Intellectual Flagellant

Between Waters

2009-08-10T19:03:00.001-07:00

Hrm hrm hrm.

So I've decided that Harry Potter does a poor job of representing the magic-school genre, which is fertile ground for writing and which I feel must be wrested from the tyrannical grip of one JK Rowling for the betterment of writing in general. To that end I have become to compose a story that is equal parts The Lord of the Rings and Looking for Alaska with heavy doses of the Bible, American Idiot, and Persona3. In brief the main character is a girl whose magical ability is noticed by a representative of a school in the Boundary Waters between her freshmen and sophomore years in high school and who despite initial resistance ends up attending where she becomes friends with another girl named Bombay Ginny (Gin), who is in many ways Alaska in messianic clothing. The more interesting angles of the story come from the lead's interaction with Gin, through which both of their characters develope. The story explores various facets of revolution as well as how teens approach faith, love, friendship, sexuality, and just about everything else that is both interesting and important. Quite a bit of work, I'm aware, but if John Green can do it in 220some pages I think I can do it in under a thousand. The original thurst of the project was to create a Lord of the Rings level of backstory, which I have been diligently assembling as often as I've been actualy writing. There's quite a bit of speculative chemistry and physics that goes into the explanation of just how magic works, as well as some economics and history behind the underpinnings of magical society and the economy of the magical word. In fact, the goal is to provide enough information for Appendices A-F, which comes out at six, if I can count properly, though the better test will be to see how it compares to Tolkein's appendices on a word-count level. I feel that between the explanation of how magic works and thorough explorations of the politics of the magical world as well as its social structure and economy I ough to chew through quite a few pages, never mind history and all that.
On a narrative level the story is told exclusively in the first person by the lead--I call her Mary, but have yet to decide whether to reveal that as her name, or whether it even matters--in the present tense, except for numerous digressions and narrations of past events as well as some snippets of history that she presents in fairy tale form.
The writing itself has proceeded exceptionally smoothly, which leads me to believe that I may in fact complete this project, which would be a significant accomplishment after the fractured nature of the writing that I've done over the last...four years.

In other news, here's the summer reading list, as accurately as I can recall it--
Read:
In Cold Blood - Capote
My Own Country - Verghese
Outliers - Gladwell
Kafka on the Shore - Murakami
Looking for Alaska - Green
Fahrnheit 451 - Bradbury

Reading:
Darkness at Noon - Koestler
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
Dune - Herbert
Last Orders - Swift
The Power and the Glory - Green
The Trial - Kafka
The Red Badge of Courage - Crane
The Economist - weekly, cover-to-cover excepting on the art exhibit article

On the Verge of WCATY, from a Different Angle

2009-06-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

So, once more unto the breach, except this time I'm working, at least nominally. Doing grunt work, more likely than not, oh well.

Mm, don't have much to write about, I suppose...Let's see, I finished The Creation of Chastity Damnation, and am working on Islands, now--another lovely Catholic story. Well, I think it's Catholic, Christian certainly...In that vein, I've been working on reading the Bible by book alphabetically. I also snagged a copy of the Qur'an, might need to expand outside of the middle east eventually, but that may take some time.

I've made an effort to read A Prayer for Owen Meany, but it's like trying to read Dickens, so I've given that up in favor of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, which is far more interesting.

Don't know how I feel about this whole Catholic writing binge, but it's interesting...things keep getting longer and longer, which is a tad annoying. Islands should be fun, if I can get it done in under 30 pages or so, but that may not actually happen... As for Amos and The End...that's going to kick my ass. Awfully.

Hi, My Name Is/Hi, My Name Is//

2009-06-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

So I've been gone for a while. In the interim a few things have happened:

- I started listening to Eminem again. A lot.
- I relapsed into Pokémon addiction.
- I relapsed into certain "emotional states". Oops.
- I realized I'm not disciplined enough to write anything longer than a longish short story.
- I stopped talking to my friends. Oops x10
- I started talking to other friends.
- I created an alter ego, lurking somewhere out there on teh internets. Good luck finding it.
- I realized that I'm an extremist after a fashion.
- I started reading The Economist.
- I stopped reading TIME.
- I realized how fertile Catholicism really is as a field of literary exploitation and subjugation.

Okay, so I don't even know how long it's been since I've been back here...oh well.

So the current writing projects are twofold:
- The Creation of Chastity Damnation: a story about a girl who isn't quite as crazy as her dad.
- Islands: a story about a lot of Catholics on an island (shocking!) after a minor rebellion. Lots of blood. Lots of angst (legitimate, though). And there are crosses (so blood goes with the territory, I suppose...)!
More on those when I actually get done writing them. Which is what I would be doing now if I weren't avoiding it...

Of course dinner is about to start.

2008-12-07T17:17:00.000-08:00

Harumph. I feel bad for all those sorry bastards in Green Bay, sitting in the cold, freezing, watching the Packers lose. At least I had the opportunity to change the channel. Not that I was interested in the first place. In case you didn't know, my interest in football is strictly limited to USC playing when there is snow on the ground outside. Mostly because I watch the players huddling under fans and misters and get very jealous.

So I was going to write about something else...but I forgot about it while eating dinner. I did make dickerdoodles. And was almost disowned. Oh well.

...

2008-12-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

I'm not even really sure why I'm here, trying to write about this in a quasi-public place. In fact, I don't know that I will. I just...It still feels rather surreal, that something like this could actually happen. You hear about how awful the economy is doing, but it comes off as just words on paper until something like this happens, and then even indirectly, you start to realize the scope of what's going on. This isn't the time or the occasion to muse about politics, but...yeah. If nothing, I'm suddenly much more thankful for my family than I've been in a long time--and I'm not passing judgment or anything like that, merely commenting that I'm, at least for now, trying not to take what I'm so fortunate to have for granted. I hope I never forget that, if nothing else.

Pests

2008-12-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

Somebody has been tampering with my Wayfarer posters and I'm about ready to squish them, should I find out who they are. All of the emo-related posters vanished a few days after I put them up, so I printed more and stuck about 12 up on the same wall in the basement hallway. That was yesterday; by this morning they are all gone except for the writing contest guidelines. Somebody doesn't like them, apparently, because there were plenty of other posters on the same wall, all of which have remained, so it's not the janitors taking them down. Unless somebody in the administration is not a fan and ordering them to be taken down. Which could be happening. Either that or some angsty freshmen motherfucker is fighting a guerilla war against me. I'll put up more, later. Preferably a very large number right before the writing contest deadline next Wednesday. I'll have to do it all on Monday, I suppose, as I don't have any free mods on Tuesday. I may switch to black and white printing just to get them out fasters, but there will be a flood of these. Watch out.

About Putting Down Games

2008-11-29T17:08:00.000-08:00

The best measure of a videogame is how you feel when you're done with it.

I finished Dead Space today, and though I'm glad that I don't need the tension/stress that it injected into my life, I'm quite sad that I'm done with the thing. I wish there were more, and I would replay it if I had time. I'll even continue to overlook the somewhat ambiguous ending. The very last bit of it, at least, fit perfectly with what the game is all about. Never mind the room that it leaves for a sequel.

I felt the same way about The World Ends With You--I didn't want it to be over.

With books I tend to feel satisfied and somewhat drained at the same time when I finish them, and I do get the same sort of feeling from very long RPGs, Final Fantasy VII in particular, but I'll ascribe that more to length and the time investment than anything else. But with games it's different; they're so delicious that I'm sad to leave the really good ones. Alas.

I should go try to beat Minesweeper on expert, see what that does for me emotionally.

About Mr. Laurence Perrine

2008-11-24T12:37:00.000-08:00

Mr. Perrine would contend that there are certain absolutes to poetry, and while that may be true, his search for a standard by which to grade his students has proven detrimental to the breadth of his interpretation of poems. Take Dickinson's four line poem about ships and flowers and sunsets (perhaps). Mr. Perrine is correct in so far as the sunset interpretation is better than saying Dickinson is writing about a meadow. But the meadow interpretation dails only with a limited imagination--or, again, one stunted by the needs for absolute answers in a teaching environment. The meadow interpretation is not incorrect, but merely less complete than that of the sunset, and the only way to make a definite conclusion about what Dickinson is writing about rests on the inclusion by her editors of the title "Sunset" and other circumstantial evidence in other poems that she has written--evidence that exists outside of the body of the specific poem in question and which, therefore, should have no bearing whatsoever on the poem's interpreation; I agree wholeheartedly in Mr. Dods in his call to seal off the work under examination (whether we should be examining poetry in the first place is another matter entirely) from all unrelated information. So while one may argue that the poem itself is flawed if clarity is the standard by which one chooses to judge it, one cannot fairly say that the meadow interpretation is categorically false. To interpret the poem as being about Martians would be beyond the bounds of possibility as laid out by the poem, and therefore such an interpretation is ridiculous. Thus I do not entirely disagree with Mr. Perrine on the matter of poetic interpretation, but differ by degree in terminology and the setting of bounds within which to examine the poem. Now, regarding Melville's The Night March...Mr. Perrine' interpretation of the army as stars, set in order by an absent God is perfectly vaild, but what is incorrect in viewing the soldiers as merely soldiers whose commander is dead but who fight on for the same cause anyway? Their archaic arms do not disqualify them from actually being soldiers; Melville has just as much right to write about medieval soldiers as he does about earthworms or as I do about goings on at a bazaar in Morrocco (where I have never been). To throw out this interpretation is close-minded and unimaginitive in the extreme. Indeed, whether one believes that the soldiers are soldiers or the soldiers are stars, it is quite easy to approach the question of the presence or absence of God from either angle, which only speaks to Melville's skill as a poet. To allow (at least) two equally valid and clear paths of interpretation to lead to the same conclusion is impressive and stands as a strong argument for Melville's purpose in writing the poem.
- - -
Now for something somewhat different...
Poetry, as has often been asserted, is about conveying an experience to the reader, and I do not agree with that, though I do believe that poetry can be much more than that. But to adhere merely to the realm of the conveyance of experience, I would like to delve a little deeper into the manner in which that experience is conveyed. Say I write a poem about being a bat, and forget all about tone and theme and meaning; maybe I like being a bat, maybe I don't, it's not important for what we're doing here. What is important is that I am not a bat, I cannot become a bat, nor will I ever be able to converse with a bat to find out what being a bat is like. Therefore, when I write a poem about being a bat, I am putting human feelings, senses, and whatnot onto the framework of what it is to be a bat. A bat, should it be able to understand English/the inner workings of the human mind (and not any human mind, but mine specifically), would not be able to make sense of what I have written because I made it all up. I came as close as I possibly could to being a bat in my imagination and then transformed that experience into a poem. But it was only imagination, and words can only partially capture experience, even fabricated, anyway. So the poem isn't about being a bat, it's about pretending to be a bat. It isn't a record of experience, but a very close (if I am succesful as a poet and have a good imagination and grasp of bat physiology) representation of the experience of being a bat. Poetry is not true experience, but the representation of experience, converted not just into human terms, but into the specific poet's terms. A skilled poet draws closer and closer to the truth of the experience (if there even is such a thing), and here I feel math allegories are relevant: think of limits to infinity. Never truly obtainable, but if your approximation is accurate enough, you can perform complex calculations and send probes whizzing past Pluto. Humans may have more in common than bats do, which facilitates some level of empathy between one another, but no human is exactly like another, and thus the lense through which we view the world is inherently different than everyone elses, thus interpretations of poems and songs and movies will vary, as do religious creeds and understandings of science and mathematics. But then the question arises--if poetry is a form (albeit a glorified, intensified form) of communication, then is all communication merely a close approximation of some greater or more true truth? Perhaps. To believe so would be very platonic, but I'm not particularly interested in pinning down whether such a thing as absolute truth exists or not. To be honest, I think it's pointless--an unproveable point, and one better decided on an individual basis. Perhaps I will rant about this later, but not at present.
Anyway, digressions aside, poetry, I'd like to think, strives to be an ever-more-perfect representation of experience (among other things), but should not be confused with things as they actually are. Indeed, it is critical to understand the distinction for any proper interpretation of poetry (should you want to descend into such a nasty past time); it is only with the acceptance of the fact that poetry is not real but rather true that we can begin to pick greater meaning out of the core experience. Poetry can, thus, never be about absolutes, or absolute interpretations, though I find myself dangerously close to making absolute pronouncements. Oh noes.
I may pick this up later and continue, we shall see.

About Reunions

2008-11-23T10:56:00.000-08:00

I wasn't extremely enthused about going to the reunion at Eleana's house; I was definitely more interested in sitting on my butt and playing Sins of a Solar Empire, but I went, and after the initially awkward I-don't-know-most-of-you-people bit it was fun. Apples to Apples is a wonderful icebreaker, though I do suck at it. Apparently handcuffs can't be as sensual as friction. Boo. Anyway, it was fun, and I'm glad that I went, and to some extent I'm sad that I didn't go to WCATY this summer, but I think I'm feeling more nostalgic about that because it's been so long since I actually was at WCATY, whereas Terra was still relatively recent. Nonetheless, there's something to be said for WCATY; mostly that WCATY was serious nerd camp, whereas EPGY (at least in Terra) people were intelligent, but not nerds in the traditional sense. Everyone was far, far to outgoing to really be a "nerd", properly speaking--not to say that's a bad thing. It's not even that surprising that all of the writers were the most sociable of everyone, and given how little contact we had with all of the other houses, I can't speak for the overall nerdiness of EPGY. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this post...
I guess what I'm trying to hit at is that when I think about the dorm at St. Norbert, I really, really miss it, in all of its shitty/scuzziness. Terra, not so much. I sorta feel bad, because we had so muc fun, and I think the more removed I am from it, the more I will remember it fondly, but still. That deep-seated ache isn't there. And it's not there for the first year that I was at WCATY either. I think that there was just something special, for me, about that second year, and I can't really say what it is, but I keep thinking about the courtyard and missing it pretty badly.

Hmm...

2008-11-21T17:49:00.001-08:00

I'd write something intelligent here, if I were feeling intelligent, but alas, I am not.

I think I spent most of my effort and intellectual points on revising Videotape today when I perhaps should have been paying attention during AP Bio. Oh well. I'm at the point where I'm fighting with myself over specific word choice, which I figure is pretty good for a story; if it were poetry, we'd be in another area, but we're not, so this is good. The last big thing I've got to deal with is shifting verb tense. I don't want to go entirely present-tense with this, but all past seems a bit dull too. I slip into present naturally in a few areas, and then drop out of it again, so I'll have to zoom back a bit and assess the whole thing to see where I want to go with that. Good lord, the writing contest deadline is getting quite close.

Amusing Commentary

2008-11-20T19:59:00.000-08:00

This is why I really enjoy Achewood. it really is unfortunate that I never take the time needed to catch up with the comic--a task that grows increasingly more daunting given its fucking ridiculous update pace--or even try to keep pace with it. Oh well. I'm also rather annoyed that somebody pulled down my Latin notecard, which I put this on. I might need to make another one of those and some point. I suppose we've got more important things to be worrying about at present. I hope Ms. Blinson is doing well.

