, but may be due to the nostalgia factor.

- I've been getting back into anime lately, and I'm enjoying it. There were a number of good hits this past season that I had to take a second look at before I noticed how awesome they were:

Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei - Itoshiki is a teacher who despairs at life and the world around him, and is constantly trying to commit suicide. His students "help" by berating him constantly and have their own problems to deal with. The harem-esque cast is composed entirely of deranged girls: one never leaves the school and is found hiding in different cupboards and closets each episode; another was stalking her boyfriend until Itoshiki told her true love is commiting suicide together and she begins to stalk him; yet another student is an exchange student from the U.S. and tries to sue everyone she can, including the teacher when he accidentally sees a flash of her panties; etc. The show spends each episode dealing with either the problem student of the week or Itoshiki's despair and outrage at some minute part of human behavior. The show is both a hilarious parody of harem anime, and a riff on all different sorts of cynicism. Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei was really the gem of this season and I can't wait for the sequel this spring.
Ghost Hound - In a small town in the mountains of Kyushu, three boys who have had traumatic encounters in their childhood become friends and learn to transfer their souls into a parallel world known as the "Unseen World". The Unseen World is however undergoing a change, with its ghosts starting to appear in the real world. From the director and scriptwriter of Serial Experiments Lain, this fills my weird-tranquil show of the season quotient. It's one of those anime where meticulous attention to detail and well-used space and silence make for an amazing experience. Although I've only seen three episodes of this so far, it really is a fantastic series.
Dragonaut - Humanoid, laboratory raised beings with magical powers transform into dragon robots and are piloted by spiky, multi-color-haired pilots who are trying to defend the Earth from a malevolent, alien planet which has destroyed Pluto and now rests in its orbit, sending its own dragon robots to attack Earth every couple of years. Completely cheesy and over-the-top but well done, I geeked out on this series and lived up cheesy-anime days of yore before I noticed how 2-D it was (no pun intended). I'll definitely watch the last episode when it comes out, as this was a fun little diversion.
Claymore - Half-demon, half-human, emotionless blonde women roam the countryside with giant broadswords and hunt down demons preying on human beings. I didn't mean to make it sound as flimsy as Dragonaut with that description, as this is actually a very quality show. Real emotions, and real tragedy, as the Claymores defend humans from this demon menace which claims hundreds of lives, but are despised by humans for their unnatural powers and being half-demons themselves. I'm currently hooked on this series, and nearly talked myself into marathoning all 26 episodes last night until my logic got the better of me and convinced me it was 11 pm and I needed some sleep.

Crap, I know I had more to write about, but my memory has faded over the week it's taken me to get out this inaugural New Year's post. Ah, well, I'll leave it there for now.

Happy New Year!

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2007-12-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

- Christmas was great this year. I went home for a couple days, got to see some friends from high school, saw my family, went to two great movies (Sweeny Todd and Walk Hard), and had some great food too. The Christmas haul was different this year, more meaningful. I got a couple of good books, including To Be the Poet by Maxine Hong Kingston and Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman which I was absolutely dying to get my hands on, and also got one of my favorite films of 2007 on DVD, Ratatouille. The real highlight on Christmas though was seeing how much my brother enjoyed the hoodie I made for him. I bought a plain hoodie from Target, bought a bunch of patches of bands he loves and stuck them on, and then used this fabric dyeing technique I found online to put some badass kanji on the back. I was afraid he'd be disappointed it wasn't a game, but when he opened it he was all smiles and I think he felt it was the best present he got this year.

- I've been a cooking explorer these past couple of days, making all sorts of foods I've never tried before and was scared to attempt. I baked some salmon with breadcrumbs and rosemary, made miso soup, and cooked some shrimp scampi last night. They all came out delicious!

- At Best Buy I broke down and used the gift cards I got for Christmas to buy something I need rather than games and movies: an electric razor. The old one I was using was the first electric razor I got, back when I was thirteen, so I think it was time for a change. I also picked up a new USB gamepad for my PC, and let me tell you, playing through Super Metroid again emulated has made me happier than a lot of the new games I've been playing.

- This is a very relaxing, long vacation; one of those vacations where I've forgotten what it feels like to be at work day in and day out. I tried spending the last couple of days not even looking at a clock, and just taking the day as it came, getting done what I needed to, eating when I felt hungry. Not unplanned, just unconcerned with the passage of time. I hope I'm able to spend more weekend days like this.

Modoranai, gafuite shimata Himeguri Karenda

2007-12-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

Because I absolutely cannot get this song and this video out of my head:

In lieu of diamonds, gold, and platinum reminders we'll still shine bright.

2007-12-17T12:11:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since my last blog post. I feel pretty tired and stretched thin as this month hasn't been a good one so far.

- My dog Tracker died on Saturday, the 8th. He was a calm, attentive, humorous, human, caring and intelligent companion. I know a lot of people say their dog is more like a person than a dog, but Tracker really was. He was incredibly smart, and very expressive. You might remember him as the prettiest of princesses.

I first got him as a puppy, and trained him to be a guide dog for my community service project senior year of high school. He came with me to class a lot, and went practically everywhere my family went because he had to get acclimated to being in different places and situations. He was the most obedient and attentive dog of the batch, and when he went back to the guide dog group for his second year of training we were sure he was going to graduate and become a big part of someone's life. He did pass the training perfectly, but unfortunately they dropped him because he had an ear infection; the dogs have to be in perfect health to go to a blind person. Since then he became our family dog, and a highlight of every trip I made home. We took him to a dog beach in San Diego every year for labor day weekend, and he absolutely loved running into the water, swimming out and finding strings of kelp, and dragging them back to shore.

He had liver failure which had been diagnosed back in November right before Thanksgiving, and was looking better up until the first week of the month. He quickly got so bad and ended up in so much pain they had to put him to sleep. I cried a lot, even though I couldn't be there with him, and also because of that. I'm going to miss him a lot, and I'm sure it's going to hit me again when I get home and realise he's not there to greet me. He was a great dog.

- On my way home from a Christmas party this Saturday night my car broke down. I was coming back on the 5, from this party in Orange County, when smoke started billowing out from under the hood of my car. The radiator had cracked and blown antifreeze all over the engine. I pulled off the highway and was luckily able to get ahold of my friend Jeremy who was just then leaving the party, and was luckily able to crash with him for the night. Yesterday we attempted to patch my radiator and make it back to his house to replace the radiator, but it turned out whatever happened had stopped the radiator fans as well. This meant I got maybe ten minutes from where my car had ended up when it was a smoking mess again. I towed it from there to my mechanic, who I knew was closed on Sunday, only to find out he was closed on Monday as well.
This led Jeremy to offer me his car to use until then, only his car was stickshift, which I have no clue to drive. I spent about an hour and a half at ten pm last night learning to drive stick, then driving nervously home the whole way, including an accident on the 105 which slowed traffic to a crawl and put my skills very much to the test. I just about collapsed when I got home.

That's how my December has been so far. I don't know what Christmas, New Years, and Christmas break has to bring. I'm not hoping it's much, much better. I'd simply settle for normal at this point.

Everyone's blood goes white, 'cept yours and mine

2007-12-06T00:26:00.001-08:00

The month of December is upon us! Arguably the most prestigious of months if not in the top five, December contains seasonal cheer, close gatherings of family friends, nippy weather (except for our friends in Australia. G'day Mates!) and the ever present ramp up to a new year which everyone, including myself, forgets about until the day after Christmas when the oh-shit-New-Years feeling sets in.

- I begrudgingly have to admit that How I Met Your Mother is pretty damn funny. I say begrudgingly because I avoid sitcoms, but Nico set me on a path today I could not avoid. A discussion in the office began about the "Slapsgiving" episode. Apparently one of the funnier clips from the episode was on YouTube and Eric related his tale of joy at its viewing. Then Nico related a similar incident with Vince. Then I remembered both Nico and Stuart like the show. I figured that if any episode would display the merits of the series to me, it would be this one. Later that night, I was able to watch the episode for myself, and yes, I laughed. I didn't laugh with the laughtrack! I can hold my dignity on that point, but there were some hilarious moments where I could not stop a guffaw. Particularly the Slapsgiving aftermath, which I did not see coming.

- After this fascinating article on Frank Herbert, I am convinced I need to read the rest of the books he wrote in the Dune series. I was originally planning to stop after the first trilogy, as I had been told that was the strong core of the series. Then, after learning how Children of Dune ends and learning about the plot of God Emperor of Dune, I became convinced I absolutely had to read about a sandworm/man hybrid. Then, with the above article fully digested, I realised I should read the two books after, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune.

- A couple rounds of sniper in Team Fortress 2 tonight reminded me how awesome the class is. A couple rounds of medic convinced me the bonesaw is an terrible tool of death, destruction, and general bad-assery.

- I'm really liking Calexico a lot.

- I'm aware I need to ramp up my Christmas gift process already. I'm torn between typical gift giving and creative gift production where appropriate. These dual forces tear at me terribly, particularly after watching The Story of Stuff. Yes, yes, I should not be so knee-jerk reactionary and examine sources further, which I will, but if there were any time of year to pay attention to this message, I believe it's now.

- "In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it." - Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata

Save me, Sabrina fair, you're the only one who can.

2007-11-28T23:45:00.000-08:00

Hmm, what have I been up to?

- Traveling: Though it's just been to home and to visit friends, I've been on the road quite a bit. Two weeks ago I went up to San Jose for the weekend to visit my friend Matt and his fiancee Sophia. That was quite nice as I hadn't seen them in a while, and there was much to celebrate since they had just gotten engaged. (Oh no, I'm already getting that old, aren't I?) We had fantastic Mexican food and a delicious cajun spicy shrimp dish that Matt cooked himself and which I desperately need the recipe for. In addition we spent some time in San Francisco, rode a subway whence I was shocked the signs were all in English, and encountered an eight-tier mall complex with an amazing digital map. I was a day late home because of the weather, and two days later I had to fly out again for Las Vegas and Thanksgiving. Dinner was good this year; it was just me, Schuyler, Chase, and my mom, so there was quite a bit of food to go around. Organic turkey was delicious, as was the stuffing, and the candied yam/marshmallow casserole we rescued from the towering inferno it became inside the oven. While I was there I caught up with high school friends, saw Beowulf which was good, and got to spend time cheering up my sick dog. All in all it was a very fun Thanksgiving and relaxing too, which leads me to my next point...

- Work: Has been incredibly busy, but I find I'm liking it. It's really not a chore as long as I throw myself into my work and adjust to this hectic pace. Since it's my first "real job" I enjoy what I'm working on and putting effort into my day to day work feels good. I don't kid myself that I've reached anywhere near Nico's level of workaholic-itude yet (new word, not quite sure about the i preceding the "tude") but for a boy who's always been afraid of hard work, it's refreshing to be enjoying it.

- Japanese Dramas: I've shifted modes again, and am off of anime for a while and onto J-Dramas again. New surprise - Bambino. This series follows a young boy named Ban, an amateur chef from Hatake who travels to Tokyo to work in a top-tier Italian restaurant on his college break, and finds it immensely more challenging and rewarding than he could have dreamed. The series gets bonus points for dealing with relationships and emotions realistically, avoiding cliches, and generally being fantastically written. Plus it's about cooking, and I think kitchen drama is enthralling to watch. (The show really does a great job of having the perfect pacing and camerawork to show the intense and hectic pace of working in a professional kitchen.)

- Film: Aside from Beowulf, I've resolved to up my cinematic tastes. I've been getting into Michael Haneke, and The Seventh Continent was a revelation. After reading a Harper's article on his films I decided to watch them chronologically and The Seventh Continent was his first. Set and filmed in the late eighties, it depicts the true story of an Austrian family with a normal, happy life who decides to destroy their house and belongings before all committing suicide. The story is told through some masterful camerawork that shows the mundane routine of everyday life as isolated moments which become unique as they are consistently blasted at us without an injection of plot or perspective. I don't mean to say that there is no plot, what I mean is these images are presented to us plain and simply, and gradually build up throughout the film to portray a gilded cage of consumption and routine that the family has to break out from by the most extreme of methods. This is all Haneke's conjecture, as the family left little evidence to the reason behind their suicide. I took these isolated shots to be a beautiful way of drawing the viewer into the film as a character. The close-ups of hands reaching for toothbrushes, shopping, cooking felt as natural as my own physical perspective in my life. It was so engrossing that I actually felt a distancing at the eventual appearance of the characters' faces on screen. It was a very shocking effect, and one that proves Haneke had immense talent from the very start of his career.

- Food: Green tea is still delicious, as is a bowl of pasta after a long day's work, or the occasional salad. Still struggling to stop myself from eating out so much.

- Music: I've been bathed in a wealth of music recently, as Evan can attest to, and some recent gems have been: Cassette Boy, Pelican, Calexico, and Electric Light Orchestra. Hmm, reminds me I need to go check Daytrotter...

Farewell!

Dreams are all you have, Dreams have held you back, Dreamers never live, only Dream of it

2007-11-16T13:41:00.000-08:00

I just had the most amazing split pea soup from the Coffee Table. It's smooth and creamy with a bit of extra pepper and these awesome slices of ham in it, then it comes with these big, thick toasted, buttery sourdough pieces on the side to dip in. It was fantabulous.

The caramel wafers slightly less so; though I doubt anything can live up to the memory of caramel waffles outside the Musee d'Orsay...

Cantilever, Under Finger

2007-11-11T18:21:00.000-08:00

Wow. I have been busy! Between work and extracurricular activities I've been going non-stop.

- Working on three campaigns at the moment with a possible fourth in the works. X-Files is proving to be a bit difficult to handle, as there was a big upset with the huge boxset giveaway we were working with Ain't It Cool News. Hopefully I've got that resolved, and the P2 campaign is halfway over. It's a lot of work but it's still fun at M80.

- Friday went out to see Vince play at The Treehouse. That was a lot of fun; his show was Vince to a factor of 10, him in his element, which was very fun to see. We rampaged as no robots have rampaged before! Nor shall hence! Dancing in the rave room was a blast. I forgot how much fun that is and I need to go again soon.

- Went to PMX yesterday, this little anime con down by PMX. I got a new movie, some decals, saw this breakdancing group who had a panel there, and then got to translate for an interview with a famous Japanese voice actress! A friend from my club runs this review site called Anime Diet, which is apparently much much bigger than I thought, and they were able to secure an interview with Yukana. At the last minute they found out they wouldn't have a professional translator on hand, so they asked me to step in! She did know some English, so she was able to handle some of the conversation, while I picked up the slack and did the occasional translating as needed. It was fantastic and a big step! Currently trying to figure out how to work this into a resume...

- Hung out with my high school friend Leif and his sister last night. Dropped by The Cocaine and saw The Murky Water District, which were very awesome and a band after my dark little heart. Also saw Smile Brigade which were an interesting, energetic, unique act from Seattle. You could tell they had definitely perfected a sound all their own.

- Ended up watching I'm a Cyborg But That's OK today with Evan. It's the latest from Chan Wook Park, who's this star director out of Korea, and known for very dark, violent revenge films. (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance) I'm a Cyborg But That's OK, his followup to his Revenge Trilogy, was a fantastical, adorably dark magic realism film about a girl who's put in a mental hospital because she believes she's a cyborg and needs to shock herself rather than eat to survive, and the boy there who fixes her with his magical powers. It was cute, happy, and weird. So very weird. And I loved it! I'm a big sucker for magical realism, and this was quite possibly the most spot-on realisation of the genre I've seen. Bless the Koreans.

