Today I worked from 1:00 to 9:30. I hate long days like that. Even with a half-hour lunch break in the middle, it really just gets me down having to work that long in a row.
The deposit machine deep in the bowels of the mall, where we usually put the day's cash and check takings, has been broken for about a week now. So we must manually take the deposits over to the Bank of America also in the mall complex. It was just me and Kiel (pronounced "Kyle") on-shift for a bit today, and he was very busy, so he told me to go and do it.
"Here," he said, thrusting a plastic envelope into my hands. "Drop this off at the bank, and get a receipt."
"Yesterday's receipts?" I asked. He nodded. "How much?" I asked.
"Not much. Around two thousand," he said.
Two thousand dollars. Cash.
In my pocket.
After getting directions to the bank, I left to go get to my car, every step of the way through the mall thinking "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, I have $2,100 in cash in my pocket." I'm pretty sure I was emitting visible "Rob me!" rays, because I noticed more than my share of menacing-looking people closing in on me. I fled to the car and promptly got lost.
I was actually afraid that, in my jumbled thoughts, I would get stuck in auto-pilot and start driving home. This sounds like a comedic exaggeration, but if I start driving and I lose a clear focus of where I'm going, I go to the mall. Or from the mall to home, if I'm already at the mall.
It's...become instinct. Many's the time that I've snapped out of a light trance, found myself circling the mall parking lot, and thinking "Dammit, I wanted to go to the movie theater," or something. So I was afraid that I would mechanically proceed home, arrive with the cash still in my pocket, cause Kiel to think I was taking too long and assume I'd stolen the money, and all sorts of troubles would ensue.
I finally found the bank and made the deposit without incident. So it worked out okay.
Later that day, I was standing in line at Taco Bell to refill Kiel's Diet Pepsi (he sends me on little errands like this a lot, I don't mind, because I enjoy getting out of the store for a minute or two) and these three girls were having a conversation in front of me which I was sort of tuning out, until I heard this snippet:
"You're not only a lesbian, you're a rambunctious lesbian. You need to chill out sometimes."
I leaned in and said "Mind if I suddenly take an interest in this conversation?" This earned a round of hearty laughs, so I started talking to them and got one of their phone numbers. (A nice girl named Haley, turned out to be the only straight one in the group. lolz.)
That evening, a boy and his mother came into the store. He traded in several games and selected a game to purchase - Grand Theft Auto IV. He was twelve years old. The game is rated M for Mature for, mainly, being a GTA title. So, being the responsible person I am compelled by store policy to be, I said:
"Ma'am, are you aware this game is rated M for...Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Strong Sexual Themes, Nudity, Drug and Alcohol Use, and Strong Language?"
Her reaction: "...Really?"
His reaction: "Gngh! Shhh!"
Unfortunately, Amaury (my coworker) and I were forced to tell the whole truth. It played out something like this:
Mom: "Is there swearing?"
Amaury: "The whole nine yards."
Me: "Yeah. Scarface-level swearing."
Mom: "Oh, dear."
Kid: "Mooom, you already agreed."
Mom: "Well, I didn't know. Now, what's this about Strong Sexual Themes?"
Amaury: *shrugs* "There's a strip club."
Mom: "Does it have topless women?"
Me: "You ever see a strip club that didn't?"
(Amaury thought this was such a good line, he high-fived me right on the spot. The kid found it less amusing, but even the mom chuckled briefly before realizing just what she was laughing at.)
And so on. The kid ended up not getting the game and swearing revenge on me. Hey, better for his mom to find out now, as opposed to hearing some of the salty language or seeing some of the really bad stuff you can do in the game (I dare not even speak of the way to regenerate your health). She would have yelled at him, then taken the game back and yelled at me for not telling her, and I didn't feel like the headache.
That was more or less everything interesting that happened today.
Showing posts with label regular. Show all posts
Showing posts with label regular. Show all posts
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Of Serendipity And Breakfast Cereal
There is actually a reason for that peculiar title, I'll be getting to it soon.
I need to update more often. I know. I know. I'm just having a lot of difficulties at the moment, lots of demands on my time, and for some reason, my mental health seems to be chipping away at the edges. Can't think why - I'm not under any particularly large amount of stress or anything, but it appears that my mind seems to slowly be fragmenting into a million shrieking pieces. Concentration is becoming more difficult, procrastination is becoming more extreme than usual, even for me...But I overdramatize.
Anyway.
I successfully pulled off my D&D campaign that I've been building up to for a good number of weeks now. With extensive help from my new deus ex machina-esque friend Chuck, who differs from me in that he actually knows what the heck he's doing, I got the castle drawn up nice and proper. Then I shoved the players into it and basically said "The castle is taken. Go." Lots and lots of interesting - what's that? You want to know why I described Chuck in that fashion?
Well, it's very interesting. He popped into my frame of reference Friday before last, seeing us playing a game of D&D and asking if he could join. Apparently, he was starved for a good game, as he hadn't played in a long time. He quickly got into the group, and appeared for next Friday's session, wherein we mistakenly awakened a mighty god-dragon, only to discover that he was not exactly as godlike as he claimed he was, whereupon we hacked him to pieces for trying to destroy us. It was weirder than it sounds, trust me.
I mentioned that I was having difficulty with the castle, and Chuck mentioned that he had designed many castles before - that, in fact, he did so for fun, as a hobby. Stunned by this turn of events, I quickly accepted his offer for help in the design of the castle, and his assistance and sketching was absolutely instrumental to the complete blueprint of the castle I turned out the next day. I call him a deus ex machina not to imply that he's a poorly-written literary construct, but that he seemed to appear from nowhere with the specific skills that I required of someone to help solve my problem. Life is truly a marvel sometimes.
So the game of D&D was grand. My character, a warforged, was mistaken for a gondola by a character who didn't appear to like the fact that robots could talk and have free will now. (He was frozen for a thousand years, I cut him some slack.) Upon the other characters' decision to attack the so-called dragon-god (we didn't quite know he wasn't a god, yet), my character chose instead to surrender and make no action. This later resulted in the others berating him for cowardice. Oh well, I'm not going to apologize for what I see as good roleplaying.
As for my dungeon, whoa-ho-ho, what a game that was. The players spent most of the time shuffling around between the basement and the kitchen, but some of them infiltrated the barracks (to break the siege) and one of them actually got a hit off on the enemy king. This is perplexing, because I had been prepared to cheat rampantly to explicitly not allow this to happen that early on in the campaign, and didn't even have a set HP or Armor Class or anything. But, he played well, and rolled well, and made the hit. Didn't kill him (even an old man has more than 15 HP), but he spooked him enough as to force a major plot change.
Speaking of major plot changes, oh, those players won't know what hit them. I've got a couple of real nice curveballs ready for 'em. But I don't wish to spoil anything.
The week proceeded all right, I suppose. Due to the fact that I'm not going to stay on over the summer, Harry Guscott, the radio guy, said that I should come back in the fall, and we would resume trying to get me on the air then. He said he liked my progress, but it was too late in the year to consider giving me shifts if I wasn't staying for the summer. Oh well. The fall awaits, with plenty of time to build my confidence and skill between then and now.
Tonight I was in the dining hall, and that was a lot of fun. Several things happened that were interesting. First, I ran into a friend of mine, who I have been seeing around a lot recently, despite the fact that I don't share a schedule with him at all beyond the one class a week we have together. I mused on this as I moved towards the cereal.
I must explain that in the rare cases that I have an internal narration, thoughts in words, that is, that I often randomly switch from thinking things to saying them quietly, and back again just as quickly. This resulted in the following monologue:
Ran into Mark again. I do admire... "...the serendipitous nature of the universe. Ooh, Cinnamon Toast Crunch."
That line made me guffaw. I don't normally laugh at my own jokes, but I have been known to laugh at absurdities in my monologues. Such was this.
Then later, a girl stopped me as I was walking to grab a spoon and commented that she really liked my shirt, the one with Red Mage from 8-Bit Theater on it. We had a brief conversation, then she hurried off, without either of us ever so much as learning the other's name. Oh well. Breaks up the monotony of things, certainly.
I've been trying recently to go running every day. The wisdom of this is in question, as I don't know whether or not that's actually bad for you, but I'm going two miles or so at a time, so it's not as though I'm running a daily marathon.
Updates have been sparse. I am sorry about that I promise an update tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. And very soon I will post the short story I've been working on, about a man who travels through time.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day may, for the first time ever, be a repeat. I doubt it, but I honestly can't remember if I've linked to this before. If I have, I'm very sorry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZwZiU0kKs It's "Weapon of Choice" with Christopher Freaking Walken dancing to the music. I love it.
REPLIES.
Kelli: Possibly, possibly, but elections are still ahead. I may yet withdraw my nomination. I'll try and find out exactly what the job entails. It might just be general apathy as opposed to specific antipathy, though: several other positions were not exactly full of applicants either. And hazing seems unlikely.
Vaughn: Hoo boy, this is gonna take a while.
I can commisserate with the lack of gaming, because that happened to me for a significant portion of my freshman year. It was a mere fluke that had me realize where the gaming people met up.
I've never heard of "Dr. Detroit," but I'll look into it. And I'd say that your advice is amazing and well-spoken - but I honestly have no plans to go to graduate school at all. I'm majoring in journalism, as you may know, and graduate school for journalism majors is really only for those who wish to teach it. I do not. Technically, some high-muckety-muck journalism grad schools exist for those who want to take high editorial positions at prestigious papers like the New York Times and such, but I don't have any interest in that either.
Mom: I anticipate that it'll be a challenge, and I think it'll be fun. Yes, Picard is what we in my field tend to refer to as "a colossal pillar of ownage." Kirk was cool, and Janeway has a specific brand of awesome, but Picard just owns people's faces until their faces are just completely owned into oblivion. I checked out zombietime, and I liked it.
Jake: Er, I guess. And I did check my email. And I don't like it.
Dad: Maybe so. But honestly I'm beginning to get a bit discouraged. A long string of nothing seemed honestly preferable to a couple of prospects that were swiftly snatched away. Good point about the social chair position and the club I started. Maybe I should mention this to them? More trips to Orlando are always good. I think. And the Gathering of Eagles was indeed great.
Steve: I'm trying desperately to work the whole thing out. And yes, Transformers is awesome. I downloaded the movie recently. Frankly, I'm quite surprised that anyone besides my circle of people I actually know reads this blog. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless. My irregular update schedule isn't helping things there...I'm going to try and fix that.
Boxing? Boxing? You? Ha. And perhaps another 'ha.' No, maybe the second isn't necessary. And as I already said, I main Meta-Knight as well. He's neat. And fast. Really fast.
Adios.
I need to update more often. I know. I know. I'm just having a lot of difficulties at the moment, lots of demands on my time, and for some reason, my mental health seems to be chipping away at the edges. Can't think why - I'm not under any particularly large amount of stress or anything, but it appears that my mind seems to slowly be fragmenting into a million shrieking pieces. Concentration is becoming more difficult, procrastination is becoming more extreme than usual, even for me...But I overdramatize.
Anyway.
I successfully pulled off my D&D campaign that I've been building up to for a good number of weeks now. With extensive help from my new deus ex machina-esque friend Chuck, who differs from me in that he actually knows what the heck he's doing, I got the castle drawn up nice and proper. Then I shoved the players into it and basically said "The castle is taken. Go." Lots and lots of interesting - what's that? You want to know why I described Chuck in that fashion?
Well, it's very interesting. He popped into my frame of reference Friday before last, seeing us playing a game of D&D and asking if he could join. Apparently, he was starved for a good game, as he hadn't played in a long time. He quickly got into the group, and appeared for next Friday's session, wherein we mistakenly awakened a mighty god-dragon, only to discover that he was not exactly as godlike as he claimed he was, whereupon we hacked him to pieces for trying to destroy us. It was weirder than it sounds, trust me.
I mentioned that I was having difficulty with the castle, and Chuck mentioned that he had designed many castles before - that, in fact, he did so for fun, as a hobby. Stunned by this turn of events, I quickly accepted his offer for help in the design of the castle, and his assistance and sketching was absolutely instrumental to the complete blueprint of the castle I turned out the next day. I call him a deus ex machina not to imply that he's a poorly-written literary construct, but that he seemed to appear from nowhere with the specific skills that I required of someone to help solve my problem. Life is truly a marvel sometimes.
So the game of D&D was grand. My character, a warforged, was mistaken for a gondola by a character who didn't appear to like the fact that robots could talk and have free will now. (He was frozen for a thousand years, I cut him some slack.) Upon the other characters' decision to attack the so-called dragon-god (we didn't quite know he wasn't a god, yet), my character chose instead to surrender and make no action. This later resulted in the others berating him for cowardice. Oh well, I'm not going to apologize for what I see as good roleplaying.
As for my dungeon, whoa-ho-ho, what a game that was. The players spent most of the time shuffling around between the basement and the kitchen, but some of them infiltrated the barracks (to break the siege) and one of them actually got a hit off on the enemy king. This is perplexing, because I had been prepared to cheat rampantly to explicitly not allow this to happen that early on in the campaign, and didn't even have a set HP or Armor Class or anything. But, he played well, and rolled well, and made the hit. Didn't kill him (even an old man has more than 15 HP), but he spooked him enough as to force a major plot change.
Speaking of major plot changes, oh, those players won't know what hit them. I've got a couple of real nice curveballs ready for 'em. But I don't wish to spoil anything.
The week proceeded all right, I suppose. Due to the fact that I'm not going to stay on over the summer, Harry Guscott, the radio guy, said that I should come back in the fall, and we would resume trying to get me on the air then. He said he liked my progress, but it was too late in the year to consider giving me shifts if I wasn't staying for the summer. Oh well. The fall awaits, with plenty of time to build my confidence and skill between then and now.
Tonight I was in the dining hall, and that was a lot of fun. Several things happened that were interesting. First, I ran into a friend of mine, who I have been seeing around a lot recently, despite the fact that I don't share a schedule with him at all beyond the one class a week we have together. I mused on this as I moved towards the cereal.
I must explain that in the rare cases that I have an internal narration, thoughts in words, that is, that I often randomly switch from thinking things to saying them quietly, and back again just as quickly. This resulted in the following monologue:
Ran into Mark again. I do admire... "...the serendipitous nature of the universe. Ooh, Cinnamon Toast Crunch."
That line made me guffaw. I don't normally laugh at my own jokes, but I have been known to laugh at absurdities in my monologues. Such was this.
Then later, a girl stopped me as I was walking to grab a spoon and commented that she really liked my shirt, the one with Red Mage from 8-Bit Theater on it. We had a brief conversation, then she hurried off, without either of us ever so much as learning the other's name. Oh well. Breaks up the monotony of things, certainly.
I've been trying recently to go running every day. The wisdom of this is in question, as I don't know whether or not that's actually bad for you, but I'm going two miles or so at a time, so it's not as though I'm running a daily marathon.
Updates have been sparse. I am sorry about that I promise an update tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. And very soon I will post the short story I've been working on, about a man who travels through time.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day may, for the first time ever, be a repeat. I doubt it, but I honestly can't remember if I've linked to this before. If I have, I'm very sorry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZwZiU0kKs It's "Weapon of Choice" with Christopher Freaking Walken dancing to the music. I love it.
REPLIES.
Kelli: Possibly, possibly, but elections are still ahead. I may yet withdraw my nomination. I'll try and find out exactly what the job entails. It might just be general apathy as opposed to specific antipathy, though: several other positions were not exactly full of applicants either. And hazing seems unlikely.
Vaughn: Hoo boy, this is gonna take a while.
I can commisserate with the lack of gaming, because that happened to me for a significant portion of my freshman year. It was a mere fluke that had me realize where the gaming people met up.
I've never heard of "Dr. Detroit," but I'll look into it. And I'd say that your advice is amazing and well-spoken - but I honestly have no plans to go to graduate school at all. I'm majoring in journalism, as you may know, and graduate school for journalism majors is really only for those who wish to teach it. I do not. Technically, some high-muckety-muck journalism grad schools exist for those who want to take high editorial positions at prestigious papers like the New York Times and such, but I don't have any interest in that either.
Mom: I anticipate that it'll be a challenge, and I think it'll be fun. Yes, Picard is what we in my field tend to refer to as "a colossal pillar of ownage." Kirk was cool, and Janeway has a specific brand of awesome, but Picard just owns people's faces until their faces are just completely owned into oblivion. I checked out zombietime, and I liked it.
Jake: Er, I guess. And I did check my email. And I don't like it.
Dad: Maybe so. But honestly I'm beginning to get a bit discouraged. A long string of nothing seemed honestly preferable to a couple of prospects that were swiftly snatched away. Good point about the social chair position and the club I started. Maybe I should mention this to them? More trips to Orlando are always good. I think. And the Gathering of Eagles was indeed great.
Steve: I'm trying desperately to work the whole thing out. And yes, Transformers is awesome. I downloaded the movie recently. Frankly, I'm quite surprised that anyone besides my circle of people I actually know reads this blog. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless. My irregular update schedule isn't helping things there...I'm going to try and fix that.
Boxing? Boxing? You? Ha. And perhaps another 'ha.' No, maybe the second isn't necessary. And as I already said, I main Meta-Knight as well. He's neat. And fast. Really fast.
Adios.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
So...Huh. This Is Weird, But Cool.
A little background. My MMC2100 class, Writing for Mass Communication, offers a 25-point bonus chunk of extra credit if we get a story published in a reputable publication, the Gainesville Sun or the Alligator (though that publication's status as "reputable" diminishes daily in my mind, they practice rotten journalism). One of these publications, suggested to us in lecture, is the online magazine "Newsies."
Today in lecture, the professor mentioned that Newsies was having a meeting tonight, in which they would consider new business and hold nominations for elections. She said that it was a good opportunity to bring a story to them, so as to maybe get it published. So I went, thinking, what a good idea.
They were indeed holding nominations. The offices were:
2 Executive Editors
Treasurer
Secretary
2 Historians
Social Chair
4 Group Editors
People came up in front of the room and gave short speeches on why they thought they deserved one position or another. The funny part was, when it came to Social Chair, nobody offered. Nobody even raised their hand when the current editors asked who wanted the nomination. I thought this was a bit odd.
At the end of the meeting, after I found the appropriate person and gave her the copy of my Large Hadron Collider story that I had brought for her to review, I approached one of the two executive editors, Allysen.
"Nobody tried for Social Chair?" I asked.
"Yeah, nobody," she said. "I guess one of the freshmen will take it, or else we'll just have to leave it vacant."
"Well..." I said. "I'm not technically a member of Newsies, and have in fact never been to one of these meetings, but if nobody else wants it, I could try for Social Chair."
She eyed me critically. "You?" she said.
"Sure," I said. "I'm taking MMC now, and passing it, and the story I gave to Alexandra [I think it was her] should prove my, er, journalistic merit."
Allysen stared for a second, but smiled. "Well, bring some ideas as to what you might do as Social Chair to the next meeting, and we'll consider it," she said. "If nobody else wants it, you'll probably get it."
So I went to the first meeting of Newsies I've ever been to, and walked away nearly elected to office in that organization.
It's kind of funny.
Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOXT22Ghouw featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard pretty much owning everybody around him. As he is wont to do. And in today's Luke-Approved YouTube Second Link of the Day, a rare treat, we have http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98iNFU0IDo0 in which Data completely dominates one of his insubordinate officers during the brief period in which he is a starship captain. Data owning people is such a rarity, when I saw it, I had to include it.
REPLIES.
Kelli: Oh. Hi again. Yes, D&D will be grand, if I can manage not to throttle my players up here. When the objective is to retake the castle, burning it down is not a victory option. Neither is blowing it up. Neither is shifting it into another plane of existence, and damn if I know how they'd pull that off at 6th level. Stupid players.
Vic: I'm lookin', I'm lookin'. As for MMC...well...I forgot the address where I posted the picture. If you could help me out there, that'd be grand. And I'll check my schedule as to when we can do another Game Night.
Dad: I don't pretend to be as good a speaker as Bill Clinton. I saw a video of that speech...it was fairly epic, I think. I'll show you the video when I come down. And I've been improving on the radio pretty quickly.
Mom: What is this piano music anecdote y'all keep telling me about? I don't remember it at all. And yes, D&D is fun.
See you.
Today in lecture, the professor mentioned that Newsies was having a meeting tonight, in which they would consider new business and hold nominations for elections. She said that it was a good opportunity to bring a story to them, so as to maybe get it published. So I went, thinking, what a good idea.
They were indeed holding nominations. The offices were:
2 Executive Editors
Treasurer
Secretary
2 Historians
Social Chair
4 Group Editors
People came up in front of the room and gave short speeches on why they thought they deserved one position or another. The funny part was, when it came to Social Chair, nobody offered. Nobody even raised their hand when the current editors asked who wanted the nomination. I thought this was a bit odd.
At the end of the meeting, after I found the appropriate person and gave her the copy of my Large Hadron Collider story that I had brought for her to review, I approached one of the two executive editors, Allysen.
"Nobody tried for Social Chair?" I asked.
"Yeah, nobody," she said. "I guess one of the freshmen will take it, or else we'll just have to leave it vacant."
"Well..." I said. "I'm not technically a member of Newsies, and have in fact never been to one of these meetings, but if nobody else wants it, I could try for Social Chair."
She eyed me critically. "You?" she said.
"Sure," I said. "I'm taking MMC now, and passing it, and the story I gave to Alexandra [I think it was her] should prove my, er, journalistic merit."
Allysen stared for a second, but smiled. "Well, bring some ideas as to what you might do as Social Chair to the next meeting, and we'll consider it," she said. "If nobody else wants it, you'll probably get it."
So I went to the first meeting of Newsies I've ever been to, and walked away nearly elected to office in that organization.
It's kind of funny.
Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOXT22Ghouw featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard pretty much owning everybody around him. As he is wont to do. And in today's Luke-Approved YouTube Second Link of the Day, a rare treat, we have http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98iNFU0IDo0 in which Data completely dominates one of his insubordinate officers during the brief period in which he is a starship captain. Data owning people is such a rarity, when I saw it, I had to include it.
REPLIES.
Kelli: Oh. Hi again. Yes, D&D will be grand, if I can manage not to throttle my players up here. When the objective is to retake the castle, burning it down is not a victory option. Neither is blowing it up. Neither is shifting it into another plane of existence, and damn if I know how they'd pull that off at 6th level. Stupid players.
Vic: I'm lookin', I'm lookin'. As for MMC...well...I forgot the address where I posted the picture. If you could help me out there, that'd be grand. And I'll check my schedule as to when we can do another Game Night.
Dad: I don't pretend to be as good a speaker as Bill Clinton. I saw a video of that speech...it was fairly epic, I think. I'll show you the video when I come down. And I've been improving on the radio pretty quickly.
Mom: What is this piano music anecdote y'all keep telling me about? I don't remember it at all. And yes, D&D is fun.
See you.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Events Of The Last Few Days
Last week was not especially memorable. No, it was not. I mean, there were a few things, like...hmm, there was...ooh, the D&D game, that was good. But overall not much happened.
Oh, yeah, I found some apartments/houses with Apartment Hunters. But we - that is to say, myself, Mike, and Matt, who are going to be sharing this apartment/house - are still waffling on which one to take. We had our eye on one, called La Mancha, but I've been told by others that there is something of a major bug problem in those dwellings, so we'll have to see for ourselves.
But regardless. There are a few things I want to talk about in particular:
1. The D&D game
2. The game of Twilight Imperium on Saturday
3. The play I watched (and performed) on Sunday
4. My radio gig on Monday
The D&D game. I like the Eberron setting, if only because I get to be a cool mechanical/organic construct known as a "warforged." Not only that, I get to be a psion, so my character is technically known as a "psiforged." His name is 01. I can be healed by either cure wounds or repair damage spells, so that's neat. I don't sleep, I don't eat, I don't breathe, and as a roleplaying feature I decided that I would begin all of my sentences with the type of sentence it is. For instance...
"Query: You and what army, meatbag?"
"Assertion: Try it and I will personally crack you open like a boiled lobster."
"Inference: So that means...what...you're gay?"
It's a lot of fun, really it is. Especially since I bought that enormous bag of dice at Megacon. But now I know the pain of everyone borrowing my dice and not giving them back and mixing them up in other peoples' dice pools and unnnngh. It's a good thing I memorized how many I have of each type so as to avoid confusion over who owns what.
In this particular adventure, we got lost in the undercity of this one, er, place (I was a little unclear on the setting), and when I missed a step, I fell hurtling downwards on a very slippery slope, taking the cleric with me. We landed in knee-deep guano, which didn't affect me as I don't breathe and, ergo, don't have a sense of smell. We were then immediately grappled by some horrors, I don't know what. I blasted 'em with a cold spell (psionic evocation, whatever), but I unfortunately hit the cleric too, dropping him to negative HP and making his magic plate armor go to bits. (The DM later ruled that he could repair it.) So his player held a grudge against me for most of that session. It was helped by the fact that the druid, a new player, "just happened" to join the party when the cleric needed healing the most.
When we were all rejoined and somewhat healed, we discovered that the only way to advance would be to go through underwater tunnels. The druid wild-shaped into a dolphin, and most of the other characters clung to her. I just plodded along. They were all fussing about breathing or some such ridiculousness, but me, I didn't care. We had to fight an aboleth, which is a big psychic fish-thing, but we (and by "we" I mean "mostly me") damaged it enough to force it to retreat. I had to blow five Action Points, a sort of bribe-the-GM currency that's actually in the rulebook, to make the monster reroll his successful saving throw until he failed it.
Twilight Imperium, now, that was a game. There were only six of us playing this time:
Louis, whose race were basically space Nazis.
Victoria, who again started as the aggravating race that starts with a War Sun (Death Star analogue).
Mike, who was the University, but realized too late that that -1 to combat rolls makes a big damn difference.
Matt, who was...heck, I don't remember.
Danny, who was someone even more forgettable. (I tend to only pay attention to my side of the table. Whoops.)
And me. My race were space pirates. That is fun to do.
We divided the galaxy into two halves, and Victoria, Louis, and I all ended up on one half and the other three on the second. Us, the warmongering races, quickly made a temporary truce and banded together to crush the techie book-learners, a fact which they were quick to complain about. Bah, too bad. All this malarkey they gave us about "winning the game" and "getting victory points." I don't play Twilight Imperium to satisfy the byzantine requirements of getting victory points, I play it to amass a gigantic face-crushing space fleet and by God crush some face, am I right?
Louis ended up winning, but not before I scored a decisive victory against Danny (I obliterated half his fleet and only lost one Fighter) and nuked Louis's homeworld in a questionably intelligent backstab attempt. I still lost, but I had fun doing it.
The play. Ah, the play. You may remember that I posted said play several weeks ago. I showed it to my teacher and he liked it so much that he had me put it on stage at the Acrosstown Theater after his An Evening with Harold Pinter. This was fun, but nerve-wracking. With about a million minor edits made, I distributed copies to my fellow actors, rehearsed the lines a few more times, got it all straight in my head, took a deep breath, and then went and threw up in the bathroom. But I felt much better afterwards.
The actual execution of the play...well. We had just finished the initial scenes, where I (I played Kevin, naturally) declared that Joe (played by Mallory, we play fast and loose with gender roles at the Acrosstown) could stay as long as he liked...then, we hit a snag. One or both of us got tangled up in the dialogue, and we ended up accidentally transitioning into the scene near the end, about the masturbation joke. I managed to improv us back to where we were supposed to be, through use of the fact that people can think really, really fast in a crisis.
Mallory's line was "You're not making any sense," but this was not immediately clear on account of I had just done a few lines of improv to get us back on track. Her eyes implored me to come up with something. So I came up with:
"I know what you're thinking..." I waggled my eyebrows conspiratorially. "You're thinking that I'm not making any sense, aren't you?" Pause for dramatic effect. "Well, I understand everything I'm saying." Which was my next line. We got back after that. Hoo boy, I can't believe I actually had the stones to pull that off.
We proceeded along fine - naked terror had hotwired my brain into perfect delivery - but still the hole in the script loomed. We could not, could not, repeat a scene, especially a scene that had dramatic weight to it (at least, as much as I could possibly instill). So both of us managed to sort of hop over the pit that had been created, and got fine on track for the ending.
It turned out surprisingly well. My teacher came up on stage to congratulate me (he knew what I had done, he was reading the script) and told me that I had managed to get people to laugh during my improv bits. So that's something. And when I spoke to my old roommate, Victor, he said that he had no idea that we had deviated from the script and were basically ad-libbing. Good news all around, then.
Then we get to my radio gig last night. I went on the air again from 2-3 a.m. This time, I was ready. I was prepared. I did not have a nervous breakdown like I practically did last time. (Possibly, my nerves were still shot from Sunday night, and needed to cool down before they could overheat again.) I went on-air three times, and each time I was cool, confident, and unafraid.
So I strolled into the office today and showed Mr. Guscott my tape. He popped it in and had a listen.
"Your recordings aren't here," he said. "This is all old stuff."
In horror, I seized upon it and listened myself. Indeed so - my perfect recordings from last night were gone.
"Did...something happen?" I stammered.
"Let's find out," Harry said. We went to the studio and popped in the tape.
DISC READ ERROR, it said.
"Odd," said Harry. "We'll try a new one." He went back to his office, unwrapped a fresh tape, and popped it in.
DISC READ ERROR
"I think you broke it," Harry said. He was smiling, and he immediately afterward reassured me that he was joking, but for just a split second a bolt of terror arced down my spine and earthed itself in my soul.
So, no record. I'll try it again on Wednesday night, I suppose. Deep, deep, deep sigh. But this time I'm even more prepared.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlSbTLzfKiA It's the Scorponok sequence from the 2007 Transformers movie. Out of all the really awesome scenes in the movie, and there were many, this one stands out as being completely jawsome.
REPLIES.
Jake: I know it did. It was awesome. And, er, I think I have a picture. I'm going to put up an album...one of these days.
Vic: I'm working on it, I'm working on it. And no, I have not yet found your blog. Email me the link or somethin'.
Mike: Good comic.
Steve: The first and second are still the best. The fourth is just kind of weird.
Dad: I figured as much. Boa was hostile that last day, I didn't like it. It felt like it was betraying my trust. And, er, thanks.
Mom: Yes, well, my bones took a pounding once or twice. I tried to ski one of those slightly off-slope through-the-trees paths, only to discover why you cannot do this. I taped all but the last 20 seconds or so of the play, at least, Victoria did with my camera. That thing devours batteries, by the way.
I don't think I can deconstruct the sequels as easily as I did the prequels. The sequels were actually mostly well-written, which gives me trouble. And, well, I'm working things out with girls...I guess.
(Jake's phone number is our area code, 792-6527.)
Bye.
Oh, yeah, I found some apartments/houses with Apartment Hunters. But we - that is to say, myself, Mike, and Matt, who are going to be sharing this apartment/house - are still waffling on which one to take. We had our eye on one, called La Mancha, but I've been told by others that there is something of a major bug problem in those dwellings, so we'll have to see for ourselves.
But regardless. There are a few things I want to talk about in particular:
1. The D&D game
2. The game of Twilight Imperium on Saturday
3. The play I watched (and performed) on Sunday
4. My radio gig on Monday
The D&D game. I like the Eberron setting, if only because I get to be a cool mechanical/organic construct known as a "warforged." Not only that, I get to be a psion, so my character is technically known as a "psiforged." His name is 01. I can be healed by either cure wounds or repair damage spells, so that's neat. I don't sleep, I don't eat, I don't breathe, and as a roleplaying feature I decided that I would begin all of my sentences with the type of sentence it is. For instance...
"Query: You and what army, meatbag?"
"Assertion: Try it and I will personally crack you open like a boiled lobster."
"Inference: So that means...what...you're gay?"
It's a lot of fun, really it is. Especially since I bought that enormous bag of dice at Megacon. But now I know the pain of everyone borrowing my dice and not giving them back and mixing them up in other peoples' dice pools and unnnngh. It's a good thing I memorized how many I have of each type so as to avoid confusion over who owns what.
In this particular adventure, we got lost in the undercity of this one, er, place (I was a little unclear on the setting), and when I missed a step, I fell hurtling downwards on a very slippery slope, taking the cleric with me. We landed in knee-deep guano, which didn't affect me as I don't breathe and, ergo, don't have a sense of smell. We were then immediately grappled by some horrors, I don't know what. I blasted 'em with a cold spell (psionic evocation, whatever), but I unfortunately hit the cleric too, dropping him to negative HP and making his magic plate armor go to bits. (The DM later ruled that he could repair it.) So his player held a grudge against me for most of that session. It was helped by the fact that the druid, a new player, "just happened" to join the party when the cleric needed healing the most.
When we were all rejoined and somewhat healed, we discovered that the only way to advance would be to go through underwater tunnels. The druid wild-shaped into a dolphin, and most of the other characters clung to her. I just plodded along. They were all fussing about breathing or some such ridiculousness, but me, I didn't care. We had to fight an aboleth, which is a big psychic fish-thing, but we (and by "we" I mean "mostly me") damaged it enough to force it to retreat. I had to blow five Action Points, a sort of bribe-the-GM currency that's actually in the rulebook, to make the monster reroll his successful saving throw until he failed it.
Twilight Imperium, now, that was a game. There were only six of us playing this time:
Louis, whose race were basically space Nazis.
Victoria, who again started as the aggravating race that starts with a War Sun (Death Star analogue).
Mike, who was the University, but realized too late that that -1 to combat rolls makes a big damn difference.
Matt, who was...heck, I don't remember.
Danny, who was someone even more forgettable. (I tend to only pay attention to my side of the table. Whoops.)
And me. My race were space pirates. That is fun to do.
We divided the galaxy into two halves, and Victoria, Louis, and I all ended up on one half and the other three on the second. Us, the warmongering races, quickly made a temporary truce and banded together to crush the techie book-learners, a fact which they were quick to complain about. Bah, too bad. All this malarkey they gave us about "winning the game" and "getting victory points." I don't play Twilight Imperium to satisfy the byzantine requirements of getting victory points, I play it to amass a gigantic face-crushing space fleet and by God crush some face, am I right?
Louis ended up winning, but not before I scored a decisive victory against Danny (I obliterated half his fleet and only lost one Fighter) and nuked Louis's homeworld in a questionably intelligent backstab attempt. I still lost, but I had fun doing it.
The play. Ah, the play. You may remember that I posted said play several weeks ago. I showed it to my teacher and he liked it so much that he had me put it on stage at the Acrosstown Theater after his An Evening with Harold Pinter. This was fun, but nerve-wracking. With about a million minor edits made, I distributed copies to my fellow actors, rehearsed the lines a few more times, got it all straight in my head, took a deep breath, and then went and threw up in the bathroom. But I felt much better afterwards.
The actual execution of the play...well. We had just finished the initial scenes, where I (I played Kevin, naturally) declared that Joe (played by Mallory, we play fast and loose with gender roles at the Acrosstown) could stay as long as he liked...then, we hit a snag. One or both of us got tangled up in the dialogue, and we ended up accidentally transitioning into the scene near the end, about the masturbation joke. I managed to improv us back to where we were supposed to be, through use of the fact that people can think really, really fast in a crisis.
Mallory's line was "You're not making any sense," but this was not immediately clear on account of I had just done a few lines of improv to get us back on track. Her eyes implored me to come up with something. So I came up with:
"I know what you're thinking..." I waggled my eyebrows conspiratorially. "You're thinking that I'm not making any sense, aren't you?" Pause for dramatic effect. "Well, I understand everything I'm saying." Which was my next line. We got back after that. Hoo boy, I can't believe I actually had the stones to pull that off.
We proceeded along fine - naked terror had hotwired my brain into perfect delivery - but still the hole in the script loomed. We could not, could not, repeat a scene, especially a scene that had dramatic weight to it (at least, as much as I could possibly instill). So both of us managed to sort of hop over the pit that had been created, and got fine on track for the ending.
It turned out surprisingly well. My teacher came up on stage to congratulate me (he knew what I had done, he was reading the script) and told me that I had managed to get people to laugh during my improv bits. So that's something. And when I spoke to my old roommate, Victor, he said that he had no idea that we had deviated from the script and were basically ad-libbing. Good news all around, then.
Then we get to my radio gig last night. I went on the air again from 2-3 a.m. This time, I was ready. I was prepared. I did not have a nervous breakdown like I practically did last time. (Possibly, my nerves were still shot from Sunday night, and needed to cool down before they could overheat again.) I went on-air three times, and each time I was cool, confident, and unafraid.
So I strolled into the office today and showed Mr. Guscott my tape. He popped it in and had a listen.
"Your recordings aren't here," he said. "This is all old stuff."
In horror, I seized upon it and listened myself. Indeed so - my perfect recordings from last night were gone.
"Did...something happen?" I stammered.
"Let's find out," Harry said. We went to the studio and popped in the tape.
DISC READ ERROR, it said.
"Odd," said Harry. "We'll try a new one." He went back to his office, unwrapped a fresh tape, and popped it in.
DISC READ ERROR
"I think you broke it," Harry said. He was smiling, and he immediately afterward reassured me that he was joking, but for just a split second a bolt of terror arced down my spine and earthed itself in my soul.
So, no record. I'll try it again on Wednesday night, I suppose. Deep, deep, deep sigh. But this time I'm even more prepared.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlSbTLzfKiA It's the Scorponok sequence from the 2007 Transformers movie. Out of all the really awesome scenes in the movie, and there were many, this one stands out as being completely jawsome.
REPLIES.
Jake: I know it did. It was awesome. And, er, I think I have a picture. I'm going to put up an album...one of these days.
Vic: I'm working on it, I'm working on it. And no, I have not yet found your blog. Email me the link or somethin'.
Mike: Good comic.
Steve: The first and second are still the best. The fourth is just kind of weird.
Dad: I figured as much. Boa was hostile that last day, I didn't like it. It felt like it was betraying my trust. And, er, thanks.
Mom: Yes, well, my bones took a pounding once or twice. I tried to ski one of those slightly off-slope through-the-trees paths, only to discover why you cannot do this. I taped all but the last 20 seconds or so of the play, at least, Victoria did with my camera. That thing devours batteries, by the way.
I don't think I can deconstruct the sequels as easily as I did the prequels. The sequels were actually mostly well-written, which gives me trouble. And, well, I'm working things out with girls...I guess.