Philosophizing, Part 1

2008-11-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

[Cave: I like Camus and Fight Club too much for this to really count as original thought, but rather a re-examining of the sciences through glasses that others have constructed. I'd shudder to call it philosophy, but rather musing. And none of this is concrete belief, either, but merely the following of logic trains to their inevitable conclusion. The acceptance of that logic is another matter entirely.]
The fundamental reason that I don't like biology, especially cellular-tissue level biology is that i reduces human action to a mechanical string of reactions that fools itself into thinking that it is self-aware and self-determining. A cute trick, certainly, but a little disheartening. You kiss someone and think that you love them, but it's nothing more than a (theoretically) predictable and certainly uncontrollable string of chemical reactions in your brain that ramifies and feeds back to the other person. It even makes individiuality a moot point, since we trigger all of these back and forth reactions. What are our bodies and senses of individuality but arbitrary divisions, pieces of the greater biomass that think we're special just because we can't see how interwoven we are with everything else. It you have such a big impact on me, and I on you, but neither of s has much real control over "ourselves" or "each other", then why even make that separation? I have no control over the chemical reactions that compose me (more on that at a later date), but my reactions greatly affect yours and vis versa. Indeed, I could be said to have more control over you than you have over yourself, and vis versa, again. Unless you reject science wholesale, there can be no true, meaningful individuality. Not that that's a bad thing. Though it does make all of the nasty things we humans do to one another all the more grim.

From a biological perspective, the end goal of life is to beget more life. That's a sort-of purpose, and some hope can be derived from that. Humans can reconcile themselves to an endgame of that variety. Chemistry, on the other hand, seems much more pessimistic (or something like that). The chemist sees the universe without pourpose, but merely a trend toward ever-greater entrpy. Everything that we make and do will eventually be nothing but lonely atoms and ions drifting through space, increasingly more spread out and isolated in the infinite expanse of the universe. Even life, then, is merely a slowing of entropic growth, and the whole institution must eventually expire. Now you could go a step lower to the realm of physics and argue that maybe other universes tend toward order, but that's little comfort for us. You could also throw out the whole thing and go live in Alabama, but personally I'd miss hockey too much for that. So what then? Well, not much. You can take that half-step and accept the quantum mechanist's hope that the increasing disorder of our universe is vital to the maintenance of theoretical order in another theoretical universe that may or may not (theoretically) contain life. Or you can simply give up hope, embrace that hopelessness as liberation and exult in your present existence, stop worrying about a future that doesn't exist and which you cannot reach.

At some later point: free will.

A Manifesto of Some Variety

2008-11-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

Twenty minutes ago I walked through airport security with chapstick in my pocket. Last I checked, that constituted a gl and an immediate threat to national security that could only be resolved with the 3-1-1 plastic bag policy. More worrying, the guy ahead of me was stopped and had his bag searched because he had a GameBoy in it; nobody noticed the lighter he had tossed on top of his coat as it rolled down the x-ray conveyor belt. I suppose the illusion of safety is nice, but when we can’t even maintain that illusion, something is wrong with the system. Or is there?
Almost every aspect of air travel is absurd. My iPod will in no way ever endanger the operation of the plane, emergency exit procedures are more or less a joke. That airlines keep up the pretense that flying as an isolated act of enjoyment is hilarious. But it’s not air travel, not as a singular system; the absurdity is endemic. Why on earth is TV littered with ads that I don’t process, let alone acknowledge the existence of? More worryingly, why do enough people pay attention to ads to make them worthwhile? Why do we as a country spend more money fighting terrorism when far, far more people die in traffic accidents every year? The whole world is utterly absurd, illogical (and who would’ve thought my favorite subject would be an attempt to systematize the fundamental chaos of the universe? Yeah, I love chem. And if you want more ammo for te absurdity argument--well, there you go).
Okay, so we’ve established that nothing really makes sense, but why? Surely we could regulate and modulate every aspect of human reality. Take love, for example; so messy and awkward, so many false starts, ruined reputations, hurt feelings--all for the sake of making babies. Come on, we could build factories to do that. Of course there’s more to love than that--but that’s all gravy from an efficiency/evolutionary standpoint. Dead weight, really. Absurdity, if you will. But it’s more fun that way. Why be grumpy about what is intrinsic to your very existence? No, I prefer to just chuckle quietly at the absurdity o this nonsensical construct we call society and reality. I pretend that I take airport security as seriously as the guy operating the x-ray machine so vigilantly while he also reads Candide. On the inside, I’m amused, but I play along and pretend not to see anything. And occasionally, I’m rewarded and run into someone with a similar outlook. As we strapped ourselves in and got ready to take off (as I began this essay, in fact), our flight attendent announces: “In the unlikely even that we land in the Arctic Ocean instead of Omaha, your seat cushion may be used as a floatation device. After you have paddled to shore, you may keep them, compliments of Midwest Express, the best care in the air.” Or something like that.

Standing on the Edge

2008-11-04T12:28:00.000-08:00

There's a pervasive, skin-wriggling awareness that it's Election Day, that something monumental, something completely expected and anticipated is going to come to fruition today. I'm not speaking entirely for myself, though I am entirely swept up in it. Indeed, before today, I was just glad that this two year long circus will finally come to an end, and yet I can see that this trial--of the media, the candidates, and the American Public--has been vital in grinding down the possibilities to the very best available options. It is unfortunate, really, that something like this didn't happen four years ago (not that it would have made much of a difference economically speaking--that die was cast by one Ronald Reagan and his compatriots). In any case, there is now the expectation that this is not an election, but a coronation, that what was meant to be for so long has finally come to pass and we are merely going through the motions. Though there is still anticipation, anxious worry that some disaster may occur, and God forbid it should; there would be riots, perhaps--certainly something far greater than the outcry after 2000. I would almost be concerned, if I really felt that there were any possibility that some disaster may occur. But my usual blitheness has kicked in, and now I am merely enjoying the moments as we move closer to kicking out one circus animal and blocking the path of another pack of them before they do any considerable damage.

More Frustrated Than Anything

2008-11-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I was going to be writing about writing and some of my thoughts on the process, as influenced recently by reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem, but I've more pressing things to vent about, and will have to return to my thoughts on writing theory at some later point.

The gist of my story is as follows: I talked to Pantano, and he has my letter of recommendation completed, but has yet to submit it and was unsure as to whether I wanted a copy to mail, or if he should submit it electronically. So I was a little miffed that he had forgotten that we decided to send it electronically, but the vast majority of the fault is mine. Just how I thought I could get away with not telling him my exact due date is beyond me, but I suppose that when he told me he would have it done by last Wednesday, I assumed that he would send it. Bad assumption. I've been making far, far too many of those lately, especially with such a complicated and important process as this. This is all coming off as rather dry, but I really am quite upset with myself. At first, I somewhat feebly tried to defend myself, and the fact that Mother Dearest went on the full offensive only made me more prickly, and for a while I managed to convince myself that if the recommendation were a few days late, it would not be a big deal. But after poking around the Stanford site, I'm absolutely terrified that something awful will happen. That I won't be in the Early Action consideration pool, that I won't get my application bumped to the Regular Decision pool. Something. God damn it, I've been working on this for three and a half years, and to see it jeopardized by one (admittedly large) screw-up on my part seems unfair. Of course it's unfair--it's happening to me and by default must be unfair, in my mind. In short, I'm very frustrated with myself, and this has more or less ruined my entire night. Joy. I would try to write some, but I ought to call Jane shortly. Maybe after that. We'll see. I'm sure she'll find some way to cheer me up, being fantastic and all, but this is going to be hanging over my head for a long time.

Far Too Many Conversations, Ideas, Et Cetera

2008-06-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

A new story idea (perhaps short, but easily expanded to something longer):

We have a Fellow, who shall fill the lead role of our experience; think something along the lines of Edward Norton in Fight Club, a office rat, rather dissatisfied with his existence despite having attended a good college, having done well, and having then secured a quite good job with Blank Corporation X. Nonetheless, he is unenthusiastic about his existence, his relationships with others deteriorate rapidly as he begins plumbing the depths of archaic video games and the internet in search of some sort of ancillary reality that has more meaning than the one that he inhabits. Our Fellow's side quest starts to chew up more and more time and we watch as he loses touch with his friends, girlfriend, family, in exchange for a more perfect, digital world with new, more perfect digital friends. Eventually, Our Fellow moves into a run down shack in some unpleasant corner of town and slowly integrates himself more fully into his digital existence that comes to be far more important than the real world.

From there the ending is murky, perhaps he goes all in and constructs some sort of device that permanently locks him into digitality, or perhaps something draws him back to the real world, some binary friends draws him into a chemical, physical reality. Either way, the message is essentially the same--there is no real worth in our world at present, and perhaps the digital escape that we create is no better, either way, meaning is instilled by humanity, and what we as individuals deem worthy of our time is then what is worthy of our time, end of story.

Perhaps something for the Stanford docket, or it'll just have to sit and gestate for a few more years.

Red Raincoats and Rifles

2008-06-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

Hrm...rather aggravated mater today, because I don't see the need in memorizing precisely how many undergraduates most of the schools that we shall be visiting have. I'm sorry that it is unimportant whether Duke has 5,000 or 6,000ish; the difference is minimal and the only thing worth remembering is that it is in the same range as Stanford and company, whereas NYU is much larger. My interest in Reed is dead, Pomona having supplanted it, and at present it would appear that NYU is on lifesupport; perhaps the visit will resuscitate it, but I'm rather not counting on it as the place seems like another larger-ish university, rather than the overgrown liberal arts school that I'm looking for. Pomona has become the second runner, more because I would prefer California over the East Coast, so the reasoning is less than sound, though Pomona's chemistry program is quite good; the lack of engineering is annoying, and I'm rather expecting Penn to be enticing; Columbia not so much.

In other news, I started writing, got a whole two pages out, and then was distracted by...something, I don't remember what. Facebook, in all probability, which is utterly stupid, but at least I kept the same tone and cadence that I've been striving for during the entire project, so the layoff hasn't negatively affected the continuity or anything. All's well, in short. I keep vacillating on whether or not to proceed with reading Ulysses, and I have reached the Circe episode, written in play format, which ought to progress more quickly than the last few bits have. Now that I understand that the Odyssey episodes do not fall in chronological order, I understand that aspect of the work far more thoroughly and everything has more or less fallen into place; a little refresher ont he Odyssey helped as well. At the same time, I've realized that I am not nearly literary enough to understand or appreciate the complex parodies and such that fill a large part of the work; certainly it is a piece of virtuosity that only Eliot can even come close to, and if nothing else I can grasp the first layer of references and such, those being the Odyssey-related ones. Beyond that, I'm willing to let things slide. The ending is inevitable, the message already one that I have heard before, but I'm going to see the thing through, given how much time I have invested in it.

In other news, I'm thinking of taking a break from thinking...well, not thinking, but at least communicating with L or making determinations to do so for a while; letting that little thing slip into memory where it belongs. That would be my only other issue with going to Pomona; I would be forced to interact with L and that would be utterly disastrous for Holy is Thy Name, if the project is not completed by that point. I wish I could say that I would be done with the writing, but I know that I won't be, though the storyboards have been helping. I rather like having fluff demons, I think, and it would be a shame to do anything to get rid of this one, though I want to at the same time.

--Sam'ich out--

Poke Poke Poke (repeat as necessary)

2008-06-04T20:53:00.000-07:00

Just finished 1984, which leaves Jane Eyre as the only real book left on the summer reading list; should be able to finish that and Ulysses while flying to, driving about, and returning from the East Coast (ick), and then I'll have a week to write the 1984 essay, and a while after that for the Jane Eyre one, though I might just get 1984 out of the way now while it's still fresh.

SAT on Saturday and I'm annoyed with the whole having to study for it deal, which is silly given that it's supposed to be an aptitude test, though clearly fails in that regard as studying does help. So, I shall continue to throw monkey wrenches into the system so long as the system requires that I take a test that is four hours long and consists of first grade math, useless grammar rules, and obscure interpretations of even more obscure prose passages.

Anyway...deep breath, deep breath...

Posted an inordinate number of pictures on FaceBook the other day which as precipitated a near flood of photo comments, though I suppose that is my penance for flooding all of the people in the pictures with notifications that they have been tagged in a picture. Blargh. Kat got cranky [kranky] about one bad one from prom, and I deleted it...eventually.

Funny, finishing 1984 has taken all of the desire to write out of me, which is perhaps a little worrying, but I've had studying and Rock Band and Grant Theft Auto 4 to keep me preoccupied (the last having only just managed to establish a foothold in the realm of my attention, and only because several of its missions entail escorting a stoned Jamaican fellow about and shooting a large number of vaguely unscrupulous other fellows).

Anyway, reading 1984 for the second time in only a few months was not particularly enjoyable, most of its potency being lost; O'brien's last rant was rather dull compared to the first time I read the book, and most of my mental energy went into picking apart aspects of Ingsoc thought that we will likely never end up discussing in class because we will likely never discuss the book at all, it being a Mertens class. The conclusion that I reached was that Ingsoc will fail for the same reason that power hungry groups have been falling for the entirety of human existence--the most flagrant sin of all, blah blah blah--hubris. Their problem is that they do possess near total power and are working toward making their grip on that power permanent, but in so doing they are setting the stage for their own destruction. If the Party does succeed, as it plans to, in creating a Newspeak language where there is literally no capability to think improperly, then there is no mental language with which to describe deviancy; with the mind being as malleable as the party wishes it to be and reality as viewed by the citizens of Oceania similarly subject to the will of the Party, it follows that eventually, the Party will succeed in temporarily eradicating all resistance, at which point the Party will have achieved a perceived lock on power, assisted by the full use of Newspeak. Thus the Party will have eradicated the disease, but become utterly vulnerable to a recurrence--the Party will have willingly destroyed its ability to perceive any deviancy and will believe that their world is perfect insofar as they want it to be; persons who do no exhibit proper behavior will simply be glossed over by Party members, beyond the members' perception, existing in nearly an alternate universe. From there it is only a matter of time before a handful of intelligent Proles emerge or the Party conditioning process fails ever so slightly in the raising of a child, and then those liberated individuals could conceivably walk into a Ministry and massacre its workers with a machine gun and surviving Party members would fail to see that anything had occurred. The flaw lies not in the Party's failure to grasp power, but in their impulsive use of it; for the Party, it is not enough to have power, it must be exercised in some feeble attempt to assure themselves that they really are in control. It is not really necessary to alter the mind and soul of every deviant, but rather just to have the power to do so. The exercise is totally unnecessary, and by continuously exercising its power, the Party ensures that it will eventually seal itself off from concrete reality and while within the collective mind of the Party the Party will have total control, it will in actuality have only succeeded in blinding itself to any sort of resistance, sealing itself off into a ball and a state in which it is totally vulnerable to assault, not of verbal or logical means, but physical force should suffice. Though there would be no real need to do so as the Party would be effectively blind to all free persons and those liberated individuals need not bother themselves with a few million people living in rundown slums in London.