Come back to see me, I know they have a rainy season.

2007-10-28T23:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week. M80 has sucked up all my time, in a good way. I find I really like the job, really like the frenetic pace, really like doing something significant. Excitedly talking to people about the X-Files is fun. My co-workers are fun too. I can't help but compare it to Oxy. It's been that long since I've been in an environment where everyone has so much energy, and has so much fun. I feel like I've been hibernating; I forgot I used to have this much fun around fun people everyday. It's that sort of environment.

My Malcolm Reynolds costume came out so well! I was really surprised when I put it on, and this costume has definitely earned a reserve place for future costume engagements. I'm thinking I may even wear it at Anime Expo next year.

November's just around the corner and it's going to already be a busy month. I've got a convention, a trip, and then Thanksgiving taking up three of the four weekends. After that...it's December already?? Though I always feel like the year just started by the time it's nearly over, I feel that way again this year. I'm not ready for 2008 and a year closer to the end of the decade yet! Oh, how I'd love a time machine...

Oh yes! As awesome as Portal was, and believe me, it's awesome, I am loving Half-Life 2: Episode One a whole lot more. Valve continues to do no wrong with an incredibly immersive game and a very well written story. I highly recommend it.

You Are Not to Blame

2007-10-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

I saw four different movies this weekend.

Eastern Promises

An indie film disguised as a mainstream release. Eastern Promises is much more about its characters than the plot they go through. We see the different mobsters grind against each other, pushing and giving till almost the limit, and then coolly backstabbing each other rather than bursting into open violence. Viggo Mortensen was fantastic, and disappears into his character, adding another brilliant role to his resume. I've come more and more to believe that the true mark of a great actor is if you can look at several different roles they've played and find it hard to believe that was the same person behind them all. (Christian Bale being the best example I've seen of this recently.) Mortensen does just that here, and judging from this choice, I'm very excited to see where his career goes. Vincent Cassel is brilliant and insane as always, though on that last point, he seems to play the same character as in Brotherhood of The Wolf and the two Ocean's films. I definitely give him the benefit of the doubt, and think he's just been typecast in America. Making a mental note to look into his French films...

The Darjeeling Limited

Stuart put it best, this is a Wes Anderson film, you know what you're going to get. Quirky, flawed, human characters, an oddly magical setting (in this case the titular train), deadpan humor, and lessons learned all around by the end. As far as where I'd rank this in Anderson's four films, I'd have to place it either second or third, as it's been a while since I've seen Rushmore. My all time favorite is The Life Aquatic.

Lust, Caution

Ang Lee has honed his skills to a fine point here. I admit I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain. I'm not put off by the subject matter, but I was put off by the controversy built up around a fictitious story. If it was anywhere near as masterful as Lust, Caution however, it certainly deserved the Oscars it won. Lust, Caution is the sad, twisted story of a young girl who pins her fate on an adolescent crush, and is dragged further and further into a world of deceit until it becomes the only life she has. I'm reminded of a Jacqueline Carey quote about a razor thin line between love and hate, and it comes to mind here. The passion that Wong Chia Chi and Yee share, though a lie, becomes the only truth she knows, and her hate turns to love though she cannot believe it herself. The film quietly smolders throughout, drawing you into its secluded corners and closed bedrooms, and the lies upon lies upon lies. Tony Leung plays the most magnificent bastard I've seen on film in a long time, and makes you loathe Yee, then come to pity him. Tang Wei is perfect as Wong, and never betrays a flaw in her portrayal. Whether this is beginner's luck or the signs of such a talented actress that she reminds me of Brigitte Lin, remains to be seen.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

What I went into thinking would be a Western turned out to be a very solemn, intense portrayal of the disillusionment of growing into manhood and the face of fame. The film begins a bit slowly, with a narration that I felt was not needed or at least too obtrusive, but then settles into a quiet, brooding, vivid character piece, couched in a rich setting. Brad Pitt gives a broad, powerful performance that slowly unfurls as both Robert Ford and the audience come to know his character. He proves that he still has all the talent that he's tucked away in recent years, and don't be surprised if the whispers of Oscar around this performance really do come true. Casey Affleck proves himself as well. I've never seen him in anything besides the Ocean films, and this performance shows that he has a long, robust career ahead of him. The camera work in this film is superb, portraying the thoughts of the characters on screen, and making beautiful use of the understated vistas throughout.

In His Head It's Like The Weather

2007-10-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

Nico had this interesting seed of an idea last night. As we were heading out to Lucky Baldwin's he mentioned he had his X-Men belt on, and wondered what his mutant power would be. I added to this that it would have to be something very odd/specific, as X-Men typically don't have just "normal" powers like flying or super strength. (By the way Nico, I did think about it some more and I think your mutant power would be the ability to turn smoke into a hard, titanium-like form. This makes me imagine cool, anime-like battles: like being surrounded by a gang of thugs who have no idea of your power, and you blow a cloud of smoke with a grin into their faces which flies at them as this hurtling, rock-like object. Or being bruised and bleeding in this massive battle, and wounded you reach for you pack of smokes, only to flip it open and it's empty, a resigned "Damn" following.)

So I ended up having this crazy dream last night about myself as a mutant; my mutant identity springing forth from my head fully formed, Athena-like as it were. I was a member of this ragtag gang of mutant kids hiding in the sewers of this Renaissance/medieval city like Lea Monde. My mutant power was a great regenerative ability, and a minor telepathy ability that allowed me to sense the location and size of moving objects in a twenty foot vicinity around me. However, I had been experimented on, ala Wolverine, and all that was left of me was a brain and a spine encased in this sleek robotic body fashioned as a replica of my human form. It was so cool!

I also remember the gang was lead by this woman who had the ability to shapeshift into animals and wore the black leather X-Men outfit. There was a short, squat guy in colorful Gogo-like clothing who could reform his body from any number of pieces it was blown into. There was your standard, super-strong Beast-like guy, with brown fur and eight feet tall. Then there was a guy who could morph into inanimate objects and create copies of himself in these forms, and he was my rival. For some reason the townspeople were not frightened by my form, and there was no explanation why I was essentially a futuristic robot in a medieval city.

So, what would your mutant power be?

Simon's Curse

2007-10-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

OMG, a night where I don't have to work on preparation! What is this??

I had a big interview on Wednesday, then my interview with M80 today. I've been preparing for both since last Friday, with barely a moment to myself the last couple of days. My body's definitely felt it with a bit of a sore throat I'm coming down with, and it already feels like the weekend for me tonight because I don't have anything to do.

I think the M80 interview went really well. I demonstrated my passion and severe interest for what they do over there, and I'm really, really hoping I get the position. It would be a dream job.

In what little time I've had outside of interview preparation, I've been marathoning through Dog the Bounty Hunter. I picked up the box set of seasons 1-3 along with season 1 of Inked. Dog is my favorite reality show. He's such a principaled character, and it's very refreshing to see someone who can live their life in such a simple, black and white manner in this confusing modern world. I'm not saying he's entirely naive of the good and bad in people (In fact I think watching the show it's very obvious he's aware of the good in everyone.) but that's what I get from the show.

It's Thursday night and there's a new episode of The Office out. Sometimes I wish I had regular tv.

I've been working towards finishing up Oblivion at last. I'm currently working strictly on the main quest to finish that portion of the game. I'm already head of the Assassin's Guild, and close to the top of the Thieves' Guild. I keep telling myself I'll play back through the game as a magic user, but we'll see if I have the stomach for that...

Kushiel's Dart continues to entertain but shows a bit of weakness. I understand Carey had to add another character into the story due to circumstances, but the plot device of "Hot Blooded Courtesan + Disciplined Monk = HILARITY! People who are opposites don't get along!" is more patronizing than I had thought her capable of.

It feels like it's about time for a new musician. If I could finish getting all of Spitz' discography, they might be it. I'd also like to find an English musician to listen to, someone with honesty but a bit more weight and hardness to them than the stuff I've been listening to lately. (Calexico, Voxtrot)

The Darjeeling Limited's just about out. Time to see my first Wes Anderson film in theaters... I am overjoyed.

I'm thinking it's a sign, that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images, and when we kiss they're perfectly aligned.

2007-09-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

We interrupt a Fred train of thought already in progress...

- My music player search has brought me to MediaMonkey which fits several of the following I'm looking for:

- Active directory monitoring to keep an eye on what I add and remove from my music folder (though it's in the paid version)
- Album art display (because this was far too cool of a feature in iTunes)
- Low memory footprint (because iTunes blew me away with the amount of memory it hogged)
- Responsive searching (The search list updates as I type in each new letter of my search term)
- Complete deleting ability (I can delete files/songs from my hard drive directly from the playlist)
- Separate playlist and library windows (I wasn't initially looking for this feature, but I've really come to appreciate it.

If someone has any suggestion for another player that fits these criteria, I'd be more than willing to check it out. Bonus points if you can tell me how to configure Foobar2000 to become this with plugins, because I hear it's damned versatile, but I have no clue.

- I forgot how much I love Jacqueline Carey's writing. She has such a way with dialogue, the narrator's thoughts, and labyrinthine Renaissance political intrigues. It almost fills the hole left by no more Gemmell, and leaves me wanting for a good movie set in this time period with excellent characters/dialogue.

- Brainstorming and drafting up my cover letter for Nico tonight left me really jazzed. Even if the position doesn't work out, I should really start practicing more Javascript/web design in my spare time. My goal: make sites more personal, simple yet intriguing, and with less information-noise. (Nico, I'm thinking of your simple MySpace page.)

- "Such Great Heights". Who did this song originally? I'm listening to the Iron and Wine cover from the Garden State soundtrack and it's goddamn beautiful.

- I have to pimp out the framing/hanging job I spent two hours working on this past weekend because I am so proud of how well it turned out. It involved a plethora of measurements, pencil marks on my wall, and experimentation with sticky-velcro hanging stickers:

- Plain, strong dark chocolate is delicious. As it is with raspberry bits in it.

- I'm venturing into eating healthier. Tomatoes, blueberries and nuts daily, spinach and carrots on occasion, cutting back on sodium. I hope I have the resolve to make it last.

- Blades of Glory was pretty hilarious, but the highlight was definitely getting to see Jenna Fischer in lingerie. I am an easy man to please at times.

That is all.

Painted in my mind on canvases of time

2007-09-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

- The job search continues. I realise I don't remember as much Japanese as I thought, and I know there's at least one position I've lost because of my poor skills.

- I'd like to go see Interpol at The Forum on October 23rd if anyone else is interested. Tickets are going for about $33 right now.

- Got back into a bit of Battlefield cause of Mahea. Been pretty fun. Still playing Oblivion otherwise.

- Spent $100 that I completely did not plan to spend on a Last Exile box set featuring Range Murata's artwork and schematics of all the airships. Although it was a lot of money spent on an impulse, I do not regret it.

- Various cravings lately (not all together mind you) : Takoyaki, cinnamon toast, El Cholo guacamole.

- Finally just decided to put down Fahrenheit 451. I can't get behind the idea of forcing myself to read something just because it's significant. If it's dry and bland, and I'm really reading for pleasure, then I'll read something I like. Moved on to Kushiel's Dart accordingly.

- Finally saw Momento. Quite a plot twist and very well made. They were right to give Nolan the reigns to Batman, and Guy Pierce continues to grow on me. (My first exposure to him was as the villain in the Count of Monte Cristo, so I've had a hard time forgiving him.) Saw Curse of the Golden Flower, and it was another visually stunning Zhang Yimou film, though typically melodramatic.

- Framed my AX artwork, now I just need to figure out how to hang them.

- Okay, I have to give ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead massive props for their site currently being Elven/LOTR themed: http://www.trailofdead.com/

I wanna live, breathe, I wanna be part of the human race

2007-09-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

I usually don't like reposting things verbatim, not a big fan of email forwards or those personality tests, but I thought this article was great, so enlightening, that I had to share it.

http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=2370

7 Reasons the 21st century is making you miserable

Scientists call it the Naked Photo Test, and it works like this: say a photo turns up of you nakedly doing something that would shame you and your family for generations. Bestiality, perhaps. Ask yourself how many people in your life you would trust with that photo. If you're like the rest of us, you probably have at most two.

Even more depressing, studies show that about one out of four people have no one they can confide in.

The average number of close friends we say we have is dropping fast, down dramatically in just the last 20 years. Why?

#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives.

That's not sarcasm. Annoyance is something you build up a tolerance to, like alcohol or a bad smell. The more we're able to edit the annoyance out of our lives, the less we're able to handle it.

The problem is we've built an awesome, sprawling web of technology meant purely to let us avoid annoying people. Do all your Christmas shopping online and avoid the fat lady ramming her cart into you at Target. Spend $5,000 on a home theater system so you can see movies on a big screen without a toddler kicking the back of your seat. Hell, rent the DVD's from Netflix and you don't even have to spend the 30 seconds with the confused kid working the register at Blockbuster.

Get stuck in the waiting room at the doctor? No way we're striking up a conversation with the smelly old man in the next seat. We'll plug the iPod into our ears and have a text conversation with a friend or play our DS. Filter that annoyance right out of our world.

Now that would be awesome if it were actually possible to keep all of the irritating shit out of your life. But, it's not. It never will be. As long as you have needs, you'll have to deal with people you can't stand from time to time. We're losing that skill, the one that lets us deal with strangers and tolerate their shrill voices and clunky senses of humor and body odor and squeaky shoes. So, what encounters you do have with the outside world, the world you can't control, make you want to go on a screaming crotch-punching spree.

#2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either.

Lots of us were born into towns full of people we couldn't stand. As a kid, maybe you found yourself in an elementary school classroom, packed in with two dozen kids you did not choose and who shared none of your tastes or interests. Maybe you got beat up a lot.

But, you've grown up. And if you're, say, a huge DragonForce fan, you can go find their forum and meet a dozen people just like you. Or even better, start a private room with your favorite few and lock everybody else out. Say goodbye to the tedious, awkward, painful process of dealing with somebody who's truly different. That's another Old World inconvenience, like having to wash your clothes in a creek or wait for a raccoon to wander by the outhouse so you can wipe your ass with it.

The problem is that peacefully dealing with incompatible people is crucial to living in a society. In fact, if you think about it, peacefully dealing with people you can't stand is society. Just people with opposite tastes and conflicting personalities sharing space and cooperating, often through gritted teeth.

Fifty years ago, you had to sit in a crowded room to see a movie. You didn't get to choose; you either did that or you missed the movie. When you got a new car, everyone on the block came and stood in your yard to look it over. You can bet that some of those people were assholes.

Yet, on the whole, people back then were apparently happier in their jobs and more satisfied with their lives. And get this: They had more friends.

That's right. Even though they had almost no ability to filter their peers according to common interests (hell, often you were just friends with the guy who happened to live next door), they still came up with more close friends than we have now—people they could trust.

It turns out, apparently, that after you get over that first irritation, after you shed your shell of "they listen to different music because they wouldn't understand mine" superiority, there's a sort of comfort in needing other people and being needed on a level beyond common interests. It turns out humans are social animals after all. And that ability to suffer fools, to tolerate annoyance, that's literally the one single thing that allows you to function in a world populated by other people who aren't you. Otherwise, you turn emo. Science has proven it.