(Jake's phone number is our area code, 792-6527.)
Bye.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Spring Break RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWKS!!
For it does, my friends. It has the Rawk Hawk seal of approval. (Hm, do I own Thousand-Year Door? I need to buy it.) Spring Break was extraordinarily awesome.
First, there was Megacon. Boy, was there ever Megacon. But I have already pontificated at length on that very subject, so nothing new there. Skiing is far more interesting news, as well as a summary of that darned project I've been chipping away at all break.
So. Skiing. We skied for four days. The conditions were surprisingly good. I mean, the temperature lingered in the 40s most of the time we were there, and yet the conditions were awesome. It was packed powder, and there was some ice, but it was on the whole very manageable. The really weird bit is that the conditions actually got better as the day wore on as opposed to getting worse, as they normally do. The crust on the ice melted and made for good skiing, when the sun came out in the afternoon and heated things up some.
This was most demonstrated on one particular run, where there were big trees shading parts of the run. As I skied over the sun-drenched parts, I could hear the crunch of powder, and as I went over the shaded bits, I could feel the scrape of the ice. This switched back and forth about two or three times a second, at the worst of times. But given that it was fairly flat at the time that those conditions occurred, it was more interesting than outright dangerous.
I'd just like to mention here, again, that No Country for Old Men was a great big piece of, er, rotten cinematic experience. The villain had no personality beyond being a walking blob of sociopathy taped to a trigger finger, the main character dies two-thirds of the way through the film offscreen and at the hands of minor characters, the other main character is completely pointless and never actually manages to involve himself in the plot, his only contribution to the movie being sardonic comments and droning conversations with other old men, and everyone who was even mildly interesting dies. Often offscreen.
But I digress. I was simply reminded of it. It sucked. Skiing was lots of fun. My father and I went out to eat at a myriad of places and had many interesting discussions. His careful side-to-side sweeping ski technique differs greatly from my slight-curves down-the-mountain bombing run technique. (This is only partially voluntary, those patches of ice make it mighty difficult to turn effectively or even slow down.) We found several good runs over the first few days, including a number of blue square slopes that were no tougher than a difficult green circle. And green circles are easy as pudding and pie. There were short bits of incredible steepness, but with large flat zones underneath, there were no problems.
Then we found one slope called Boa. It was up an enormous lift that took us into multiple double black diamond territory. Basically, when we got off at the top, a sign pointed us to Boa and about six double-black slopes. Don't make a wrong turn, if you value your lives, was the clear message behind the sign. But we gave it a go. Holy mackerel, was that an amazing run. I mean, I don't think I've had so much fun skiing in all my life. It was steep, certainly, but it allowed for great speed without punishment. There were very few irregularities and almost no bumps or imperfections in the hillside that would generally punish for going quickly. Not to say that I went straight down - that's suicide - but I did have me a lot of fun. We went on that one many, many times.
We would have gone snowmobiling, as we generally do, but the concierge informed me of the prices. $120-$140 each for a two-hour tour. As for dogsledding, which I've always wanted to try, it was $350. I didn't have the heart to ask whether that was total or for each person, because really, did it matter? So we decided that the only thing we would do besides skiing was tubing. There was a nice tubing hill nearby, which we went to go to on Thursday.
Ah, Thursday. Let me pause in this story to tell you about Thursday. On Thursday, it was snowing mightily by the time we got up. We were overjoyed at this, for fresh powder is the skier's best friend. Eagerly did we get on the lift and up to the top of the mountain, for we were anxious to experience all that there was.
Aggravatingly, it was the worst skiing of the whole time. Not that powder in and of itself is a problem, it makes for good if somewhat slow skiing, but the inconsistency was killing me. There were lumps of powder dotting an otherwise icy slope, resulting in a patchy and inconsistent run wherever we tried to go. Skiing on powder and skiing on packed/ice are very different concepts, and switching between them multiple times per second is an exhausting task. Hail did start falling about halfway through, though, to my entertainment and amusement. Generally, though, I was too tired and beaten down to continue past about 1:00. Even Boa failed me, for many humps and hills appeared as a result of the inconsistent powder allotment. This demoralized me, and I went to the bottom and sat out. But I still had high spirits, for tubing would take place later that day.
Except, not. When we got there, we were informed that the snow was too much, and the tubing facility was closed. Well, shoot. We had dinner and went home. Next day, we went home. I chatted with a nice girl named Stephanie who I sat next to. I found her situation interesting, as even as we were returning to Florida after spending spring break in Utah, she was leaving her home in Utah to spend spring break in Florida. We talked, it was fun. The headphones the plane supplied were really terrible.
Back in Gainesville (as nothing extremely of note occurred on Saturday or Sunday, that I recall, we played Travis's D&D campaign which was fun), I spent all of yesterday trying to get interviews for my news story assignment about the Large Hadron Collider. Getting up at 5:00 a.m. was the first part of this, as I needed to call CERN in Switzerland and account for the time zone differences. I was answered by a very nice woman who was quite helpful, by giving me two phone numbers. One of them, however, was never answered...and the other one was a University of Florida professor. So much for getting up early. Deep sigh.
I did get three interviews, from the eminent Drs. Acosta, Avery, and Matchev. Each of them explained to me carefully how there was absolutely no chance of the world being swallowed by black holes or converted into strange matter by the LHC, on account of if that were going to happen as a result of the energetic collisions inside the LHC, the far more energetic collisions that constantly take place in the atmosphere from cosmic rays striking Earth would have done so billions of years ago. So no troubles.
I like my final story. Then I played Super Smash Bros: Brawl all night. Then I woke up, tried to find a house to live in unsuccessfully, unsuccessfully petitioned the housing office to find out why I hadn't gotten an RA letter of either confirmation or denial, went to class, had lunch, took a shower, and here I am. Good business. But still I am busy.
Oh, yes, nearly forgot: I got another date. I shall not nearly be so manic or whatever about this girl (a rather nice girl named Amanda in my Writing for Mass Communication class) or this date, as I have seen what my desperation has wrought. I am finally beginning to figure out how to speak to women in the sort of fashion that leads to asking them out, though. So, uh, good business all around. She has tattoos, which I would normally consider a major turn-off, but they're more unusual and interesting than trashy. For instance, on her ankle, she has a hot-air balloon. If nothing else, I at least want to know the story behind that.
Here's the first part on my essay on why Star Wars: Episode I really sucked. It's fun. I'll complete it soon.
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Anakin Skywalker: A kid, ten years old, with absolutely no training, manages to build both a working pod (and a pod that is, in fact, much faster than most of the other pods on the circuit, if you noticed) and a droid that knew six million forms of communication (check IV-VI for that), which is, at my count, 5,999,998 more than he did. With parts scavenged from a junk dealer (Watto), without the dealer noticing. In his spare time from being a slave. He knew mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, artificial intelligence, never mind the robot brain of C-3PO that had to have been built at the molecular level for the information it held and its size...and we’re supposed to swallow all this because he’s the Chosen One? Does the Force give advanced technical knowledge, now? Sure, Jedi build their own lightsabers, but not working pod-racers or droids. When they were pre-adolescent.
Speaking of Anakin having lots of free time, did his mother do absolutely anything for Watto? If he owned her, you’d think he’d have her breaking her back fourteen hours a day in his shop. And why did he and his mother have their own multi-room dwelling instead of a grimy corner of the shop? Isn’t that a little much for slaves?
The Gungans are a race of idiots. If they breathe air, why do they have underwater cities? Do they breathe both air and water? If so, why are their cities entirely aerated? And why did Jar-Jar panic when the bongo he and the Jedi were in started leaking? Yes, he’s moronic even by Gungan standards, but that wasn’t a stupid mistake, that was raw terror. Why pick that big fat idiot, Boss Nass, to be their leader? One can understand his rampant xenophobia, because some people are just like that, but why did he turn around and make Jar-Jar a general? He picked not only the most incompetent of his race of idiots, but a former exile and one who would have been executed if Qui-Gon had not interceded on his behalf. And for what? The fatso said that Jar-Jar brought the Gungans and the Naboo together. No he didn’t, he led the Naboo to the Gungans. That’s hardly bringing two races together. Queen Amidala brought them together. Jar-Jar is a guide, not a diplomat. Not that he’s any good at anything that he does.
Oh, Queen Amidala. Where shall I begin. Why is a queen an elected position? And why did the Naboo, who are apparently as idiotic as the Gungans, elect a thirteen-year-old girl to be their supreme leader? Not that she did any leading to speak of. And I can understand why a person in that position might need a decoy, or a bodyguard, but everything in the movie and Eps. II and III indicated that the painted-white girl was always a decoy. The girl who was performing high-level negotiations with the Trade Federation? The girl who spoke in front of the entire Galactic Senate? A decoy. Isn’t that marvelous. Sure, Padme was right there nearby all those times, but still. And why did this decoy order Padme around so much? Making her clean R2-D2, sending her off on an unspecified errand (when Anakin came to see her before going off to the Jedi Council)...the decoy seemed pretty free about making Padme do the manual labor. And let’s not forget Padme trooping around on Tatooine, vulnerable to the first mugger or sneak thief that Qui-Gon was too busy dealing with Watto or someone to deter. She is thirteen, though. Her judgment isn’t the best.
Back to Watto, let’s get on a sort of prevailing theme of the movie. Blatant racial stereotypes. Watto was the typical haggling Jewish merchant. “Mind tricks don’t work on me – only money.” Did you notice his scruffy black beard and oversized nose? Hell’s bells, in Episode II he was wearing what was basically a yarmulke. And he’s far from the only one. The Trade Federation people, the Nemoidians, were “Chinamen” in the most offensive sense of the term. They might as well have offered to make Queen Amidala some hot and sour soup before they invaded. And then we have the Gungans, simple-minded Jamaican stereotypes to a man. Er, to a horse-lizard-fish thing. Come on, was George Lucas actually trying to get angry letters about this movie?
The battle droids. What’s with them? Aside from the fact that they’re “easier to kill than carpenter ants,” according to Mike Nelson’s (the MST3k guy, if you haven’t seen MST3k, you’ve lived a barren life) riff on the movie, they didn’t seem to even follow their own internal consistencies. Either they were all directly hardwired to the main battle-computer on the ship – as was evidenced by the fact that when the control ship was destroyed, they lost power – or they were on independent circuits – as was seemingly evidenced by the fact that they were picked off by the dozens by the Jedi without thousands of reinforcements pouring in after them. But what am I saying? Asking for consistency from Lucas? That’s crazy talk. I’m crazy for even thinking it.
The Jedi are dumber than the Gungans. I could write a whole essay just on the idiocies of the Jedi in Eps. I-III, but let’s focus on The Phantom Menace. Their rejection of Anakin, for one thing. His midichlorian (side note: aaaaaargh) count is higher than any Jedi in history, and he was Force-sensitive and extrasensory before he knew what the Force was. So of course they’ll reject him off-hand for being too old. If you’re the Jedi Council, and you see a youngster out there who’s already unbelievably powerful for his age and training (that is: none), and who clearly has the potential to be one of the most accomplished Force-wielders ever, you either train the living daylights out of him or you kill him to stop him from going to the Dark Side. You don’t cast him aside and let him freewheel around the galaxy, especially since you just received evidence that the Sith are back. Think they’ll reject someone like him for being a few years too old? Think he’ll turn down their offer, bitter as he is about being rejected by the Jedi?
Oh, let’s not forget “Fear is the path towards the Dark Side!” Since when is fear a terrible emotion to be eradicated? Fear is a natural and healthy part of any human, or humanoid, or whatever. Do the Jedi really expect there to be no fear among their candidates? What does that do to a “fight-or-flight” situation? It turns it into a “fight, or, uh, fight some more” situation. Part of courage, which I’m pretty sure is mentioned as being one of the essential ideals of a Jedi, is having fear and overcoming it.
Why, why, why did Obi-Wan not stop back by Tatooine after the events of Ep. I and not pick up Anakin’s mother?!? If fear truly is the path towards the Dark Side, how about eliminating that particular wellspring of fear, not to mention winning Anakin’s undying loyalty that no amount of Palpatine whispering in his ear will ever overcome. They could have resolved the entire difficulty by a one-week jaunt to Tatooine. It would have been a trivial matter to change Republic credits for whatever currency exists on Tatooine, or simply buy some commodity that Watto will accept. The only difficulty that exists here is that by doing this, the plots of Eps. IV-VI would have been erased, and any amount of plot-induced stupidity is worth preserving those cinematic gems.
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I'll post the rest later.
Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is something I am going to have to search for right now. I don't know what I'll pull up, but...hmm, wait a minute. I think I have something. Instead of youtube, today will be collegehumor. Four links, making fun of the street magician David Blaine.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1722057
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1753653
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1795488
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1804052
The first two are great. The third is okay, I haven't seen the fourth. There's some bad language, but above all it's just hilarious.
REPLIES.
Jake: I have hidden depths, as you well know. And, er, I don't think I actually took any pictures of your Alucard costume. Uh...sorry. I'll tell Vic, though.
Steve: Believe me, I have always kind of hoped, but the odds against it are insane. Since I don't even remember her name or what she looked like, I could know her right now and see her every day, and never know that it was her. And yes, we met on Saturday.
Mom: I sent the story to Linda. She loved it. As for your Megacon interview, it was your interjection that Dad "especially" enjoyed seeing the teenage girls in costume that had him slightly miffed.
Dad: Anything I could write here, we already discussed. So, uh, yeah.
Vic: I contend still that the difference between this story and The Things They Carried is that I don't try and present the story as fact, and I especially don't try to fill the reader's head with some nonsense about "story-truth" or "happening-truth." That author makes it sound as though he honestly believed his stories were true. I know most of what I wrote isn't true, but I just like the way it sounds.
Ciao.
First, there was Megacon. Boy, was there ever Megacon. But I have already pontificated at length on that very subject, so nothing new there. Skiing is far more interesting news, as well as a summary of that darned project I've been chipping away at all break.
So. Skiing. We skied for four days. The conditions were surprisingly good. I mean, the temperature lingered in the 40s most of the time we were there, and yet the conditions were awesome. It was packed powder, and there was some ice, but it was on the whole very manageable. The really weird bit is that the conditions actually got better as the day wore on as opposed to getting worse, as they normally do. The crust on the ice melted and made for good skiing, when the sun came out in the afternoon and heated things up some.
This was most demonstrated on one particular run, where there were big trees shading parts of the run. As I skied over the sun-drenched parts, I could hear the crunch of powder, and as I went over the shaded bits, I could feel the scrape of the ice. This switched back and forth about two or three times a second, at the worst of times. But given that it was fairly flat at the time that those conditions occurred, it was more interesting than outright dangerous.
I'd just like to mention here, again, that No Country for Old Men was a great big piece of, er, rotten cinematic experience. The villain had no personality beyond being a walking blob of sociopathy taped to a trigger finger, the main character dies two-thirds of the way through the film offscreen and at the hands of minor characters, the other main character is completely pointless and never actually manages to involve himself in the plot, his only contribution to the movie being sardonic comments and droning conversations with other old men, and everyone who was even mildly interesting dies. Often offscreen.
But I digress. I was simply reminded of it. It sucked. Skiing was lots of fun. My father and I went out to eat at a myriad of places and had many interesting discussions. His careful side-to-side sweeping ski technique differs greatly from my slight-curves down-the-mountain bombing run technique. (This is only partially voluntary, those patches of ice make it mighty difficult to turn effectively or even slow down.) We found several good runs over the first few days, including a number of blue square slopes that were no tougher than a difficult green circle. And green circles are easy as pudding and pie. There were short bits of incredible steepness, but with large flat zones underneath, there were no problems.
Then we found one slope called Boa. It was up an enormous lift that took us into multiple double black diamond territory. Basically, when we got off at the top, a sign pointed us to Boa and about six double-black slopes. Don't make a wrong turn, if you value your lives, was the clear message behind the sign. But we gave it a go. Holy mackerel, was that an amazing run. I mean, I don't think I've had so much fun skiing in all my life. It was steep, certainly, but it allowed for great speed without punishment. There were very few irregularities and almost no bumps or imperfections in the hillside that would generally punish for going quickly. Not to say that I went straight down - that's suicide - but I did have me a lot of fun. We went on that one many, many times.
We would have gone snowmobiling, as we generally do, but the concierge informed me of the prices. $120-$140 each for a two-hour tour. As for dogsledding, which I've always wanted to try, it was $350. I didn't have the heart to ask whether that was total or for each person, because really, did it matter? So we decided that the only thing we would do besides skiing was tubing. There was a nice tubing hill nearby, which we went to go to on Thursday.
Ah, Thursday. Let me pause in this story to tell you about Thursday. On Thursday, it was snowing mightily by the time we got up. We were overjoyed at this, for fresh powder is the skier's best friend. Eagerly did we get on the lift and up to the top of the mountain, for we were anxious to experience all that there was.
Aggravatingly, it was the worst skiing of the whole time. Not that powder in and of itself is a problem, it makes for good if somewhat slow skiing, but the inconsistency was killing me. There were lumps of powder dotting an otherwise icy slope, resulting in a patchy and inconsistent run wherever we tried to go. Skiing on powder and skiing on packed/ice are very different concepts, and switching between them multiple times per second is an exhausting task. Hail did start falling about halfway through, though, to my entertainment and amusement. Generally, though, I was too tired and beaten down to continue past about 1:00. Even Boa failed me, for many humps and hills appeared as a result of the inconsistent powder allotment. This demoralized me, and I went to the bottom and sat out. But I still had high spirits, for tubing would take place later that day.
Except, not. When we got there, we were informed that the snow was too much, and the tubing facility was closed. Well, shoot. We had dinner and went home. Next day, we went home. I chatted with a nice girl named Stephanie who I sat next to. I found her situation interesting, as even as we were returning to Florida after spending spring break in Utah, she was leaving her home in Utah to spend spring break in Florida. We talked, it was fun. The headphones the plane supplied were really terrible.
Back in Gainesville (as nothing extremely of note occurred on Saturday or Sunday, that I recall, we played Travis's D&D campaign which was fun), I spent all of yesterday trying to get interviews for my news story assignment about the Large Hadron Collider. Getting up at 5:00 a.m. was the first part of this, as I needed to call CERN in Switzerland and account for the time zone differences. I was answered by a very nice woman who was quite helpful, by giving me two phone numbers. One of them, however, was never answered...and the other one was a University of Florida professor. So much for getting up early. Deep sigh.
I did get three interviews, from the eminent Drs. Acosta, Avery, and Matchev. Each of them explained to me carefully how there was absolutely no chance of the world being swallowed by black holes or converted into strange matter by the LHC, on account of if that were going to happen as a result of the energetic collisions inside the LHC, the far more energetic collisions that constantly take place in the atmosphere from cosmic rays striking Earth would have done so billions of years ago. So no troubles.
I like my final story. Then I played Super Smash Bros: Brawl all night. Then I woke up, tried to find a house to live in unsuccessfully, unsuccessfully petitioned the housing office to find out why I hadn't gotten an RA letter of either confirmation or denial, went to class, had lunch, took a shower, and here I am. Good business. But still I am busy.