I could go on about other things, Winston's pseudo-betrayal and such, but I don't know that there really is any need to. That is merely picking nits with Blair's logic, and the end result is more or less the same. If there is no choice, then there is no culpability, but Winston and Julia are estranged either way. More interesting, perhaps, is whether or not Winston really could have withstood the rats, or if he was merely told by O'brien that he could not and therefore became predisposed to believe what he was told, at which point the action became involuntary. Either way, Winston had no choice in the matter--if we remain with Blair's established rules, that is--and thus cannot truly be blamed for what he did.

Blargh...enough academic ranting.

O, HAI!

2008-04-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

"O rly?"

"Ya rly."

"No wai!"

Dude.

Stuff

2008-04-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy. Lacrosse twice this weekend, and between that, Kaplan, and the play, I'm pretty much fucked if I want to get anything done. And I do. Oh well. Got into my writing class at Stanford, which is exciting. Latin Day was ridiculously boring, but it was a good opportunity to catch up on sleep. PS, apparently da Vinci is an impressionist...Oh, and Plaza Burgers are pretty yummy, but I definitely don't want to know what the secret sauce is made out of. Gmail is borked, or I might be wasting time on that. As it is, I think I'll just go to sleep as any chance for getting work done has officially disappeared.

Frustrated

2008-03-09T20:27:00.001-07:00

So I've spent the last 5+ hours or so working on corrections for my AP Chem exam that we all bombed terribly. I just hit the point where I stopped caring about whether it was right or wrong, because it wasn't so much an issue of not having enough time to get it done, I just didn't understand half of the stuff that was going on. Some of that ties into having missed class, but looking back on the notes that I have, there were definitely a large number of things on the test that had very little to do with anything that we had learned, and most of what we had learned was only a tiny, simplistic version of what ended up being on the exam. Very frustrating. At the same time, I understand that we are pressed for time, and that doing practice problems in the book would have been immensely helpful as it has been in the past, but I've just been so busy that I haven't gotten around to it. Fuck Kaplan. Fuck Kaplan bloody silly I fucking hate that class and how it demolishes my weekends. As much as it would suck, I'm sorta starting to entertain ideas about quitting lacrosse. Probably will never get around to it, but it would be nice to not have that to deal with. Actually, now that I really think about it, it would be rather nice to not have that around...It would more or less be a cross country type situation, except I wouldn't have the second half of the semester to put things back together. Yes, this is starting to sound like a very good idea. Maybe, if I'm not scrambling to hold everything together, I could try playing next year, but for now, it's just another burden that I have to deal with.

In other news...my jacket smells like Indian food 'cause that's what we ate on Saturday night before spending four fucking hours playing rock and at Mary Kate's house...God...Eventually we hit this point of despondency where none of us were really capable of playing properly, and we all dumbed down the difficulty level considerably. Which is saying a lot, 'cause rock band is noticeably easier than guitar hero 3, at least the guitar parts are. That actually got rather boring after a while as most of it consisted of mindless strumming portions. The drums were amazingly fun, though extremely hard (for me). I'm tempted to get the standalone drum set and play that. It would be rather entertaining, though I've been sinking plenty of time into guitar hero as it is...I'm about halfway through career mode on hard and am finally starting to get a hang of the whole shifting frets dealio.

I've got other things on my mind, but I'm a little to intellectually (and physically) drained to properly vent on that right now. Basically, I'm just turtling until spring break hits, and then I can recharge my batteries. God, I'm fucking exhausted. More in my head than anything else. And I need to write. Oh Christ do I ever need to write something...well, only three months until I can...fun. Fuck me.

-_-

Been a Bit of a While

2008-03-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

So, of course, the big news was our trip to state in hockey...god, that was a party. Almost enough to make me want to go to hockey games on a regular basis next year. Indeed, I'm almost positive that I'm going to. The game against Appleton was fun in that terrifying sort of way...God, when they tied it 2-2 I was absolutely horrified that we were going to let it slip away, but then our little freshmen buddy made everything okay. The state final was more or less predictable...they were so much bigger that it was pretty much impossible to make any other assessment of how one team stacked up against another, but I'm damn sure Cody had better hands than their Mrs. Hockey fellow, but he's so small that he just gets smeared whenever he tries to penetrate the offensive zone. Our guys had a lot of heart, and to give them credit, they never gave up despite being pretty soundly outplayed. It's one of those games that you know you shouldn't win, but you're just close enough to the other team that if you get lucky, things might turn out in your favor. They didn't, but we hit the post early in the first and with about six minutes left in the third, so if either of those (or both) had gone in, it would've been a totally different hockey game. Hell, if just one of them went in it would've gone from being "domination" to being a "slug fest" where "heavy blows were traded"...it is quite obvious that none of the hockey reporters for the papers know what the hell they're talking about. Okay, I will concede that I am biased in favor of our guys, but it was a tight game, they just had a noticeable edge that carried through the game. Our cheering section was nuts, though, and we most certainly drowned out the Eau Claire kids during the last minute of th game. Honestly, when Cody finally did score, we were all as happy as if we had won the game. I feel for our guys, though - that had to've been such a frustrating game to play, just judging by how frustrating it was to watch them put so much effort into it and get so little in return.

Anyway, hockey rants aside...err, wait. Briefly, I'm rather disgusted that the Gophers let their first game against Anchorage slide, but they won the next one, and while we certainly aren't going to have home ice for the first round of the WCHA playoffs, if we hold things together well enough, we're in position to go to the NCAA tournament. Funny, given that we're seventh in the WCHA, and eleventh nationally. I think that says something about the strength of the WCHA (that and the four or five WCHA teams in the top 10), as well as how much stronger our nonconference schedule is than Wisconsin's (haha).

So, properly breaking away from hockey, I procured both Sins of a Solar Empire and No More Heroes. Haven't played a whole lot of the latter, but it's fun and bloody and the controls are good, for the most part. The lack of camera control gets annoying, but you can blame that on the shitty Wii controller. That whole one analog stick thing is a bit of a problem. And by a bit, I mean it's a huge problem that they should've foreseen, but failed to for some reason. Not every game for a console is a shooter or a party game, Jesus. Sins is a blast, and extremely elegant in terms of how it works. The strategy involved is almost excessively simply - it's all about choke points and spread your forces to cover as much of your territory as you need. Even when you're attacking an enemy, it becomes an issue of pincering their worlds so that they can't rebuild behind you, or else taking over the worlds as you clear them. Either way, it's very fun. I'm having a few issues on larger games where my video driver crashes when I'm zooming out while ships are entering or leaving phase space...not sure whether it's the game, my video card or drivers, or whatever, but it's not a deal-breaker and on the small maps it's rarely an issue. I might just need to update my video drivers at some point.

There was supposed to be some meat to this somewhere, but I don't know that I'm ever going to get to it. First base is comfy, and I don't really feel motivated to move beyond that; I'm also moderately ticklish, apparently.

School's getting to be a bitch, but the Am Lit research paper is almost done, which is going to offer a nice reprieve and a chance for me to get Chem in order. Calc and physics are going fine, we're almost done with editorial stuff in Wayfarer, and Am Lit should be just dandy when this research paper gets finished. Billy Budd is a fucking twit and I'm happy that he died, though the fact that Sarah is in love with Claggart only serves to reinforce my conviction that she is the devil in miniature human form.

I've been hearing marginally more from Libby, recently, which is to say I've actually been hearing from her. We chatted a few weeks ago about nothing in particular, and then proceeded to talk shit on Friday night about the state finals. Kinda annoying, 'cause apparently she's not into hockey at all, but I imagine there had to be an underlying joking nature to the whole thing; anything else would seem a little out of character. Either way, it was nice to talk to her, though I'm getting the impression that, unfortunately, she didn't get into Stanford, or at least got wait-listed. The fact that she brought up being a national merit finalist but not Stanford when I asked for life was going seemed to seal that one, at least for now. Eh, hopefully in a month I'll get some big-texted, obnoxious email about how she got in; that would make me smile. It really has been nice to hear from her and Nat every now and then; it provides me with that little bit of special conversation that I don't get enough of at school. I guess you could question my mental fidelity at this point, but I don't really care; my thoughts are inviolate, as far as I'm concerned, and so long as you don't act on them, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Finally, I'm reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is amusing, and I've very slowly been getting back into the writing groove, which makes me very happy.

>>Sam'ich out<<
"She's [still] on fire"

Grades and Such

2008-02-16T22:01:00.000-08:00

Well...progress reports dropped and things were less than spectacular. Bs in Physics and Calc, though the latter should be doing better once I get corrections in and when he gets around to grading our last little test, 'cause I did well on that. And I've got this Physics unit down, too, which should help. A- in Am Lit, but the whole research paper thing should jack my grade up nicely, as will the Dickinson Essay, inshallah. Hrm, well, everything else was cheery, though my Chem grade will likely take a bit of a dip after our first exam. Multiple choice was alright...if I guessed well on a few key questions I think I'll have come out quite well; lost a few points on the second free response section, but overall that was good too. First free response, though, ate my lunch. If I'm lucky, I'll get around half points for that section total, in which case my grade wouldn't be awful, really, but that would be a best case scenario, and, well, we saw what happened last time I was hoping for on of those.

Finished Assassin's Creed today (finally). Enjoyed it. The fights with Robert de Salle and his goons were annoying, though throwing him around and then stabbing him in the throat when I was on the verge of getting killed myself was exhilarating. Haven't thoroughly enjoyed a game and played through it so completely since BioShock. I'm not sure I'm totally down with the criticism of the ending...it was interesting, and yes it was a cliffhanger, but it's setting up the rest of the series nicely, and I'm looking forward to more good stuff in the future. What else...played Guitar Hero quite a bit and I've got most of the stuff on medium down pat, but hard is beyond me...the whole having to move your hand thing is just asking too much. Oh, and I am quite looking forward to getting Sins of a Solar Empire. It always looked interesting and has turned into quite the RTS darling, apparently, so I am quite excited to throw away countless hours on that (read: terrified).

Let's see...and then there's that other thing...Most certainly not something for even accidental public consumption, so check out the Other Book if you can. If not, well, then don't worry about it.

Tata, now.
~Mr. Sam'ich
"it's raining blood!!!"

Achy

2008-02-02T15:04:00.000-08:00

Hrm...Latin Convention was most certainly interesting, for a number of reasons. Primarily, because everyone was well behaved, which was actually quite enjoyable - it is entirely possible to have fun hanging out and playing Halo, Guitar Hero, and the like (we quite seriously had about 4 or 5 360s spread out throughout the juniors and seniors). We all displayed some vague modicum of school spirit, which was quite nice, though it did involve me doing a lot of yelling and now my voice is rather raspy, though I think I shall describe it as "sultry" as that is more amusing. I have also justified not buying eitherHalo 3 or Call of Duty 4, for several reasons. I also perfectly understand the "tightness" of the Halo 3 controls and why reviewers love it so much - I just don't. If nothing else, the grass visibly popping in constantly is maddening. I hate CoD4 for all of the reasons that make me love games like Team Fortress 2. Guitar Hero was interesting...I was very bad at it, but it was also intensely entertaining, and I am very tempted to purchase it. I won first in some category...derivatives, I think, though I thought that I heard that is was Greek derivatives, which would be very odd as I didn't take that test, but at the same time the odds of me checking the wrong test bubble and yet having an answer pattern that was perfect seem close to nil, so perhaps I just wasn't paying attention. We also won (as a school) second in the overall qualitative category, which was both very surprising and entertaining.

I feel like perhaps I would like to write something moving or personal or whatever, but I don't know that I have the words for something singularly eloquent at present. Suffice it to say, I have found that I am still in love with some of my memories, quite specifically, one of them. I was thinking about it on the way home from Convention, and then reading Eliot's minibio for my AmLit research paper seemed to crystalize a lot of these feelings as he seemed to do the same sort of thing, though for entirely different reasons. Frustrating, yet interesting and perhaps not entirely unexpected, yet its still something that I have to deal with. Well, its not so much the attachment to the memories as it is the implication that that attachment brings with it. But I've already resigned myself to that sort of thinking, so perhaps its not so bad.

Tried to get started writing my new story; not sure how it's going to come out, but we'll see.

I'm hunting around for summer writing programs and have found one at Stanford that is very interesting, but also rather expensive. As I said, interesting, though, and I really would like to do it. Though part of me would worry about the whole getting attached to a place like that before I get in. I would provide good motivation for that last semester of high school, though. If it matters.

Tata.

2007-12-09T19:15:00.001-08:00

Ooops! Forgot a parting shot.

- Veracity Out -
"everything went numb from the money and the guns -

- and somewhere in the distance they heard something someone said:
HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?"

MEDIC!!!

2007-12-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a while, far too long, really...I think I've mentioned that before, either here or in the Other Book...Either war, I've delved into why briefly somewhere, or at least thought about it in my head. In short, no emotional tension/need to vent=no real need to blog. Unfortunate, really, because I'd like to have all of these records floating around for my own future use. So...status update. I'm not even really sure how much has been logged either here or in the Other Book, so I guess I'll just jump in somewhere.

School's...well, I've vented my feelings on school. I really want to go to Stanford, as I'm sure I've voiced. Again, haven't really visited many other places, but there was definitely a feel to it, a sort of certainty that I would fit in there very well. It's hard to keep confident about that, seeing some of my grades tank and not really being able to do anything about it...It's just ridiculously frustrating...god.

In other news, I cracked Team Fortress 2 and really enjoy it, though I despise the chat features. I realize it can be useful for coordination and what not, but I'm not that serious about the whole thing, and I really don't like having some 30 year old fuck telling me what to do, etc. Funny, the exact opposite of what I usually end up hearing on PA and Kotaku and whatnot. Basically, the lack of voice support isn't an issue at all, and I would almost like playing on Live just to see whether the "brats" that everyone bitches about are really brats or just funny and immature. I polished off Episode 2 and enjoyed that as well.

I guess I don't really know why I'm here (blogging, I mean). I could be studying, but I think that I'm pretty well prepped for the calc test (physics not so much, but that hardly matters any more). I think that the Chem exam went well, but we'll have to wait...actually, he'd better have them graded by tomorrow now that I come to think of it. Dear God, that's going to be nerve wracking, but if I ace it, that boosts my grade significantly.

Basically, I'm very worried about school, I still, STILL haven't been able to clear my head/emotions, but I guess I probably never will be. Annoying, but at least I'm getting used to it. Katherine is fun, though I've been dragging my feet and it's getting very annoying. The fact that I actually listened to a certain little birdy and got burned for it still annoys me, and then the weather didn't cooperate, and then she was busy. So in essence this has gotten dragged out three weeks longer that I would have liked, but I guess I've already proved that holding out a little longer than necessary is better than being a little to quick on the trigger.

Feeling good about calc, I think it's time to go set some people on fire.

Failing/Flailing

2007-11-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

Hrm, yeah, so...School's all chipper and whatnot, and the weekend was rather fun. But now I feel like I'm wading through an overwhelming sea of teh Awkwards. Hopefully I can just move past it, 'cause I'd really not like this to turn into a redux of 8th grade...God, but it definitely feels like it already. I hope not. But it still feels like it. Oh well, if nothing else I hope I can be a little more resilient than I was then. But I'm not worrying about that right now; I'm more concerned with getting past what I hope is just a little rough spot. Not even rough, really, just awkward. Or maybe I'm just blowing this all out of proportion.