#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.

I have this friend who uses the expression "No, thank you," in a sarcastic way. It means, "I'd rather be shot in the face." He puts a little ironic lilt on the last two words that lets you know. You ask, "Want to go see that new Rob Schneider movie?" And, he'll say, "No, thank you."

So one day we had this exchange via text:

Me: "Hey, do you want me to bring over that leftover chili I made?"

Him: "No, thank you"

That pissed me off. I'm proud of my chili. It takes four days to make it. I grind up the dried peppers myself; the meat is expensive, hand-tortured veal. And, now my offer to give him some is dismissed with his bitchy catchphrase?

I didn't speak to him for six months. He sent me a letter, I mailed it back, unread, with a dead rat packed inside.

It was my wife who finally ran into him and realized that the "No, thank you" he replied with was not meant to be sarcastic, but was a literal, "No, but thank you for offering." He had no room in his freezer, it turns out.

So did we really need a study to tell us that more than 40 percent of what you say in an e-mail is misunderstood? Well, they did one anyway.

How many of your friends have you only spoken with online? If 40 percent of your personality has gotten lost in the text transition, do these people even really know you? The people who dislike you via text, on message boards or chatrooms or whatever, is it because you're really incompatible? Or, is it because of the misunderstood 40 percent? And, what about the ones who like you?

Many of us try to make up that difference in sheer numbers, piling up six dozen friends on MySpace. But here's the problem ...

#4. Online company only makes us lonelier.

When someone speaks to you face-to-face, what percentage of the meaning is actually in the words, as opposed to the body language and tone of voice? Take a guess.

It's 7 percent. The other 93 percent is nonverbal, according to studies. No, I don't know how they arrived at that exact number. They have a machine or something. But we didn't need it. I mean, come on. Most of our humor is sarcasm, and sarcasm is just mismatching the words with the tone. Like my friend's "No, thank you."

You don't wait for a girl to verbally tell you she likes you. It's the sparkle in her eyes, her posture, the way she grabs your head and shoves your face into her boobs.

That's the crux of the problem. That human ability to absorb the moods of others through that kind of subconscious osmosis is crucial. Kids born without it are considered mentally handicapped. People who have lots of it are called "charismatic" and become movie stars and politicians. It's not what they say; it's this energy they put off that makes us feel good about ourselves.

When we're living in Text World, all that is stripped away. There's a weird side effect to it, too: absent a sense of the other person's mood, every line we read gets filtered through our own mood instead. The reason I read my friend's chili message as sarcastic was because I was in an irritable mood. In that state of mind, I was eager to be offended.
And worse, if I do enough of my communicating this way, my mood never changes. After all, people keep saying nasty things to me! Of course I'm depressed! It's me against the world!

No, what I need is somebody to shake me by the shoulders and snap me out of it. Which leads us to No. 5 ...

#5. We don't get criticized enough.

Most of what sucks about not having close friends isn't the missed birthday parties or the sad, single-player games of ping pong with the wall. No, what sucks is the lack of real criticism.

In my time online I've been called "fag" approximately 104,165 times. I keep an Excel spreadsheet. I've also been called "asshole" and "cockweasel" and "fuckcamel" and "cuntwaffle" and "shitglutton" and "porksword" and "wangbasket" and "shitwhistle" and "thundercunt" and "fartminge" and "shitflannel" and "knobgoblin" and "boring."

And none of it mattered, because none of those people knew me well enough to really hit the target. I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little. And don't ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing.

Tragically, there are now a whole lot of people who never have those conversations. The interventions, the brutal honesty, the, "you know, everybody's pissed off because of what you said last night, but nobody wants to say anything because they're afraid of you," sort of conversations. Those horrible, awkward, wrenchingly uncomfortable sessions that you can only have with someone who sees right to the center of you.

E-mail and texting are awesome tools for avoiding that level of honesty. With text, you can respond when you feel like it. You can measure your words. You can pick and choose which questions to answer. The person on the other end can't see your face, can't see you get nervous, can't detect when you're lying. You have almost total control and as a result that other person never sees past your armor, never sees you at your worst, never knows the embarrassing little things about yourself that you can't control. Gone are the common quirks, humiliations and vulnerabilities that real friendships are built on.

Browse around people's MySpace pages, look at the characters they create for themselves. If you've built a pool of friends via a blog, building yourself up as a misunderstood, mysterious Master of the Night, it's kind of hard to log on and talk about how you went to prom and got diarrhea out on the dance floor. You never get to really be yourself, and that's a very lonely feeling.

And, on top of all that ...

#6. We're victims of the Outrage Machine.

A whole lot of the people still reading this are saying, "Of course I'm depressed! People are starving! America has turned into Nazi Germany! My parents watch retarded television shows and talk about them for hours afterward! People are dying in meaningless wars all over the world!"

But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn't live as long and babies died more often. Diseases were more common. In those days, if your buddy moved away the only way to communicate was with pen and paper and a stamp. We have Iraq, but our parents had Vietnam (which killed 50 times more people) and their parents had World War 2 (which killed 1,000 times as many). Some of your grandparents grew up at a time when nobody had air conditioning. All of their parents grew up without it.

We are physically better off today in every possible way in which such things can be measured ... but you sure as hell wouldn't know that if you're getting your news online. Why?

Well, ask yourself: If some music site posts an article called, "Fall Out Boy is a Fine Band" and on the same day posts another one called, "Fall Out Boy is the Shittiest Fucking Band of the Last 100 Years, Say Experts," which do you think will get the most traffic? The second one wins in a blowout. Outrage manufactures word-of-mouth.

The news blogs many of you read? The people running them know the same thing. Every site is in a dogfight for traffic (even if they don't run ads, they still measure their success by the size of their audience) and so they carefully pick through the wires for the most inflammatory story possible. The other blogs start echoing the same story from the same point of view. If you want, you can surf all day and never swim out of the warm, stagnant waters of the "aren't those bastards evil" pool.

Only in that climate could those silly 9/11 conspiracy theories come about (saying the Bush administration and the FDNY blew up the towers, and that the planes were holograms). To hear these people talk, every opposing politician is Hitler, and every election is the freaking apocalypse. All because it keeps you reading.

This wasn't as much a problem in the old days, of course. Some of us remember having only three channels on TV. That's right. Three. We're talking about the '80s here. So there was something unifying in the way we all sat down to watch the same news, all of it coming from the same point of view. Even if the point of view was retarded and wrong, even if some stories went criminally unreported, we at least all shared it.

That's over. There effectively is no "mass media" any more so, where before we disagreed because we saw the same news and interpreted it differently, now we disagree because we're seeing completely different freaking news. When we can't even agree on the basic facts, the differences become irreconcilable. That constant feeling of being at bitter odds with the rest of the world brings with it a tension that just builds and builds.

We humans used to have lots of natural ways to release that kind of angst. But these days...

#7. We feel worthless, because we actually are worth less.

There's one advantage to having mostly online friends, and it's one that nobody ever talks about :

They demand less from you.

Sure, you emotionally support them, comfort them after a breakup, maybe even talk them out of a suicide. But knowing someone in meatspace adds a whole, long list of annoying demands. Wasting your whole afternoon helping them fix their computer. Going to funerals with them. Toting them around in your car every day after theirs gets repossessed by the bank. Having them show up unannounced when you were just settling in to watch the Dirty Jobs marathon on the Discovery channel, then mentioning how hungry they are until you finally give them half your sandwich.

You have so much more control in Instant Messenger, or on a forum, or in World of Warcraft.

The problem is you are hard-wired by evolution to need to do things for people. Everybody for the last five thousand years seemed to realize this and then we suddenly forgot it in the last few decades. We get suicidal teens and scramble to teach them self-esteem. Well, unfortunately, self-esteem and the ability to like yourself only come after you've done something that makes you likable. You can't bullshit yourself. If I think Todd over here is worthless for sitting in his room all day, drinking Pabst and playing video games one-handed because he's masturbating with the other one, what will I think of myself if I do the same thing?

You want to break out of that black tar pit of self-hatred? Brush the black hair out of your eyes, step away from the computer and buy a nice gift for someone you loathe. Send a card to your worst enemy. Make dinner for your mom and dad. Or just do something simple, with an tangible result. Go clean the leaves out of the gutter. Grow a damn plant.

It ain't rocket science; you are a social animal and thus you are born with little happiness hormones that are released into your bloodstream when you see a physical benefit to your actions. Think about all those teenagers in their dark rooms, glued to their PC's, turning every life problem into ridiculous melodrama. Why do they make those cuts on their arms? It's because making the pain—and subsequent healing—tangible releases endorphins they don't get otherwise. It's pain, but at least it's real.

That form of stress relief via mild discomfort used to be part of our daily lives, via our routine of hunting gazelles and gathering berries and climbing rocks and fighting bears. No more. This is why office jobs make so many of us miserable; we don't get any physical, tangible result from our work. But do construction out in the hot sun for two months, and for the rest of your life you can drive past a certain house and say, "Holy shit, I built that." Maybe that's why mass shootings are more common in offices than construction sites.

It's the kind of physical, dirt-under-your-nails satisfaction that you can only get by turning off the computer, going outdoors and re-connecting with the real world. That feeling, that "I built that" or "I grew that" or "I fed that guy" or "I made these pants" feeling, can't be matched by anything the internet has to offer.

Frontin'

2007-09-08T01:20:00.001-07:00

[12:51] Evan Bacon: HO!
[12:51] Fred: Don't be callin me no ho when I roll up in yo spot with the ice on my fingers and slap the white outta yo face.
[12:52] Evan Bacon: :'(
[12:52] Fred: Thas right, BITCH
[12:52] Evan Bacon: :'(
[12:52] Evan Bacon: I like my job a lot when meeting with parents
[12:52] Evan Bacon: and when meeting jointly with teachers
[12:53] Fred: You straight up unleash yo schlong in they face?
[12:53] Evan Bacon: but not when its getting yelled at for basically not having adjusted to the way things get done here
[12:53] Evan Bacon: yeah man
[12:53] Fred: All, COCKSLAP BITCH
[12:53] Evan Bacon: you KNOW it
[12:53] Evan Bacon: Fred, you should be an educator
[12:53] Fred: Yeah, I know you roll straight HARD
[12:53] Fred: Nigga please
[12:54] Fred: They'd throw me out on my ass in five min tops cause I be bringin TRUE education to the chillins
[12:54] Fred: All like, whatchoo do when a ho ain't put out and you dropped the benz?
[12:54] Evan Bacon: you know
[12:54] Evan Bacon: I think you're right
[12:54] Fred: Simple playa, YOU TURN HER ASS OUT
[12:54] Fred: And give her the back a yo hand
[12:55] Evan Bacon: jesus christ fred!
[12:55] Fred: Thas right
[12:56] Fred: I keep it REAL son
[12:56] Fred: See, even yo fly ass can't handle that shit
[12:56] Fred: I be straight up PROVOCATIVE
[12:56] Fred: In fact, that be my pimp name: PROVOCATEUR
[12:56] Fred: Cause I roll all classy with that french Alize shit
[12:57] Fred: All droppin hos with my stunnin repetoire, and the straight up curl in mah voice
[12:57] Evan Bacon: Fred
[12:57] Evan Bacon: your'e the whitest person I know
[12:57] Fred: Yeah
[12:57] Fred: Or am I so white, I'm BLACK
[12:57] Fred: Straight up TRUTH son
[12:57] Evan Bacon: ooooooooh
[12:57] Evan Bacon: two sides of the same coin!
[12:57] Fred: Thas right
[12:58] Fred: Rollin all Two Face style
[12:58] Fred: Droppin straight knowledge and crime on Gotham
[12:58] Evan Bacon: hahahahaha
[12:58] Evan Bacon: ebonic two face
[12:58] Fred: That shit be WORD
[12:58] Fred: You know Harvey Dent ain't got no acid splashed in no face
[12:59] Fred: That shit be for the papers
[12:59] Fred: He straight up be a mulatto brotha
[12:59] Fred: Best of both worlds
[12:59] Evan Bacon: LOL
[12:59] Fred: And white ass, honkey Gotham cops get jealous
[12:59] Fred: So they spin him all criminal style
[12:59] Fred: Straight up the MAN, yo
[12:59] Evan Bacon: I'm so happy that this is being saved in my gmail archives
[12:59] Fred: This shit be goin on my blog right now
[12:59] Fred: All instant-like
[13:00] Evan Bacon: really?
[13:00] Fred: Hellz yes, biatch
[13:00] Fred: You doubt a playa play?
[13:00] Fred: Shit
[13:00] Fred: Where that noise be comin from?
[13:00] Evan Bacon: but
[13:00] Fred: But WHAT
[13:00] Evan Bacon: people in the ghetto of gotham don't know how to use the interweb
[13:00] Fred: The only but I wanna see is a big ole badonkadonk booty
[13:00] Fred: All floppin in mah face
[13:01] Fred: Shit, true knowledge niggas know
[13:01] Fred: You know Two Face got the realz word
[13:01] Evan Bacon: ....
[13:01] Fred: Best drop that frontin, son
[13:01] Fred: That shit get you slapped faster than Karl Rove tryin to step to a Roscoes
[13:02] Fred: Ain't real
[13:02] Evan Bacon: What I think you should do
[13:02] Evan Bacon: is go into Watts
[13:02] Evan Bacon: and go into a restaurant
[13:02] Evan Bacon: and speak like this
[13:03] Fred: Shiiiit

Because the wind is high, it blows my mind.

2007-09-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since the last blog update, so I felt I'd throw up some of my random thoughts.

- I spent the weekend down in San Diego with the family. Good times, fun at the beach, good food. It was a bit odd having my host sister/brother's girlfriend there, as this is the first time we've seen her since we found out they had been seeing each other. I saw Balls of Fury, and it wasn't as funny as I hoped, but maybe they'll make it better with the DVD release and deleted scenes cut back in. Got sunburned on my arms; I have to keep an eye on that.

- I received my first shipment of Magic cards in the mail, around 1400 in all. I put together a quick deck late last night, and felt the old memories coming back as I did. I'm really glad to be able to play again, and to have an opponent as excited about it as Evan. I would certainly like to get everyone in on some Magic action!

- I finally broke down and bought myself a new camera. I reason that I need to keep track of my moles after the sunburn, so as much as I need a camera for other purposes, that's the urgent one which drove me to purchase. I've heard fairly good things about Samsung cameras, and I realise I do only need a point and shoot, not the semi-SLR I had my heart set on.

- I'm a bit burned out on anime at the moment. I'm still watching Mononoke for my weekly reviews, but I don't have much motivation to finish Hidamari Sketch or Lucky Star. I should pick back up Claymore and Towards the Terra, as I left both of those series after an episode or two, and I still need to get into Darker than Black. I'm grabbing Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, but my heart's no longer really in it as the track record with recent episodes has been spotty at best, as Evan and Mahea can attest to. I can't wait for the new fall season!

- I love Miller Chill. I saw some ads for this beer and I was a bit apprehensive. It is from one of the huge American piss-beer breweries after all, and I've never liked Miller otherwise. So I apprehensively bought a six pack last week. After one taste, damn, I am drinking this over Corona when I can get it. It's a Mexican beer imitation, with the lime and salt already added. It tastes fantastic. I love Corona with some lime in it. Chill has a nice sharp, almost creamy tasting start to it, and finishes with the lime coming in at the end. Superb.