Oh, yes, nearly forgot: I got another date. I shall not nearly be so manic or whatever about this girl (a rather nice girl named Amanda in my Writing for Mass Communication class) or this date, as I have seen what my desperation has wrought. I am finally beginning to figure out how to speak to women in the sort of fashion that leads to asking them out, though. So, uh, good business all around. She has tattoos, which I would normally consider a major turn-off, but they're more unusual and interesting than trashy. For instance, on her ankle, she has a hot-air balloon. If nothing else, I at least want to know the story behind that.
Here's the first part on my essay on why Star Wars: Episode I really sucked. It's fun. I'll complete it soon.
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Anakin Skywalker: A kid, ten years old, with absolutely no training, manages to build both a working pod (and a pod that is, in fact, much faster than most of the other pods on the circuit, if you noticed) and a droid that knew six million forms of communication (check IV-VI for that), which is, at my count, 5,999,998 more than he did. With parts scavenged from a junk dealer (Watto), without the dealer noticing. In his spare time from being a slave. He knew mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, artificial intelligence, never mind the robot brain of C-3PO that had to have been built at the molecular level for the information it held and its size...and we’re supposed to swallow all this because he’s the Chosen One? Does the Force give advanced technical knowledge, now? Sure, Jedi build their own lightsabers, but not working pod-racers or droids. When they were pre-adolescent.
Speaking of Anakin having lots of free time, did his mother do absolutely anything for Watto? If he owned her, you’d think he’d have her breaking her back fourteen hours a day in his shop. And why did he and his mother have their own multi-room dwelling instead of a grimy corner of the shop? Isn’t that a little much for slaves?
The Gungans are a race of idiots. If they breathe air, why do they have underwater cities? Do they breathe both air and water? If so, why are their cities entirely aerated? And why did Jar-Jar panic when the bongo he and the Jedi were in started leaking? Yes, he’s moronic even by Gungan standards, but that wasn’t a stupid mistake, that was raw terror. Why pick that big fat idiot, Boss Nass, to be their leader? One can understand his rampant xenophobia, because some people are just like that, but why did he turn around and make Jar-Jar a general? He picked not only the most incompetent of his race of idiots, but a former exile and one who would have been executed if Qui-Gon had not interceded on his behalf. And for what? The fatso said that Jar-Jar brought the Gungans and the Naboo together. No he didn’t, he led the Naboo to the Gungans. That’s hardly bringing two races together. Queen Amidala brought them together. Jar-Jar is a guide, not a diplomat. Not that he’s any good at anything that he does.
Oh, Queen Amidala. Where shall I begin. Why is a queen an elected position? And why did the Naboo, who are apparently as idiotic as the Gungans, elect a thirteen-year-old girl to be their supreme leader? Not that she did any leading to speak of. And I can understand why a person in that position might need a decoy, or a bodyguard, but everything in the movie and Eps. II and III indicated that the painted-white girl was always a decoy. The girl who was performing high-level negotiations with the Trade Federation? The girl who spoke in front of the entire Galactic Senate? A decoy. Isn’t that marvelous. Sure, Padme was right there nearby all those times, but still. And why did this decoy order Padme around so much? Making her clean R2-D2, sending her off on an unspecified errand (when Anakin came to see her before going off to the Jedi Council)...the decoy seemed pretty free about making Padme do the manual labor. And let’s not forget Padme trooping around on Tatooine, vulnerable to the first mugger or sneak thief that Qui-Gon was too busy dealing with Watto or someone to deter. She is thirteen, though. Her judgment isn’t the best.
Back to Watto, let’s get on a sort of prevailing theme of the movie. Blatant racial stereotypes. Watto was the typical haggling Jewish merchant. “Mind tricks don’t work on me – only money.” Did you notice his scruffy black beard and oversized nose? Hell’s bells, in Episode II he was wearing what was basically a yarmulke. And he’s far from the only one. The Trade Federation people, the Nemoidians, were “Chinamen” in the most offensive sense of the term. They might as well have offered to make Queen Amidala some hot and sour soup before they invaded. And then we have the Gungans, simple-minded Jamaican stereotypes to a man. Er, to a horse-lizard-fish thing. Come on, was George Lucas actually trying to get angry letters about this movie?
The battle droids. What’s with them? Aside from the fact that they’re “easier to kill than carpenter ants,” according to Mike Nelson’s (the MST3k guy, if you haven’t seen MST3k, you’ve lived a barren life) riff on the movie, they didn’t seem to even follow their own internal consistencies. Either they were all directly hardwired to the main battle-computer on the ship – as was evidenced by the fact that when the control ship was destroyed, they lost power – or they were on independent circuits – as was seemingly evidenced by the fact that they were picked off by the dozens by the Jedi without thousands of reinforcements pouring in after them. But what am I saying? Asking for consistency from Lucas? That’s crazy talk. I’m crazy for even thinking it.
The Jedi are dumber than the Gungans. I could write a whole essay just on the idiocies of the Jedi in Eps. I-III, but let’s focus on The Phantom Menace. Their rejection of Anakin, for one thing. His midichlorian (side note: aaaaaargh) count is higher than any Jedi in history, and he was Force-sensitive and extrasensory before he knew what the Force was. So of course they’ll reject him off-hand for being too old. If you’re the Jedi Council, and you see a youngster out there who’s already unbelievably powerful for his age and training (that is: none), and who clearly has the potential to be one of the most accomplished Force-wielders ever, you either train the living daylights out of him or you kill him to stop him from going to the Dark Side. You don’t cast him aside and let him freewheel around the galaxy, especially since you just received evidence that the Sith are back. Think they’ll reject someone like him for being a few years too old? Think he’ll turn down their offer, bitter as he is about being rejected by the Jedi?
Oh, let’s not forget “Fear is the path towards the Dark Side!” Since when is fear a terrible emotion to be eradicated? Fear is a natural and healthy part of any human, or humanoid, or whatever. Do the Jedi really expect there to be no fear among their candidates? What does that do to a “fight-or-flight” situation? It turns it into a “fight, or, uh, fight some more” situation. Part of courage, which I’m pretty sure is mentioned as being one of the essential ideals of a Jedi, is having fear and overcoming it.
Why, why, why did Obi-Wan not stop back by Tatooine after the events of Ep. I and not pick up Anakin’s mother?!? If fear truly is the path towards the Dark Side, how about eliminating that particular wellspring of fear, not to mention winning Anakin’s undying loyalty that no amount of Palpatine whispering in his ear will ever overcome. They could have resolved the entire difficulty by a one-week jaunt to Tatooine. It would have been a trivial matter to change Republic credits for whatever currency exists on Tatooine, or simply buy some commodity that Watto will accept. The only difficulty that exists here is that by doing this, the plots of Eps. IV-VI would have been erased, and any amount of plot-induced stupidity is worth preserving those cinematic gems.
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I'll post the rest later.
Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is something I am going to have to search for right now. I don't know what I'll pull up, but...hmm, wait a minute. I think I have something. Instead of youtube, today will be collegehumor. Four links, making fun of the street magician David Blaine.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1722057
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1753653
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1795488
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1804052
The first two are great. The third is okay, I haven't seen the fourth. There's some bad language, but above all it's just hilarious.
REPLIES.
Jake: I have hidden depths, as you well know. And, er, I don't think I actually took any pictures of your Alucard costume. Uh...sorry. I'll tell Vic, though.
Steve: Believe me, I have always kind of hoped, but the odds against it are insane. Since I don't even remember her name or what she looked like, I could know her right now and see her every day, and never know that it was her. And yes, we met on Saturday.
Mom: I sent the story to Linda. She loved it. As for your Megacon interview, it was your interjection that Dad "especially" enjoyed seeing the teenage girls in costume that had him slightly miffed.
Dad: Anything I could write here, we already discussed. So, uh, yeah.
Vic: I contend still that the difference between this story and The Things They Carried is that I don't try and present the story as fact, and I especially don't try to fill the reader's head with some nonsense about "story-truth" or "happening-truth." That author makes it sound as though he honestly believed his stories were true. I know most of what I wrote isn't true, but I just like the way it sounds.
Ciao.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Megacon: The Verdict? Awesome!
Very, very awesome. I mean, totally. I can't even describe how awesome this event was. The highlights:
Everything.
Well, let me encapsulate. I ran into a lot of interesting people and took a lot of interesting photos, those including:
- Ninja Babes from Space
- The Gears of War crew, in full regalia
- The King (the Burger King)
- A Predator
- Peach and Zelda from Super Smash Bros. Brawl
- Spider-Man
- LEGO Darth Vader
- Ghostbusters
- General Grievous
- The entire Team Fortress 2 crew, minus the Heavy
- Pyramid Head and, well, Mrs. Pyramid Head
- People from 4chan protesting Scientology
- Ghost Rider
- An enormous Kirby
- Ashley J. Williams
- Kakashi holding a "Naruto Sucks!" sign
- Two separate Luigis, one holding Yoshi, one holding an invincibility Star
- Tifa Lockhart
- A girl with a sword that was way bigger than she was
- Master Chief in a fetching blue MJOLNIR suit
- Transformers
And lots more. Those are just the highlights.
I spent a lot of money, but I expected to, so it was okay. I still have a good bit left to get me through to the end of the semester and the beginning of summer, assuming I avoid any more $100 trips to the mall for stuff I don't need.
I got to paint a figurine. He was a dragon knight, I decided, since he was in totally insane full-plate with a kickin' cape. Black armor with silver trim, faded purple cape, gold helmet with red plume. I decided that he would have a golden sword with which to slay the golden dragon. This spurred a debate with Travis over the fact that gold dragons are good-aligned in D&D and whether or not a golden sword would harm a gold dragon. I short-circuited the discussion by stating that he had a golden freaking sword with which to slay the goshdarn golden dragon and that was all there was to it. Sometimes an author of fantasy must put his foot down.
I bought, oh, what did I buy? Many things. I got a picture of what should have been the 36th character in Brawl, Fawful, of Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. He has fury. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxfzIoB7AA is a good example, but not my Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, that'll come later. Look at the way he talks, and you'll see why I like him. I also got a short portrait drawn to my specifications of a couple of characters from Fullmetal Alchemist.
An big bag of dice was another thing I bought. They were selling dice from an enormous bin, where you could scoop out a random mug of dice for $9 or a hand-picked mug for $13. I went for hand-picked - how could I not? Picking the dice was the most fun part. I got, what, 8 d4s (I was searching for 4-sided dice, muttering "d4s, d4s" to myself. Jake leans over my shoulder and says "May d4s be with you, Luke." It was all I could do not to hit him in the face.), 20 d6s, 10 d8s, 13 d10s, 4 d12s, and 12 d20s. I will never again have to pillage my various board games and beg dice off people for enough dice to create characters.
I also got a 24-sided die that looks just like a big 20-sided die ("And I roll, what's that, a natural 22. That's a critical hit if ever I saw one."), and several special d10s. I got many that count off in ones and three that count off in tens, but I got one for hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, and hundred thousands. If I ever need to roll damage for a nuclear bomb, I am now ready to do this very thing.
I have been looking for a particular Magic card, Murmuring Bosk, for some time now. It's very expensive, but I need four of them, so I reluctantly bought one for $17. I did not want to buy four at that price. I bought several packs of Morningtide from this one group that was selling them for $3, which is a good value. Also I ventured many dollars on dice rolls. There were four d6s that you would roll at once. If you got a 4 or a 24, you won a free box of Morningtide packs, which I very much wanted. I didn't win any, to my annoyance, but I got several grab bags for my trouble. If you didn't win a box, you got a grab bag of random cards. Good stuff there.
The funny part, at least to me, is this. At the end of Saturday, I ventured $5 on five rolls of the dice. My last roll was 1, 1, 1, 6. If that stupid 6 had landed on its opposite side, I would have won a free box. But instead they gave me a pack of Morningtide, which I opened to reveal: a Murmuring Bosk. So that's two, I only need two more.
My costume was great. At least, great on average. I was Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist. My clothes weren't too difficult, just a long yellow shirt (should have been a jacket, but I couldn't find one), white undershirt, and black pants with white stripes (Victoria sewed the stripes on). And black boots. I begin to understand why people like boots. I had my hair bleached, and my highly skilled friend Lauren drew an incredibly complex and awesome tattoo on my right arm that my character uses to destroy anything he touches. It was very, very awesome and lasted all Friday...but it came off. I got caught in the rain when Vic's car broke down, and the ink ran right off. So I scrubbed off what remained and had Matt replace it with "COMPLEX TATTOO GOES HERE" in blue. I got less pictures taken, but more people thought it was funny. And yes, I did get pictures before and after.
That's about it. I'll post updates of my ski trip over the next week or so. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-yldqNkGfo It's called "Food Fight." It's a history of American-centric wars over the last half-century or so, using food to demonstrate. There's a link explaining what foods represent what countries, but see if you can puzzle it out on your own. It's fairly self-explanatory, but some messed me up.
REPLIES.
Karen: Too bad to see you won't be posting for a while...does that mean you won't be reading the blog? Does that mean you won't see this response? I hope not. I'm working on the blog when I can, and I'll keep updates semi-regular. Trust me. I wouldn't miss out for long.
Jake: Well, yes, that would have just been foolish and against all the genre conventions. I'm going to write another story with that character, probably by the end of this week, maybe not. My costume came along great.
Mom: It all pretty much came out at once. I went a-wandering, as I am wont to do during the evenings, and came up with that plot and that story all in one rush. As for why nobody could remember, the protagonist ensured it, which I forgot to put in and edited in later.
Steve: I stretched a bit far, but I think it went well overall. You and your fruit rush. I ate most of the fruit I got, giving some to others. Pumpkin-flavored flax. I swear. And I know Brawl is amazing, I played it on Saturday at Megacon.
Bye.
Everything.
Well, let me encapsulate. I ran into a lot of interesting people and took a lot of interesting photos, those including:
- Ninja Babes from Space
- The Gears of War crew, in full regalia
- The King (the Burger King)
- A Predator
- Peach and Zelda from Super Smash Bros. Brawl
- Spider-Man
- LEGO Darth Vader
- Ghostbusters
- General Grievous
- The entire Team Fortress 2 crew, minus the Heavy
- Pyramid Head and, well, Mrs. Pyramid Head
- People from 4chan protesting Scientology
- Ghost Rider
- An enormous Kirby
- Ashley J. Williams
- Kakashi holding a "Naruto Sucks!" sign
- Two separate Luigis, one holding Yoshi, one holding an invincibility Star
- Tifa Lockhart
- A girl with a sword that was way bigger than she was
- Master Chief in a fetching blue MJOLNIR suit
- Transformers
And lots more. Those are just the highlights.
I spent a lot of money, but I expected to, so it was okay. I still have a good bit left to get me through to the end of the semester and the beginning of summer, assuming I avoid any more $100 trips to the mall for stuff I don't need.
I got to paint a figurine. He was a dragon knight, I decided, since he was in totally insane full-plate with a kickin' cape. Black armor with silver trim, faded purple cape, gold helmet with red plume. I decided that he would have a golden sword with which to slay the golden dragon. This spurred a debate with Travis over the fact that gold dragons are good-aligned in D&D and whether or not a golden sword would harm a gold dragon. I short-circuited the discussion by stating that he had a golden freaking sword with which to slay the goshdarn golden dragon and that was all there was to it. Sometimes an author of fantasy must put his foot down.
I bought, oh, what did I buy? Many things. I got a picture of what should have been the 36th character in Brawl, Fawful, of Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. He has fury. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxfzIoB7AA is a good example, but not my Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, that'll come later. Look at the way he talks, and you'll see why I like him. I also got a short portrait drawn to my specifications of a couple of characters from Fullmetal Alchemist.
An big bag of dice was another thing I bought. They were selling dice from an enormous bin, where you could scoop out a random mug of dice for $9 or a hand-picked mug for $13. I went for hand-picked - how could I not? Picking the dice was the most fun part. I got, what, 8 d4s (I was searching for 4-sided dice, muttering "d4s, d4s" to myself. Jake leans over my shoulder and says "May d4s be with you, Luke." It was all I could do not to hit him in the face.), 20 d6s, 10 d8s, 13 d10s, 4 d12s, and 12 d20s. I will never again have to pillage my various board games and beg dice off people for enough dice to create characters.
I also got a 24-sided die that looks just like a big 20-sided die ("And I roll, what's that, a natural 22. That's a critical hit if ever I saw one."), and several special d10s. I got many that count off in ones and three that count off in tens, but I got one for hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, and hundred thousands. If I ever need to roll damage for a nuclear bomb, I am now ready to do this very thing.
I have been looking for a particular Magic card, Murmuring Bosk, for some time now. It's very expensive, but I need four of them, so I reluctantly bought one for $17. I did not want to buy four at that price. I bought several packs of Morningtide from this one group that was selling them for $3, which is a good value. Also I ventured many dollars on dice rolls. There were four d6s that you would roll at once. If you got a 4 or a 24, you won a free box of Morningtide packs, which I very much wanted. I didn't win any, to my annoyance, but I got several grab bags for my trouble. If you didn't win a box, you got a grab bag of random cards. Good stuff there.
The funny part, at least to me, is this. At the end of Saturday, I ventured $5 on five rolls of the dice. My last roll was 1, 1, 1, 6. If that stupid 6 had landed on its opposite side, I would have won a free box. But instead they gave me a pack of Morningtide, which I opened to reveal: a Murmuring Bosk. So that's two, I only need two more.
My costume was great. At least, great on average. I was Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist. My clothes weren't too difficult, just a long yellow shirt (should have been a jacket, but I couldn't find one), white undershirt, and black pants with white stripes (Victoria sewed the stripes on). And black boots. I begin to understand why people like boots. I had my hair bleached, and my highly skilled friend Lauren drew an incredibly complex and awesome tattoo on my right arm that my character uses to destroy anything he touches. It was very, very awesome and lasted all Friday...but it came off. I got caught in the rain when Vic's car broke down, and the ink ran right off. So I scrubbed off what remained and had Matt replace it with "COMPLEX TATTOO GOES HERE" in blue. I got less pictures taken, but more people thought it was funny. And yes, I did get pictures before and after.
That's about it. I'll post updates of my ski trip over the next week or so. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-yldqNkGfo It's called "Food Fight." It's a history of American-centric wars over the last half-century or so, using food to demonstrate. There's a link explaining what foods represent what countries, but see if you can puzzle it out on your own. It's fairly self-explanatory, but some messed me up.
REPLIES.
Karen: Too bad to see you won't be posting for a while...does that mean you won't be reading the blog? Does that mean you won't see this response? I hope not. I'm working on the blog when I can, and I'll keep updates semi-regular. Trust me. I wouldn't miss out for long.
Jake: Well, yes, that would have just been foolish and against all the genre conventions. I'm going to write another story with that character, probably by the end of this week, maybe not. My costume came along great.
Mom: It all pretty much came out at once. I went a-wandering, as I am wont to do during the evenings, and came up with that plot and that story all in one rush. As for why nobody could remember, the protagonist ensured it, which I forgot to put in and edited in later.
Steve: I stretched a bit far, but I think it went well overall. You and your fruit rush. I ate most of the fruit I got, giving some to others. Pumpkin-flavored flax. I swear. And I know Brawl is amazing, I played it on Saturday at Megacon.
Bye.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Sporadic Updates: COMMENCE.