- Veracity Out -
"and as you close your eyes for the Big Sleep, I hope you'll think of me"

Happy Birthday to Me

2007-11-05T20:39:00.000-08:00

So, yeah....It's odd, the first time since about 5th grade that anyone is even aware that it's my birthday, and it seems that just about everyone that I'm even vaguely friends with knew about it. Nice, really, just not something that I'm used to. I'm certain you can blame Facebook for the vast majority of the awareness and thus the spike since last year. I didn't really need Nikki and Pablo assaulting my hair, but that's a small price to pay. The sign that Katherine made made my day, honestly. Dealing with the 19 (a lot for me) birthday-related wallposts was rather daunting, but whatever.

I made off like a bandit - tons of CDs that I will barely be able to get through by the end of the week, thus it will be a while before I can formulate a full opinion of all of them. The Treble Charger one is decent, and I like the Third Eye Blind CD. Beyond that, I haven't even listened to any of the others, but that'll come. I also scored the AoE III expansion, the Orange Box, World in Conflict, and Personna 3. The last one certainly wins that best box award - it was stuffed with an art book, a CD, and a massive manual in addition to the actual game. I was actually planning on playing it a little, but the internet and the plethora of Call of Duty 4 reviews/Facebook washed out any chance of that. I really ought to be going to bed soon...I like this whole being awake during school thing. Personna 3, interestingly, chews up 67 MB of memory...year, MB, as in megabites - ie, nearly 7x as much memory as a single PS2 memory card holds. I suppose PS2s with harddrives are available in Japan, but anyone in the US who doesn't have a PS3 is basically screwed. So, for this game, at least, I feel like the early adoption paid off. I put in a run as the Japanese on AoE III and enjoyed it, but it's going to take a long time to get a feel for any of the three new civs.

Oh, I suppose I need to scrounge up movie times, seeing as how I somehow didn't get turned down today. That was pretty much the cherry on top of an already excellent day.

- Veracity Out -
"my favorite blank spot :p"

Burn That Shit

2007-10-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

To put it mildly, I'm rather annoyed with school. The whole concept of the thing in general. I've had this idea bouncing around in my head for a long time - the whole flawed high school education process, getting into college etc. It's just starting to crystallize and I might have to go and pump out an invective essay about it sooner or later, but not now. I'm just pissed, extraordinarily. Hylkema's BS is annoying me, and I'm just getting rather stressed out. Oddly enough, I feel less worried about the AP Chem exam tomorrow than I do about the Physics mid term. I suppose part of this is fueled by the Stanford trip, which has reignited my interest in college, Stanford in particular.

I was very pleasantly surprised by how nice that campus was. To some extent, the location felt...wrong, to me. Or perhaps it was that I felt out of place, but either way it was silly and perhaps fueled by a little too much Red Hot Chili Peppers than anything else. Regardless, the campus was gorgeous and the whole place has really gotten its hooks into me, perhaps enough to get me to apply myself in school, though not nearly as much as my resurgence in determination. Of course, that's been accompanied by panic at the way that (I perceive) my grades have been sliding in all of the classes that I can't really afford to pay attention to. Anyway, Stanford was teh awesomes and it would take a LOT to convince me to go somewhere else over it. I'm certainly still very interested in Duke and Penn, but both require that you apply to a specific college within their system, which I'm not a fan of, considering I have nearly no idea what I want to do/study. Of course, I have yet to visit either of those two, or any other colleges for that matter. Berkeley was nice, but it just didn't quite feel right. Too big and impersonal. Very, very pretty campus though, perhaps even more than Stanford's, though I was very cold at the time and I held that against the place to some extent. I suppose if I were to offer an early guess, I'd go with Stanford, but that's more a gut feeling than anything.

Yesterday was pleasantly surprising - I ended up talking to Libby via the gmail chat function for a rather long time. It was really nice to talk to her again, though now that I'm (somewhat) detached, I'm starting to formulate a less biased opinion of her. Nothing earth shattering, but she has a rather deep streak of school hate and general grumpy feelings. Granted, Katherine is the same way, and between the two of them and my own frustration with school...well, I think the difference is that I don't hate most of the people at Edgewood, I just couldn't care less about their existence one way or another. That goes for a good chunk of the people, and I'm rather friendly with everyone else. So, indifference on my part, coupled with extreme frustration with the system that is fueled perhaps more by pressure and stress than anything else. That's certainly where the flaw in the system lies - there's more pressure involved in getting into a top-flight college than the actual academics involved in the institution. Certainly classes can be expected to be challenging, but the need to break yourself in order to push your grade up that marginal half percent in order to get an A instead of an A- ceases to exist (or it would for me). Right, so as I have been trying to say, over the course of talking with Libby she mentioned that she applied ED to Stanford, mailed in everything a few days ago, and that was basically the hammer blow that solidified a lot of my desire to go there. Not because she is specifically, but simply because it offered me a tangible view of somebody who is probably going to get in, and on the one hand it leads to a carrot dangling in front of my nose, it's also discouraging. And not. She certainly doesn't have the high class rank that I do, but her test scores are sterling. Extra-curriculars are more or less on par, so it gives me hope that I have a shot at getting in. I'm just concerned that I'm getting too strung up on getting into Stanford, and if I don't get in, my reaction could be rather bad. I just don't want to not get in, and then end up being a grouch about it for the next four years of college, wherever I end up going.

I find it interesting that, a year ago or whatever it was when Mater started shoving these college overview books down my throat, I felt intimidated. These kids that were getting in were ridiculously smart as well as well-traveled and had simply done so many things that it was singularly mind-boggling. But now, I'm starting to come to a strange sort of realization - that I'm quickly turning into one of these psychos. I've certainly got the grades, and I feel (right now, though perhaps not really correctly) that I'm coming out of a brutally cut throat institution (which could help with a little freshmen year push at the start of college) whereas somebody like Seth or Libby doesn't really have to deal with that. All of a sudden I've been all over Europe, for Christ's sake I spend my summers learning for fun and I'm a three season athlete in addition to the Wayfarer editor. So perhaps my chances are a little better than I'm afraid they are.

So high school's a hellacious shit hole, what else is new?

- Veracity Out -
"by the way i tried to say i'd be there, waiting for you"

travel note

2007-10-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've been in California since Thursday, visiting colleges, for the most part. Actually, I've done nothing but visit colleges, and study like crazy for the AP Chem exam that's looming on Wednesday. And prep for the Am Lit essay, and prep the AP Chem lab for Monday. And do the AP Chem quiz. Dear God, it's been a stressful few days. Not much to say, really. Stanford>Berkeley, certainly, but I was more or less expecting that. And now it's time to get not nearly enough sleep and spend a few long plane rides trying to study some more and tie up the last few loose ends that I've left lying about. Quite good fun. I really ought to write more about my impressions of Stanford, but I think I can sum it up quite nicely in that there was nothing about it that I disliked, and I would certainly like to go there, if I got in. I'm interested to see what my reaction to Penn is, though I think that I'm prejudiced enough in its favor that I will find plenty to like about it as well. The only thing that concerns me is that I feel extraordinarily out of place in California - specifically in Palo Alto/Stanford. San Francisco wasn't so bad, and the Berkeley campus itself made me feel much more at home, what with the greenery and such. The school itself didn't do much for me though - if I wanted to go to a bigger university type place, I'd stick to Michigan or Madison.

I suppose I should be steeling myself for Monday/Tuesday, as the girls cross country team will likely castrate me if I don't get moving, but I guess we'll see how that goes.

Funny, I've been staring at a green dot for the past half hour, wondering whether or not I want to do anything, and I've actually resisted the temptation, oddly enough.

- Veracity Out -
"i'll be there for you"

PS - happy 100th post. took a while to get here, and i feel like i ought to do more to commemorate it, but i'm rather tired and i have to get up at around 3:30 in the morning...joy.

teddy bear

2007-10-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the Other Book, Homecoming was fairly fun, though I'm of the opinion that the dance sucked. I feel kinda bad about that, as she seemed rather bored and I sorta feel like it's my fault...Apparently interest in further activities is muted, which I suppose is alright...I'm rather swamped with school and cross country this week and likely next week as well, so until then I'm not singularly interested in dating or whatever.

I have stumbled upon the conception of that certain Someone as a teddy bear, partly as a result of minor references to that person during conversations prior to Homecoming. Why the image has stuck, I cannot say, and why I'm having a damn relapse, I don't know, but both are happening and it's rather annoying, especially considering that I have other things to deal with. Perhaps I need to give it more time, but I don't know that that would help much, given that this Teddy Bear has become my muse of sorts, at least for the LiZ Secondary Edition project, and I'm certainly not going to be finishing that any time soon. I really ought to get around to mapping out the story for it, it nothing else. Ah, I wish I could move on entirely from this, but at the same time my memories are far too fond and precious for me to let go of.

- Veracity Out -
"pull the curtain/begin"

Beyond the Realm of Fairness

2007-09-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

For the record, I would like to state that the concept of homework over the weekend is satanic. Honestly, homework in general is distasteful, but I understand the need for it. I would also advocate a longer school year or simply a longer day in exchange for no homework whatsoever. Not only does it run contrary to how work and the real world work, it creates unnecessary stress and whatnot. Certainly essay-worthy fodder, but I'll stash this for later.

Cross Country for the rest of the season is up in the air, but won't be by about 1:40 tomorrow afternoon. We'll see how it goes; honestly, I'd like to keep running at least for this season, but if I don't get an A on the Chem Exam, I don't know that I really have much choice.

The great video game crunch is beginning, just as school is starting to get hairy. I've nearly put BioShock to bed, which will be a great help, but then God of War 2 is still waiting to be finished off, and Shadow of the Colossus hasn't even been started. Throw into that that arrival of Eternal Sonata, and the beast that I dare not name, and it's going to be an interesting string of weekends. Halo 3 has gotten an interesting mix of reviews that seem to divide sharply between nearly perfect and pretty good but not great. Understandable, given the hype, and my personal feeling is that I will likely fall in line with the more "meh" group rather than the Halo 3 praise band. I may buy it, eventually, but I think for now I may sit on my hands. I really don't have the time to invest in multiplayer of any variety, and hence I haven't picked up Warhawk yet. Heavenly Sword still needs to be polished off, but considering that it's supposed to be a rather brief experience, that shouldn't be much of an issue.

I've more or less given up on Ulysses, which is sad, because I really do want to read it, however there are two factors conspiring against the endeavor. One is the total lack of time to do any free reading, which is not a surprise (a side note: I have just realized for horrendous this year will get when we finally start reading novels in Am Lit). Only chewing on 10 pages or so every week makes it very difficult to keep track of what is going on in any story, and this is especially problematic with something as convoluted as Ulysses. Additionally, there is the edition issue. Easton Press books are very nice to look at, but not necessarily the most readable. The French dashes instead of quotation marks are extremely problematic in a book of this nature, never mind simply being annoying in the first place. I may try to get a normal version, but until then, I'll shelve this guy for now.

I'm thinking a vest would look rather nice for Homecoming, so I just need to secure a date...Hmm. Part of the problem, as I mentioned in the Other Book, is that I'm not feeling entirely up to it...At least my options have more or less narrowed themselves down to a single person, but nonetheless...I wish my skies were slightly more cloudy than they are at present. Honestly, I've been feeling rather crappy in general - dissatisfied with school, friends, everything in general. A weekend to completely relax would do me wonders, but that's never going to happen until, well, Thanksgiving, at least.

- Veracity Out -

Sam, focus!

2007-09-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm supposed to be studying for Euro, have been "studying" for the last...Jesus, hour and a half. And by studying I mean flitting about teh internets and wasting ridiculous amounts of time. Well, I'm probably going to be up late as it is, and all I have to study for is that damn test.

In other news, I'm rather jittery, extremely energetic...Yeah, massive ADD attack, except for that whole I-don't-have-ADD thing. But that's not really that important. I've actually been feeling quite energetic all week - catching up on sleep over the weekend certainly helped. Cross Country has been going well too, and that helps. We did a rather beastly run that involved tortoises and hares, but I honestly enjoyed it - certainly more than any interval run. Which reminds me...we haven't run intervals in something ridiculous like three weeks. God, I love Cooper. Regina can still burn in hell, though.

And of course, Homecoming is only 2 1/2 weeks away, so everyone has to secure their dates RIGHT NOW. Caryn, Nate, Freddy, Maggie, Laura, and Josh don't seem particularly interested in actually going, which could prove very problematic. The bigger problem is who I'm going to ask, which I really ought to do tomorrow. No time to think up some creative, cute way to ask, considering that I haven't even decided who I want to ask...fuck. There's the safe bet that I don't know that I'm totally interested in, though it would be fun, the probably not going to happen one that I really want to pursue, and then the probably safe and fun but potentially problematic for other reasons one...Too many choices; I wish I could just ask somebody. I think Nate encapsulated it rather well, though, "You're only a junior once, go for it". And I probably will, I have a back up, if nothing else. I just...I feel like it could be a really bad idea, or it could be fine, I'm just not really sure. MaryKate's going with a freaking caveman, but at least she talks to him occasionally. Aw, hell, I'll probably go for it, and if that doesn't work out...oh well.

In the meantime, I'll pretend to study while carrying on a long online conversation with Eleana that involves repeatedly sending each other alcohol. Woo!

And holy shit, redox looks scary. I'd rather play with derivatives and find area under a curve (actually, I really do like doing that).

I'm also tempted to email Libby, considering that she appears to be online at present...but perhaps she doesn't want to hear from me, I don't really know. Ah, in my present mood I'll probably send her something if she's still online.

- Veracity Out -
why the fuck not?

Pushing Forward

2007-09-17T18:58:00.000-07:00

Just got out of one hell of a week, managed to actually catch up on sleep this weekend in spite of having to get up at 5:30 or something ridiculous like that on Saturday to get to Mt. Horeb on time for the cross country race. The race itself was atrocious, as far as I'm concerned, but both my coaches and I have recognized that it's because I'm trying to run dHat's race rather than my own. I'm aiming for amending that tomorrow and actually being well rested ought to help as well.

Our coaches saw fit to castigate us about certain aspects of the race on Saturday, some of which was merited, and other portions of which were not. Put simply, they were rather heavy handed in dealing out blame, but tended to be moderate across the board in spite of the lack of accuracy. We know what we need to do, though the coaches certainly don't realize that this team simply lacks the requisite talent to perform on a high level.

I actually had a quite nice day today, though I'm not entirely certain why. The grade report was rather good - did moderately well on an AP Chem quiz and exceedingly well on an AP Euro test and DBQ - 48/45 and 25/25 respectively. Beyond that, I think that I just had more energy than I normally do and was in a good mood as a result. The Homecoming push has finally gotten rolling, which I suppose makes sense considering the dance is only three weeks off. So, people will start plotting this week, doing some serious asking next week, and then Homecoming week itself will be rather demure as every waits for the dance itself. Rather odd to think that I'll be able to attend three major dances this year rather than just two. I suppose I've been considering my prospects, though I don't know that I'm going to act on them until late this week or early next week. No need to get too antsy. Well, perhaps. Decker already got screwed, which really sucks considering all of the effort that he put into his plan for asking. I just feel bad that he was finally going to ask someone only to be stymied. I'll have to make certain not to fall into a similar situation, though I think that my confidence is such that I'd be able to ask other people should I run into a brick wall initially, especially if it's just an issue of that person going with someone else rather than blatant rejection.