- You know you watch too much of The Office when you have a dream about Pam Beesley.

- Brick is an amazing, fantastic film, and I highly recommend you all see it as soon as possible. Film noir + conscious high school drama = Yes please!

- Beyonce is the same age I am...

- Steve Iriwin, you live on in our hearts, and our khaki shorts. Crikey!

Happy Birthday, you old fool.

2007-08-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

Call this the obligatory Birthday Post. I feel that on certain occasions it's important to write, and it keeps me on some semblance of a schedule. (Though I would like to point out I've posted on both my translation blog and my group anime blog!)

Another year gone by. That's the first thing which comes to mind to say on a birthday. A birthday is such a strange symbol. Is it occasion to summarize what you've learned in the past year and reflect on lessons? Is it a marker that you're still alive, still fighting? A marker towards the glass half empty?

No, I refuse that. I don't think a birthday is any sort of an occasion to be depressed over. Really, I stop and think about what a birthday means to me, and it is a collection of possibilites. I think on events that are still to happen; a birthday is another year to experience, and learn. I'm a dreamer, and that's always left me with more ideas and "what ifs" than energy to act on them, but that is what a birthday means to me. It's an exciting bunch of possibilities.

I don't want to make a list of goals for the coming year. Maybe I should. It would give me something to rally my energy and motivation around. A humble list then:

- I want to improve my Japanese. It's my main skill, the scholarly sum total of my college experience, and looking for jobs recently I've noticed it's slipped quite a bit. I really do love languages, as few of them as I can keep in my head at once, and I want to be able to speak Japanese competently.
- I want to write on a regular basis. Like exercise, writing is a creative muscle that needs to be flexed. The last time I updated my DeviantArt account? I'm guessing six months. That really shouldn't be so. Even if it's terrible crap, I should be practicing accordingly.
- I want to get out more. My recent mold situation impressed on me how much of my life is spent at home, playing with my toys. I'd like to get out, meet new people, make new hobbies, explore the city, and if possible travel. (Also, writer within me, I felt like these things need to come in at least threes...)

So, that's what I'd like to build towards in the coming year. I'm sure I'll have half-baked, colorful notions and schemes pop into my head throughout til the next August 24th, but at the very least I want to get those three done.

Here's to another year. Happy Birthday, you old fool.

Robocop has metal underwear, but that never stopped Anderson Cooper.

2007-08-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

Through the many wonderful benefits of StumbleUpon, I found this animation, Imagining the Tenth Dimension.

It's a step by step illustration of how each dimension can be understood, building upon concepts of the previous dimensions. It's a fascinating watch, and a step beyond the familiar first three dimensions (and the fourth if you're all up in Donnie Darko) in a comfortable thorough explanation.

After viewing it, it brings up a multitude of questions, which continue to flower:

1.If the concept of a Fourth Dimension object is the entire temporal “life span” of that object, and one were a Fourth Dimension being perceiving always in the Fourth Dimension, would that not then neccessitate the ability to percieve the Sixth Dimension, which would be all possible points and trajectories in the Fourth Dimension?

2.The easiest way to think of a Fourth Dimension object is as a “temporal snake”, an object wherein all its points in time are perceivable. However, thinking of a Fourth Dimension object in this “snake” form is a Third Dimension form, because one would be perceiving all physical points at once. Would perception of a Fourth Dimension object more likely be knowledge of every single point of such an object, rather than plain, Third Dimension perception of it's physical spaces?

3.If one could travel in the Sixth Dimension and visit completely different timelines within our universe, how does the visiting of other Eight and Ninth Dimension Infinities differ on a conceptual level?

When I crane my neck to kiss your head, I know that there is something that I can rely on.

2007-08-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

- The Job Search goes on. I had my first interview on Friday, and it went fairly well. It was with ANA (All Nippon Airlines) Trading, and it would be for a sales assistant position selling components to US manufacturers. While the interview went well, I don't want to be a salesman. I think about my current job and how quickly I get tired of having to deal with people, and I can't imagine if that were my entire job. I realise I wouldn't be dealing with John Q. Dumbass-Public, but I still don't think working with people is my forte.

- I grabbed a bunch of new music to listen to. Current favorites are Thao Nguyen off of Daytrotter, Gza, and Dappled Cities.

- The new streaming video feature over at Netflix is really neat! I come home everyday and watch an episode of The Office while I eat dinner. There's no slowdown at all and the quality is incredibly clear.

I thought I had more to talk about. Ah well, later.

He's not heavy man, he's my brother.

2007-08-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a good, long weekend up in San Jose visiting my high school friend, Matt, and his girlfriend, Sophia. Caught up, talked late into the night, watched movies, had good food (especially off of Matt's crazy-expensive-high-tech backyard grill), picked up some Japanese novels (in Japanese), got a couple new shirts for a new starter wardrobe, and went to a barbecue with their friends. It's amazing I could fit all that in one paragraph, as the events themselves were immense.

We talked about a number of subjects: family, books, film, languages, childhood. I realised that everyone has a unique relationship with their parents. That I am cultured, and I can talk at length about good authors and books I've read. That I wish there were more time to watch movies in the day. That I love the different rhythms of languages, and I need to step up my Japanese study. That I think three kids are too many to have, but I wouldn't give away either one of my brothers.

I bought two nice, dressy casual shirts while I was in San Jose. I've realised recently that while I'm not into fashion for the most part, I have tended to dress somewhat frumpy the past couple of years. Jeans and t-shirts the entire way. I feel that I need a bit of a change, something that looks a bit nicer, something to wear besides t-shirts all the time.

Well, that was my weekend, description of other fantastic events aside. Hope you all had a good one too!

Spartans, what is your profession?

2007-07-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

Oh man. It's been two weeks since I updated my blog. And as many of you may know, its due to the fact that bacterial organisms have been trying to kill me.

Two weeks ago, I discovered that the water heater in my apartment had been leaking, and mold had been growing in the carpet around the closet where it's stored. Unfortunately this carpet happens to be in my bedroom and bedroom closet. While I alerted my landlord first thing Monday, I endured it for a couple of days, until I began to get physically ill. I woke up on the Wednesday following having trouble breathing. Kind of had a wet, hacking cough. Luckily that disappeared the next day, though I noticed after hiking on Saturday that my lungs hurt (this might just be from my terrible lack of exercise). Subsequently I've had a constant sore throat that's refused to go away.

The latest update is the water heater has been replaced, and either the moldy carpet or the carpet in the entirety of my room will be replaced tomorrow. This may mean I'm without a sleeping space for the next couple of days, as replacing all the carpet in my room would require moving all my stuff into the living room.

What have I been up to the last two weeks? It's been rather crazy.

- On the Mold weekend, my mom came down to visit and we drove up to Santa Barbara and wine country for the weekend. We took a map of all the Sideways locations and hit up a couple of them. Plus I had split-pea soup at Pea Soup Andersen's, which I haven't had since I was a kid. That was a staple of our family drives to California and I missed it a lot.

- I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and started in on Graham Greene's The Quiet American. I love the film and I'm finding the book just as enjoyable. Greene writes superbly.

- Having a mold-infested bedroom has an interesting side-effect: it's encouraged me to get out more. This past weekend I practically lived out of my backpack, with no computer to come home to, and I loved it. I spent an awful lot of time with my friends, went on a great hike with Evan, caught a good movie (Rescue Dawn), wrote and read in various parks, and danced at the Obon festival in Little Tokyo. It's made me question my homebody, sedentary lifestyle, and of course I immediately had delusions of traveling the globe with a backpack full of clothes and meeting interesting people and seeing fascinating places. Maybe that's a bit of a daydream, but I should still get out more.

- Caught a couple of Woody Allen movies. Match Point was excellent, and then because I was feeling bad for only watching movies where Scarlett Johansson gets shit on (metaphorically), I rented Scoop, which was average but funny.

- I let my boss know I'd be looking for a new job in September. He took it a lot better than I thought, especially considering we've been floundering without someone in the other position at my office for six months. He understood that I had to get out and pursue the things that I'm interested in. He even was understanding about working out a schedule for me to interview while I still work at the company.

- I played a good chunk of FF6, and once I'm done with that I think I'll start back into FF Tactics Advance. I never really gave the game a chance and the bit I played this past weekend was fun.

Well, there will surely be updates more often, with or without mold, as I am on the brink of recapturing my computer from the viral organisms holding it hostage. Wish me luck!

The World Outside is Knocking

2007-07-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

I went and saw Order of the Phoenix last night with Stuart, Nico, and Warren. I have to say this may be the best Potter film yet. It's been a while since I've seen the third, my favorite, so that statement needs some restraint.

The story felt terribly coherent in this one. You could actually watch and follow the storyline, and there were the magical bits and wonders to catch on the sides. I know OotP was a huge book, and they did an amazing job of keeping the side stories from drowning the main narrative.

This is the book where the series began to take its dark turn and they don't pull any punches in the film. I was shocked at how dark the film was, and how terrible were the defeats.

Admittedly I haven't read the fifth book yet, I'm still halfway through the fourth. However, I hope they keep this director/screenwriter team as they did a fantastic job.

All in all I highly recommend it!

I've got another blog now. I'm starting to do some translation work in my free time in order to get my Japanese skills back up to par and to become familiar with the hurdles of translating. I'll try to inject a couple interesting points here and there. For the most part however it's going to be a straight translation blog, a place to show off my work and keep me motivated.

My Hometown

2007-07-12T00:21:00.000-07:00

Because you've caught me with my pants down and my randomness all showin' off for the world to see.

- That's the second time in two weeks that someone has made a reference to Clerks 2. I guess it's about time I saw it.

- I'm loving me some Oblivion. It's much more immersive than Morrowind. Besides the story, quests, and detailed NPCs, I could just ride around looking at the landscape for hours.

- Really liking me some Otsuka Ai at the moment. And some Shiina Ringo of course. In my opinion the two most talented women in J-Pop today.

- Apparently Acetone gets layers and layers of dried glue off of fixed glasses in seconds. Yay for toxic, deadly chemicals!

- The title of this post comes from the song I was listening to, not any reference to my hometown. Gotta keep my Vegas-Hate proud and out on my sleeve.

- The barbarous, cruel kingdom of Mugicha declares war on my civilized utopia of Green Tea. Oh noes!

- How many times can I watch Big Trouble in Little China in a week? Apparently one more!

Letting the Days Go By

2007-06-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

A blog post in the middle of my mini-vacation. Well, I say vacation because it's pretty cool having my brother Schuyler here, and I had an awesome night tonight. Honestly, work has been very shitty lately and up until four hours ago, I wasn't very happy. But tonight was awesome, with all the guitar hero, Pippintude, YouTube hilarity, and good friends. It was a nice night.

Where does that highway go to?

Anata ni Te Watashi Takute

2007-06-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

Mentally recovering from my ongoing two straight weeks of work. For those out of the loop, I didn't have a weekend this weekend. I had to work Saturday and Sunday as we're moving into a new office. One of the downsides of a salaried position at a small company. I knew it was going to be rough, but I didn't think I'd crash so hard at the end of it.

My family's coming down this weekend. That should be fun. My brother may also come up for Anime Expo next weekend, which would be an awesome experience to have with him. This will be my first anime con, the biggest convention I've been to of three. I'm looking forward to it, but wishing I had a free weekend in between to recover. Ah well, I always say that.

I guess I just felt like writing tonight because I'm feeling rather down and I can't take any st. john's wort before bed or I won't be able to get to sleep. When I stop and think about it, there's really nothing that big to get me down, so it must just be something cyclical and chemical.

Dust Kicked Up from the Desert Floor

2007-06-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

Oh man, what an awesome random song to stumble across. The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack was one of the first albums that sparked my love of orchestral music, along with Joe Hisaishi of course. Hmm...I really need to get around to the LOTR soundtrack...

So. New computer. Yeah. That's why you haven't heard from me in a while. That's what I was doing practically all weekend, including beating Half-Life 2 in about three days. Goddamn that's an awesome game. All in all, my sordid tale of computer woes is nearly over, and I'm not all worried about it anymore. (Work on the other hand...)

In addition, Harry Potter just gets better and better. This third book is so much more readable than the first two. I find myself thoroughly engrossed. I don't plan on finishing the next three before July 21st, but I'd like to have at least Goblet of Fire done by July 13th, when the next movie comes out. And I really need to try out this recipe for Butterbeer...

I just noticed I ended every single paragraph with elipses. Huh.

You are so young, So feel alive.

2007-05-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

I didn't really feel like posting tonight, but I had to get Voxtrot out there. I think they're my new favorite band off of Daytrotter, even more than Aloha. They're kind of chill, personal, and when you listen to their songs, you feel like you're just sitting there with them playing, like it's a private show for you. I don't know, I wish I could explain it better, but they're very cool, and definitely worth checking out.

I've got a bit of a melancholy feeling, mostly coming from the end of a long weekend. Although I'm training myself, I'm still impatient about the future, and just enjoying myself for a weekend feels reprehensible. I've been described as the kind of guy who gets worried when everything's going well. I think that's accurate, as it's hard for me to relax.

Maybe this should be my movie post too. I saw two movies lately, Garden State and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, that I had been putting off for a while. Garden State because it has particularly sentimental memories attached to it that just wreck me inside. Eternal Sunshine because I heard it was a good movie, heard what the subject matter was, and thought it'd make me terribly depressed. Both are good movies that I'm glad I gave a second chance.

Garden State...As much as I had a grudge against Zach Braff for the aformentioned reasons, I really have to admit that he's crafted something poignant and beautiful here. Maybe it's not easily seen, the movie's very well polished and it feels a bit too clean at times to be dealing with what it's dealing with. Quite honestly though, I feel he's made the When Harry Met Sally of our generation. What I mean is, he's made a movie about romance that really cuts to the heart of the state of romance we've grown up with. His hero deals with finding his purpose and the subconscious drive he feels for it. The heroine is someone who's not quite damaged, but bruised by the world. Weird and easy to trust, she keeps pulling then pushing him away. I really do feel he's captured something here, and I hope this is the kind of film that ends up in film school echelons in fifteen to twenty years.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a bit differently made. There's no avoiding that it's got big name actors in it, but its so brutal and raw. You really forget what baggage you've brought to the film with each of their careers. Even Jim Carrey, who I've had a bit of a beef with since he abandoned hilarious comedy work for the dead-horse beatings of his feel-good movies. But here, damn, after watching the film you really do feel like you've been through the break up of a meaningful relationship. It doesn't come with the attached depression however, both because of the ending and the message of the film, which is that as much as we'd like to forget the pain others have caused us and curse them as bad people, they left us with some beautiful memories and they're just as wondrously flawed as we are. Kate Winslet has a line in the film, "Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own piece of mind; don't assign me yours." Just one piece that stayed with me.

So...two films that I didn't want to let in because they might hurt me, but both ended up making me feel better, feel a bit wiser in the end. Hmm. Imagine that.

And all the boys that avoided you, had somebody else's name.

2007-05-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

A bit of an update, as I feel remiss if I go a week without posting.