No real schedule here, I'll just be updating when I feel I have something to say. At least once a week, for sure, but whenever something noteworthy happens.
So: I got the radio job. At least, I'm 99.9% of the way towards getting it. I made a demo tape, which Harry decided he liked the sound of, so he gave me a multiple choice: Did I want to start Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or today? Of course, I chose today. This is why, after I write this, I'm going to take a nap. I only got five or so hours of sleep, and I do not want to fall asleep in the middle of my first shift. Even if it is just a sort of mock-shift, this is important.
Harry said I needed to inject more enthusiasm into my voice, which is probably true. He did add, though, that in all other aspects I was doing quite well, and that in the actual studio (as opposed to merely the recording room, which is boring) the odds were pretty good that I would be inspired to greater heights of, er, enthusiasm. I hate to repeat a word, but "fervor" doesn't really apply and I'm too lazy and tired to go to thesaurus.com. That seems kind of like cheating, anyway.
My first shift will only be an hour, from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., and there'll be another DJ (jock) in the studio with me. Sorry, but to the best of my knowledge there is no online simulcast through which the folks in Wellington might listen. I looked all over the website ( http://www.rock104.com if you want to try yourself), and found nothing. But it's not going to be that interesting, anyway. I'll only speak on-air twice or three times total, and those times are generally just going to be me promoting the next song we're playing or reminding everyone that yes, they're still listening to Rock 104, in case they thought their radios had gone schizophrenic on them and randomly switched them to NPR when they weren't watching. I'll probably stumble through all of them. But hey, that's why I'm doing this at 2 in the morning - not that many people to hear me screw it up.
Rachel informed me that she just wants to be friends. I get the feeling that, though she gave me what even my jaded mind considers to be a fairly good reason, it was my personality. Oh well. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that sort of thing. I'd be more bummed, but we hadn't even been going out for two freaking weeks yet. So no big downer there. I'm just glad she came to this realization now and not, say, three months from now after emotional investments had already been dug in deep. Saved both of us a lot of trouble.
I'm going to make a new D&D campaign, to the approximately one of you out there I haven't told this to yet. It's going to put the players, 6th level, inside a massive castle that formerly belonged to an ally of theirs but has since been taken over by an evil king, his crazy powerful bodyguard, and his legions of cannon-fodder troops. Stealth and subterfuge will be the order of the day. Though the guards will mostly be 1st-2nd level mooks who drop like flies to any kind of attack from the main characters, there will be higher-level sergeants and captains to put the hurt on...and if the players get too uppity, the king's bodyguard, a 19th-level monk, will put a stop to that nonsense.
Here are the tricks that will make this better than any dungeon I've ever run:
- I'm mapping out the whole dungeon. Six floors and a basement, and I'll detail every room, every floor, every secret passage, every everything. With the help of the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Stronghold Builder's Guide that I serendipitously purchased on a whim some years back, I will construct an epic castle of awesome, drawing it all out on engineering paper and making detailed blueprints. The players will have access to these, it being mostly their home turf - the enemies will not, they having just taken the place and not found everything yet.
- But the enemies are not stupid. If, say, the PCs decide to book it and run into a secret passage, and an enemy watches them go, all of a sudden, that secret passage ain't so secret anymore. I plan to draw an enemy version of the blueprints, much more sparse than the main one, and update it as we play whenever the enemy finds out a secret that they previously had not. And they might anyway, because...
- I'm keeping track of days, and time of day. The first time the enemy figures out something is going on, sees a dead body or whatnot, a timer will start, and a certain number of days later, reinforcements will arrive in the castle. These may or may not include more soldiers, enemy rogues and spies, nonhuman assailants, etc. Also, in terms of secret passages, there will be a very, very small but slowly increasing chance of the soldiers accidentally finding the secret passages independently of the players. (They are combing the place, you know, looking for the players.) Keeping track of days will be additionally important, because...
- I'm also keeping track of supplies. Creating water is no problem, as long as the party has a cleric (hint: they'd better have a cleric), but I'm ruling that magically created food doesn't nourish. They'll have to go on supply runs from the various storerooms located throughout the castle, or suffer successively increasing penalties to their, well, everything, due to hunger pangs. This won't be too hard, but it'll be something they have to consider. I'm ignoring bathroom breaks, though. There is such a thing as too much realism, and that's about where it starts.
- I'm not using pre-generated stats and creatures from the Monster Manual for the soldiers. I'm rolling them up manually. That's right, I'm sending PCs at you. Mwahahaha. Taste of your own medicine, chumps. I'm not going to roll up each and every soldier, but there'll be a "mook" template, "slightly better mook" template, "sergeant" template, "captain" template, and so on and so forth. This is just one of those reasons why open combat is somewhat discouraged in this particular campaign.
I'll be giving the players objectives they can follow, rescue the captured royalty and secure weapons caches and suchlike, but they can feel free to ignore that and see if they can boot out the invading army without my help. It'll be tougher, but I won't discount ingenious plans. Obviously, killing the enemy king will be a free pass to win the campaign, but with his bodyguard, that will take some insane amount of doing. Be aware, though, that if you do things right, you'll never have to fight the bodyguard...(No more hints.)
Oh, and we were having this conversation: I accept and understand the use of Bluff checks to get past the guards. The mooks aren't going to be very bright. If you encounter a door and a surly guard points a spear at you and says "Who goes there?", there's the perfect time to use Bluff. If a bunch of guards, hurrying towards a strange noise, runs smack into your group, a quick "They went that way! Hurry, they're getting away!" is what Bluff was made for. But as soon as an enemy actually draws his weapon and attacks you, Bluff checks go bye-bye. I don't care what the rules say. No soldier in the world is going to be listening to what his enemy says as he is charging at said enemy at swordpoint. You can Intimidate until the cows come home, but when combat begins, Bluff checks end. To disprove this, name me one single thing you can say to an attacking soldier, who knows that you are in fact the enemy, that will successfully bluff him into not attacking you. I'll wait.
Remember that play I wrote? After a bunch of minor edits, I performed it in class, and my teacher thought it was such a hit, he wanted me to go on stage and perform it in front of an actual audience at an actual theater, after his presentation of "An Evening with Harold Pinter." Hoo boy. Kind of nervous, but really really excited. It'll be on Sunday, March 22, for anyone who wants to come and watch it. I haven't thought of a name for it...maybe y'all can inspire me?
So that's it. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is...um...it's around here somewhere...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2491LucLa1g That'll do. Mitch Hedberg always gets laughs. Always. Watch him and be hilarity-ized.
REPLIES.
Mike: Why did I decide on a schedule? Because otherwise I wouldn't have started doing it with any regularity. And I know about the whole "things fall apart" mental thing, trust me, that's most of my mental processes right there.
Steve: I'm working on a new schedule. Monday nights are tricky, as I have 7:00-10:00 class and then the gym right afterwards. I'm really not interested in that list, but I can't stop you (plus you've already posted it), so whatever.
Mom: I think I can work something out. I'll have some kind of schedule, never fear, even if it is a random and chaotic one. As for the play, well, I already answered that.
Steve: I don't see any meat there. Where is the meat? I can't live without meat. I am not a vegetarian. I demand meat every single day. Red meat. Dripping with meaty goodness. If that'll give me a heart attack when I'm forty, so be it, because I don't want to live an extra twenty years if all I have to look forward to is bran and hemp milk.
And what's the hubbub about being organic? Every kind of food is organic. If you eat it, I'm pretty sure it's organic. I rarely find myself eating inorganic material. The time does not often roll around where I munch on the plastic wrapping instead of the Doritos, or forsake a turkey sandwich to gnaw on some pebbles.
Karen: 300 words is about half a page, single-spaced. I was writing three, four, even five-page entries, three times a week. I can hack 300 words on pretty much any subject I have even the vaguest idea about, but 3,000? Difficult. I realize there's more interesting in my life than I think there is, but not a lot inspires me to write, and me trying to write when I don't feel I have anything good to write about is like me trying to jog through an Olympic swimming pool filled with peanut butter. I could probably, eventually, technically make it, but it would take way too much effort and I would be exhausted at the end. And like Dad said, there's a difference between my job, which is central in importance, and my hobby, which shares space with all my other hobbies. I realize I am sounding whiny. I often do this. It is a trait of my personality, at times.
Steve: Einstein? I don't get it.
Dad: Pretty much. Running is getting easier...I plan to try three miles tomorrow. See how that goes. I think I can do it - I made two miles without even getting seriously winded. This is getting easier all the time. And it sounds kind of silly when you put it that way...
Da Ann'd.
So: I got the radio job. At least, I'm 99.9% of the way towards getting it. I made a demo tape, which Harry decided he liked the sound of, so he gave me a multiple choice: Did I want to start Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or today? Of course, I chose today. This is why, after I write this, I'm going to take a nap. I only got five or so hours of sleep, and I do not want to fall asleep in the middle of my first shift. Even if it is just a sort of mock-shift, this is important.
Harry said I needed to inject more enthusiasm into my voice, which is probably true. He did add, though, that in all other aspects I was doing quite well, and that in the actual studio (as opposed to merely the recording room, which is boring) the odds were pretty good that I would be inspired to greater heights of, er, enthusiasm. I hate to repeat a word, but "fervor" doesn't really apply and I'm too lazy and tired to go to thesaurus.com. That seems kind of like cheating, anyway.
My first shift will only be an hour, from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., and there'll be another DJ (jock) in the studio with me. Sorry, but to the best of my knowledge there is no online simulcast through which the folks in Wellington might listen. I looked all over the website ( http://www.rock104.com if you want to try yourself), and found nothing. But it's not going to be that interesting, anyway. I'll only speak on-air twice or three times total, and those times are generally just going to be me promoting the next song we're playing or reminding everyone that yes, they're still listening to Rock 104, in case they thought their radios had gone schizophrenic on them and randomly switched them to NPR when they weren't watching. I'll probably stumble through all of them. But hey, that's why I'm doing this at 2 in the morning - not that many people to hear me screw it up.
Rachel informed me that she just wants to be friends. I get the feeling that, though she gave me what even my jaded mind considers to be a fairly good reason, it was my personality. Oh well. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that sort of thing. I'd be more bummed, but we hadn't even been going out for two freaking weeks yet. So no big downer there. I'm just glad she came to this realization now and not, say, three months from now after emotional investments had already been dug in deep. Saved both of us a lot of trouble.
I'm going to make a new D&D campaign, to the approximately one of you out there I haven't told this to yet. It's going to put the players, 6th level, inside a massive castle that formerly belonged to an ally of theirs but has since been taken over by an evil king, his crazy powerful bodyguard, and his legions of cannon-fodder troops. Stealth and subterfuge will be the order of the day. Though the guards will mostly be 1st-2nd level mooks who drop like flies to any kind of attack from the main characters, there will be higher-level sergeants and captains to put the hurt on...and if the players get too uppity, the king's bodyguard, a 19th-level monk, will put a stop to that nonsense.
Here are the tricks that will make this better than any dungeon I've ever run:
- I'm mapping out the whole dungeon. Six floors and a basement, and I'll detail every room, every floor, every secret passage, every everything. With the help of the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Stronghold Builder's Guide that I serendipitously purchased on a whim some years back, I will construct an epic castle of awesome, drawing it all out on engineering paper and making detailed blueprints. The players will have access to these, it being mostly their home turf - the enemies will not, they having just taken the place and not found everything yet.
- But the enemies are not stupid. If, say, the PCs decide to book it and run into a secret passage, and an enemy watches them go, all of a sudden, that secret passage ain't so secret anymore. I plan to draw an enemy version of the blueprints, much more sparse than the main one, and update it as we play whenever the enemy finds out a secret that they previously had not. And they might anyway, because...
- I'm keeping track of days, and time of day. The first time the enemy figures out something is going on, sees a dead body or whatnot, a timer will start, and a certain number of days later, reinforcements will arrive in the castle. These may or may not include more soldiers, enemy rogues and spies, nonhuman assailants, etc. Also, in terms of secret passages, there will be a very, very small but slowly increasing chance of the soldiers accidentally finding the secret passages independently of the players. (They are combing the place, you know, looking for the players.) Keeping track of days will be additionally important, because...
- I'm also keeping track of supplies. Creating water is no problem, as long as the party has a cleric (hint: they'd better have a cleric), but I'm ruling that magically created food doesn't nourish. They'll have to go on supply runs from the various storerooms located throughout the castle, or suffer successively increasing penalties to their, well, everything, due to hunger pangs. This won't be too hard, but it'll be something they have to consider. I'm ignoring bathroom breaks, though. There is such a thing as too much realism, and that's about where it starts.
- I'm not using pre-generated stats and creatures from the Monster Manual for the soldiers. I'm rolling them up manually. That's right, I'm sending PCs at you. Mwahahaha. Taste of your own medicine, chumps. I'm not going to roll up each and every soldier, but there'll be a "mook" template, "slightly better mook" template, "sergeant" template, "captain" template, and so on and so forth. This is just one of those reasons why open combat is somewhat discouraged in this particular campaign.
I'll be giving the players objectives they can follow, rescue the captured royalty and secure weapons caches and suchlike, but they can feel free to ignore that and see if they can boot out the invading army without my help. It'll be tougher, but I won't discount ingenious plans. Obviously, killing the enemy king will be a free pass to win the campaign, but with his bodyguard, that will take some insane amount of doing. Be aware, though, that if you do things right, you'll never have to fight the bodyguard...(No more hints.)
Oh, and we were having this conversation: I accept and understand the use of Bluff checks to get past the guards. The mooks aren't going to be very bright. If you encounter a door and a surly guard points a spear at you and says "Who goes there?", there's the perfect time to use Bluff. If a bunch of guards, hurrying towards a strange noise, runs smack into your group, a quick "They went that way! Hurry, they're getting away!" is what Bluff was made for. But as soon as an enemy actually draws his weapon and attacks you, Bluff checks go bye-bye. I don't care what the rules say. No soldier in the world is going to be listening to what his enemy says as he is charging at said enemy at swordpoint. You can Intimidate until the cows come home, but when combat begins, Bluff checks end. To disprove this, name me one single thing you can say to an attacking soldier, who knows that you are in fact the enemy, that will successfully bluff him into not attacking you. I'll wait.
Remember that play I wrote? After a bunch of minor edits, I performed it in class, and my teacher thought it was such a hit, he wanted me to go on stage and perform it in front of an actual audience at an actual theater, after his presentation of "An Evening with Harold Pinter." Hoo boy. Kind of nervous, but really really excited. It'll be on Sunday, March 22, for anyone who wants to come and watch it. I haven't thought of a name for it...maybe y'all can inspire me?
So that's it. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is...um...it's around here somewhere...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2491LucLa1g That'll do. Mitch Hedberg always gets laughs. Always. Watch him and be hilarity-ized.
REPLIES.
Mike: Why did I decide on a schedule? Because otherwise I wouldn't have started doing it with any regularity. And I know about the whole "things fall apart" mental thing, trust me, that's most of my mental processes right there.
Steve: I'm working on a new schedule. Monday nights are tricky, as I have 7:00-10:00 class and then the gym right afterwards. I'm really not interested in that list, but I can't stop you (plus you've already posted it), so whatever.
Mom: I think I can work something out. I'll have some kind of schedule, never fear, even if it is a random and chaotic one. As for the play, well, I already answered that.
Steve: I don't see any meat there. Where is the meat? I can't live without meat. I am not a vegetarian. I demand meat every single day. Red meat. Dripping with meaty goodness. If that'll give me a heart attack when I'm forty, so be it, because I don't want to live an extra twenty years if all I have to look forward to is bran and hemp milk.
And what's the hubbub about being organic? Every kind of food is organic. If you eat it, I'm pretty sure it's organic. I rarely find myself eating inorganic material. The time does not often roll around where I munch on the plastic wrapping instead of the Doritos, or forsake a turkey sandwich to gnaw on some pebbles.
Karen: 300 words is about half a page, single-spaced. I was writing three, four, even five-page entries, three times a week. I can hack 300 words on pretty much any subject I have even the vaguest idea about, but 3,000? Difficult. I realize there's more interesting in my life than I think there is, but not a lot inspires me to write, and me trying to write when I don't feel I have anything good to write about is like me trying to jog through an Olympic swimming pool filled with peanut butter. I could probably, eventually, technically make it, but it would take way too much effort and I would be exhausted at the end. And like Dad said, there's a difference between my job, which is central in importance, and my hobby, which shares space with all my other hobbies. I realize I am sounding whiny. I often do this. It is a trait of my personality, at times.
Steve: Einstein? I don't get it.
Dad: Pretty much. Running is getting easier...I plan to try three miles tomorrow. See how that goes. I think I can do it - I made two miles without even getting seriously winded. This is getting easier all the time. And it sounds kind of silly when you put it that way...
Da Ann'd.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
My Stoppard-Esque Play. Also, I Finished Saturday's Post.
So go and read it. I commented, I replied, I finished things up. Sorry about slacking...I know it kind of is hypocritical of me to demand comments and then not follow through with my side of the bargain. I'll do better, I promise.
So, as I promised in the last post (if you read it), I went to go see a bunch of scenes from Tom Stoppard plays, and was inspired by this Stoppard deluge to write my own Stoppard-esque scene for a play. I like it a lot, and I'm bringing it into class tomorrow. Maybe if it's good enough, I can act it out some week in the future with Mallory. Who knows?
Here it is. I haven't titled it, but the main idea is that there are two roommates, Joe and Kevin. (Credit to Mallory and my other classmate Nathan for the names. Everyone knows how badly I stink at names.) Joe is trying to subtly hint to Nathan that he wants the room to himself for a while to bring a girl in, while Nathan is amusedly repelling him at every turn.
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Scene: A dorm room at a university. The room is standard dorm-room fare; two beds, desks and chairs, posters of sports teams and movies up on the walls, bookshelves, an empty pizza box on the floor, etc. Kevin is seated at the desk, typing on his computer. He’s wearing a Bills T-shirt, jeans, a digital watch, brown shoes, and a black bandanna. His desk is next to a closet, with a closed door.
There is a rattling sound, such as keys fumbling to get into a lock, from offstage to the left. This continues for five or ten seconds. Kevin does not react. Eventually, an unlocking sound is heard. Enter Joe from stage left through the door. He’s wearing a gray polo shirt, black slacks, black loafers, and a brown belt. Seems hesitant.
Joe: Hey, man.
Kevin: (looks up) Oh, hi, Joe.
Joe: Why was the door locked?
Kevin: Does not a man have a right to his privacy? I simply can’t concentrate when every simpleton with no superior occupation can come barging in and disrupting my hard-earned concentration.
Joe: What? I...whatever. Hey, uh, I got something to ask you.
Kevin: Shoot.
Joe: Are you in here...for any particular reason?
Kevin: Say what?
Joe: I mean, is there any reason in particular that you have to be here?
Kevin: Where?
Joe: Uh...the room?
Kevin: Ah. Next time, be more specific.
Joe: What?
Kevin: I thought you were taking a more metaphorical route. Asking me my life’s purpose. Why am I here on God’s green earth, that sort of thing. A bit heavy for casual conversation, but I figured I’d play along.
Joe: I don’t...never mind. What I’m trying to say is-
Kevin: No, you’ve touched upon a very valid point here, Joe. Why are any of us here, hmm? Why exist? Why the quintessential “to be”? Is there a reason, behind the selfish fulfillment of our own small and mortal desires?