Interesting fodder for thought. In other news, I've started work on my agonizingly satiric "Gamer's Guide for Dating", which I think is perfectly hilarious if not functionally particularly useful. I suppose if you were a total social shutin and moderately retarded besides, there might be some merit in it, but most of the advice would likely just offend anyone who actually needed to follow it. Doubtless I come off as an ass, but that's why it's something that will just sit on my laptop and never see the light of day, unless I find some expedient way of thrusting it forth into the public sphere.

My parents took pity on my being-crushed-by-school-ness and decided that video games would be a good salve. Now if I had the time to play them...perhaps. I suppose it's a good thing that the first was Heavenly Sword, and the other was Oblivion, which I already have. The fact that, apparently, the Best Buy employee being questioned about suitable game ideas was surprised that I already had BioShock is depressing in the extreme. The game is a out of the park homerun and has a very good chance of running away with GOTY, though Call of Duty 4 will likely give it a run for its money. I refuse to acknowledge the possibility of Halo 3 garnerning the title, though it is certainly a possibility, though honestly I don't think that it will happen. Anyway, Heavenly Sword is delightful visually - on par with Gears, honestly - and the combat is decent. Better than Kingdom Hearts, but perhaps not on quite the same level as God of War. The game just feels very shallow, lacks puzzles of nearly any variety, and some of the cutscenes are genuinely fruity. I believe the evil king fellow offered 100 gold pieces and a bag of Doritos as a reward to his soldiers for killing me. The action-comedy mix worked well in Kill Bill because it didn't make sense at all and yet did, here it's just asinine. I didn't pay for it, though, so it's not that it matters much. I'll certainly pick up Eternal Sonata at some point this week. Whether I succomb and buy Halo 3 remains to be seen; probably not on launch day, considering how many other games I have still waiting on my plate and my relative disinterest in the series.

AP Chem awaits.

- Veracity Out -
"I hope you had the time of your life", really. Moving on is the hardest part, but I'm getting there, day by day. I wish there would be some cloud cover, and yet I don't know that it would help.

Hey, Mrs. Potter, won't you talk to me?

2007-09-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

Kinda an interesting day. Had Kaplan for the first time today, and of all the people who should be in the class, Kristina was. Nice to see her, though I think we're both different enough now and not forced into WCATY companionship that we may not really be awesome friends or anything. Oh well, I'm getting used to that feeling a lot this year. WCATY definitely had some retrograde actions.

On a WCATY note, I'm actually feeling much better about the whole thing, especially the...meteorological aspect of it. For some reason, I had this little mental conversation with myself and ended up saying something like "Yeah, she gall durn spoiled me rotten" and for whatever reason, that's been making me feel better. Fingers crossed, but I may be finally getting over this thing. Of course, Eleana had to go and gripe about missing WCATY on Facebook, so that may kick it off again, but for now I'm doing rather well.

I started reading Ulysses last night, and though I've only delved twenty pages or so into it, I like it, and am not feeling particularly overwhelmed, though it'll be interesting to see how much of it I actually get.

Anyway, I have a delicious idea for an essay. Especially because I'm not an authority on the topic whatsoever. That's what makes it fucking hilarious, but so will the quasi-technical diction and rather blunt ways of putting things. "If she wants to go for a walk, your primary goal should be finding a bench or somewhere else cozy to sit down in the dark". "A lull in conversation is either a cue that she's bored and you suck and talking, or she really would like you to stick your tongue as far down her throat as humanly possible. Be warned, making her puke will not go over well and she will likely not want to go out with you again. Or anyone else for that matter - word will get out". Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I present A Geek's Guide to Dating. Specifically for guys, really, but I think it ought to be hilarious if I can muster enough creative ways of phrasing very mundane things like holding her hand and things like that. Should be fucking hilarious.

- Veracity Out -
goodnight

I's rather annoyed at myself.

2007-09-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

So basically I was supposed to spend today getting all of the work done that I had for this weekend, but basically all I've achieved is doing most of my chemistry quiz. I still need to prep that lab for Monday, and get working on editing my Joy Luck essay. It's basically done, I just want to work on sentence efficiency and things like that - basically tightening the whole thing up and making it all perfect-like. That and I have to finish reading Death of a Salesman, which I just remembered. Lots of fun stuff to be doing.

Had another mini-relapse, though nowhere near as bad as it was last weekend. The fact that I didn't go and dig out the old WCATY yearbooks certainly helped...I think it was looking at pictures of everyone and realizing that I'm probably never going to see many of those people again in my entire life that was so singularly depressing. It would certainly be nice to hear from some people occasionally, but for the most part I haven't been doing much to keep up with others, either. Oh well. The vigil continues, as I expected it to. I'd really like to get something eventually, but if there needs to be some downtime for a while, I can certainly understand that. What with school starting and all, everyone's probably getting just as busy as I am.

Speaking of which...Calc is going well; rocked the test and whatnot, so as long as homework grades don't weigh to much, I shouldn't have much trouble. Granted, we haven't learned anything new yet, so there could always be some problems from that sector, but I'm not really worried about it. Minor hiccups in Chem, but I think I'll be able to take care of that as long as I'm careful enough when doing lab reports and what not. Just gotta make sure that everything is in order instead of making retarded math mistakes like I did on both the last lab report and the quiz. Am Lit is officially a breeze...the whole writing well thing that she's trying to teach us is essentially what I've known and been doing since, or somewhere about the middle of freshmen year. Granted, I don't always apply it when I ought to, which is part of the reason for going back and cleaning up the Joy Luck essay. Euro seems to be going well; I eviscerated our first Sherman, and the test seemed rather easy, though they're supposed to get a little harder. Physics, is, of course, a joke. Basically, nothing's going to be a bear this year, I've just gotta stay on top of everything and make sure that I don't royally fuck up.

I'm nearly done with the initial layer of my Korlinosk map, but I'm probably going to go back and color code everything, which I think should help reading it considerably, not that anyone other than me is ever going to read it. Nonetheless, it's pretty and therefore I like it.

Wow, how is it already nearly a third the way through September? Shit, that means homecoming is approaching much more quickly than I really anticipated...Speech! Speech! On a Mr. Regina note, we pretty much all skipped practice today and I fully expect heads to roll for it. I was going to run today, but...well, I didn't, what a surprise!

- Veracity Out -
"if you're the Queen of California, then..."

Pretty Fucking Pleased With Myself

2007-09-03T19:15:00.001-07:00

Well, I got what I wanted, yep. Good fucking job for me. I wanted a resurgence in post-WCATY mopey-ness, and by hell I managed to stir some up. Sit around, look at old yearbooks, yep, good job retard. Dammit, I hate myself. Especially because I know that it's entirely ridiculous. Yes, WCATY was a blast, but there are plenty of cool people at Edgewood too that provide a similar level of fun. It'd help if I were better friends with Katherine, Sarah, Mary Kate, etc., but really, there's not that much difference between all of the different groups from Edgewood and WCATY as long as you ignore the jocks/preppy kids. Which I can. Of course, there's really only one person from WCATY that I really, truly miss. At least I'm honest enough that it's really the intellectual part of that that I'm longing for rather than all of the extracurriculars. So I'm not a total bastard. It's just...God, I thought I was over this, and then all of a sudden I'm not; by the way, that last sentence was only about 50% true. I...I just wish I could be more realistic about all of this, I wish that I could just let go, but I can't. Of course I'm not going out of my way to make things better for myself, but I can't help it...I thought I had laid this whole thing to rest, but I was quite obviously wrong.

- Veracity Out -
release me

Would You Kindly

2007-09-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

Decent race, time was right around where I expected it to be. Felt really good on the first mile and easily ran it in under 6 minutes, but after that I lost a lot of steam, especially going up the opening hill for the second time. A good starting point, I'm satisfied with it. dHat sucked major wang and I sorta wish I'd had enough gas in the tank to catch him and beat him, but he's probably not going to be pulling ahead much by Thursday, so I can just take another stab at the whole beating him thing then.

I spent a good 5 or 6 hours this afternoon playing BioShock. I thought that I was already nearing the end of it, and then all of a sudden there's a boatload of additional things to do. A delicious surprise, really, though I ought to have seen it coming, I just didn't, being so engrossed in the game and whatnot. I'm moderately terrified by the prospect of playing through it again, but it'll be enjoyable. I wish that the two story lines would diverge sooner, but apparently only the ending is any different. If things split when you confront Ryan, then it would truly be a delicious experience, but the twist was delightful nonetheless. Of course I was caught off guard by it, but not entirely. There were enough allusions to Atlas by Ryan and others that I knew there had to be something more to him, I just didn't know exactly what it was. Fun, nonetheless.

Between BioShock and trolling through various Wikipedia articles, I'm feeling rather philosophical, and I think I might spend some time hammering out all of the bases that I want to cover with LiZ ed.2 before I forget all of them. It's turning into a depressingly large project, but I suppose that's to be expected. I still have no idea when I'm going to get around to writing it, but it could be a long time. The Warzone Project is officially dead, by the way. Not enough juice, nor planning, something that I'll have to keep in mind for LiZ.

I'm rather disappointed with myself. I'm slipping back into my Edgewood shell much more rapidly than I thought I would, but I guess that just hammers home the point: either you adapt, or you don't have any friends, and I'm a little too outgoing to be contented with the latter situation. Basically, I desperately need to finish that WCATY-Edgewood essay now before every last shred of my mopey emo-ness wears off. But it's not like I'm back to sophomore year entirely. My preppy tolerance has gone down, or at least I think it has. My dating standards have certainly risen, but that's really not a good thing for me. Very bad, actually; I might have to do something about that.

I have quite a bit of work that I need to do over the next two days, but I'll live. First I must finish BioShock, crank out those LiZ thoughts, and perhaps even play some Halo. For some reason I have a hankering to go back and revisit it, for whatever reason. I don't know why, but I'm terrified that I might actually end up buying Halo 3 after all.

- Veracity Out -
"hey, mrs. potter, won't you talk to me?"

Verona Tomorrow

2007-08-31T19:44:00.001-07:00

First CC race of the season tomorrow. I really ought to be stretching and icing tonight, but I'm not going to. Not interested. Whatever happens, happens, and I think that the Reginator has a surprisingly chill view of the whole thing. As long as I'm under 20 I'm happy, under 19:30 would be excellent. Lower than that...I doubt it.

Mostly uneventful day. I'm getting concerned that all of my classes are just going to slip through my fingers. I've got a lock on Am Lit H now, and I don't think that Euro will be that bad, but we haven't had the first major round of tests yet. Chem feels good so far, but I'm waiting to get our quiz and lab back before I pass judgment on the class. AP Calc is what concerns me...sort of. I can't really figure out what I need to do to get decent grades on homework, but at the same time I don't know what a decent grade level is in the first place. Hylkema doesn't have anything about it on his website, though he did make allusions to the fact that percentages are going to be slightly lower than they would normally. I doubt that it's on the level of Chem, but I'd like to see what it's really like as well as find out what I need to do to get a good grade on my homework. The group project/test today was very easy, and I feel pretty good about the test that we took yesterday - I certainly know the concepts, it's just a question of whether I handled the actual math well enough. The last Latin quiz was atrocious, but I think I'll be able to get a handle on things as long as I don't mess up too much between now and when I relearn all of the grammar that we were supposed to have learned last year but didn't. So it's really not all that bad when I look at it like that, but I still can't help shaking the feeling that I'm losing my grip on my grades, and at the same time becoming emotionally shallow and derelict and whatnot. Not gonna dwell on that last point a lot, but I feel like I ought to be more...I don't know...upset about past events, and I'm not. It's not that I'm over them, I've just got a really cool attitude toward them and it kinda worries me.

In other news, the WCATY-Edgewood essay is progressing nicely, though it takes me three and a half pages to get to my main point and I still really haven't driven into it that much. Part of it is just that there really isn't a whole lot that I feel like I need to say about it; I don't want to labor the point - I'm going to come off as a huge ass anyway, no need to exacerbate that.

So now time for sleep and then running...Ugh.

- Veracity Out -
running on empty

A Preferably Brief Commentary

2007-08-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

Ran sissy intervals today, but we did them relay format which caused some real competition and thus real exhaustion. Though I think that had something to do with 30 minutes of weightlifting 8th mod and an hour of ultimate after school and before practice started. I'd really like to play, but I'm not sure how well it'll mesh with my other activities, especially this fall. Still bought a frisbee with "Edgewood Platypi" written on it. For five bucks, it was definitely worth it.

Made further progress on my rambling WCATY-Edgewood essay in World Religion...ah, what a wonderful class. Corey and I figured out what's going on with our Joy Luck project, and I think it's going to turn out very nicely. We actually spent more time talking about lacrosse than the actual project, which is fine with me. He's actually a cool guy, and much like Devin, if you can get him away from his usual group of friends, he's much more intellectual than he seems.

Interest is starting to take off on the whole lake trip thing, so hopefully the weather/lake level will cooperate.

AP Calc test tomorrow...I don't think it's going to be that bad, after having looked at the tests from the last few years. Nothing diabolical, and the concepts themselves are manageable.

So I'm tired but not overworked (thank God), and feeling decent, not mopey, but not better than indifferent. Which is alright. It's cozy.

- Veracity Out -
"...but she don't flow to me."

U-235 + neutron = ur town is SO pwnd!

2007-08-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Such was the conclusion of an hour and thirty-five minutes of AP Chem. Amazing what we get done in that class. Still, it's more than we managed to achieve in Euro, Calc and Physics all put together. Apparently the Hessian is nuts to an extent that I never imagined - if you want to know how a neutron is turned into a proton, you'd best bring your lunch, perhaps even a sleeping bag and a tape recorder. Delightful, especially 'cause Pantano was just like "Yeah, it just happens...I don't really know how, and I don't care. Go ask Hessler..." Fun stuff, most certainly.

Rather odd how school has been nowhere near as difficult this year as it was last year. Of course the largest part of that is the lack of 60+ pages of reading every night coupled with a monstrous quiz on the material the next day. There's a little of that in Euro, but not much (certainly not in terms of number of pages), and the quizzes aren't that bad, or frequent, for that matter. So the workload is lighter, but we've yet to enter the first wave of quizzes and tests (coming up around the end of this week and the start of next), so that's going to be the first major hurdle. Physics has been more or less written off, I won't be able to say for certain until I get my first Am Lit Hnrs paper back, and Chem, Calc, and Euro are going to be defined by the difficulty of the tests, but I can handle that. Cram for a few days before each exam, it's something that I can handle. The take-home quiz for Chem is easy (so far, though I've only done the first page, front and back). Supposedly all of the questions are from AP tests, but I get the feeling that they're the easy, warm-up problems that clutter the first page and keep you busy before you get into the real meat of the test and the true blood-letting begins.

Practice today was miserable in large part because of the heat, but tomorrow will doubtless be considerably worse unless there is a dramatic drop in temperature. I'm not sure how the race on Saturday will go, but given that my relative speed on the time trial yesterday was a minute faster than it was last year, I'm hoping to shoot for the 19:30 barrier. I'll see how it goes.