- I am in full-blown "OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD NEW COMPUTER" mode. I'm finally feeling pretty good about the specs after a little research and a couple calls to change my equipment:

Thermaltake Armor Jr. Gaming Case w/420W Power Supply Black
550 Watt -- NZXT PRC-550 Power Supply SLI Ready
[Socket-AM2] AMD Athlon™64 X2 5600+ Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe nForce 570-SLI MCP Chipset w/7.1 Sound, Dual Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, IEEE-1394 Dual PCI-E MB
2048MB [1024MB X2] DDR2-800 PC6400 Memory Module
ATI Radeon X1950GT 256MB PCI-Express x16
320 GB HARD DRIVE [Serial-ATA-II, 3Gb, 7200 RPM, 16M Cache]
NEC 7170A Dual Format/Double Layer 18X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive
12-In-1 Internal Flash Media Card Reader/Writer

The only thing I'd like to upgrade is the video card, but I'm way over my initial budget, and even I can't justify another $200 for the perfect card. I figure I'll wait and see how the performance is, and if I absolutely have to have the 8800 GTS 320MB (my perfect card), I'll sell the current one and pick it up.

- I'm also in full blown game buying mode, but here my list is comfortably plump:

Half Life 2 (w/CS: Source)
Far Cry
Oblivion
Battlefield 2142
Civilization 4

I may pick up Command & Conquer 3 when I get the new system and if my RTS bug is itching, however I think another Warcraft 3 playthrough (which...I think...I have?) would satisfy that just as well.

- My friend Mike Huang from my anime club had a post a while back on his anime blog (Anime Diet) about easy to watch shows getting...watched a lot more than heavier, serious fare. I suppose upon a momentary rumination this is quite obvious. I regret I've fallen into this trap as well. The latest episodes of Claymore and Darker than Black go unwatched, I'm making slow progress through Bakumatsu (though this may also be due to how it falls apart a fair deal after the first ten episodes). Meanwhile, I'm all but caught up on Lucky Star and Hidamari Sketch. Not really something I feel bad about persay, just a phenomenon that I must admit strikes me as well.

- I rewatched Garden State and...well, perhaps I'll leave that for another post. It'd do good to have a movie review post, as I talk about movies so much.

- Daytrotter. You should all be checking it regularly (and RSS Feeding it, if you're hip). Free studio songs from the best up-and-coming indie bands. New songs go up practically every day, as far as I've noticed. There's a wealth of amazing music to catch on here. I personally recommend Aloha as a good start. Listen to "All The Wars" and tell me that you can stop.

- I think watching my spending and cutting out fast food has honestly fattened my wallet. Although I made some major, major purchases this month, I'm still pretty comfortable.

- My brother has plans to travel to Japan in August. Of course I want to go and he'd love for me to go. Whether this will interfere with quitting plans at my current job (or turn into a job hunting opportunity) remains to be seen, but I just found out about it.

- I started taking St. John's Wort every now and then for the deepest blues. The jury's still out, as it does help, but it's made me feel weird on occasion.

- Hrmm. It's 12:20 at night, but I really want a cup of tea. Shall I get one? I shall. Sleep be damned.

Adhesive Love

2007-05-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

Ahh, Stone Temple Pilot's Tiny Music. Another musical memory, though more vague than Radiohead. I picked it up freshman year of high school, and it calls up all those misfit, escapist feelings.

I've heard people say this is one of their worst albums. Maybe that's just because this was the last album before they broke up? (The whole Talk Show/Scott Weiland period. Then got back together again...) I love it though. Every song is a different musical landscape, and I love how they wander back and forth from driving, hard rock to soothing, quiet, dark melodies.

Funny story, I actually saw Talk Show in concert as they opened for Aerosmith way back when. I'd be hard pressed to remember one of their songs now though... For me, STP has always been more about the sound/melody rather than the lyrics. I don't know if that means Weiland is extraneous or not, how much of the music he actually writes, but I think this album epitomizes the best of their sound and it's my favorite.

This just in.

2007-05-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

Even on a day as fucked up and horrible as mine is, there can still be some good news: Rev. Jerry Falwell dies at age 73.

僕らの見えない未来

2007-05-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

- I've been fiending, waiting, and dreaming of my new comp for a while now. Possible changes in my summer plans would make the purchase very close, as in getting it early June. I'm planning to buy one from iBuyPower, and these are the current stats I'm looking at:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Dual-Core
1 GB of Ram
GeForce 7600 GS 512MB (which I can hook up my brand new 22" widescreen monitor to via DVI)
320 GB HD
Dual Layer DVD Burner

I think the 22" monitor deserves its own post, but not quite. I've been wanting a 22" widescreen monitor for longer than a new computer. I've been waiting for them to drop below two hundred dollars. Just so happens Woot had an Acer refurbished one for $199 this past Monday and I bought without a second look back. It's shipped and on its way, and I can't wait!

- I've just today been thinking of what games I want to get for my new comp. My list so far includes Half-Life 2, CS: Source, Oblivion, FarCry, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, STALKER, and possibly Civ 4/C&C 3. I've never really had a comp that could run top of the line, mind-blowing graphic intensive games, so this is going to be superb.

- On the Anime front: Bakumatsu has cooled down a bit. It seems they lost their direction around the 10th/11th episode, and I feel that the story isn't as cohesive. Perhaps it's because the majority of mysteries have been revealed, and now it's just a matter of seeing the series resolve itself. Terra E is still goddamn amazing, and I'm hooked.

- I was really jonesing for some more music from UVERworld, the band who does the opening song for Terra E. Went and grabbed their album, and it is superb (the parts without the unfortunate rap/rock songs). This is my current favorite off the album, ゼロの答. I haven't had my face rocked this hard since AKFG and the Rewrite opening to Fullmetal Alchemist.

- I'm really proud of how I've been able to hold off on junk food this week. I brought all my lunches to work, and resisted the urge to get late night Hat on the way home last night. I tell myself that any money I save is going towards the computer, so that's helped, but honestly I rarely have discipline in this area so it's welcome all the same.

- Going to Nucleus last night really reminded me how I need to collect more Range Murata work (Here too). I really want at least one more statuette of his, and looking through the Robot books, I have to have all of them now. From the looks of it each is a collection of little stories Murata has written/illustrated, but each is completely different in its art style. From schoolgirls playing in the lushly overgrown ruins of Shibuya, to a Heian-era princess being escorted to assume her throne by the twelve animals of the zodiac, to a blood and guts secret agent/assassin story, to my personally favorite, a post-apocalyptic wanderer story drawn entirely in this twilight, soft blues and purple style. Simply amazing.

- I am having the most difficult time finding episodes of the Nodame Cantabile live action series. It's nowhere online...and I want it so bad! This is one of the funniest, most wacky/cartoony shows I've ever seen. I cannot believe how much effort they put into the characterization; I honestly feel like I'm watching a live-action manga.

- I've become entirely addicted to iGoogle. Beyond finally discovering the glory of RSS Feeds (being able to open up Google and check if there's any episodes of my favorite anime out), I've got a bunch of other fun gadgets up. There's my US/Japan clock, Japanese word of the day, Shakespearean insult of the day, CNN/Reuters headlines, Movie times, NewEgg deals. It's even got my Teahouse theme up with little Mr. Fox enjoying a bento/sushi lunch in the shade of some maple trees. I've found my new killer app.

Well, I'm off on a Costco run today. Wish me luck!

In My Place (Part 3 of 3, or The Siren Song of the Animated)

2007-05-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

I thought for a while about what to write. This is the third part of...something after all. I thought about writing on lingering outsider feelings I realise I should have outgrown. I thought about writing on how I still don't really know what to do with my life, when I understand no one has it all figured out at my age. I thought about writing on my love of languages (which I think I will still write about, perhaps when I have the time to get really passionately into it...)

Then I figured, well, I've gotten huge into anime again this season, so why not write about that? There are so many good shows to talk about. Honestly this has been the best season for anime in a long, long time. Typically I'll follow one or two shows at most during a season; this season there are six excellent shows I'm following, with another two to three more that are pretty good and may develop further. Here's my list!

- Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto - Here I am at the very beginning of my list and I'm already fudging it a bit. Bakumatsu technically started in the Winter, early January. However, it's just now finishing up, and it's the best show I'm watching at the moment, so I think it fits. Bakumatsu is a samurai period drama, set in the mid 1860s when Japan was opening up and transitioning between the Tokugawa and Meiji governments. There are several supernatural elements hovering in the background (ancient evil artifacts, and ancient societies dedicated to guarding them) which are close to causing outright civil war in Japan. The main character, Akizuki, is searching for one such artifact, when he crosses paths with a kabuki troupe bent on revenge. They decide to work together for a time, and find themselves in an increasingly intricate web of deceit and traitors, all out for themselves in this tumultuous period. All the typical praises stand for Bakumatsu: superb characters, well-written plot, detailed setting, all times ten in this great series. However, if I had to mention two points which really get me jazzed watching this show... First, the kabuki troupe performs plays every couple episodes, using these tales to publicly reveal the misdeeds of the one they seek vengeance on. I LOVE that Japanese theater is making its way into an anime like this. It's such a rich and deep tradition that has gone overlooked in the recent Japanophilia craze, and I'd love to see more of it. (I'm currently dreaming of a Mushishi-type show, featuring a travelling Bunraku troupe, sort of a scaled down version of Bakumatsu. That would be SUPERB.) Second, I cannot stress enough how well written the plot and characters are, and there is one central character in particular who was just revealed to have conflicting loyalties halfway through the series. It's so well written that this is honestly the first time I can ever remember being on the edge of my seat, furiously wondering what an anime character is planning next. In short, I am hooked.

- Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight - Okay, I'm getting all my Winter-still-continuing series out of the way up front. This also happens to be my second favorite show at the moment. GUMS (Oh my god, what a horrible acronym which I've never seen/realised until this moment.) ...Manabi is essentially a simple story: set in the near future in Japan, a young high school girl transfers into a small, sleepy school, and single-handedly reinvigorates the entire student body with her energetic attitude. I have a hard time telling if Manabi is an acquired taste or not. The reason I love it is, the animation is AMAZINGLY well done, and two, it's just...so...cute. Being an anime fan, I don't think I could help but develop a taste for sweetly saccharine, feel good stories. Manabi is decidedly one of these. Manabi (the titular character) manages to cheer up her friends and bring them together at every turn. There is no situation she cannot fix by being determined and optimistic. It sounds like a very simple show, and perhaps it is, but really the pure intensity is what's so appealing.

- Terra E - Once in a while, I'll be proven wrong about a series I start watching, and I must begrudgingly admit it's awesome. This is one of those times. The plot concerns a future Earth where society is controlled and regulated by a mysterious government which attempts to weed out psychic/reincarnated souls called Mu in the populace. Those Mu who have managed to escape have formed their own rogue/guerilla group that fight back from the fringes. So enters our hero, Jomy, who may be the most powerful Mu to come along yet, and a key to the resistance's continued fight. The first episode of Terra E sets up the future society and shows Jomy going through his normal high school life before he takes the Waking Day test (a test everyone must undergo to enter adulthood in this society, and the secret screening method to find Mu). This first episode was terribly bland, and follows a terribly bland day at a stereotypical anime high school. However, immediately afterwards the series really takes off. The Matrix-esque plot has been done before, so it's nothing new, but here it is done so well that one can't help but get engrossed. Jomy is so well written, you're there again, believing in every moment of his rebellion against this new life that's been forced upon him. You really want the Mu resistance to succeed, even as we're shown how divided they are by different leaders pulling at the reins. This show is not reinventing the wheel, but it exudes quality.

- Nodame Cantabile - Take one part lightly silly school romance, one part passion for the world of classical music, and mix. It's a misfit school romance set in a music college. Chiaki is the male lead, a musical virtuoso, but with a bad personality, looking down on every other student around him. When he clashes with his main professor, he's demoted to the "special" professor for loser musicians. It's here he runs into and gets inexorably tied up with Nodame, a young pianist who's as airheaded and silly as she is naturally talented. He begins to come around, helping her to become a more disciplined musician, and she inadvertently helps him open up. It's fun, silly, touching, real, and you can't help but love the characters and their quirks.

- Darker Than Black - I would've never watched this show if I hadn't caught it in my anime club. A strange mystical event occurred in Tokyo five years ago and the government has since erected a hundred-story wall to surround the affected area. Human beings with psychic powers are beginning to appear around the world, and battling each other for turf, mystical artifacts, and information as to what's behind the wall. Another familiar plot, but this series has a great setting and tone; dark, gritty, and real. The psychic beings are clearly drunk on their power and it's broken their minds, as they essentially stalk each other as serial killers, methodical and ruthless. This series uses my favorite brand of "magic" as well; none of the powers are flashy, but feel like they could actually fit into reality. For example, one character can teleport matter from one point to another, wherever there is other sufficient matter to replace it. When he does this, there's no brilliant flash or crackling lightning. He simply touches the object he wishes to move, and the matter in the area of teleportation morphs into it. It's magic that could fit into the "real world". All in all a very cool action series, definitely worth watching.

- Hidamari Sketch - Hidamari is obviously an Azumanga Daioh clone, but it doesn't care. It does very well with its premise. Four girls live in the same dorm and go to the same art school. As they live their lives and try to get their assignments done on time, they're very wacky about it. The series has its funny moments, but where it really shines is in the art direction. The artists have used the premise as an excuse to experiment with different drawing styles and backgrounds. They'll even use collages of real world objects as still shots within the show; for instance, every time we see one character's desk, it's a real desk, with real art supplies arranged on it. It's always interesting to watch and see what they'll do next. Oh, and it features one of my favorite nonsensical opening songs in a long time, all about art supplies and narrated from the point of view of an art teacher giving assignment instructions to her class.

Phew. Well, that's a good deal of the anime I'm watching at the moment. (But not all of it...) I have a feeling I'll be blogging about anime more often, now that I'm very much back into the medium and one of my anime club friends has his own blog that tends to fascinate me. So if this is your cup of tea, be sure to check back for regular anime ramblings. Thanks for reading this far! ...And I'm off!

In My Place (Part 2 of 3, or When the power goes out we'll just hum.)

2007-04-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Goddamn, I love me some Radiohead.

I've started digging up old music lately: Billy Joel, Ben Folds Five, Radiohead. Bands I listened to all the time back in high school. They're all very near and dear to me. Billy Joel was the musical taste I inherited from my mother. She was a huge fan of his, knew every song, used to play the Storm Front album on cassette all the time on drives between Las Vegas and California (I distinctly remember the red flag against black clouds cover). My parents even took me to see him in concert, but unfortunately I was so young I remember very little of it apart from the stage decoration. Same with Sting and Paul McCartney in concert.) Ben Folds Five was one of those musical virii that a friend of a friend introduced to my friend Ian and kind of spread slowly through our little group. We then took "Brick" to our Jazz Band teacher, learned it in class, and in one of my fondest high school memories, performed the song on stage at a high school dance. (I played bass guitar in high school, fyi.)

Radiohead though. Radiohead was the holy grail. Radiohead came down to us from the "cool" guy in our group, my friend Leif. One hell of a musician, very charismatic and thoughtful guy, and the de facto leader of our little group of friends. Radiohead came to me on The Bends, then I went back and grabbed Pablo Honey, basked in the new release of OK Computer, and followed through Kid A and Amnesiac. Radiohead was the soundtrack of my high school years by and large.