Joe: Did you just come back from philosophy class?
Kevin: No, that’s Wednesdays. Anyway. What’s up? Why am I in the room, you ask?
Joe: I guess.
Kevin: I was just doing some homework.
Joe: Is there any way you can, uh, do it somewhere else?
Kevin: Why?
Joe: Well, I’m just wondering.
Kevin: A curious thing to wonder, in the absence of a stated reason.
Joe: I was just wondering, you know, if there’s any reason you have to be here, I mean, specifically here. In the room.
Kevin: It’s my room, isn’t it? Don’t I have a right to be here?
Joe: Sure, but it’s my room too.
Kevin: And I’m not abridging your right to stay. Feel free to linger as long as you please. I’ll even go the extra mile and suppress all my questions about your reasons for being one place or another, on account of I’m feeling generous today.
Joe: What? You’re not making any sense.
Kevin: Really? I understand everything I’m saying.
Joe: Sometimes, you’re the only one who understands what you’re saying.
Kevin: Are you telling me that communication should be a two-way street?
Joe: I guess.
Kevin: You and all the others. You’re all the same. Why can’t conversation become the art of self-indulgence, like so many other art forms have?
Joe: Look, all I’m asking is if I can have the room for a little while.
Kevin: Don’t you already?
Joe: I mean to myself.
Kevin: Really? Then where will I sleep, hmm? Where will all my things go?
Joe: I just mean for a couple of hours, man.
Kevin: I suspected as much. I know you’re not the sort of person to up and evict your roommate for the low crime of speaking in circles, but a man must always err on the side of caution.
Joe: Well...can I?
Kevin: Have the room to yourself for a couple of hours?
Joe: Yeah.
Kevin: Well, I don’t know. I was doing something, you know.
Joe: Can’t you do it somewhere else? Like the study room?
Kevin: The study room? That disheveled den of obfuscation? Between the over-caffeinated crammers struggling to push a semester’s worth of information into their brains in three hours and the couples who view the place as a safe haven for the most blatant public displays of affection imaginable, I’d hardly get a word written.
Joe: Can you go to someone else’s room?
Kevin: Yes, but then I fear I’d have to have this exact same conversation, only with the roles reversed, and you know how I hate seeing my true self reflected, even if only in an exchange of words.
Joe: What?
Kevin: Besides, nobody else is on the floor. They’re all at the concert downtown. All their doors are locked fast.
Joe: Oh. Really?
Kevin: I’m afraid so. The siren songs of the local garage bands have worked their hypnotic magic, and the floor is vacant.
Joe: Dang.
Kevin: Thus is this potential avenue of egress closed.
Joe: For God’s sake, man, I just want the room to myself for a little while.
Kevin: Why?
Joe: Uh, well-
Kevin: You need to accomplish something that cannot be interrupted by the prying eyes of bystanders? Something so secretive and intimate that not even I, your roommate, am privileged enough to witness?
Joe: Sort of-
Kevin: Are you going to masturbate?
Joe: What?! No!
Kevin: Oh, so you’re going for more of a hands-off approach?
Joe: What the hell-
Kevin: No, never mind. Forget I said anything.
Joe: What are you talking about?
Kevin: Delete those last two statements from the record. Inform your mental stenographer.
Joe: You’re not making any sense.
Kevin: Well, you’re repeating yourself.
Joe: Agh. Talking to you is like...playing tennis against a wall.
Kevin: Really?
Joe: I can’t make any goddamn headway. No matter what I say, you throw it back in my face.
Kevin: An interesting simile.
Joe: Just shut up and listen to me for like five seconds, will ya??
Kevin: This should be good.
Joe: I need the room because I want to spend some time alone with...a friend of mine.
Kevin: A friend?
Joe: Yeah.
Kevin: What kind of friend demands this level of privacy?
Joe: A...good friend.
Kevin: Well. A good friend, you say. Gosh, has my curiosity been sated. You have a way of piercing the veil of confusion and vagueness with your one-word descriptions, do you know that?
Joe: Look, you asshole, I want to bring a girl in. All right? I want to bring a goddamn girl in, so you need to get the hell out. That plain enough for you? No more tricks? No more word games? I didn’t want to have to spell it out, you know, but you just won’t shut the hell up sometimes.
Kevin: ...That’s what this was all about?
Joe: Yes!
Kevin: You wanted to bring in...a girl?
Joe: Yes!!
Kevin: No.
Joe: ...What??
Kevin: Sorry.
Joe: Are you serious?
Kevin: Can’t help you there.
Joe: And why the hell not?
Kevin wordlessly reaches over and pounds on the closet door two or three times. It opens partway. A girl, clad only in underwear, partially emerges from the closet.
Girl: Kevin? Is he gone ye-omigod! (darts back into closet, slams door)
Joe: Oh.
Kevin: Right.
Joe: Uhh...
Kevin: Get it?
Joe: Um...I’ll just, uh...figure something else out...I guess.
Kevin: You do that.
Joe: Uh...bye. (leaves)
Kevin remains silent for a time, then pounds on the closet door again. It opens a crack.
Girl: Is he really gone this time?
Kevin: Yes.
Girl slowly walks out, eyes darting around for a glimpse of Joe. When she sees he is indeed not there, she relaxes.
Girl: You torment him too much sometimes, you know.
Kevin: Well, it’s for his own good.
(lights descend)
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I like it. Hopefully my teacher will, as well. When I emailed him to ask if I should undertake such a project, his reply was "Two words: HELL YES!" As I have said before, he is very neat.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is just the funniest and stupidest thing I've seen in a while. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dj1V_qHC8c It's the Burly Brawl from The Matrix: Reloaded, done in LEGO form. Animation is terrible, but it's pretty amusing.
REPLIES.
Note: When I was finishing up Saturday's post, I replied extensively, then realized I was replying to Saturday's comments. So I cut them with Ctrl-X and thought I would paste them into this post with Ctrl-V. I forgot about this when I copy-pasted the play I wrote, thus losing those comments, so now I must re-write them. Damn everything.
Mom: I know, I know. And are those really the only three words? Maybe the only three common words...I'm sure some obscure scientific words don't rhyme with anything. I sent the box. Ren Fair should be fun. I'm looking forward to seeing Grandma, Grandpa, and Linda. As for special meals?
- Hamburgers (especially Omaha Steakhouse burgers, + a few turkey burgers to mix things up)
- Tacos (lots of them, with extra meat)
- Fish (salmon or tilapia, swordfish if possible)
- Spaghetti (with garlic bread made from that French bread, very good)
- Grilled cheese sandwiches (with Muenster)
Those are good suggestions. As for vegetables, spinach seems to be working for me. Just the leaves, though, not cooked and especially not canned. Maybe a little garlic to put on it, I've heard that's worth considering. And yes, I hope to get in decent shape for skiing.
Jake: You did what now?
Steve: It's not about cravings, it's about convenience. I'm hungry at the Reitz Union, and there is a Wendy's like four feet away. I'll probably never cut fast food or junk completely out of my diet, or eat as well as you, but some effort is still good. Are you seriously touting the health benefits of beer?? Of course I'll never smoke. I tried one of Michelle's cigarettes (just to see what it was like, not because I had an interest in starting) and it tasted terrible. I had a smoky taste in my mouth for like an hour. And it made me cough everywhere. No sir, I don't like it. Good to see you've gotten off milk. Nineteen days.
Dad: I've only been running every other day. Even so, I feel like it's getting easier and not harder. My legs are hurting a bit, but I can generally ignore that, for the most part. It's the wind that's giving me trouble, and even then, not much. Marc tells me that without good running shoes, though, I may develop shin splints, and that is a seriously bad thing. So I may buy a pair. Could I convince a fellow runner to help me out in that regard, wink wink?
The end. (On time? Complete?!? My word.)
So, as I promised in the last post (if you read it), I went to go see a bunch of scenes from Tom Stoppard plays, and was inspired by this Stoppard deluge to write my own Stoppard-esque scene for a play. I like it a lot, and I'm bringing it into class tomorrow. Maybe if it's good enough, I can act it out some week in the future with Mallory. Who knows?
Here it is. I haven't titled it, but the main idea is that there are two roommates, Joe and Kevin. (Credit to Mallory and my other classmate Nathan for the names. Everyone knows how badly I stink at names.) Joe is trying to subtly hint to Nathan that he wants the room to himself for a while to bring a girl in, while Nathan is amusedly repelling him at every turn.
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Scene: A dorm room at a university. The room is standard dorm-room fare; two beds, desks and chairs, posters of sports teams and movies up on the walls, bookshelves, an empty pizza box on the floor, etc. Kevin is seated at the desk, typing on his computer. He’s wearing a Bills T-shirt, jeans, a digital watch, brown shoes, and a black bandanna. His desk is next to a closet, with a closed door.
There is a rattling sound, such as keys fumbling to get into a lock, from offstage to the left. This continues for five or ten seconds. Kevin does not react. Eventually, an unlocking sound is heard. Enter Joe from stage left through the door. He’s wearing a gray polo shirt, black slacks, black loafers, and a brown belt. Seems hesitant.
Joe: Hey, man.
Kevin: (looks up) Oh, hi, Joe.
Joe: Why was the door locked?
Kevin: Does not a man have a right to his privacy? I simply can’t concentrate when every simpleton with no superior occupation can come barging in and disrupting my hard-earned concentration.
Joe: What? I...whatever. Hey, uh, I got something to ask you.
Kevin: Shoot.
Joe: Are you in here...for any particular reason?
Kevin: Say what?
Joe: I mean, is there any reason in particular that you have to be here?
Kevin: Where?
Joe: Uh...the room?
Kevin: Ah. Next time, be more specific.
Joe: What?
Kevin: I thought you were taking a more metaphorical route. Asking me my life’s purpose. Why am I here on God’s green earth, that sort of thing. A bit heavy for casual conversation, but I figured I’d play along.
Joe: I don’t...never mind. What I’m trying to say is-
Kevin: No, you’ve touched upon a very valid point here, Joe. Why are any of us here, hmm? Why exist? Why the quintessential “to be”? Is there a reason, behind the selfish fulfillment of our own small and mortal desires?
Joe: Did you just come back from philosophy class?
Kevin: No, that’s Wednesdays. Anyway. What’s up? Why am I in the room, you ask?
Joe: I guess.
Kevin: I was just doing some homework.
Joe: Is there any way you can, uh, do it somewhere else?
Kevin: Why?
Joe: Well, I’m just wondering.
Kevin: A curious thing to wonder, in the absence of a stated reason.
Joe: I was just wondering, you know, if there’s any reason you have to be here, I mean, specifically here. In the room.
Kevin: It’s my room, isn’t it? Don’t I have a right to be here?
Joe: Sure, but it’s my room too.
Kevin: And I’m not abridging your right to stay. Feel free to linger as long as you please. I’ll even go the extra mile and suppress all my questions about your reasons for being one place or another, on account of I’m feeling generous today.
Joe: What? You’re not making any sense.
Kevin: Really? I understand everything I’m saying.
Joe: Sometimes, you’re the only one who understands what you’re saying.
Kevin: Are you telling me that communication should be a two-way street?
Joe: I guess.
Kevin: You and all the others. You’re all the same. Why can’t conversation become the art of self-indulgence, like so many other art forms have?
Joe: Look, all I’m asking is if I can have the room for a little while.
Kevin: Don’t you already?
Joe: I mean to myself.
Kevin: Really? Then where will I sleep, hmm? Where will all my things go?
Joe: I just mean for a couple of hours, man.
Kevin: I suspected as much. I know you’re not the sort of person to up and evict your roommate for the low crime of speaking in circles, but a man must always err on the side of caution.
Joe: Well...can I?
Kevin: Have the room to yourself for a couple of hours?
Joe: Yeah.
Kevin: Well, I don’t know. I was doing something, you know.
Joe: Can’t you do it somewhere else? Like the study room?
Kevin: The study room? That disheveled den of obfuscation? Between the over-caffeinated crammers struggling to push a semester’s worth of information into their brains in three hours and the couples who view the place as a safe haven for the most blatant public displays of affection imaginable, I’d hardly get a word written.
Joe: Can you go to someone else’s room?
Kevin: Yes, but then I fear I’d have to have this exact same conversation, only with the roles reversed, and you know how I hate seeing my true self reflected, even if only in an exchange of words.
Joe: What?
Kevin: Besides, nobody else is on the floor. They’re all at the concert downtown. All their doors are locked fast.
Joe: Oh. Really?
Kevin: I’m afraid so. The siren songs of the local garage bands have worked their hypnotic magic, and the floor is vacant.
Joe: Dang.
Kevin: Thus is this potential avenue of egress closed.
Joe: For God’s sake, man, I just want the room to myself for a little while.
Kevin: Why?
Joe: Uh, well-
Kevin: You need to accomplish something that cannot be interrupted by the prying eyes of bystanders? Something so secretive and intimate that not even I, your roommate, am privileged enough to witness?
Joe: Sort of-
Kevin: Are you going to masturbate?
Joe: What?! No!
Kevin: Oh, so you’re going for more of a hands-off approach?
Joe: What the hell-
Kevin: No, never mind. Forget I said anything.
Joe: What are you talking about?
Kevin: Delete those last two statements from the record. Inform your mental stenographer.
Joe: You’re not making any sense.
Kevin: Well, you’re repeating yourself.
Joe: Agh. Talking to you is like...playing tennis against a wall.
Kevin: Really?
Joe: I can’t make any goddamn headway. No matter what I say, you throw it back in my face.
Kevin: An interesting simile.
Joe: Just shut up and listen to me for like five seconds, will ya??
Kevin: This should be good.
Joe: I need the room because I want to spend some time alone with...a friend of mine.
Kevin: A friend?
Joe: Yeah.
Kevin: What kind of friend demands this level of privacy?
Joe: A...good friend.
Kevin: Well. A good friend, you say. Gosh, has my curiosity been sated. You have a way of piercing the veil of confusion and vagueness with your one-word descriptions, do you know that?
Joe: Look, you asshole, I want to bring a girl in. All right? I want to bring a goddamn girl in, so you need to get the hell out. That plain enough for you? No more tricks? No more word games? I didn’t want to have to spell it out, you know, but you just won’t shut the hell up sometimes.
Kevin: ...That’s what this was all about?
Joe: Yes!
Kevin: You wanted to bring in...a girl?
Joe: Yes!!
Kevin: No.
Joe: ...What??
Kevin: Sorry.
Joe: Are you serious?
Kevin: Can’t help you there.
Joe: And why the hell not?
Kevin wordlessly reaches over and pounds on the closet door two or three times. It opens partway. A girl, clad only in underwear, partially emerges from the closet.
Girl: Kevin? Is he gone ye-omigod! (darts back into closet, slams door)
Joe: Oh.
Kevin: Right.
Joe: Uhh...
Kevin: Get it?
Joe: Um...I’ll just, uh...figure something else out...I guess.
Kevin: You do that.
Joe: Uh...bye. (leaves)
Kevin remains silent for a time, then pounds on the closet door again. It opens a crack.
Girl: Is he really gone this time?
Kevin: Yes.
Girl slowly walks out, eyes darting around for a glimpse of Joe. When she sees he is indeed not there, she relaxes.
Girl: You torment him too much sometimes, you know.
Kevin: Well, it’s for his own good.
(lights descend)
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I like it. Hopefully my teacher will, as well. When I emailed him to ask if I should undertake such a project, his reply was "Two words: HELL YES!" As I have said before, he is very neat.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is just the funniest and stupidest thing I've seen in a while. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dj1V_qHC8c It's the Burly Brawl from The Matrix: Reloaded, done in LEGO form. Animation is terrible, but it's pretty amusing.
REPLIES.
Note: When I was finishing up Saturday's post, I replied extensively, then realized I was replying to Saturday's comments. So I cut them with Ctrl-X and thought I would paste them into this post with Ctrl-V. I forgot about this when I copy-pasted the play I wrote, thus losing those comments, so now I must re-write them. Damn everything.
Mom: I know, I know. And are those really the only three words? Maybe the only three common words...I'm sure some obscure scientific words don't rhyme with anything. I sent the box. Ren Fair should be fun. I'm looking forward to seeing Grandma, Grandpa, and Linda. As for special meals?
- Hamburgers (especially Omaha Steakhouse burgers, + a few turkey burgers to mix things up)
- Tacos (lots of them, with extra meat)
- Fish (salmon or tilapia, swordfish if possible)
- Spaghetti (with garlic bread made from that French bread, very good)
- Grilled cheese sandwiches (with Muenster)
Those are good suggestions. As for vegetables, spinach seems to be working for me. Just the leaves, though, not cooked and especially not canned. Maybe a little garlic to put on it, I've heard that's worth considering. And yes, I hope to get in decent shape for skiing.
Jake: You did what now?
Steve: It's not about cravings, it's about convenience. I'm hungry at the Reitz Union, and there is a Wendy's like four feet away. I'll probably never cut fast food or junk completely out of my diet, or eat as well as you, but some effort is still good. Are you seriously touting the health benefits of beer?? Of course I'll never smoke. I tried one of Michelle's cigarettes (just to see what it was like, not because I had an interest in starting) and it tasted terrible. I had a smoky taste in my mouth for like an hour. And it made me cough everywhere. No sir, I don't like it. Good to see you've gotten off milk. Nineteen days.
Dad: I've only been running every other day. Even so, I feel like it's getting easier and not harder. My legs are hurting a bit, but I can generally ignore that, for the most part. It's the wind that's giving me trouble, and even then, not much. Marc tells me that without good running shoes, though, I may develop shin splints, and that is a seriously bad thing. So I may buy a pair. Could I convince a fellow runner to help me out in that regard, wink wink?
The end. (On time? Complete?!? My word.)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Update In The Morning
I'm tired. Today didn't go as well as I would have hoped, and I'm a little down. No need to reply to this, it'll be gone in the morning, by noon tomorrow. I guaran-freaking-tee it.
Edit: Ha! This is before noon! 11:52, chumps. Now all I need is some content. That'll, er, come real soon. Next hour or so. I'm writing it as you read this.
I had a lot to say, about the RA meeting I had last night, about the stuff I've done last few days, but all that has suddenly and seemingly become irrelevant. The answer as to why? Four short words: I got a date.
Ooh, those words are fine. Think I'll repeat them a bit.
I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date.
That's...that's about enough. For now. I got a date. Heh.
So here's how it happened. The girl's name is Rachel. I had talked to her a few times previous and we hit it off fairly well, on account of it came out early in our conversation that she was a gamer girl. She spotted my "Rules of Video Games" T-shirt that my sister bought me for Christmas years ago (gotta call her and thank her for that), and mentioned that she herself liked to play the occasional game. Conversation ensued, and she said that she went to Video Game Club once a week on Friday's. I like the sound of that. Her exact words: "I like a guy who knows how to DDR." I do. But I'm out of practice and must practice heavily. It'll be good for me.
So last night at around 1:45 a.m., I went to the Graham Oasis convenience store across the street from Hume (how convenient), where she works and where I had met her previously. I didn't know she was working then, but I was pleasantly surprised to meet her. We talked a bit, and she mentioned that she had been up for the last 48 hours straight. Apparently, she had need to pull an all-nighter, and after that, had seen no reason to go back to sleep. So here she was, on a caffeine bender, as she described it. Conversation ensued once more.