On a more personal note, I'm feeling rather conflicted. On the one hand, I've been suffering some major WCATY withdrawal, and the fact that nobody else is in school yet is making things worse. But the big thing is that I'm stuck in something of a middle ground. I'm not over it entirely, yet, but I've achieved a sort of numb, detached (I'm tempted to say indifferent, but that's not the right way of putting it - I certainly still care, I'm just not feeling anything, no sensation) state, very much like the passive, patient, waiting points that I hit earlier this summer. It's not the same, but the feeling (or lack thereof) is similar. The difference, of course, was the perception of hope, the knowledge that I hadn't been stymied yet, I was just being confronted by silence. Now I know how things stand, with no questions or doubts, and it sucks, but I've managed to detach myself from it. It's odd, because I feel like I should either feel more, be more wrapped up in this, or else be over it and ready to move on. But for now I'm stuck in No Man's Land, and it's a rather awkward position. It's fine, so far, and I think a nudge of any variety would get me moving elsewhere, but the thing is, I'm not really in any hurry to get anywhere, so I don't know that I even need to do much about it yet. Later, perhaps, but for now, I'm stuck in a comfortable rut, and I think I'll just remain here for a while.

I've decided that the worst part of this whole thing is that I got addicted to intellectual companionship. That was the core of the whole thing, what I really enjoyed as much as all of the additional things put together. I'd like to try and maintain that, somehow, because I got the taste for talking with someone who was easily as smart, if not even more intelligent, than me, and now I'm more or less hooked, and I don't have much of a supply either. That's the real problem. Even if there were people like that outside of my grade (there certainly aren't within it), I don't know that it would really be the same in a school environment where you're noticeably more segregated by age than we were at WCATY (despite being split up by block and whatnot, the distinctions between age never really took as much as they do at Edgewood). So it's frustrating, and I might even be willing to make further pilgrimages for the sake of that, either that or descend into the terrifying realm of Warcraft/Guildwars. It would be worth it, as far as I'm presently concerned. Even though Warhawk, Blue Dragon, BioShock, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Heavenly Sword, and Rainbow Six still need my attention. That's already a laundry list of games, and the holiday season hasn't even hit yet. Dear God, somebody save me.

So anyway, it's been clear skies, but I'm not expecting that to change until this weekend at the very least. If there isn't some cloud cover by then, I'll probably send a little message wishing luck at school, but I'll hold my silence beyond that for a while. If breathing space is needed, then I'll keep quiet for a few months.

- Veracity Out -
"How does it work?" "Black magic and voodoo, bitch!"

school, i hope you die. in a fire. slowly.

2007-08-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

So tired....Got most of my work done; everything, actually, and then some. With the exception of Calc, which I actually was supposed to do for tomorrow. Doesn't really matter, considering he doesn't collect it until Friday. I'll do it, eventually. But I seriously got up at 8, started working, and didn't quite working until 6. Then it was BioShock binge time. Plowed through a lot more of the game, and I'm on the last zone. Weird, cause it feels kinda short. Relative to something like the singleplayer for Gears, it's long enough, time wise, and in terms of the amount of places there are to move around and do things, but the world still feels smaller than it ought to, there isn't quite as much to do as you'd think, other than messing around with the gazillions of different plasmids. But really, there's so much more infrastructure in Rapture (or there should be), I wish I could go run around the engine rooms of the place, things like that - prowl through abandoned apartment blocks and stuff. It'd be both creepy and add a lot of space. I guess I feel like it should have all of the open space of an RPG, rather than the more shooter-like confines that it does have. I just wish there were some non-story related areas where you could run around and do things, the sorta stuff that I didn't really care about in Final Fantasy, et al., but here, with the combat far more entertaining (though still not spectacular), I want more to do. I guess I'm not done, yet, but still...Of course I'm going to have to play through it again on Hard so that I really have to mess around with the way you fight Big Daddies and whatnot, but it's just kinda feeling a little shallow right now. but again, I'm not done yet and there may still be a bunch to do. Great game overall, though.

Anyway, I was going to start working on an essay about WCATY and school and the differences between them, but I'm rather tired and I think I'll just go to bed instead.

After I make a brief Other Book entry, that is.

- Veracity Out -
the pillar of davidson

The Irony is Deliciously Crushing

2007-08-25T20:37:00.000-07:00

So I fucked up, what a surprise. It's not even that I messed up really, there was just a communication breakdown. Whatever, it was still fun...Just not the way I wanted things to turn out. I understand, certainly, but our respective situations are different, and I guess I felt compelled to give it a try. I'll blame the Reginator for that - instilling a "Why the hell not?" attitude in me about everything. It's not really a bad thing, most of the time, just not this time, necessarily. I feel bad more about the fact that it must have been terribly awkward, but I guess I just haven't had time to dwell on other things. I'm a little concerned about my social future, now, but that can't really be helped. Back to the bunker, more or less...I don't know that I ever expected or wanted to get a whole lot more out of Edgewood, but it also makes me realize that a college with less than 2,000 people would be oppressively small, in all likelihood. Last year I kinda adjusted to the size, but I'm feeling it rather noticeably now. There was certainly some retrograding as a result of WCATY. Yeah, so I'm stewing...This really isn't content for this space, so it's off to the Other Book.

Oh, NB: this school year will be miserable in the death-by-at-thousand-cuts sort of way as opposed to being squashed under one miserable class. I don't know which I prefer, but they both suck.

So a bleak outlook for school...fuck, I need to cheer myself up somehow.

feeling quite contrite,
Veracity

w00t!

2007-08-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

Great success. Very nice. So yeah, I got around to it and everything panned out very nicely. Actually ended up having a long conversation about colleges/parental expectations, crap like that. Quite delightful, and the most delicious part is that now the parentals are backed into a corner. Ah, the irony is so sweet - bear in mind, mater originally asked if I was going to follow through on this whole thing, and I himmed and hawed and didn't really do much of anything, and once I start making noises about wanting to go visit, she started getting a little worried but hoped that I would never have the organizational skills to get anything put together. And now there's a date and she's stuck and pissed and I'm reveling in it. Just as much as that 30 minutes conversation about colleges, though that was quite fun just on its own.

So there's the daily report for you - all goods, yezzir.

- Veracity Out -
50DKP MINUS!!!

Bioshock/Procrastinating

2007-08-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

So the Gamespot review of Bioshock was not as glowing as others. They encountered a little bug that was annoying, but their main beef seemed to be with the gameplay. That's part of the problem that I have with their decision to eschew catergorical numbers that feed into the collective score - in the old days they would have slapped this thing with tens for all categories except gameplay, and it would've been a high 9 in aggregate, but now they can be much more subjective about the process. They certainly didn't need to give it a 10, but I feel like 9 was a little low. Part of it is just that they're obviously a staff of hardcore shooter fans, and Bioshock doesn't fit that bill, but it really shouldn't be expected to, though it certainly will. So, Gamespot is really just reflective of the gamer market - Bioshock is a great game, but its commercial success may be somewhat muted by the fact that the Halo whores may not be that interested in it. If nothing else, it'll end up being extremely important, if not succesful.

So, yeah, I was gonna call her - should call her...but I'm dragging my feet.

First day of school, in other news. Didn't do anything, and I'm kinda curious to see which classes are going to end up being hard and which ones will be easy. Physics is gonna be a breeze, as will Latin 3 and World Religions, but beyond that...I'll have to see how it goes. Mertens didn't really appreciate my work on our summer project. It wasn't bad, but I was shooting for higher than a B+...oh well. I was afraid calc was gonna be hard, but we'll see how it goes - the homework tonight was actually quite easy. I think Chem will be the best, most thorough of the APs, cause Pantano is hellbent on making it so, and Euro may actually end up being one of the hardest ones, or not. Rothering is threatening daily quizzes and promising that they're not that easy, but I'll believe it when I see it. They're all multiple choice, and as long as he's not an asshole about the wording like Reginator, it shouldn't be that bad.

We basically led an open rebellion in CC today, appointing various new captains and whatnot. Quite delightful, though it did go a little too far when someone threw a nut @ el capitan. Oh well, he's a whiny bitch, so I'm not particularly concerned. I have to say, I really enjoy the fact that we are doing different workouts every day - I think we can credit that to Cooper, and the infusion of fresh ideas into the program is definitely going to help us, I think.

So, 30 minutes or longer after my original self-imposed deadline...Well, now or never (or tomorrow)...

- Veracity Out -
for some reason I think "definitely" should be spelled "definately", don't know why, but I always do - I think it's a more phonetic, sensible way, but that's just me

Dammit

2007-08-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

School. Somebody please shoot me.

Normally I'd try and write something profound and reflective here, something that I could look back on when the year's over and either laugh at myself or nod here and there respectfully, but I think I'll avoid that. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that all of the things that I really care about aren't connected with school in anyway at this point. It's weird how I really enjoyed WCATY the first time through, just as much the second time, but this year I look back on the whole thing much more fondly, even though the first year was pretty much better in every way, except for the one thing. But that's kinda big. Like huge, actually. Still...This year I wish I could substitute WCATY people for the entire EHS population with a few exceptions, last year, not so much. Weird, but that's just how I'm feeling right now.

Spent the whole day watching movies - Crank was funny, though it wasn't really supposed to be; Hot Fuzz was good, and then I watched Hero while playing Chrono Trigger. Mmm, delicious.

The vigil continues.

- Veracity Out -

a brief note...

2007-08-18T21:08:00.000-07:00

I will very likely explode when I finally get some new mail...

BIOSHOCK!!!

- Veracity Out -

BIOSHOCK!!!

Patience is Virtuous

2007-08-18T20:33:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm more or less alright with saying that I'm back to that neutral state that I hit a while back. I'm sure I mentioned something like that yesterday, but reinforcing it doesn't particularly hurt. Not to say that I wouldn't like to jump forward into that ecstatic phase if things go the way that I want them to, but I have at least convinced myself to stop worrying about it. Now, a negative reply would create some issues that would take a while to get over - so it's not so much a matter of being over it as simply being able to be patient and see how things turn out. I've made friends with silence and sky-blue. A good place to be, for now, I suppose.

Finished that damnable AP Calc packet after spending most of the day working on it. What was frustrating about the whole thing was that it was essentially based on all of the concepts that we had learned in Pre-Calc, but taken to another level of difficulty that wasn't appropriate for a summer review assignment. There were one or two concepts that were completely new, but for the most part I felt like I knew what the problems were based on, I just wasn't entirely certain how to proceed from where I was. So that's the last of the homework pile except finishing that final paragraph for Joy Luck. Should be a nice, relaxed day tomorrow, though I believe I may end up getting screwed into volunteering at the hospital. Won't that be just a delightful way to spend the end of my summer.

I've been more or less addicted to Underclass Hero and The Bottle & Fresh Horses over the last few days - though I do like the latter more as it avoids the blatant politics of the former and at the same time has a rambling, Southwest flavor that I enjoy, oddly enough. Certainly nothing that will engender a liking of country, but this...flavor (a good word for what I am trying to quantify, I find) appeals to me, not as a genre but merely a layer on top of the general rock that adds a certain something to the music as a whole.

Bioshock...I don't really know what to say, other than I wish it weren't coming out the day after school starts. Jesus, my grades are going to be hobbled right off of the bat with that thing devouring my time. In all honesty, I doubt that will happen, I just will end up drooling over the box while not actually having any time to play. That is going to suck royally. It's bad enough people already got copies early, the fact that I might have to wait even longer to really get into it is agonizing. Depending on what happens next weekend, I may have even less time to play, but in that situation, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Played a good bit of Chrono Trigger tonight, and I still really enjoy it. It's also not turning out to be horrendously long, which I really appreciate. I might even be able to finish it tomorrow, depending on how much time I end up sinking into it.

Rented several movies today. Jackass Number Two, Hot Fuzz, and Crank. Watched Jackass and really enjoyed it, though I think I enjoyed the first one slightly more given its greater focus on painful stunts and less on guys with their pants off. I'll watch the other two tomorrow, and probably Hero, the Last Samurai, and possibly V for Vendetta. My movie binge for the end of the summer. I'm looking forward to it. Oh, perhaps House of Flying Daggers as well, though I'd have to track down the tape, wherever it got to. Wow, I really want to watch Hero now...

So, a truncated version of my planned rant for yesterday about school. The TIME article was about how schools fail to meet the needs of exceptionally intelligent students (I enjoyed the reassurance that there are plenty of people out there who are significantly smarter than me, now if only I could convince other people of that...). Essentially their conclusion was that schools ought to let students skip grades when they needed to, but that doesn't really address the root issue for many of these students. It's not that they already know what's being taught in their grade, it's simply a matter of learning it much faster. It's not that the system needs to allow them more movement, it's that the system is fundamentally flawed in its very pacing, but rectifying that is difficult. An honors track of any variety would have made the last two years significantly less painful, but that would have broken with Edgewood's desperate attempts to homogenize and socialize every incoming student. It's an understandable goal for a school in its position where students come from a large number of feeder schools and cliquishness is a problem even as things are now. Nonetheless, serving the educational needs of the students trumps trying to integrate all of them socially; the social issue is easier to ignore at a larger school where there would be enough accelerated students that they would form their own subsociety within the greater one of the school. Now the issue with the honors program is that Mommy and Daddy's Little Billy is just as bright as everyone else, and why can't he be in the special classes? He's just as smart as those other kids who have been reading Shakespeare as long as Billy's been able to dress himself. Well, Little Billy's a stupid shit, but Mommy and Daddy certainly aren't going to admit that if they even realize it in the first place. Apparently that was more or less the situation in Fort ten years ago and the end result was that the Honors track was lowered so that it was essentially a regular track while "regular" classes became remedial ones for the truly stupid kids. So the parents need to be kept in line, but something needs to be done to accelerate the pacing for the students who need it. Use standardized entrance tests for the honors track and weed out the students who don't keep their grades up high enough. At a smaller school like Edgewood, it would be more difficult to implement as the honors kids would already be somewhat set aside from the general population, and being in different classes would exacerbate that, but in a larger public high school where you have at least 2000 students in aggregate, there's no reason that something like that would not work - put all of the truly gifted students in an honors track, at least for the classes where they excelled. Doing so would create a fairly tight-knit group of intelligent students who would, granted, by somewhat ostracized from the rest of the school population, but in a school that large, there would be enough students in the honors track that it really wouldn't make much difference.

Well, that ended up being longer than intended. I was going to fire off a few emails about the iFlag group, but I think I'll save that and others for tomorrow during my movie binge. I'll certainly be calling on Monday if I haven't received anything by way of reply before that point.

BIOSHOCK!!! BIOSHOCK!!! BIOSHOCK!!! BIOSHOCK!!! BIOSHOCK!!!

- Veracity Out -
"Why would you put that in a lollipop?"

argh

2007-08-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

Stymied once again. Ah well. It's actually getting rather late, and though I had intentions of musing on the American education system and its inherent flaws, I think I'll save that for later. Inspired, of course, by the TIME cover article for this week, but I have a slightly different take on the whole thing, more a view on society in general. I think Frank Herbert saw something in society and translated it into the Bene Gesserit distinction between humans and animals (though both are homo sapiens).