The Bends is one of those albums that drags me back to high school feelings. Teenage outsider, high school crushes, young depression, and those little bits of bright joy that would shine through from time to time. High and Dry I could sing word for word. Blackstar was a relationship plan, or rather a 20/20 hindsight of such. Fake Plastic Trees was a story all its own.

One of our friends, Ashley, was this really cool girl who played trumpet in Jazz Band, spent more time in the art room than other classes, and who every single last one of us had a crush on. About halfway through high school she was moving away to Santa Barbara, and Ashley, Leif, me, and Ian spent one long night hanging out for the last time. Talking, high-school philosophizing, playing lame truth or dare games where Leif was the one who got to kiss Ashley, and finally just sitting around, firing off little bits of wisdom, with The Bends playing the whole time in the background. We didn't sleep that night, we stayed up until seven the next morning, when Ashley was leaving for good. Around the early morning, five thirty or so, Fake Plastic Trees came on, and we left it on repeat. Whenever I hear those chords I always remember the faint light leaking in the window, reminding us that our time together was almost over, and the four of us grasping for what last meaningful things we could say to each other.

I come back to Radiohead now, and it still feels familiar to me. It still feels like it says something about my life. The Bends (the song) for that still heavy burden to do something significant with my life, imparted from my parents. Bones for the messed up social interaction whenever I meet new people, still feeling like I can't quite slip into that small talk groove, those first steps of getting to know who you're talking to. Blackstar, as it now seems to paint perfectly clear my last huge relationship and the lingering desire and need that's still slowly fading away.

I come back to Radiohead, to all this music, and it still means something to me. It still inspires me, still comforts me, and more than a new band or song I may discover, it feels familiar. After all these years some part of me has stayed the same. I don't think that's all that draws me back to it, as it it is good music, but I still need it, and for that I'm glad.

In My Place (Part 1 of 3, or Fred Doesn't Come Up with Eccentric Titles for Things He Hates)

2007-04-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

Tech Support. I said this was coming, and I've had a lot to say about it for a long time. It took a behind-the-scenes Nico-expose to spur me into action.

Anyone who's babysat knows what working Tech Support feels like. The parents have gone, you're alone with the kid in the house, and the cute little thing brings you their favorite tape to watch. You go to the tv, put the video into the vcr, and then realize you don't know where the remote is or even how to turn on the television, vcr, and the extensive home theater stereo system which is the only way you'll have sound for Barney's Magical Dinosaur Big-Top Adventure. You start to look for the remote, and the kid's just sat down on the couch, expecting the instant gratification of their parents' sure, knowledgeable hand at the Encrypted Ancient Mayan Entertainment Center of Doom. Of course, you've just started to learn your way around this system not your own. You probably haven't used a single one of the exact same components in their system, certainly not to the point where you have a comfortable familiarity with it. As you're getting a basic feel for the system, around the two second mark, the whining begins, "I want Baaaarneyyyy! Where's Baaaaarneeeeyyy! Where??!" Tiny fists begin to pound the couch, legs kick frantically in the air, squeals become shrieks as you hurry to appease the demonspawn's anger and unwavering belief in your total incompetence.

Let me explain why I think people act this way. "The customer is always right." There's something in this day and age about paying money for a product that instantly makes people expect an utter and total slave and master relationship from the manufacturer (and their agents). We are raised on the maxim above and the cliched, pop-culture image of the massive, faceless, evil corporation. If you're giving someone money, they're trying to screw you. Customer-business relationships are no longer about a mutual need to buy and sell product; they are hot-blooded, gladiatorial combat between two ancient races with a bitter, bloody past.

I want to help people, I honestly do. I want them to hang up the phone happy and with their problem fixed. But more often than not Tech Support is a soul-crushing, frightening experience because of the above attitude. Add to this my lucky distinction of working in computer tech support (where each and every system is a unique amalgam of barely compatible parts), and problems often far outnumber solutions.

There are several things people can do to make our (customer and employee) tech support experience much more enjoyable. I'd like to preface this by explaining I don't mean to condescend to any of you, my friends. I don't think you rude, squealing, demanding cherubs. I simply seek to illustrate some helpful tips for situations I know I've found myself on both sides of. (Yes, I'll admit I've been the bitchy customer more than once.)

1. The Customer Service/Tech Support Agent is not your enemy.
- To illustrate the complete converse of the attitude I described above, the agent you're speaking to is not your enemy. They are not there to defend their company as stalwart footmen in the first waves of an epic onslaught. They are there to get your product up and running again, and in the case of a defect, act as your representative to the company as a whole. Don't feel like you need to be ridiculously friendly and pleasing to them, but do remember there's another human being on the other end of the line, and they really do want to help you.

2. The Customer Service/Tech Support Agent is not the Alpha and Omega.
- The agent does not know everything. Now don't take this as ammunition to condescend and treat every conclusion they come to as the ignorant ramblings of a preschooler. Simply keep in mind that the agent most likely hasn't heard of your particular flavour of problem before, and is not familiar with your system. They'll need to find their way through this along with you, but they do have knowledge of the product to bring to bear on the problem.

3. There is rarely call to jump rank.
- I know we're all familiar with using "I'd like to speak to your manager." to get what we want. Unless the agent is being an utter and total prick (I imagine it does happen) this is uncalled for. Well, let me be more specific. The attitude which often accompanies it is uncalled for. The agent really does want to help you, and they're often equipped with all the tools necessary to solve your problem. Asking to speak with a manager will only get you someone more used to dealing with angry bullshit and with a harder company stance who will want much less to help you.

4. If your agent really has been helpful, tell them so.
- If I could get everyone who ever called into a tech support center to follow steps one through three, I'd be happy. This one's just my secret little wish. If the agent you've been talking to really has helped you and done everything they could to solve your problem, regardless of a complete solution, thank them. It really will make their day.

Those are the main points I'd like to convey. Sure, there are many a small, nagging problem that I could address (Mostly problems specific to instructional editing keyboards that even I wouldn't want to hear about outside of work!), but that is the whole of what I'd like you all to take away from this post. If you have any questions about tech support and the rigors thereof, you always know where to find me, your friendly, resident tech support agent. (God I hope not for too much longer!)

(P.S. Yes, Mahea, I know my grammar is probably driving you up the wall, as I haven't written anything this cohesive in a long time, and my grammar is eccentric to begin with. Sorry! Hopefully I'll come closer to MLA standards with more of these long-topic blog posts ;) )

I'm not a stone, I'm just a man

2007-04-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from my six day trip to Vegas for my company tradeshow. Highlights include:

- Seeing my family and having dinner with my boss and coworker over

- Seeing my dog

- Losing $110 at Vegas tables ("Contributing to the local economy"...)

- Catching the Patrick Stewart/Glenn Close remake of The Lion in Winter on Showtime

- Catching an episode of The Tudors on Showtime (Meh, he's no Patrick Stewart)

- A couple of late night rounds of pool at PT's Pub with my brother and my friend Peter

- Way too much to drink at Nine Fine Irishmen

- Realising my boss isn't such a bad guy, my job is just 60% shit, 35% bore

- Realising I haven't got things too bad when I can lose $100 at the tables and not have to worry about food/rent/essentials

- Adeel Khan, the student body president at Virginia Tech, appearing on CNN and refusing to answer question after question concerning the shooter and his mentality, instead urging people to focus on those who were lost and celebrating their lives

All in all it was a good week, and I enjoyed the trip.

Under the Wheels of Tradition

2007-04-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

Just a little note/advice I thought to dash off, to both others and myself, before I forget.

My company started interviewing new employees recently. One of my coworkers is leaving, and we need someone to fill her position. Being privy to this portion of such a common experience, even peripherally, has brought certain insights. I think it's safe to say these could apply to most any company/HR department with an ounce of compassion and humanity, and to most positions you'll find.

- Don't feel like you're being judged mightily from on high. Really, one of the main purposes of an interview is for the company to see how you'll fit in. Keeping calm and acting like yourself is in your best interest.

- As an addendum to that, be as honest as possible about who you are, what sort of work you prefer, what sort of work you don't like, and what you're looking for in a new position. Even if the fit is a bit rough, honesty is much appreciated.

- Dress nicely! Strangely inverse to that, even if the employees you see are in jeans and a tshirt, wear business attire. While you don't want to portray yourself as someone you're not, you DO want to show that you're willing to put effort into impressing them and that you're serious about the position.

- Don't feel down if things don't work out. This may be an area where it would appear you could not generalize, but based on my company, I really feel that most corporations out there are looking for the best person to fit the job. If you're not hired, it doesn't mean they hate your guts as a person, think you're a slob, think you're a cheat, etc. It really just means that your interests didn't fit with their interests.

- Thank you notes are always a nice gesture, even if things didn't work out.

Hopefully my notes shed a bit of light on things. Interviewing shouldn't be as stressful as it feels!

(Side Note: This post was inspired by Nico's recent blog about MySpace and working behind the scenes of internet marketing. I think it's a great idea, and I've a feeling there'll be one coming up from me about the bane of my existence: tech support!)

The angles and the corners

2007-04-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

Hmm, my blog's been a bit neglected lately, between the twin forces of soul-crushing work and my deep-fever WoW addiction, I haven't given much thought to blogging. I have been up to a lot though!

- This past weekend was a fun one. My family came down and we went to San Diego. Went to the beach, had great seafood, mexican food, and some decent pasta too. I got to take the train on the way down! That was an experience. It was actually fairly un-crowded and comfortable. I think this will pique my interest in traveling to see my friends in California via Amtrak.

- Culinary deadend. I've been a bit tired lately when getting home from work to cook. Been subsisting on gyoza, frozen burritos, and the occasional bowl of spicy sausage pasta.

- I am convinced my orc warrior will end up a giant-axe wielding badass, riding around on a chocobo or a Yakul-like antelope.

- Back on the subject of food, I'm having trouble finding a new snack food. I've been on pistachios for a while, and I still have another two pound bag to finish =(. I want something salty as always, but not too salty as I really should be cutting back on the amount of sodium in my diet. If I could find a place that sells giant bags of those puffed vegetable chip thingys, I'd be set.

- I'm getting into The Decemberists. I really like their folksy/sometimes old-timey sound, and the laid back nature of most of their songs. Good stuff.

That is all!

Complete Derailment

2007-03-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

I love Achewood. It's my favorite web comic at the moment. I spend hours puzzling over Chris Onstad's miraculous invention of quirky characters, completely weird but quirky-cool catchphrases, and the unique dialogue patterns for each individual character. Plus it's funny as hell.

Chris Onstad also has a blog (and a blog for each main character in his comic, in their individual manner of dialogue). On his blog the past couple weeks he's recounted his experience with The Grateful Palate and their Bacon of the Month subscription. They also sell a splendid collection of Sea Salts that I am dying to try, as I continually find myself falling on the salty end of the Sweet vs. Salty addiction scale.

This entire round of Internet linkery has led me to ponder and put down in form my habits re:food. Both culinarily and consumptive-wise I tend to think of myself as a barbarian. I love strong, salty tastes, and I have little attention for the nuances of complexly spiced dishes. I wade into the kitchen like a street brawler with a ladle; if I don't have a recipe to follow, I'll just throw in what I think is appropriate for each ingredient (and oftentimes do this even if there IS a recipe), while tasting the results of course. I'm known for my Speecy Spicy Sausage pasta, which is a blast in the mouth of oregano and garlic drenched tomato sauce, copious amounts of Pecorino Romano sheeps' cheese, and the spiciest Louisiana hot links I can find. It's a dish that sets your tongue aflame but stokes your desires for more.

So, I'd like to try those various Sea Salts, but I feel the subtle nuances would be lost on me. All I REALLY need is a recipe for P.F. Chang's Five Salt Spice, and I should just get up off my lazy posterior and do a Google search for it.

The Stillness That Comes

2007-03-19T00:05:00.000-07:00

- I've been knee-deep in the sights and sounds of Germany today. My family's planning to go there for our summer trip this summer, and it falls to me to organize where and what we'll be seeing. Since time is short (two weeks) and there's a lot to cover (Germany, Austria, and a brief stop in the Czech Republic) I'm planning to do Munich, Dresden, Salzburg, Vienna, and time in Prague if possible. Dresden is the highlight for me so far. The Semperoper, one of Europe's oldest and most beautiful opera houses, and Zwinger Palace, home to Saxon kings for many, many centuries, among other sites. I'm entirely looking forward to reveling in the land of Beer as well...

- May have more leads on a new job traveling to Japan. Lauren's friend Ryan whom I met at the St. Patrick's Day shindig has a friend who works the exact job I'm looking for. It's in anime/manga, and the position requires him to visit Japan for about three weeks every couple of months. I'm really hoping this turns into a solid opportunity, as that job sounds divine.

- Not quite sure what to think of 300 yet. Well, no, it's just that any deeper impressions are hindered by the level of ecstatic violence in the film. I felt it was a great story, one I loved in comic form, but the grotesque and vulgar level of violence it went to in the movie really disconnected me from the film and feeling anything for the characters. I think I just need time to let those parts of the movie fade, but it honestly got under my skin.

- Currently reading Sam Harris' End of Faith. I went into the book initially very wary of his claims, that religion as it exists in the world today is racing us towards armageddon with basic, incompatible tenets of the major faiths which pit themselves against each other in a no-quarter-given war for Truth, with the capital T. However, he does have some very good points, and he does make allowances for the necessity of spirituality in the human experience, merely in a more liberal way, free from dogma.

- Goddamn, I wish that Tony Takitani movie had come with a warning label. It was about a man who grows up alone and withdrawn, then finds a woman who completes him and brings out the soul in him, only to lose her and then spiral down an hour-long plunge into depression and loneliness. I had moved a number of Japanese movies to the top of my list in the hopes I'd catch a few, like Shall We Dance, which were positive. Whoops!

- Need to get more breakfast, need to remember that.

- Speaking of jobs, it looks like I may be extending my departure from my current one a bit farther. My coworker's engagement and quick departure is going to leave our very, very, very small company at a disadvantage right about when I was planning to move on. Now it looks like rather than leaving in June, I'll be quitting at the beginning of September, giving myself time to move if need be. If I did get the Japan job though, there's little that could keep me at Bella, all things considered.

- Green tea is awesome as always.

Transmetropolitan

2007-03-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

There it is. A tale of hope, even in the bleakest of situations, for even the most dire of cynics. But it's a story, fiction, not real. Why does it matter?

Because at the very least, it proves one person believes there's still hope in this screwed up, wizened little world. One person had the fortitude to sit down and write a massive piece of work like Transmetropolitan. And it was a lot of work. Writing's hard. I used to believe there was always that percent, utter geniuses, from whom writing, great works, and masterpieces would flow like unstoppable leaky snot down your nose. I don't know if they're out there, I think I believe they're not, or if they are they're so utterly rare as to not be counted on. No, writing is hard work. Writing is pouring ever bit of your soul and brain into a blank sheet of paper, and then wringing whatever you can out of the rest of your parts. Writing is creating an entire world out of scratch. Writing is a job and a half.