Her: This is nothing. I've stayed up for three days at a time.
Me: Oh, I did that once.
Her: Any reason in particular?
Me: Ever heard of a game called Homeworld II?
Her: Uh...no.
Me: You know like, uh, StarCraft and WarCraft and those?
Her: Oh, StarCraft? I love that game. I'm looking forward to StarCraft 3. [She considers Brood War to be a separate game, she told me later.]
Me: (thinking) I might just have to marry this girl.
So that worked. A few minutes later, we had this conversation:
Her: How was your Valentine's Day?
Me: Not good.
Her: Aww, why?
Me: Because I'm so desperately lonely. (Editor's note: This was said in a joking fashion. I didn't bawl my eyes out in front of her. It was sent and understood as a joke. [I had asked a girl out two days previous, and made moves on a girl that night, with no success.]
Her: Well, maybe I could be your valentine. *bats eyelashes*
Me: Er...[While my brain is screaming at me You idiot! Respond! Get your rear in gear, mister, I want coherency and I want it now!!] Okay. Sure. I'd like that.
Her: Well, it's too late now, it's already tomorrow.
Me: Well, in that case, how about being my retroactive valentine?
Her: *giggles* Okay.
We talked for a bit more. I bought her a Mountain Dew, which she had mentioned drinking (she told me, though, that she got them for free on account of her job, which made me feel dumb), and a small heart-shaped box of candy. She liked them. We arranged a date for Monday afternoon to go and have lunch.
I left, because I had to leave on account of the store was closing. She gave me a hug as I was at the door, and as I pulled away from the hug I gave her a small kiss on the cheek. (Why? Because I had consumed vast quantities of sugar earlier, and was a little erratic anyway on account of finally getting a date, so my confidence was dangerously, recklessly high.) She smiled and blushed a little as she closed the door and walked inside.
That's really about it. I couldn't sleep, so I walked around the campus and up and down University road for a little while. Then I went to bed, woke up, talked on the phone a bit, and posted this here. A very unsubstantive update, yes, but...I got a date. That's all I want to think about.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hue3B772hXA It could not be anything else. It could not.
REPLIES.
Mom: I may have gotten shot down, but I have apparently learned to compensate. Working on eating more vegetables. I'll be careful at the club, I know not to consume vast quantities of drugs and alcohol. I am not, after all, my sister. I'm not going to lie to you and say I haven't drunk at all at college, but I do so very, very seldomly. I might sign up for a simpler Spanish course in the fall, if my schedule allows.
Steve: Not that I know of, no. And bear in mind that I taste things much differently than you do. Onions I can't tolerate, not in the slightest little bit, raw or cooked. Garlic, maybe. Shut up about the milk. I'll send you that picture, trust me, I will. And yes, I concentrate too much in English to really learn another language well.
Mike: That's good. I'm looking for a house, I'll go back to the Apartment Hunters people on Monday. Distance is, of course, a huge factor.
Kelli: That is good. That is very good. Good to see you here. I had mono once, it sucked. I'm coming down next weekend, about five days from today. I'll look into Across the Universe. And yes, the background still goes blinkety-blink.
Dad: I'm emerging, and the fact that I got a date is helping this along enormously. I'll give things a try. And if this girl doesn't work out, well, I will find another. My confidence just needed boosting, is all.
End.
Edit: Ha! This is before noon! 11:52, chumps. Now all I need is some content. That'll, er, come real soon. Next hour or so. I'm writing it as you read this.
I had a lot to say, about the RA meeting I had last night, about the stuff I've done last few days, but all that has suddenly and seemingly become irrelevant. The answer as to why? Four short words: I got a date.
Ooh, those words are fine. Think I'll repeat them a bit.
I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date, I got a date.
That's...that's about enough. For now. I got a date. Heh.
So here's how it happened. The girl's name is Rachel. I had talked to her a few times previous and we hit it off fairly well, on account of it came out early in our conversation that she was a gamer girl. She spotted my "Rules of Video Games" T-shirt that my sister bought me for Christmas years ago (gotta call her and thank her for that), and mentioned that she herself liked to play the occasional game. Conversation ensued, and she said that she went to Video Game Club once a week on Friday's. I like the sound of that. Her exact words: "I like a guy who knows how to DDR." I do. But I'm out of practice and must practice heavily. It'll be good for me.
So last night at around 1:45 a.m., I went to the Graham Oasis convenience store across the street from Hume (how convenient), where she works and where I had met her previously. I didn't know she was working then, but I was pleasantly surprised to meet her. We talked a bit, and she mentioned that she had been up for the last 48 hours straight. Apparently, she had need to pull an all-nighter, and after that, had seen no reason to go back to sleep. So here she was, on a caffeine bender, as she described it. Conversation ensued once more.
Her: This is nothing. I've stayed up for three days at a time.
Me: Oh, I did that once.
Her: Any reason in particular?
Me: Ever heard of a game called Homeworld II?
Her: Uh...no.
Me: You know like, uh, StarCraft and WarCraft and those?
Her: Oh, StarCraft? I love that game. I'm looking forward to StarCraft 3. [She considers Brood War to be a separate game, she told me later.]
Me: (thinking) I might just have to marry this girl.
So that worked. A few minutes later, we had this conversation:
Her: How was your Valentine's Day?
Me: Not good.
Her: Aww, why?
Me: Because I'm so desperately lonely. (Editor's note: This was said in a joking fashion. I didn't bawl my eyes out in front of her. It was sent and understood as a joke. [I had asked a girl out two days previous, and made moves on a girl that night, with no success.]
Her: Well, maybe I could be your valentine. *bats eyelashes*
Me: Er...[While my brain is screaming at me You idiot! Respond! Get your rear in gear, mister, I want coherency and I want it now!!] Okay. Sure. I'd like that.
Her: Well, it's too late now, it's already tomorrow.
Me: Well, in that case, how about being my retroactive valentine?
Her: *giggles* Okay.
We talked for a bit more. I bought her a Mountain Dew, which she had mentioned drinking (she told me, though, that she got them for free on account of her job, which made me feel dumb), and a small heart-shaped box of candy. She liked them. We arranged a date for Monday afternoon to go and have lunch.
I left, because I had to leave on account of the store was closing. She gave me a hug as I was at the door, and as I pulled away from the hug I gave her a small kiss on the cheek. (Why? Because I had consumed vast quantities of sugar earlier, and was a little erratic anyway on account of finally getting a date, so my confidence was dangerously, recklessly high.) She smiled and blushed a little as she closed the door and walked inside.
That's really about it. I couldn't sleep, so I walked around the campus and up and down University road for a little while. Then I went to bed, woke up, talked on the phone a bit, and posted this here. A very unsubstantive update, yes, but...I got a date. That's all I want to think about.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hue3B772hXA It could not be anything else. It could not.
REPLIES.
Mom: I may have gotten shot down, but I have apparently learned to compensate. Working on eating more vegetables. I'll be careful at the club, I know not to consume vast quantities of drugs and alcohol. I am not, after all, my sister. I'm not going to lie to you and say I haven't drunk at all at college, but I do so very, very seldomly. I might sign up for a simpler Spanish course in the fall, if my schedule allows.
Steve: Not that I know of, no. And bear in mind that I taste things much differently than you do. Onions I can't tolerate, not in the slightest little bit, raw or cooked. Garlic, maybe. Shut up about the milk. I'll send you that picture, trust me, I will. And yes, I concentrate too much in English to really learn another language well.
Mike: That's good. I'm looking for a house, I'll go back to the Apartment Hunters people on Monday. Distance is, of course, a huge factor.
Kelli: That is good. That is very good. Good to see you here. I had mono once, it sucked. I'm coming down next weekend, about five days from today. I'll look into Across the Universe. And yes, the background still goes blinkety-blink.
Dad: I'm emerging, and the fact that I got a date is helping this along enormously. I'll give things a try. And if this girl doesn't work out, well, I will find another. My confidence just needed boosting, is all.
End.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Witty Title Goes Here
Theoretically, it should, at least.
I really don't have much to talk about. I'm kind of bitter, on account of the girl I've been sort of hoping to go out with for the last month or so just turned me down. As nicely as possible, certainly, and we're still good friends, but...eh. It's the first time I've really had that happen, had a girl I've been after for a while spurn me like that. It was the old "You're sweet, and I like you as a friend, but I just don't see you like that" talk. Sigh, sigh, very deep sigh. But, as the saying goes, life goes on. 24,998 other eligible girls on campus, after all.
But in the realm of good news, I'm making strides on getting that radio job every day. Basically, I'm going to the studio whenever I find myself with a free hour or something and working on recording my voice in mock "breaks." Breaks are those bits on the radio when you hear the jocks talking about the next song coming up or the contest that night or something. I went in yesterday and recorded myself doing five breaks, and today I shared them with Harry Guscott. He told me that I was much improved, and in fact was doing "more than adequately" (which from him, apparently, is high praise), but I still had a few problems. No biggie, that's what practice is for.
Today I participated in a taste test at the Food and Nutrition building. I figured they might appreciate my unique perspective. They gave me cups of juice and told me to rate them and give brief descriptions. I sampled pineapple-orange (I liked it) and apple (not so much). The cool bit was they gave us crackers and a glass of water to cleanse our palates between cups. At the end, I got a coupon for 50 cents off a meal at one of the dining halls, so I went and had lunch there. I discovered that broccoli is another vegetable I can eat, so I had some of that and some spinach. Victoria recommended that I get some garlic and cover my vegetables in it. She may or may not have been joking. Perhaps her goal is to get me to spray half-chewed garlic-and-vegetable admixture out of my nose with sufficient force to dent the wall opposite.
I'm sad to say it, but I have officially decided to drop my Spanish class. It has to be done. I can't compete in this class. I got a 39% on the first essay and a 58% on the first test. I don't even want to think about the oral report I would have had due in three weeks. It just requires a level of fluency that I don't have and can't acquire in time to succeed. My mother will be upset, and I commiserate, but frankly I know when I'm beaten, and I'd rather have a W on my transcript than a big fat F.
I went to my first session in the procrastination study. My doctor ("I'm not a doctor yet," he said when I addressed him as such. "I'm in the last year of my doctorate. I have two master's degrees, though," he said, when I looked a little suspicious. "I'm no newbie.") is an affable fellow named Bob, and I spent most of the first session just talking about my problem and trying to come up with things that symbolize it well. He wrote down some things on a piece of paper and suggested that I read it when I get up and go to bed. Whatever works, I say.
Eh. Not terribly inspired to write at the moment...I've been thinking of writing a new line of short stories. I call them "Protector of the Universe." It's about a human who was fated to be, well, the protector of the universe, and to this end on his 21st birthday manifested insane, godlike powers with which to keep a lid on things, cosmically speaking. The stories would follow him as he traveled around Earth, taking care of various supernatural discrepancies. Yeah, he's too powerful to be directly opposed by pretty much anyone, but in some of the best superhero stories I've ever read, the power of the main character is irrelevant to the story. Storylines of the Incredible Hulk and the Sentry directly reflect this - they're mostly too powerful for anyone to fight, so the story doesn't focus on their big battles, it focuses more on inner issues. His abilities take a backseat to what happens and a more psychological aspect, how he deals with things. Though he's in no danger of failing, how he takes care of business might be just as interesting. I'll write one and see how it goes.
Today sucked. There was a tornado watch, and of course tonight had to be the night that I walked all the way to the bookstore outside of campus, in a driving rain. And I think my umbrella has holes in it. Today seemed rife with, I don't know, ennui seems like a good description, if my definition of ennui being "a sort of tired boredom" is accurate. Overcast and rainy days always get me down. I'm not usually like this. Nothing seems terribly interesting. Eh. Either it'll fade by tomorrow or I'll have to seriously kick myself in the behind in the morning to get things going again. Maybe I'll pick something I feel strongly about and build up a head of rage. Anger always dispels depression for me.
Anger, to me, has always been greater than depression. Anger is a productive force. I don't believe depression has ever spawned anything at all useful in this world except maybe for some art. Anger is one of the driving forces of civilization, of invention, of passion and fire.
Tomorrow, if I have free time, I'll go to the Apartment Hunters shop I heard about from my RA, Ricky. Since I got wait-listed for housing on account of some misfiled paperwork, I pretty much have no chance of living on-campus next year unless I qualify to be an RA. So I'm looking for an apartment. Mike, if you're reading this, I'll find a place where your share will be around $2,000 a semester, or less if I can find it. I'm willing to pay a little extra on my share to keep yours down - frankly, even if I do this, it'll be less than I'm paying now. Hume is the most expensive dorm on campus, costing over $2,800 per semester.
I'm listening to music as I write this. My music player is on "Random." I glanced at the song I was listening to, it's by Metallica and called "My Friend of Misery." Next song, I think.
Ah, Disturbed's "Land of Confusion." Awesome song. I feel better already.
On the plus side, I'm going to a club for the first time in my life on Friday evening. Friday's going to be busy for me: from 4:00-7:00, I have my RA retreat. At 7:00, Dungeons & Dragons begins. And at 11:00, I leave for the club, whichever one it is we're going to. I left the planning and suchlike entirely to my friend Catherine, who has much more experience in these matters. It as yet remains to be seen how I handle the club scene. If it's at all what I expect it'll be - a smoky, poorly-lit room packed to the eyebrows with people trying to act cool and music pounding over speakers at a volume that violates certain laws of physics merely by existing - then I probably won't do it much. But, as I say, it remains to be seen how things will go.
And, that's about it. Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is probably going to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtw7qW7Vcw This is for anyone who's ever wondered exactly why Captain Falcon has the move "Falcon Punch" in Super Smash Bros. As for everyone else, well, it's only thirty seconds long. Give it a try, it's pretty funny, in an over-the-top kind of way.
REPLIES. (in a bit.)
Steve: Truth. Twenty-six days.
Enish: Thanks for the vote of confidence, man. I truly appreciate it. You really have no idea how much you did to keep me going...
Steve: Whoa there, Skippy. I want to start eating better, not be a whole-grain and tofu-eating lunatic freak such as yourself. I can't stand whole-grain pasta, it tastes like it's made of sand, granulating to pieces in my mouth. (And no, I haven't just been buying the cruddy kind.) And I did get actual vegetables, not just juice, read the whole list.
I know about stadium runs. I tried to do it once, and became exhausted after about 15 minutes. I know, I know, out of shape. I'm working on it, dadgummit. I'll take the picture when I'm good and ready. STFU about milk.
Mike: Yes, yes, blame the action cards and not my supreme awesomeness. Bear in mind that you did have the Dreadnought and several other ships. I had, literally, a Carrier and a handful of fighters, out of range of helping.
Mom: I'm chipping away at this whole radio-station gig a little at a time. When I advance next is up to Mr. Guscott. He'll tell me when I'm ready, which I am hoping will be soon. There's no way to bypass Steven's milk-related objections, not now. He's on a roll. I'm actually eating raw spinach and broccoli as my main vegetable staples, at the moment. Haven't tried sweet potatoes. My posture is okay, better than it was. It's a slow process.
Steve: I have only one response: fermented milk??
Michelle: Good to see you still going. You had me concerned a while back. And thanks.
Dad: I am hoping so. I have my demo tape on me, but it's on a minidisc, and I have no idea how to convert that to a CD or any other medium. And I'm still working on the food, dangblastit.
End.
I really don't have much to talk about. I'm kind of bitter, on account of the girl I've been sort of hoping to go out with for the last month or so just turned me down. As nicely as possible, certainly, and we're still good friends, but...eh. It's the first time I've really had that happen, had a girl I've been after for a while spurn me like that. It was the old "You're sweet, and I like you as a friend, but I just don't see you like that" talk. Sigh, sigh, very deep sigh. But, as the saying goes, life goes on. 24,998 other eligible girls on campus, after all.
But in the realm of good news, I'm making strides on getting that radio job every day. Basically, I'm going to the studio whenever I find myself with a free hour or something and working on recording my voice in mock "breaks." Breaks are those bits on the radio when you hear the jocks talking about the next song coming up or the contest that night or something. I went in yesterday and recorded myself doing five breaks, and today I shared them with Harry Guscott. He told me that I was much improved, and in fact was doing "more than adequately" (which from him, apparently, is high praise), but I still had a few problems. No biggie, that's what practice is for.
Today I participated in a taste test at the Food and Nutrition building. I figured they might appreciate my unique perspective. They gave me cups of juice and told me to rate them and give brief descriptions. I sampled pineapple-orange (I liked it) and apple (not so much). The cool bit was they gave us crackers and a glass of water to cleanse our palates between cups. At the end, I got a coupon for 50 cents off a meal at one of the dining halls, so I went and had lunch there. I discovered that broccoli is another vegetable I can eat, so I had some of that and some spinach. Victoria recommended that I get some garlic and cover my vegetables in it. She may or may not have been joking. Perhaps her goal is to get me to spray half-chewed garlic-and-vegetable admixture out of my nose with sufficient force to dent the wall opposite.
I'm sad to say it, but I have officially decided to drop my Spanish class. It has to be done. I can't compete in this class. I got a 39% on the first essay and a 58% on the first test. I don't even want to think about the oral report I would have had due in three weeks. It just requires a level of fluency that I don't have and can't acquire in time to succeed. My mother will be upset, and I commiserate, but frankly I know when I'm beaten, and I'd rather have a W on my transcript than a big fat F.
I went to my first session in the procrastination study. My doctor ("I'm not a doctor yet," he said when I addressed him as such. "I'm in the last year of my doctorate. I have two master's degrees, though," he said, when I looked a little suspicious. "I'm no newbie.") is an affable fellow named Bob, and I spent most of the first session just talking about my problem and trying to come up with things that symbolize it well. He wrote down some things on a piece of paper and suggested that I read it when I get up and go to bed. Whatever works, I say.
Eh. Not terribly inspired to write at the moment...I've been thinking of writing a new line of short stories. I call them "Protector of the Universe." It's about a human who was fated to be, well, the protector of the universe, and to this end on his 21st birthday manifested insane, godlike powers with which to keep a lid on things, cosmically speaking. The stories would follow him as he traveled around Earth, taking care of various supernatural discrepancies. Yeah, he's too powerful to be directly opposed by pretty much anyone, but in some of the best superhero stories I've ever read, the power of the main character is irrelevant to the story. Storylines of the Incredible Hulk and the Sentry directly reflect this - they're mostly too powerful for anyone to fight, so the story doesn't focus on their big battles, it focuses more on inner issues. His abilities take a backseat to what happens and a more psychological aspect, how he deals with things. Though he's in no danger of failing, how he takes care of business might be just as interesting. I'll write one and see how it goes.
Today sucked. There was a tornado watch, and of course tonight had to be the night that I walked all the way to the bookstore outside of campus, in a driving rain. And I think my umbrella has holes in it. Today seemed rife with, I don't know, ennui seems like a good description, if my definition of ennui being "a sort of tired boredom" is accurate. Overcast and rainy days always get me down. I'm not usually like this. Nothing seems terribly interesting. Eh. Either it'll fade by tomorrow or I'll have to seriously kick myself in the behind in the morning to get things going again. Maybe I'll pick something I feel strongly about and build up a head of rage. Anger always dispels depression for me.