Um, so yeah...I'm over it, though there's not really anything to be over yet, and I may not actually need to be.

Anyway...

- Veracity Out -

to the very best at all of the worst times

2007-08-16T20:06:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I don't really know what that's supposed to mean, but I've been rather grouchy today because of a certain color that is permeating a certain area, and I've covered all of this ground before so I'm not sure how much I'll say. Honestly, even in The Other Book, saying the same thing over and over again is both difficult and not particularly cathartic. It would really help to talk to someone, or something like that. It would be even better to get a little color change, of course, but that's not really going to happen for another two days. Holding out and holding on. Oi, this sucks. I just hope this thing isn't going to turn into the monstrosity that that other thing was. Just this week, I hope. Saturday can't come soon enough.

I wonder if Saturday has any relation to Saturn? (ed: it is)

Watched American Pie 2 today. Funny, and yet it still has that tenuous thread or morality and stuff amidst its antipode. Odd how that crops up, but it seems to be a rather common thing in those type of movies, at least by the time you get to the end.

Spent the whole day (sorta) working on my paragraphs for Am Lit, and I'm almost done though I don't know if I'll entirely finish. I certainly have time to, but my motivation has died and my mood has headed south rather sharply. I'll probably put it off for tomorrow, which will in turn roll back the calc stuff...shit. I really hate that I have to spend the end of my summer doing all of this shit, but at the same time I certainly wasn't going to just chip away at it for an entire month. What happened to this month anyway? Jesus. Oh, right, it's only halfway done and the whole run to the Twin Cities chewed up time, plus there's this week, and hey, that's pretty much the whole month. It'd really be nice to have a day or two to completely unwind and not think about school or anything like that, and I guess it'd help if I got those fucking paragraphs done, but I don't know that I have the spirit or writing quality to work on it now. Most of the rest of them are of questionable quality as it begins, and being pissed off and tired as I am...I might just go to bed early instead of wasting 40 minutes staring at my computer. I'm not feeling a Chrono Trigger session.

CC is getting easy already, which is really nice. Of course that's going to change once races start, but the fact that the practices have already hit about the hardest they're going to and I can handle it is rather nice. Had a decent, civilized conversation with Hatley, though I still want to shave off his fagtacious goatee.

Wow, I'm a lot more angry than I thought I was...kinda worrying, really, but I guess I've got this all bottled up in me right now and don't have much of a method of releasing it. CC certainly isn't an escape valve - the whole point of that is to numb yourself to all of the physical pain and just let your mind rove where it will. So...Gears? No, not quite what I'm going for. It's not a brutal, violent angry, just more frustrated than anything else. Oh noes! This isn't supposed to start until a month or two into school. Well, I've had assurances that mod 2 will be the best class of my life, but I'm just kinda listless and uninterested at hearing that. I'm gonna be real pissed if this whole thing blows up and I end up being shoehorned into the anti-social slot again this year. Fuck, this could be a big, HUGE problem...but again, I don't know there's anything I can do about it. I'm pretty much at the beck and call of my emotions right now, and they're saying that I'm not going to be getting friendly with anyone right away. God, this sucks.

I'm just worried that I'll be rather bland when school starts and more or less shoot myself in the foot socially. Funny, cause I spent the whole second half of last year trying to amend my social standing, and even at WCATY I was rather determined not to regress, even though I was kinda under pressure (actually, no, I perceived that I was under pressure) to do so. And now I've gone and done it all on my own. Damn it, I don't want to be Mr. Grouchy-I-hate-you-all this year, but I very well could be. Shit, I need to get an answer on this thing definitively pretty soon. Yet, I can't bring myself to be blunt about it. Alright, fingers crossed for Saturday.

I was chastising myself earlier for being so hopeful for a color change, telling myself that it's really nothing to get all excited about, but thinking about it again, now, that's completely asinine, cold, mechanical. Wait, so did the two halves flip flop? A little, perhaps, but they're still in their original positions too. Ooh, this is getting all confusticating and fun. Except I'm still grouchy. But seriously, a little white streak would jack my mood meter up about 354256426456 notches, assuming the composition of that cloud were positive. If not...well, at least I could start moving on from here. God, I wish there were just some easy way to firm up the situation. But, of course, that would be too easy, and then there'd be no fun/agony in it.

Umm, yeah, kinda lost my train of thought there...Good point for a reboot.

Materbus has been a royal bitch about the whole Lady Jane movie thing, but I guess I'm not helping with my whole grouchy "I don't give a flying fuck" attitude toward it. I'm really quite willing to write off however many points get tacked on that, but I don't know that it'll be that many. It's just annoying that we have to watch a bad movie that is over 20 years old and can't be found at either the library or the video store, or purchased anywhere. It's not that I haven't tried, it's just that this is so ridiculously obscure that it's not worth the time. I guess it is worrying that I'm already willing to start sacrificing points in a class before it's actually started...could be a bad sign of things to come, but this is gonna be a tough year. It'd be so much easier if I had some competition, but as it is, leading a race is hard as hell, especially in the motivation department.

So there, I've pretty much drained myself for the day, much like that lovely spider bite video. Jesus, that was possibly the most nauseating thing I've ever seen, and yet I've watched it like 4 or 5 times.

I might fire off my own cloud streak, or maybe not. I'll have to ponder it; either way, it's too late for more work on Joy Luck.

- Veracity Out -
"but she don't flow to me..."

5 days

2007-08-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

Oi, we did intervals today. I remember the days when we didn't start intervals until the second or third week of practices...Honestly it wasn't that bad, really - we did two 1/4 mile sprints, then three 800 meter runs, and then the two 1/4 again. Did a lot better than I was expecting to, and I own dHat's ass on the last two sprints, but he's a slow sprinter, so that's not really that much of an accomplishment.

Started working on my paragraphs for Am Lit hnrs, but I didn't even get done with the first chunk cause I had to leave for CC early to drop off me hermana and I had a dermatologist appointment in the morning that chewed up a lot of time. Didn't help that I spent the whole evening playing Chrono Trigger - finally got done with that annoying future level. I liked it, though - the level layout is quite good and despite how little dialog and whatnot there is, you get a good feel for what the world is like, appropriately dystopic and whatnot. I'm leaning in Action Button's direction - it may well be the best JRPG ever. FF12 would be close, if it weren't for the fact that the story is absolute detritous and the combat gets a little sleepy except with the harder bosses.

So, the vigil continues with little in the way of results. Of course that is understandable, but it is grating nonetheless. I think I'm starting to numb to it, so the cycle is closing in on a repeat of itself. Kinda easy to see where this is going, which should be good. Of course there is a point of divergence - go up or down, went up last time, if it's down this time, then I guess I'll live, I'd just rather not go there in the first place. So, in two or three days we ought to see how this all turns out, though I was considering alternate modes of communication today, but because of my procrastination and mater not being home early enough, I didn't try. It was rather late too, but unless information was bad, I needed to wait until it was late anyway...Yeah, basically I just procrastinated. So it really ought to be tomorrow at the latest, but I need to broach the issue with the parentals in the first place - basically it's probably going to be the secondary date instead of the close one. Kinda sucks, but it provides some breathing room.

I'm getting all tripped up in my own thoughts here so I'm just going to stop for now.

- Veracity Out -

NB - will rant about the path of social divergence tomorrow, though I get the feeling that once school starts, the issue will be decided for me.

high maintenance

2007-08-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

other shit that be freaky

was gonna say something else, but i forgot

never let go

all hail that...i don't have the heart for that right now...

it's raining, and i'd really rather not go to cc practice cuz that'd just be miserable

i think 3eb is really just making things worse at this point, but i guess i feel like stewing in my feelings right now, so there's nothing for it but to mope. and of course moping is ridiculous, or so the rational part of my brain tells me. busy, busy, a legitimate reason...but it still doesn't help, doesn't assuage the patent distress at that endless sea of sky blue. i really ought to be utilizing the other book for this sort of rumination, but...ah well.

i hope you take a piece of me with you

what really concerns me is the possibility that there may be no resolution of this before school starts. if the connection persists, i can cling to that and get through the year feeling like i'm on the outside of things at school, and i would be, really - for better or worse. probably worse. no, definitely worse, but if there's even the vaguest possibility i would never be able to pass on it, not now. funny how i thought it was over this and then all of a sudden it's got a deathgrip on me that can't be broken. and if it's bound to fray and just fade away...that's gonna suck, quite a lot. i'll get over it, eventually, certainly, but the beginning of this year is going to be rough.

but what really amuses me is that initially it was the irrational part of me that was being hopeful while the rational part was chastising, finger wagging, no you can't have that, stop being stupid. now it's the irrational part that's reading into nothingness and getting strange ideas out of it, feelings of bereavement where there was nothing there in the first place. and now it's up to the rational part of me to assure the other half that no, there's really no cause for concern at this point, actually, i ought to be rather chipper about everything except the start of school, that there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about (...yet, is the awful, persistent addition of the irrational half). it's sky blue, nothing more, there is no significance in it, and yet there is, there is such a screaming emptiness there that it is impossible to overlook the myriad possibilities that blossom and self-immolate into a singular, inevitable conclusion that leaves you standing in front of a door with the certainty that this is going one way or another, with no middle ground, no hope in waiting because the waiting is agony that rends you into a thousand disparate hopes and realities fading into emptiness while the world stands still. the silence is scathing, but the answer may be worse.

- Veracity Out -
catharsis indeed

hmm

2007-08-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

CC got a lot better - Luke and Jeff showed up, as well as a kid in the grade below me who ran rather well for the first 2 1/2 miles or something like that before he died. So it doesn't seem like it's going to be a total loss this year, but I'm still not loving the whole idea.

I'm really getting into Chrono Trigger - the combat is nice, and it's possible how it evolved into something like FF12. I really like the pacing, though - it moves along quickly and doesn't have the grinding feel that a lot of the FF games have.

Finished all of my Euro write-ups, though I still have to watch some retarded movie or something like that. And then there's Am Lit (tomorrow), and AP Calc (the next 4 days...Jesus). Party.

And now I'm feeling kinda bummed. Silence. Scathing. I'm quite sure I've used that line before, but it's still as true as it was then. I'd be kinda interested to see how long ago it was that I wrote that; feels like forever, but I'm sure it's not nearly that long. Hell, it's probably been like a week or something ridiculously short like that. Nonetheless, despite our best efforts, troop morale is failing, Sergeant. Something must be done to address this.

- Veracity Out -
"the sky was gold..." actually it was night, but never mind that...

sigh...

2007-08-13T20:59:00.001-07:00

OMGizzle - 3 post in a day, nay in a few hours? Ridiculous, especially cuz that last one doesn't really count much (read: at all)

Mmm, yes, feeling in a sighing mood. Busy, I'm sure. I might have to try alternate means of contact.

So anyway, oblique references aside, I started playing Chrono Trigger. Not sure about it yet, but it's not knee-deep in a bunch of hardcore fantasy shit yet, so I'm still sticking with it. The impetus for it, of course, was poking around on Action Button again. Funny, the site never seemed to merit being bookmarked, but I still stop back there every now and then and spend inordinate amounts of time reading ridiculously long "reviews". I say that with quotes 'cause they're really not reviews, so much as rants somewhat loosely affiliated with a game that the "reviewer" might have played at some point recently, or not. It's a tenuous connection in many places. A lot of it is excessive crap, but I never visit there because I actually want to know whether or not to get/play a game. That's for more mainstream sources. No, Action Button serves more as a thoughtful look at games, especially those of the Japanese variety. The review on Chrono Trigger was glowing, and I certainly like how there isn't a jarring shift from the world to the combat zone - so props for that. That said, the very things that purportedly make this the best JRPG ever may end up making me hate it. Tim Rogers may despise FF7, but I love it...to an extent. The same goes for X, but with even greater reservations. The combat is vaguely interesting in 7, not so much in the latter. X is hurt even further (this really was my biggest problem with the game) by the totally linear nature of it. Absolutely no open spaces, compared to 12's ridiculous amounts of roaming room (which made it feel much more real). I like the story of 7 quite a bit, poorly translated as it may be. Now, I am led to understand that it isn't singularly original, but that's fine with me, really. The assault on the Shin-Ra headquarters will forever be one of the greatest, most powerful dungeons that I've ever played through. All of the weird music and pixelated blood was honestly disturbing and set a great tone for the level. And shortly after that...they get out of the city and the story's cohesion falls apart until the end game. Granted, some of that is needed in terms of getting you to new places and opening up sidequests and whatnot, but I really have to wonder what would have happened if the whole story played out in Midgar. I'm going to be keeping that in mind for LiZ 2nd Edition (or whatever I end up calling this big, ugly mess). Funny how my interest in the whole love story thing is fading, and it's all because my inbox is devoid of white stripes. Ah, my moods are ever mutable and fickle. No fear, 3EB will fix that nicely.

So, on to the focus of my thinking over the last hour or so. Somebody needs to murder every person associated with JRPGs - fans, producers, everyone. Might as well loose lions on the entire freaking country for what I'm proposing. The problem is that, twenty years ago, the SNES couldn't handle anything other than incredibly simplistic, turn-based combat. The games were superb, and that bred a large fanbase that hasn't been able to get it through it's collective skull that there isn't a reason for turn-based combat any more. The 360 and the PS3 are more than capable of something other than hideous, boring number crunching. That said, TB is just interesting enough to keep players from ripping their eyes out and drowning in their own inner agony, but when you compare it to any reasonable shooter, the quality of the gameplay just dies. As pointed out on Action Button, the combat in Gears is exactly the same throughout the entire game, with only slight variations in terms of weaponry. You are doing the exact thing for 10-15 hours, it is extremely simple (in concept at least), and it never gets boring, never becomes a grind. TB combat, on the other hand, loses it's charm before you ever start playing the game. I'm not saying we need something as watered down and fruity as Kingdom Hearts, and I have high hopes for FF13 and all of that rapid command entering nonsense. I'm also interested to see what happens with Eternal Sonata - the combat looks like it might just give this realm a shot in the arm. On the other hand, I'm not advocating something like the fighting in Odin Sphere, which is only marginally better than, say FFX. It is just as simplistic, but the level design makes this so much more obvious than in Gears of War. No, perhaps a much more fleshed out system, a grown up version of what is going on in Kingdom Hearts, where you are inputing specific attacks in order to make your character pull off all of his/her ridiculous attacks. Whatever it ends up being, it must be something that can finally replace turn-based combat. Nobody stuck to the little tree-shape tiles because that was a core aspect of the genre, and there is no reason to do the same with poor gameplay. Now the cliche fantasy elements are another rant entirely.

Glad I've got this to take my mind off of other things. It's not that I think that things are heading downhill or anything, it's just that even the most fleeting contact every now and then is...reassuring, not in the sense that it allays any fears (there aren't any), it just engenders warm, fuzzy feelings, which I find I like. Sigh...
It'll be interesting to see how this all pans out. I really hope it works, I honestly do, but...Again, we'll see.