Transmetropolitan's about journalism. About giving a fuck about the world and telling other people about it. Caring enough to get in the face of someone who's wronged you, not letting big crimes with shadowy, quiet impact go by unpunished. Transmetropolitan's about standing up even when you know you're gonna be smacked down. It's about dying for integrity. That's a message you've heard before. You've probably ignored it here, or ignored it there, found situations where it's too difficult to apply. I know I have. Transmetropolitan reminds you why it's important to stand up even when there's a loaded gun pointed in your face, always, 24/7, because of all the things that can be taken from you: your money, your house, your life, your integrity is the most important. Integrity is that very last inch where you are free, the one thing that absolutely cannot be taken away by force. Your integrity is you.

Spider Jerusalem's the crankiest, most ornery son of a bitch you'll ever meet. Guaranteed. But by the end of the comic you love him, because you realise that of all the parts of himself he's not willing to sell out on, all the grimy, ugly, perverted little parts of himself, at the center is his integrity.

I've been groping my way blindly through Vertigo comics for the past couple of years, and Transmetropolitan's at the top of my list, with The Sandman. Hell, I'd tell you to read Transmetropolitan instead of The Sandman, because if there is one comic you absolutely must read, it's this one.

I've got my copies lying around if you're interested...

Up Against a Wall

2007-03-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

I don't talk about my eating habits very much. In particular, my aversion to cheese and dairy. I often tell people that I'm lactose intolerant, or that I just can't handle cheese, but that's not the case. In actuality, for about four years now I've been on a no cow-dairy/no flour/high-green vegetable diet. The logic being that there is a certain type of enzyme in cow milk, which could be lactase, I'm not entirely sure, that is incompatible with our bodies. The reason for avoiding wheat is because the vast majority of wheat in wheat-based products today has been so blasted with chemicals and refined, that it too is detrimental to our bodies. Eating more green vegetables is part because the over-arching theory of the diet is that a healthy body is one where the acids and bases are balanced, our food culture today is an entirely acidic one, we are not getting nearly enough bases in our diet, and green vegetables are inherently base.

The reason I've never talked about my diet much is because I am not one for pushing my beliefs on other people. In truth, you could say I'm at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I don't talk about my beliefs because I'm of the mind that when you expose that part of yourself to someone, they immediately want to tell you about their beliefs, and, even unconsciously, it becomes a battle as to which beliefs are "right". Plus, it's a lot easier to say "Oh, I don't eat dairy." than "Oh, I don't eat cow-dairy because it's inherently incompatible with the human body."

I've been on this diet for four years now. My mom introduced me to it. Since I've been on it, I haven't had a cold once. The only time I've gotten sick is the sore throats I get when I eat cow-dairy. I've honestly seen a positive improvement in my health from it.

My grandmother was in the hospital this past week because she had a heart attack. She's had lung cancer and another heart attack previously. She's always had high blood pressure and high cholesterol. She is the sweetest woman I've ever known, and honestly the single most positive influence on my life. She's always happy and glad to see us, and not afraid to let us know. (Whenever we visit, every other sentence out of her mouth is "I'm so glad to see you kids." and you can see it in her eyes.) I remember her singing old songs from the 40s to me when I was a little kid, her little rhymes, and the endless, grandmotherly teasing. (My entire teenage years were punctuated by her jokingly asking "You getting hair down there yet, Freddy?" Heh, now she's putting Schuyler through the same torment.) In short, she's not someone I want to lose anytime soon.

In light of her health problems, me and my mother have been trying to get her to pay attention to her diet, and to get on the same diet we're on. She'd be open to it too, if it weren't for my grandfather. She grew up in a time when "husband knows best", she's not forceful, and my grandfather, well...he can be completely overbearing and stubborn. He is a great guy, very intelligent, and he's constantly trying to drag me and my brother into philosophical discussions when we visit. (He's very smart, fascinated by quantum physics. I often think that if he didn't grow up with the ethic that he needed to provide for his family above all else he'd have become a physicist rather than a steel welder.) I love my grandfather, but he doesn't listen to anyone but himself. He's staunchly of the belief that anything besides what established, medical doctors tells him is complete horseshit, and there's nothing you can do to convince him otherwise. So of course when my mother and I bring up my grandmother's health and our diet he talks us in circles for hours and never once admits it could be possibly helpful to look into. (It doesn't help that my grandmother's doctor is taking his side and saying dietary supplements/our diet is a complete waste of time and money.)

So right now she's contemplating open heart surgery, not willing to listen to us as far as helping her body survive, my mother's talking herself blue in the face trying to convince my grandfather to let her try out this diet, and I'm completely frustrated and sad, because there's nothing I can do. They won't listen.

Zug Zug

2007-03-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

- It's happened! I'm back on the WoW train. I've got an Orc Warrior named Chareos on
our server. I'm thoroughly enjoying the game this time around. I'm glad to have a place where I can meet up and share a fun experience with my friends. It's cool to see who chose what, and how their characters reflect them.
I think I can manage a WoW account rather well too. I've never gotten the addiction, and I chalk it up to the fact that, while WoW has the most enjoyable gameplay mechanics around, its world, races, and classes are rather mundane. Even though it's a giant leveling treadmill, Final Fantasy XI is what fulfilled those criteria for me, and I was addicted to for a good amount of time. Dark Knight/Ninja Catgirls for the win!
All in all, WoW is fun, and I'm certainly not complaining that I was able to make eight levels today soloing while doing engaging quests and shouting back and forth to Warren and Mahea =)

- I thought some more about careers this weekend. I'm starting to firm up my plans for quitting my current job by making a budget for the next couple months. After that I had been planning on finding a job that would allow me to work in Los Angeles while traveling to Japan frequently. In the end though, Japan is where I would really want to end up, and even such a job as my next one would be a half-way point to getting back there. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching English. As I said before, it's been my favorite job out of college. There are many other things I miss about Japan as well. So, my thinking today was, why not go straight for what I want? Why not apply again? Why wait?
I'll have to think about it.

- I've been reading a lot of Transmetropolitan lately. I'm glad I didn't dismiss the series out of hand, because it actually has a lot of good points. There are moments where they break through Spider Jerusalem's never-ending cynicism and show how he really cares, and he's doing what he does because he believes there's still some good in the whole sad mess that is humanity. Really gets me.

- Anime Club was good on the anime. Death Note is absolutely enthralling, and Honey and Clover was much more entertaining than I thought it would be.

- I'm at Vector in FF6, and the game doesn't show any signs of slowing. Now I've got Setzer in my party too!

- I could really go for a 30 order of Utsunomiya Gyoza right about now.

That's all!

Jealousy, Here thy naked villany is clothed in flesh.

2007-02-25T23:49:00.000-08:00

Oh man, the Oscars were fabulous tonight. They started off well enough, with a number of well-deserved wins, a couple to grumble about, but on the whole very pleasing and refreshing. Achievement in Makeup, Cinematography, and Art Direction to Pan's Labyrinth (Even though I really wanted Children of Men to get the second). Achievement in Visual Effects to Pirates: Dead Man's Chest (I LOVE the Davy Jones costume). Best Documentary to An Inconvenient Truth. Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film (grumble, grumble, grumble). The show ended however with Oscar history: Martin Scorsese winning Best Director for The Departed. Here is a man who has worked and slaved to create some of the greatest films we've ever seen for over thirty years, who has sat in that audience five previous times waiting for that award and walking out of the theater without one, and now he is finally recognized. It was really a pleasure to see him go up there and accept it, you could tell he was genuinely pleased, a certain weary satisfaction was there. This, of course, only makes me want to see The Departed even more. So much so it's been moved to the top of my Netflix rental queue, and I've reactivated my three at a time plan so I can have it by Tuesday. Hooray!

I didn't realise until this year how pumped I get about the Oscars; they're like my Superbowl. Hmm...Oscar party planning duties...

As a total sidenote, Drunken Seven Samurai Movie Night was a stunning success. Thank you guys for attending!

Mata!

Hotel Dusk

2007-02-20T22:56:00.000-08:00

What an awesome game. A nice little noir-ish point and click adventure. I expected the story to get melodramatic and over the top at every turn, but it actually kept the perfect tone throughout. It was honest, engaging, and very well detailed. Oh! I need an icon of Kyle Hyde for my AIM buddy icon.

Now it's on to the glory that is Final Fantasy VI Advance. This game is gonna swallow me whole, I know it.

The Fortress, which may or may not be Hidden

2007-02-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

I best make good on my level-upped movie snobbery!

Goddamn, Akira Kurosawa was an amazing director. I've always been a huge fan of Seven Samurai, and about two weeks ago I got The Hidden Fortress from Netflix. These films are forty, fifty years old, but still completely watchable. (I want to digress at this point to stress my statement, you DON'T need to be a movie snob to appreciate his films. They really are enjoyable even by today's film standards.)

The Hidden Fortress is well known for being a heavy inspiration on the original Star Wars: an aging general and a hunted princess run from an overwhelming enemy force, accompanied by two bumbling peasant sidekicks. (Lucas had even originally offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi to Toshiro Mifune, who plays the general in this film.) The story here is just as powerful: you never truly feel that all hope is lost for the princess and the general, as they bear their fate so stoically. Every tight situation they find themselves in, you're gripped, wondering how they'll get out of it. Kurosawa was known for being a perfectionist, and it shows. From his breathtaking epic landscape shots, to the detailed period costumes, to the way he could capture a look from a character from afar and make it feel all the more powerful. This is present throughout The Hidden Fortress and without spoiling too much, I'll throw out a few examples. You know how in a Hollywood film nowadays, our anti-hero will be holed up in some hotel room, while the cops send out their entire force to take him down, and you'll get a close-up shot of some hallway as cop after cop streams down it, blurring past the camera? When enemy soldiers come upon our heroes in the film, we see them swarm over the bank of a river from afar. This distant framing of the shot and the breadth of the set allow a real feeling of overwhelming dread to set in. Regarding the costumes, when you see the deposed princess' handmaiden and teacher deciding her plan of escape in their cave hideout, and their formal robes are visibly, delicately worn and threadbare, you get a feeling of how far their kingdom has fallen. All these elements, present throughout every little moment of the film, combine to make it an enveloping masterpiece.

In conclusion, I highly recommend checking out an Akira Kurosawa film if you have the chance. I've always got my Seven Samurai DVD ready for another watch!

About What? I Really Don't Know

2007-02-07T23:24:00.000-08:00

I felt like writing, so here I am.

- This week has slipped by unbelievably quickly. As has the last, and the week before that. I'm hoping time continues to blaze by at this pace ( ::knock on wood:: ) so that the next four months pass before I've even noticed. What happens in four months you ask? My planned change of employment. Unless, of course, I happen to get that translator position at Squaresoft... It's funny that Mahea wrote she finds she likes office jobs. I really can't say I do. Perhaps I haven't found the right one, and on the whole I'm not sure where my vocational path lays. Of all the jobs I've had post college, the one I enjoyed the most was teaching English. I've toyed with the idea of taking that up again, but I've given myself a couple years to think about it, as it would be a very large change. I've also toyed with the idea of going back to school, getting a Master's degree. Perhaps Mythology, perhaps Literature. Once again, I need to distill the essence of what I enjoy most, what field I could spend my life in. I think about the future a lot.

- So I did it, I broke down and bought Final Fantasy VI Advance and Sonic Rush, both of which should be coming via Amazon on Friday. I think I've escaped the crushing need for DS goodness for now. Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja doesn't come out until later this month, and I can hold off on Ouendan and Kanji Sonomana. Now holding off on getting a copy of Ar Tonelico on the other hand...

- I've also come to terms with my sleep schedule. Oh woe is me, I'm waking up a half-hour later than I planned! I'm not a kid anymore with school in the morning, and if I can get away with it, to hell with a guilty conscience! I want my sleep!

- Now that I found out about that remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, turns out it's not on Netflix. Too obscure, too indie! Do I get street-cred bonus points?

- Tonight I realised the church-escape scene at the end of Shanghai Noon is a complete homage/spoof on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Though much more lighthearted of course.

- My current Loch Lomond background is beautiful.

- Green tea is still awesome.

And my rambling's become fragmented and loose. Time to head off!

Childhood Lessons

2007-02-05T19:52:00.000-08:00

A lot has gone on in the last couple days, but rather than doing my usual laundry list here, I feel like just focusing an entry on one thing.

One part of my weekend was an early Saturday viewing of Pan's Labyrinth. I'd had a positive and a negative mention of it from friends, but as I've been following the coverage on CHUD, I was going to give it a chance anyway. It was a very well made movie, an amazing movie, and I enjoyed every portion of it: from the fanciful costumes and sets of the little girl's fantasy world, to the tense, well plotted conflict in 1940s Franco-ruled Spain, to the nuanced performance of the evil Captain, to Doug Jones' stunning role as the faun (seriously, look up his profile on Wikipedia and you'll see a number of your favorite "creature" performances of the past couple years. Plus he apparently played Cesare in a remake of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari which is going on my Netflix NOW). Back to the movie, it handled the weight of its plot arc very well. I never felt I was being completely hammered down, and I never felt that the fantastical pieces were being allowed to hijack the flow of the film. It had a very strong, clear message: the fairy tales, fantasy, and childhood tales we are told to put away to become adults end up making us better people than had we otherwise put them away.

I suppose I took the film particularly to heart as a dreamer, but it's really something everyone should see.

Just Another Thirty Minutes...

2007-01-30T10:51:00.000-08:00

My sleep schedule's been a little wacky lately.

On the whole I never feel rested unless I get to sleep in. It's not a matter of getting a certain number of hours, I think it's moreso that unless I sleep past a certain time, I don't get that happy-let's wake up! feeling.

Usually I get up around quarter to eight so I have time to take a shower, and watch some anime while I eat breakfast. Lately though, I've been waking up at quarter to eight, putting my alarm back on for eight fifteen, and waking up with enough time for a shower and to grab breakfast to take with me. I used to only do this once in a while, but this week and the end of last, it's been every day.

I don't feel bad about missing out on that morning time, or the anime, I just feel a little guilty for not keeping to my sleep schedule.

Wittman Ah Sing

2007-01-29T10:48:00.000-08:00

So as I sit here on Monday morning, wincing at another week of work, sipping water from my work-appropriated Hawaii coffee mug, I whip up another blog entry.

- My DS continues to be like a crack addiction. Just when I thought I was out this weekend, after buying Hotel Dusk and Megaman ZX, I get pulled back in. Lost in Blue, Super Mario 64, Kanji Sonomana, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, and now Sim City DS. I'm gonna have to hold myself back, wait on these ones (except Lost in Blue because I see online that the game is rare; gonna have to go grab that used copy in the mall on Thursday.) as my wallet is none too happy with me.

- I purchased a bit of anime swag this weekend that I'm already terribly fond of. My Samurai Champloo cap is bitchin' and sure to be my start down that long and winding road that is Japanese street fashion. My Range Murata figure is totally cool (It's here, the figure in the upper left hand corner). I wish they would produce more figures off of his work besides simply his scantily clad anime girls. I'd kill for a model of this piece, or this one.

- Sam Woo Orange Peel Beef was delicious last night!

- I'm almost done with the non-fictionous section of The Fifth Book of Peace, about twenty more pages. I...I don't really know what to say about this section. It bothers me. It's really focused on the Vietnam War, and how Wittman is always thinking about it, avoiding it, getting involved with people against it. I suppose that it's an accurate picture of how she felt at the time, but it still disturbs me.

- Hoping to read some Sam Harris next. Maybe I'll finish off my Borders gift card accordingly.