Anger, to me, has always been greater than depression. Anger is a productive force. I don't believe depression has ever spawned anything at all useful in this world except maybe for some art. Anger is one of the driving forces of civilization, of invention, of passion and fire.
Tomorrow, if I have free time, I'll go to the Apartment Hunters shop I heard about from my RA, Ricky. Since I got wait-listed for housing on account of some misfiled paperwork, I pretty much have no chance of living on-campus next year unless I qualify to be an RA. So I'm looking for an apartment. Mike, if you're reading this, I'll find a place where your share will be around $2,000 a semester, or less if I can find it. I'm willing to pay a little extra on my share to keep yours down - frankly, even if I do this, it'll be less than I'm paying now. Hume is the most expensive dorm on campus, costing over $2,800 per semester.
I'm listening to music as I write this. My music player is on "Random." I glanced at the song I was listening to, it's by Metallica and called "My Friend of Misery." Next song, I think.
Ah, Disturbed's "Land of Confusion." Awesome song. I feel better already.
On the plus side, I'm going to a club for the first time in my life on Friday evening. Friday's going to be busy for me: from 4:00-7:00, I have my RA retreat. At 7:00, Dungeons & Dragons begins. And at 11:00, I leave for the club, whichever one it is we're going to. I left the planning and suchlike entirely to my friend Catherine, who has much more experience in these matters. It as yet remains to be seen how I handle the club scene. If it's at all what I expect it'll be - a smoky, poorly-lit room packed to the eyebrows with people trying to act cool and music pounding over speakers at a volume that violates certain laws of physics merely by existing - then I probably won't do it much. But, as I say, it remains to be seen how things will go.
And, that's about it. Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is probably going to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtw7qW7Vcw This is for anyone who's ever wondered exactly why Captain Falcon has the move "Falcon Punch" in Super Smash Bros. As for everyone else, well, it's only thirty seconds long. Give it a try, it's pretty funny, in an over-the-top kind of way.
REPLIES. (in a bit.)
Steve: Truth. Twenty-six days.
Enish: Thanks for the vote of confidence, man. I truly appreciate it. You really have no idea how much you did to keep me going...
Steve: Whoa there, Skippy. I want to start eating better, not be a whole-grain and tofu-eating lunatic freak such as yourself. I can't stand whole-grain pasta, it tastes like it's made of sand, granulating to pieces in my mouth. (And no, I haven't just been buying the cruddy kind.) And I did get actual vegetables, not just juice, read the whole list.
I know about stadium runs. I tried to do it once, and became exhausted after about 15 minutes. I know, I know, out of shape. I'm working on it, dadgummit. I'll take the picture when I'm good and ready. STFU about milk.
Mike: Yes, yes, blame the action cards and not my supreme awesomeness. Bear in mind that you did have the Dreadnought and several other ships. I had, literally, a Carrier and a handful of fighters, out of range of helping.
Mom: I'm chipping away at this whole radio-station gig a little at a time. When I advance next is up to Mr. Guscott. He'll tell me when I'm ready, which I am hoping will be soon. There's no way to bypass Steven's milk-related objections, not now. He's on a roll. I'm actually eating raw spinach and broccoli as my main vegetable staples, at the moment. Haven't tried sweet potatoes. My posture is okay, better than it was. It's a slow process.
Steve: I have only one response: fermented milk??
Michelle: Good to see you still going. You had me concerned a while back. And thanks.
Dad: I am hoping so. I have my demo tape on me, but it's on a minidisc, and I have no idea how to convert that to a CD or any other medium. And I'm still working on the food, dangblastit.
End.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Today's Twilight Imperium Game, And My Radio Station Comments
I'll fill this in fully in a couple of hours. For now, I'm headed off to the Rock 104 radio station room, so I can get some of that on-the-scene training that Mr. Guscott tells me is so essential. They're there 24/7, unless they go out and cover some event, and my card key will get me into the building anytime, so I'm headed over now.
So, uh...bye. Back in a few hours, maybe less.
Edit: Uh, guess I'll update in the morning. I'm tired now. Not that anyone reads this these days, anyway. Honestly, this is getting to be a serious drag.
Well, it's morning. And here's the update.
Twilight Imperium. Boy howdy, is that ever a fun game. I mean, really. We began with an "accelerated start," which means that we all started off able to capture a couple extra planets than we normally would be able to. Combine that with the fact that my side of the board was rife with awesome planets while the other side was pretty much a star desert, supernovas everywhere and asteroid fields cluttering up the place, and I got a great start.
The real fun began when I researched War Sun technology, along with my friend the University (one of the races) across the table. I worked hard and spent lots of resources getting all the fiddly little prerequisites to get that, as it meant that I could build the unstoppable war machines known as War Suns. Death Stars, basically, but without the copyright infringement. Then, of course, someone had to play the bill Shared Technology (you can vote on bills in this game, pass laws, lots of fun), which passed overwhelmingly, which meant that my neighbors could copy my War Sun technology without any of the prerequisites. The long and the short of this was that every player had a War Sun by turn 3, something almost completely unheard-of. "There goes the neighborhood," I was heard to comment. "Even the University's got the bomb, er, the War Sun now."
My race was the Naalu, a bunch of psychic space mermaids, basically. We had the awesome racial ability to always go first. Always. I exploited this fully when it came to attacking, troop deployment, technology research, all that sort of thing. Grand fun. Especially when it came to all-out war between me and Mike, who had the Federation of Sol, I believe it was, the only earthlings on the table. "Their weakness is that they're balanced," it was explained to me. I...guess that makes sense. Most of the other races played were horribly overpowered, like my always-goes-first ability. Though attackers gain no specific benefits, the ability to always decide where conflicts are held is invaluable.
War Sun aggression continued. Soon, everybody had two War Suns, at least nearly everybody. Louis didn't have a single one for most of the game, though he ended up winning because he wasn't part of the four-player blood feud that was myself, Mike, Vic, and Matt. It went sort of like this:
Me x Mike
Vic x Mike (somewhat)
Vic x Matt
Me x Matt (by proxy)
I outmaneuvered Mike, and through a succession of lucky rolls, destroyed half his battle fleet not two spaces away from his homeworld. I had to contend, though, with the fact that though I destroyed one of his War Suns, he had five Dreadnoughts in production, and those things are nearly as scary. By the time I built up enough to make my move, he had his second War Sun rebuilt and ready to go.
We had another epic battle, but this time my victory was far from complete. Though I scrapped his entire fleet, I had nothing left but two damaged War Suns, no Fighters, no Dreadnoughts, not even Cruisers or Carriers. He could have moved in and mopped the floor with me. At that point, though, the game ended on account of we had to go immediately. This, of course, meant that we first spent half an hour picking up every piece, every chit, every scrap of cardboard with weird symbols and putting every card back in every deck.
I in particular had trouble with the deck of planet cards, the ones that gave information on the planets one could capture. I was handed the incomplete deck and told to alphabetize them, which I did. This took some time. Scarcely had I finished when someone gave me what I believed to be the second half of the deck and added, as an afterthought, "Oh, alphabetize these too." Annoyed, I turned back to the deck I had already alphabetized, only to find it nowhere to be found. Someone had picked it up in their vigor. Scowling, I alphabetized this new deck, and after no small amount of interrogation found the other part. I painstakingly put both decks together, and this time I was secure in the knowledge of a job well done, and most importantly, a job completed.
So, as any student of literary foreshadowing has no doubt already predicted, someone then plopped a third stack of previously unmentioned planet cards. From on high the command came, "Alphabetize these, too."
ARGH!
But we got cleaned up, finally, and went to the mall. Vic bought some new clothes, which she likes, and apparently the whole exercise of going shopping was to make herself feel pretty and dissuade herself of the notion - a previously unshakable notion - that her swollen cheeks made her look like a chipmunk. I pointed out, logically I think, that her lacking of several vital chipmunk characteristics, e.g., fur, tail, paws, etc., would tend to disprove this, but she was adamant about her chipmunk resemblance. So nothing for it but she had to go shopping.
The shopping complete, I dithered around at home a bit, getting a little work done on this stupid political science project I have due (I don't want to give details, it hurts my brain just to think about it), then I went to the radio station. WRUF, 103.7, Rock 104. Hopefully, my new workplace.
It was great. There's this somewhat complicated board with switches and knobs and slide-y things all over it, and lights go on and off depending on what you're trying to do, but I think I've got a pretty good handle on it at this point. The jocks - the DJs, they call them "jocks" - were very helpful each time I came, each of them showing me what I needed to do and asking if I had any questions, answering all I asked, etc. It was very neat.
Low-impact job, too. I inquired as to one of them, a sprightly girl named Summer, as to the pay of the position. "Minimum wage," she said. "But who cares? We get paid to sit here and occasionally press a few buttons, maybe talk into the mike twice or three times an hour, and answer the phone. It's the easiest job I've ever had, and it's pretty fun, too." Later, she said "I could come here and get paid to listen to the radio, watch TV, and go on the Internet. Or, I could go home and not get paid, where I would listen to the radio, watch TV, and go on the Internet. I know which one I want to do." This is gonna be great.
Obviously, I'll start with the terrible shifts to begin with, the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. most likely, but as time goes by I'll be able to upgrade my shifts to some time when I actually intend to be awake and alert. Until then, I'll just have to rely on truly legendary amounts of caffeine, and catnaps before I head in.
So that's about it. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day has just got to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejweI0EQpX8 I don't know if anyone here knows what kinetic typography is, but for those who don't it's basically moving text to match the spoken words that the text matches. Hard to explain, but just watch it. This one is Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First."
REPLIES.
Before I begin, I would like to make a quick note. I lagged on this update, leaving it until, well, until tonight. I was even thinking of leaving it for tomorrow morning, when I noticed I had a comment on this unfinished post, by a guy by the name of Enish. He said that he read this blog, without even knowing who I am personally. Not only does this mark the first person who reads this blog that I don't know IRL, that I know of, but it really was a breath of fresh air, honestly. It energized me into finishing this post. It gave me hope, basically. To a writer, feedback and an audience are everything, and his note reassured me that I have both. I'll formally reply next post, but for now...thanks.
Steve: All right, but you being my last reader is a disquieting thought. It makes me wonder what about me drove everyone else off but kept you interested...You tell me to buy bottled algae without informing me of the terrible string-related deaths it could cause?!? I'm never taking your shopping advice again.
I was going to post this in the main blog, but this is more addressed to you. I went on a shopping run that would please even you, I think:
Package of baby spinach leaves
Bananas
Organic orange juice
V-8 "Fusion" fruit-vegetable juice
Package of broccoli
Elbow macaroni
Parmesan cheese
Except for the last two (old habits die hard, dangnabbit), I can't see you finding fault with anything I bought. What do you think now, nyah?
Magic has, I believe, improved as a result of the power creep. So much more is possible now, and not everyone does the same thing. In Mirrodin, it was obviously broken, and everyone did the same dang thing. The new sets, there are many, many paths to victory. There is no one broken card like Skullclamp that everyone just groans at, no single combo that everyone exploits. They're powerful but balanced. Vic was a little woozy, but mostly coherent.
I'm not going to...what? And as for "every cell phone can take a picture," no, they can't. My cell phone can't take a picture. My cell phone is nearly ten years old. It's the same brick that my parents bought my sister when she entered high school. It's got a new faceplate, but it's a brick all the same. And yes, fine, I'll use my digital camera to take a blasted picture for you. Eventually.
Shut up about milk. Twenty-seven days.
Jake: You should be. Tell the others to post. Hold knives to their throats if you must, but get them on here! Megacon plans are still in the making.
Bye.
So, uh...bye. Back in a few hours, maybe less.
Edit: Uh, guess I'll update in the morning. I'm tired now. Not that anyone reads this these days, anyway. Honestly, this is getting to be a serious drag.
Well, it's morning. And here's the update.
Twilight Imperium. Boy howdy, is that ever a fun game. I mean, really. We began with an "accelerated start," which means that we all started off able to capture a couple extra planets than we normally would be able to. Combine that with the fact that my side of the board was rife with awesome planets while the other side was pretty much a star desert, supernovas everywhere and asteroid fields cluttering up the place, and I got a great start.
The real fun began when I researched War Sun technology, along with my friend the University (one of the races) across the table. I worked hard and spent lots of resources getting all the fiddly little prerequisites to get that, as it meant that I could build the unstoppable war machines known as War Suns. Death Stars, basically, but without the copyright infringement. Then, of course, someone had to play the bill Shared Technology (you can vote on bills in this game, pass laws, lots of fun), which passed overwhelmingly, which meant that my neighbors could copy my War Sun technology without any of the prerequisites. The long and the short of this was that every player had a War Sun by turn 3, something almost completely unheard-of. "There goes the neighborhood," I was heard to comment. "Even the University's got the bomb, er, the War Sun now."
My race was the Naalu, a bunch of psychic space mermaids, basically. We had the awesome racial ability to always go first. Always. I exploited this fully when it came to attacking, troop deployment, technology research, all that sort of thing. Grand fun. Especially when it came to all-out war between me and Mike, who had the Federation of Sol, I believe it was, the only earthlings on the table. "Their weakness is that they're balanced," it was explained to me. I...guess that makes sense. Most of the other races played were horribly overpowered, like my always-goes-first ability. Though attackers gain no specific benefits, the ability to always decide where conflicts are held is invaluable.
War Sun aggression continued. Soon, everybody had two War Suns, at least nearly everybody. Louis didn't have a single one for most of the game, though he ended up winning because he wasn't part of the four-player blood feud that was myself, Mike, Vic, and Matt. It went sort of like this:
Me x Mike
Vic x Mike (somewhat)
Vic x Matt
Me x Matt (by proxy)
I outmaneuvered Mike, and through a succession of lucky rolls, destroyed half his battle fleet not two spaces away from his homeworld. I had to contend, though, with the fact that though I destroyed one of his War Suns, he had five Dreadnoughts in production, and those things are nearly as scary. By the time I built up enough to make my move, he had his second War Sun rebuilt and ready to go.
We had another epic battle, but this time my victory was far from complete. Though I scrapped his entire fleet, I had nothing left but two damaged War Suns, no Fighters, no Dreadnoughts, not even Cruisers or Carriers. He could have moved in and mopped the floor with me. At that point, though, the game ended on account of we had to go immediately. This, of course, meant that we first spent half an hour picking up every piece, every chit, every scrap of cardboard with weird symbols and putting every card back in every deck.
I in particular had trouble with the deck of planet cards, the ones that gave information on the planets one could capture. I was handed the incomplete deck and told to alphabetize them, which I did. This took some time. Scarcely had I finished when someone gave me what I believed to be the second half of the deck and added, as an afterthought, "Oh, alphabetize these too." Annoyed, I turned back to the deck I had already alphabetized, only to find it nowhere to be found. Someone had picked it up in their vigor. Scowling, I alphabetized this new deck, and after no small amount of interrogation found the other part. I painstakingly put both decks together, and this time I was secure in the knowledge of a job well done, and most importantly, a job completed.
So, as any student of literary foreshadowing has no doubt already predicted, someone then plopped a third stack of previously unmentioned planet cards. From on high the command came, "Alphabetize these, too."
ARGH!
But we got cleaned up, finally, and went to the mall. Vic bought some new clothes, which she likes, and apparently the whole exercise of going shopping was to make herself feel pretty and dissuade herself of the notion - a previously unshakable notion - that her swollen cheeks made her look like a chipmunk. I pointed out, logically I think, that her lacking of several vital chipmunk characteristics, e.g., fur, tail, paws, etc., would tend to disprove this, but she was adamant about her chipmunk resemblance. So nothing for it but she had to go shopping.
The shopping complete, I dithered around at home a bit, getting a little work done on this stupid political science project I have due (I don't want to give details, it hurts my brain just to think about it), then I went to the radio station. WRUF, 103.7, Rock 104. Hopefully, my new workplace.
It was great. There's this somewhat complicated board with switches and knobs and slide-y things all over it, and lights go on and off depending on what you're trying to do, but I think I've got a pretty good handle on it at this point. The jocks - the DJs, they call them "jocks" - were very helpful each time I came, each of them showing me what I needed to do and asking if I had any questions, answering all I asked, etc. It was very neat.
Low-impact job, too. I inquired as to one of them, a sprightly girl named Summer, as to the pay of the position. "Minimum wage," she said. "But who cares? We get paid to sit here and occasionally press a few buttons, maybe talk into the mike twice or three times an hour, and answer the phone. It's the easiest job I've ever had, and it's pretty fun, too." Later, she said "I could come here and get paid to listen to the radio, watch TV, and go on the Internet. Or, I could go home and not get paid, where I would listen to the radio, watch TV, and go on the Internet. I know which one I want to do." This is gonna be great.
Obviously, I'll start with the terrible shifts to begin with, the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. most likely, but as time goes by I'll be able to upgrade my shifts to some time when I actually intend to be awake and alert. Until then, I'll just have to rely on truly legendary amounts of caffeine, and catnaps before I head in.
So that's about it. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day has just got to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejweI0EQpX8 I don't know if anyone here knows what kinetic typography is, but for those who don't it's basically moving text to match the spoken words that the text matches. Hard to explain, but just watch it. This one is Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First."
REPLIES.
Before I begin, I would like to make a quick note. I lagged on this update, leaving it until, well, until tonight. I was even thinking of leaving it for tomorrow morning, when I noticed I had a comment on this unfinished post, by a guy by the name of Enish. He said that he read this blog, without even knowing who I am personally. Not only does this mark the first person who reads this blog that I don't know IRL, that I know of, but it really was a breath of fresh air, honestly. It energized me into finishing this post. It gave me hope, basically. To a writer, feedback and an audience are everything, and his note reassured me that I have both. I'll formally reply next post, but for now...thanks.
Steve: All right, but you being my last reader is a disquieting thought. It makes me wonder what about me drove everyone else off but kept you interested...You tell me to buy bottled algae without informing me of the terrible string-related deaths it could cause?!? I'm never taking your shopping advice again.
I was going to post this in the main blog, but this is more addressed to you. I went on a shopping run that would please even you, I think:
Package of baby spinach leaves
Bananas
Organic orange juice
V-8 "Fusion" fruit-vegetable juice
Package of broccoli
Elbow macaroni
Parmesan cheese
Except for the last two (old habits die hard, dangnabbit), I can't see you finding fault with anything I bought. What do you think now, nyah?
Magic has, I believe, improved as a result of the power creep. So much more is possible now, and not everyone does the same thing. In Mirrodin, it was obviously broken, and everyone did the same dang thing. The new sets, there are many, many paths to victory. There is no one broken card like Skullclamp that everyone just groans at, no single combo that everyone exploits. They're powerful but balanced. Vic was a little woozy, but mostly coherent.
I'm not going to...what? And as for "every cell phone can take a picture," no, they can't. My cell phone can't take a picture. My cell phone is nearly ten years old. It's the same brick that my parents bought my sister when she entered high school. It's got a new faceplate, but it's a brick all the same. And yes, fine, I'll use my digital camera to take a blasted picture for you. Eventually.
Shut up about milk. Twenty-seven days.
Jake: You should be. Tell the others to post. Hold knives to their throats if you must, but get them on here! Megacon plans are still in the making.
Bye.
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