- I've decided that the vitriol and rancor one often finds on internet forums has been really bringing me down. I read the PA forums on a daily basis, in particular SE++, and then I'll be on SomethingAwful which hosts the same kind of "make fun of other people ad naseum" humor. So, for at least a month, whenever I feel like reading one of those sites, I'm just going to go read a book instead. Use my spare time productively.

- Finally, speaking of reading, I'm looking for a good site with literary reviews/critical essays. Particularly scholarly ones. Anyone know of such a site?

A Story for the Ages

2007-01-22T00:29:00.000-08:00

Boy, do Nico and I have a story to tell YOU.

Nico's Blog Post

A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe

2007-01-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been about a week since my last post and I want to stick to a schedule: at least one post a week.

- I'm back in and hooked on Battlestar Galactica. Just finished watching Season 3 Episode 4, and man, that was the heartfelt welcome I was hoping for since the beginning of the season. Anyone who's caught up will know how those first couple episodes felt barren and hopeless for the characters. I'm glad to see they're all alright.

- Work has been tiring, long, and frustrating, but then that's work.

- I finally got a listen to a few of tracks off of Garnet Crow's Twilight Valley album. Really good stuff, her voice stands out more than anything else. I also caught a new Kana Uemura song, which is interesting. I feel it's right about the time for me to discover some new music. I'm teetering between Otis Redding or Haydn.

- I'm about halfway through The Fifth Book of Peace and loving it. The fiction portion of the book is much more personal than her previous works. I know all her work is personal in that she weaves tales about her family and childhood, but this one is more like a quiet, family story; a portion of her life written down and there to experience simply as it is. Regardless, it's awesome Maxine Hong Kingston as always. I've found part of her allure is the way she speaks in more than one verbage, identifying people, places, and things by more than one name, closer to one language then another. Reminds me of the way Japanese will sometimes mix in my head with English, and then different flavors of English from the mundane to the lyrical. Well, a bit of a gush about her amazing writing style.

- Looking forward to the impromptu Lost Drinking Party this weekend! Always a good time. I'm tempted to do the same thing when I buy Rome on dvd, but I really, really, REALLY want to follow the plot on that one.

- Ooooh, this is such a good Garnet Crow track, Anywhere.

- I NEED the other seasons of Sealab on DVD. 4 is actually more awesome than I expected it to be, but I need the classics.

- Just about done with FF4. I wonder if there's a New Game/Hard Mode.

- My random list of random thoughts is probably just about getting tiring, heh. Adios!

Wacom Abandon

2007-01-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

Oh Nico, what hast thou unleashed!

I just started using the Wacom tonight, and I already know I'm hooked. It's so natural, so simple, so straightforward to control. I'll never be able to go without one again.

And now...onto my work!

The Captain has visited my benevolent benefactor himself!

A timeless portrait of the prettiest princess in all the land.

Thank you Nico!

The Campbell Family Circus

2007-01-10T17:38:00.000-08:00

Mirrormask was simply fantastic. It was a wonder-filled childhood journey along the lines of Labyrinth. If you're able to let yourself go and become immersed in stunning visuals, I highly recommend it.

I don't often know what to think about grossly "mis-written" emails. I would like to think the person on the other end is a thoughtful, intelligent human being, but why would they then go and throw all manner of grammatical rules and spelling out the window when typing an email? Case in point:

"i USE NEWTEK VT4 - PREMIERE PRO 2 AND CINEGY EXTREME, WHAT KEYBOARD WOULD GIVE ME THE MAPABILITY AND FLRXABILITY TO MAP SWITH BETWEEN MY NLE APPS"

That was the entirety of the email, I kid you not. Being a Literature major and an ardent lover of the English language, I am often adverse to forays into the thick, dense, untamed wilds of the Internet. This aversion extends to the point of avoiding such crude and haphazard dens of language when I can. Therefore, it comes as quite a shock when such a thing lands on my doorstep.

Oh, by the way, I finished Dune, and it was AWESOME. "Those of us called concubines, history will remember as wives."

Spamalicious

2007-01-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

Favorite spam message title: "Don't be the 'little guy' in the club."
I can't help but imagine a midget standing against the wall, sipping his Bacardi and Coke, all lip trembling while he holds back a tear.

Favorite spam sender: "Dung"
They try so very hard.

Heroics

2007-01-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamt that me and Warren were transported into a post-apocalyptic future ruled by mutant Godzilla bird creatures, whom we were charged with overthrowing for the good of all aliens that had now settled on the planet as the last two humans on Earth.

One of the best ghost stories I've ever read is here: Return of the Creepiest Thing You've Ever Seen
About half-way down the page, after the pictures of the boarded up, old shed in the middle of the woods.

Modokashii Sekai no Ue de

2007-01-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

Man...the ending of Welcome to the NHK left me feeling slightly melancholy and with more questions than answers. The main characters didn't end up falling in love and becoming a couple, they just went on living their lives. I guess the moral of the ending was that real life itself is savior enough from depression and high drama is not necessary?

Woohoo! I didn't go broke from buying a shit-ton of DS games and I was able to pay my rent this month! This is the first time I've ever been so fiscally irresponsible, and I'm glad to say it didn't go as bad as I had thought. My job, while...not a fun job, does provide me with a comfortable lifestyle.

Homemade burritos are fucking delicious. I am a good cook.

Damn Netflix and their slow shipping. They start you off with quick, fast-turnaround shipping and if you send in a movie in the middle of the week, you can usually get the next one three days later. Now, I'm lucky if I'll see one new movie in the entire six-day postal week.

Wasabi Potato Chips are delicious. Grace Park is so hot. Dune just keeps getting better and better.

That is all!

The Holidays, the Haul, and the New Year

2007-01-02T16:48:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been an awfully long time since I last updated my blog: over a week and a half. I have a good excuse though! I was on vacation, and when I'm on vacation I'm often far from in-touch with anything electronic.

Christmas was good this year. I'll start off by invoking the myriad saints of anti-capitalism ("It's better to give than receive." "The holidays are about family and friends, not presents.") but this year was a bad-ass one for presents.

First of all, I received a Nintendo DS Lite from my friend Mike back home. Now, we usually give each other reasonably priced presents, around twenty to fourty dollars, so I had no reason to suspect anything different. When he kept hinting that I'd be getting the best Christmas present ever this year, and when I held the wrapped package in my hand, I had an inkling. I was completely blown away to find a black DS Lite and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin inside. I was not prepared for a gift this awesome. I think I was suitably wacky and goofy the rest of the night, as the endorphins in my brain brought me back to childhood Christmas levels. Still in the grip of this mighty surge the next day, I went to GameCrazy and proceeded to spend two hundred dollars on DS and GBA games. I was a very happy little boy. So far I've waded into Mario Kart DS and Contact the most.

DVD-wise was just as full of awesome. Howl's Moving Castle, Mirrormask, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, Talladega Nights, and Rocky Horror Picture Show to name a few. Damnit, Janet, I wanna screw!

Books were superb and plenty this Christmas. I got a quirky pair of history trivia books from my friend Matt which I had always been reading when I went over to his house. Ev and Miriam got me this crazy, old "Colloquial Japanese" book which I estimate is from the 1920s or 30s. My mom got me Yasunori Kawabata's Thousand Cranes, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Fifth Book of Peace, and then Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The crazy thing though was that Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were both the same twenty year-old edition as my copy of Dune, and thus had the super cool, retro sci-fi art on the cover. Score!

All in all I have many things to be thankful about this Christmas, and many thoughtful people in my life to be thankful for. It was awesome to see my Grandma and Grandpa out in Florida, and I always enjoy seeing my friends and family back in Vegas after a long absence. I got in some quality time with my dog as well.

Hope you all had a great holiday season and I wish you well in the new year!

Piano is the Music of My Soul

2006-12-21T21:44:00.000-08:00

Any crappy/bad/frightening day can be erased by equal parts Eyes on Me (accoustic) and Jinsei no Merry Go Round.

Almost a week without an update! My blog is in terrible danger of becoming lost by the wayside. I'll have to post more randomness.

For instance, Sakiika, Japanese dried squid, is ridiculously delicious. I need to get me some...

Wacom Longings

2006-12-15T17:17:00.000-08:00

I'm not an artist, I know it. My visually artistic learnings have pretty much come to the doodles in the corners of my journal and a brief study of eyes when I had this grand vision of individually mastering each portion of the face so I could easily draw entire faces.

All the same, I terribly want a Wacom tablet. After trying to edit my Umaro icon to make it festive today, I once again smacked headfirst into the lunacy that is drawing with a mouse.

Too late to put it on my Christmas list as that already went out to the 'rents, but a man can dream...

Hypnotized

2006-12-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

I have a terrible need to learn how to dance the Haruhi Suzumiya dance.

Also, the opening words sound like gibberish to me, so I dream of a McDonald's parody staring the Hamburgler, going "Robble, robble..."

Joe Hisaishi Rocketh My World

2006-12-12T23:19:00.000-08:00

I just can't get enough Hisaishi. Sen to Chihiro soundtrack, Howl no Ugokushiro soundtrack...
He is my gateway drug into the world of orchestral/soundtrack works.

I need to dig up my old Princess Mononoke album as well.
Hmm, and perhaps some Peter and the Wolf for old times' sake...

Any further suggestions?

The Democratization of Art

2006-12-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

One thought, concept, theory which keeps cropping up in my head from time to time, is the democratization of art currently gaining momentum in our culture. By this I mean the use of the Internet to distribute, share, and expose art made by the people. It's intrigued me for a while now how sites like DeviantArt, musician profiles on MySpace, and YouTube, in addition to the sharing of art through file-sharing services, has allowed anyone to put anything they create online, available for viewing by their peers.

It's a very freeing yet chaotic thought. I can put my poem up on DeviantArt, and hundreds of people will read it, but can I be considered a "successful" or "notable" poet? The standards by which we measure legitimate art, and art that has been recognized as "good" (yes, perhaps interchangeable with "mainstream"), these standards are being redefined, if not completely obliterated, as we speak. My friend Nico no longer needs to get a big label record contract for people all over the world to hear his music. Placing the tunes up on MySpace and sharing them around on BitTorrent exposes him to anyone who has a computer and an internet connection.

I'm really intrigued by the thought that this will change our notion of "artistic success". Do I really need to be a published poet to feel successful? (And even now, it's possible to submit and publish a book myself through Amazon, ordering copies as I see fit) Does a film need to be shown on two thousand movie screens across the country to be "successful", when it can be seen on two million computer screens? Do I need to enter the "art world" (again, a commercially defined concept) by getting picked up by a major publisher/label/studio and receiving massive amounts of compensation for my work?

Can I be satisfied with living my life, producing my art, yet not providing a living by it? I suppose in the "old world" terminology, one would describe it as being my hobby. Now? I don't think its significance needs to be so small. I can have a nine to five job, produce art that is viewed by hundreds and thousands of my peers online, and feel like being an artist is part of who I am. Perhaps I can even feel more free as to what I produce than as a "compensated" artist, where I would need to produce a consistent, popular style in order to support myself financially.

Well, just a brain-rambling of mine. I honestly have no formal, "legitimized" training or learning in this subject. Just a thought. A curious one though.

Analysis

2006-12-07T12:27:00.000-08:00

"Oftentimes, academic writings like this aren't meant to explain the creator's direct intent, but rather to observe the relationship between the work and culture, and how they affect and are affected by one another."
Boffins Discuss GTA

Wow. I stumbled across this comment on the Kotaku article linked above, and it really struck me. I've always been one to scoff at academic deconstructions of movies and games. I always thought "You idiot! The creator wasn't being that intellectual and deep when he filmed this badass zombie fight scene!" This realisation in particular never crossed my mind, that maybe they're not writing about what the creator planned, but how we're going to see it and think about it.

Heroes and Their Absence

2006-12-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

Fantasy writer Gemmell dies at 57

It's hard to express how you feel when someone you look up to dies. It feels like a little part of you slips into "history", becomes words in a dusty tome that's then put up on a bookshelf in a vast, endless library which contains the piece of you along with everything else that's now gone from this world. It makes me feel like "my" age in history is passing. The things I love disappearing, though I realise David Gemmell is just one thing among many that I love and define me.

I first read Legend when I was in high school. I really don't remember the exact year. I do remember that I couldn't put the book down and while I was reading it the world around me disappeared. Gemmell had this way of writing that felt vivid and real rather than words. It was especially noticeable in his action scenes, where I could see what was going on rather than read it, because his words were precise and direct. His characterisation was superb as well. Every character felt like a person and their actions were realistic from their point of view. He had a thing for father figures. All the main strong males in his books (Druss, Waylander) had a direct, straightforward sense of what was good, and what was evil, and they always had a lesson to impart in a witty manner, with a memorable phrase.

I guess more than anything else, his books, his worlds, were a home to me. Not just when I was a kid, but across multiple spans of my life. I've looked up to him as a hero, the only one I can honestly think of having that was a living, breathing human being, and he was a guiding light to me as a writer as well.

I feel like I don't have the proper words to eulogize him. To express that he was more than a man to me: he was larger than life, he was my favorite writer of all time. I could sense that he was a good man through his words, and he encouraged me to strive to be like the heroes he wrote about in his books. Looking back, it was really him that I wanted to be like. He was my hero, and although I never met him, he was a huge part of my life.

Goodbye, David. You will be missed.

Subject Line Confessions

2006-11-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

Hmm, an annoying thing about emails from the plebians I notice when getting into work today: the subject line is used as their personal stage for melodrama and suffering. I get emails with subject lines like "whish i hadn't" and "Keyboard, when?". It's humorous because I can hardly tell these emails from the spam messages with subjects like, "not work" and "found it here".

Speaking of which, hilarious spam subject line of the day: "They overcame ED!"
I picture this blown up to 76 pt font sizes on the front page of the newspaper, all 1940s style with a picture of a sailor dipping his woman and kissing her underneath, tickertape falling in the background.

Musical Addictions

2006-11-30T00:26:00.000-08:00

Currently listening to Coldplay's Swallowed in the Sea over, and over, and over, and over...
It's warm and inviting.

A list of awesome

2006-11-28T00:10:00.000-08:00

1. Sandstone canyon hikes in Icebox Canyon outside of Vegas.
2. Pandora.com
3. Keane - Under the Iron Sea
4. Back to the Future Part 3
5. Harper's

There's this phenomenal article in the current issue of Harper's about the battle over Natural Time vs. Scientific Time (Time by the sun and rotation of the Earth vs. Time by the atomic clock). A group of American scientists and politicians are trying to switch the World's entire standard time over to the Atomic Clock. This sounds like a good idea at first until you realise how much this would fuck with Astronomy, national economies, and our very idea of time representing the rising and setting of the sun itself. Me, I'm with Natural Time.

I really want some lush, green topographic maps for my room. Maybe something from Oregon/Washington or the Colorado section of the Rockies. Mmm, acurately graphed verdant hillsides.

6. Green Tea, particularly in my simple white mug.

The cobwebs and rusty gears

2006-11-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

I was going to post about something, I had just thought of it this morning but now I can't remember. It was really good too.

What a wonderful way to start off a blog!

Here I am

2006-11-16T15:32:00.000-08:00

I find it difficult to bring my thoughts together into something resembling a rant or point, so this will most likely be a blog of random thoughts and musings.