- Veracity Out -
"wait and see"

2007-08-13T19:07:00.001-07:00

The village church yard is filled with bones weeping in the grave,
The silver lining of clouds shines on people Jesus couldn't save,
You want to know how deeply my soul goes, Deeper than bones, deeper than bones

6 mile

2007-08-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

Oi, 6 miles today. What a bitch. I actually did rather well, considering I never ran more than 3 during the summer. Stayed with Hately for the majority of it and only dropped back when he took off on the last 4 or 5 blocks. Felt terrible, though, probably should have drunk more water before I went running, but that's alright. Abs were super easy, though, but that's a small consolation prize.

Parents actually started being cooperative, sorta. So I guess we'll see if any of those are viable. Spent most of the rest of the day working on AP Chem work; almost done with the packet. Not much else to report, but I'll probably add more later.

- Veracity Out -

uber sappage

2007-08-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

Busy day. Got a bunch of school supplyish things, which no longer has the same sort of excitement factor that it did way back in the day. Probably because buying a ton of notebooks, pens, and nothing else isn't really that interesting. Oh well. Let's see...not a whole lot else, volunteered, which didn't really suck that much, it was just really boring. And then had dinner with grandma - also boring.

I should have run today, considering that cross country practice starts tomorrow...oh well. Last year, I felt bad when I didn't run over the summer, not the same thing this year, not even close. So, this year could be bad, but that's just the thing, as far as CC goes - I just don't care. I've got other things to worry about.

So, cue sappiness -

Ummmm....yeah. Basically, I'm just feeling all sentimental about WCATY. Probably considering school's about to start and whatnot. Not just a particular facet of it (though that is a large, large part of it), but the whole thing just kind of shines now. I'm a little worried that I'm gonna sorta bummed going through the whole school year now, but I think that Calc and Chem are gonna be so much fun (at least in terms of who's in the class) that that shouldn't really matter all that much. Still, with school approaching and whatnot...I'm just spending a lot of time mooning over WCATY in general. Ah, fun times, even if the class sucked balls. Funny thing is, if I could take Arabic in college, I probably would. Still, the majority of it really is that one thing. Ah, well...

Mater is funny. First she's supportive, until she figures out that I might actually be serious. Then she's just like "Well, are you sure you really want to...?" Funny. I guess I may be the only party still interested, I hope not, but it wouldn't really surprise me if it were. Oh noes! Doubt is creeping back, mixed with boundless hope and exuberance, granted, but nonetheless, it's starting to naggle at the back of my head. I guess I just need to pin down a date, and after that it's just a question of finding out if an appropriate level of ambiguity has been reached.

I really should work on a lot of the summer work that I've got lined up, but I might just play Gears (just have to kill RAAM to win), or maybe brainstorm some more stuff for LiZ.

Oh, on the note of LiZ, I've decided that in the primacy it's going to be a straight up love story between Peter and Leah, of course there's going to be other stuff going on, but that's beside the point, really. Yes, that's a hint.

- Veracity Out -
"but I wanted a Ferrari cake!"

back from civilization

2007-08-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

So we're back from the Twin Cities. Sad couple days, but at the same time it was nice to see Uncle Tim & Billy as well as Massagara (SP?). Anyway, we're back. Got a lot of reading and stuff done while we were there, and I'm over halfway done with Joy Luck (thank God, though it's not as bad as I thought it would be).

Had a little blip of spontaneity that didn't quite pan out so well, but whatever. I'm still hopeful the whole thing will turn out well eventually, it's just a question of getting my parents to let me start driving more than fifteen minutes away from home witohut needing to be in almost constant cellphone contact. So that might take a little work, actually, a lot of work, but whatever.

I also think it's hilarious that Pantano likes Billy's music. Small world, I guess.

- Veracity Out -
"did subject, like, totally love you, man?"

silence is scathing

2007-08-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

Not so much, really. I'm just bored, so I have this ADD need to be social, even with people I wouldn't necessarily communicate with much. It doesn't really bother me so much as it is just a little vexing, but I think I've gotten past a lot of the initial round of doubts and whatnot that probably won't resurface until the pilgrimage. Wow, this is funny how roundabout and oblique a lot of this discussion is, yet, if anyone were to actually read this with some semblance of an idea of what I'm talking about, I could be in trouble. I might need to reign my musings in a little; I do have The Other Book for a reason, I suppose. So anyway, I kinda like chatting with people that I normally wouldn't be friends with, just as a sort of good experience thing. I still wish Edgewood was composed entirely of my friends from there as well as all WCATY people.

Got a good bit of writing done today, actually. Nothing tonight, but I can blame the internet for that. Seriously, I need to seclude myself in the basement where I don't get WiFi access if I ever want to get much done. I'll have to keep that in mind where homework is concerned next year. So, the story isn't dead yet, just on the verge of collapse. I'm gonna rework where the group travels to make things more varied and interesting. The problem is I'm about to dive into the big moral part of the story, and I've hardly thought about that until now. Hmm, possibly problematic...

So we're going to the Twin Cities tomorrow and the day after. After that, we're going to be at the cabin, which ought to be fun. And I've gotta go on hajj somewhere between then and the start of school. Hmm, I guess I'll have to do some nudging and arm twisting of the parentals.

Not much else to report today.

- Veracity Out -

PS - I lied, the whole commenting issue on Kotaku last night kinda ate at me. So I was a little off topic, but it wasn't the flagrantly out of line, fanboyish thing that the Zune fanboys seemed to think it was. Ah well, I atoned with some insightful, levelheaded comments tonight.

Fanboys suck.

she storms and he wonders

2007-08-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

Mmm, interesting day. Seriously spent hours trying to fight through the last scenario in Act 3 of Gears, and eventually got through it. Taking down the very last Guard was ridiculously nerve wracking, considering I got shot in the face with a shotgun and barely survived, then missed him with no less than 7 torque bow bolts before I finally blew him up. Then the next set-piece was nearly as bad, and I kept thinking "Okay, these were just two tough scenarios, it gets easy after this"...and it hasn't. This last act is gonna be a bitch, but I guess that's to be expected; it had to pick up sooner or later.

I actually got some writing done, but I'm getting the feeling that unless I start to mix up what's going on in the story, it's going to get extremely repetitive and boring. I just wish I hadn't crafted this big, complex journey for them to go on, cuz not that much really happens for a lot of it. I might actually go back and edit some major bits so that there's more interaction with the natives - that ought to make it considerably more interesting, I hope. I guess I'll keep working until school starts, but after that...As usual, we'll see how it goes.

Didn't really do all that much today, now that I think about it. Wasted a lot of time, and...yeah, party.

Wow, that's actually really depressing - how I manage to waste vast amounts of time getting nothing done. Kinda pisses me off. Scratch that, it really pisses me off.

- Veracity Out -
i don't wanna wake up, no

woo latin!

2007-08-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

m/o
s
t
mus
tis
nt

Very jolly fucking lovely day. The response was good, and I imagine that the definition of "hanging out" is sufficiently loose. I certainly did my best to make it come off that way. So basically it's an issue of parental consent. They certainly aren't going to be letting me drive there by myself, but hopefully they won't put up a total brick wall. I guess we'll see how it goes. Mater might actually be sympathetic, or not, we'll see.

Again, failed to write. Started playing SoC, loved it. Finished the Diamond Age, the plot sucked, big surprise. Got some good wakeboarding and tubing in. Woo, fun day. Now how's that for terse?

- Veracity Out -

[SHIFT] + [i]

2007-08-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, that was an ordeal. Kinda helped that I started out with something general and then got around to what I was meaning to get at. Funny thing was, despite hesitating for a good 5 minutes before jumping into the last couple lines and then analyzing them repeatedly after I was done, the actual writing was easy, casual, and I think it came off alright. The best part was that, while I was writing at least, I had this feeling that everything was going my way. For the first time I kinda had hope that maybe I wasn't being completely retarded or out of line. Granted, that feeling has since faded, and I guess we'll see how it goes from here, but I'm still clutching at that small, slippery tendril of hope. I'm just ready to let go if I need to. So basically I'm at peace with this whole thing now, I think. I guess we'll just see how it goes.

Tried writing and completely failed. I kinda wanna do a little short story ditty, no more than a few pages, just to get myself in the mood. Might actually try that before I go to sleep tonight.

Busy day. Ran a race in the morning. There were six people in it total, and only one guy could hang with me, and that was just for the first mile. The race sucked, it was really hilly, and the whole thing was one pavement, which just beat the hell out of my feet. But I won and got a sweatshirt out of it. Even better were a pair of sunglasses, which I later found out were both very nice and very expensive, so I got $100 out of the deal - very nice considering I wasn't trying to make any money and the state of my finances as the holiday game wave approaches.

Made even more money mowing the lawn and doing other stuff, chores, mostly. Busy day. Even did some AP Calc stuff - extremely easy. I even got some volunteering hours in at the hospital, which sucked, but I've gotta get 'em done if I wanna be in NHS next year, so I really don't have any choice.

Played a bunch of Gears, too - finished the tail end of Act 2 and got through all of Act 3 except for the very last fight. That one's always been hard for me, whether I go with the slow torque bow sniping run, or jump in with shotties and the lancer. I've gotten so close only to get my face bashed in by one of the last guards twice now. Very frustrating, but I stopped so that I could write, and then that never happened.

Well, I got that big load off of my plate now, which is nice. I'll see how it goes from there.

- Veracity Out -
"well I guess it all depends...on your garments"

aw, hell

2007-08-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

Dammit, I just figured out what the orange status dot thing means, I think. Damn it, damn it, damn it. And now a wonderful opportunity for me to drag my feet once more, and read into tiny intricacies and details that likely mean nothing but add to my growing sense of insufficiency barreling toward an overwhelming, general self-loathing. Woo, fun shit.

In other news, I read a ton of The Diamond Age, and now have only about 100 pages left in it. Also watched Romeo+Juliet, well, part of it anyway. I don't know that I've ever watched the whole thing from start to finish, though I guess I could catch the last hour if I wanted to. Always love watching just little bits of it. The fusion of the hilarious visual style with the equally hilarious dialog is just delicious.

Went to the cabin for a little while today, and also got very close to the end of the second act in Gears. Still haven't touched Shadow of the Colossus yet.

Mater molestus est. Big time, holy hell.

Ran a little bit, but I'm worried about how the race is going to turn out tomorrow. I guess we'll see. I just don't want to get up early for it.

Can't really bring myself to write much, which is frustrating, as is the realization that I really ought to start working on that big, huge pile of summer work that's looming overhead. God, this sucks.

So, yeah, I think I fucked up big time. Well, maybe just missed an opportunity.

- Veracity Out -
prick love for pricking...lol

2007-08-02T22:20:00.001-07:00

i'm so close to just firing it off...but it is 12:20, I can barely keep my eyes open, so, yeah...I think it'll just be a relief to get this off my chest and move on from there.

hat in hand

2007-08-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

Did a boatload of acquiring of articles of clothing materials today. Mostly shirts, but I grabbed a pair of pants as well as some dress shirts and ties, a book bag/satchel, and a jacket and tweed hat that were exorbitantly expensive. Good thing I didn't really notice until after I had bought them...wait a minute, that's not how it's supposed to...Damn it. Whatever, the hat is amazing, as is the jacket though it's far to hot to be traipsing around in a fleece-lined thing, what with it being 95+ and all the last few days. It actually rained today, but it was so hot that most of the precipitation evaporated immediately, producing copious amounts of steam. Quite lovely, especially when you're trying to drive through it. Just peachy.

Additionally, I bought the new Sum 41 CD which I really enjoy. They seem to have succeeded in their pop punk/metal fusion in all of the places where Does This Look Infected failed. So Long Goodbye really resonates with me, more than any other songs that I've tried to assuage certain feelings with lately. The whole album is delightful, really, even the fruity little French ditty. I think there were references to pants, but that's just based on a sketchy understanding of Spanish and no French whatsoever.

While I was at Best Buy I also picked up Shadow of the Colossus when I saw that they were basically giving it away for a paltry $20. Haven't started playing it yet; I think I may like to get further in Gears and God of War before I start in on yet another game. We'll see. The third item of purchase at the remarkable store of superior commodities of an electronic nature was 300 on Blu-Ray. Just watched it, actually, and it was delightful. Seeing the whole thing in uber-HiDef was toe-wriggling delicious.

So that concludes my shopping exploits. Did I mention I procured the most amazing hat ever? Indeed I did, but the point bears repetition.

I really ought to get working on the Warzone Project again, or it really might never get done. Time's awasting, dear God, only 3 weeks of liberty left. I've been cooking up some lovely ideas for LiZ, though - mostly to do with city layout and whatnot. The biggest change is that the characters aren't going to be running around together all of the time. They'll cross paths, especially Kami and Zal, but otherwise, they'll just run into each other, making weaving the different stories together both more interesting and difficult. But that's off in the future.

I was thinking of having a rambling outpouring of thoughts on the divide between the individual's feelings and those that society/culture preprograms onto that individual. Sort of a head vs. heart thing, but at the same time, it's neither and yet both. Very ephemeral and whatnot, but I don't know that I really have the mental will to go diving into that pool at this point.

Funny, I think I've nearly given up the ghost, really feel like it, and now all of a sudden I feel like inquiring, whether out of curiosity or genuine desire, or something else...I don't know. I might just do it, though. I guess...Well, there really isn't much to lose, but I guess there is the problem of success. And therein lies another problem - that I would have a problem with getting what I alternately think I want and think I don't care about any more. Well, I suppose I'll just have to brew on this for a little longer. Since I've gotten my fingers all warmed up, I might just take a stab at writing something, while I'm sitting here hoping my sister and her compatriots don't descend on me like a plague of ravenous savages (read: teenage girls).

- Veracity Out -
you can see a million miles tonight, but you can't get very far

i'm done...i think

2007-08-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

so...yeah. about that.

in other news, we ended up losing in the "championship" game, but whatever. added some more scrapes, bruises, et al. to the collection, got crosschecked in the throat...yeah, party. not much else. some people who may or may not be affiliated with the regular team may potentially have done something incredibly stupid and gotten kicked out. yeah, geniuses.

So...slow day, basically. I don't know if I'm feeling a writing session, so it might be time to get back into Gears and see how much more of it I can get through.

- Veracity Out -
but...what if I wanna be a mailman when I grow up?

sunburned

2007-07-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

So, indeed I am rather sunburned. Extremely, actually. Quite painful, especially when I'm out in the sun more, which is...just about all the time. Whatever, camp's almost over, and then I can go back to sulking in the dark confines of video game land and get pale again. In addition, I've actually gotten a few decent welts and bruises from our games today, as well as a rather massive scratch on my ribs from...something. I don't know. Whatever, we won both, though the early one was very close (needed braveheart to finish it, and we almost lost that, too). The second one was a slaughter, which was nice, but tomorrow we have to play the other two undefeated teams. Woo, fun. I'm contemplating just not going. I wonder if anything bad would actually happen. I guess I could get barred from going back next year, but I don't know that I really care. I suppose, if nothing else, I've gotten better at face offs. Actually won about 50% of all the ones I took, and the other guy was quite good.

Oddly enough, I'm actually developing a taste for Train now...I don't know why, but I guess I never figured I would ever be able to listen to the Refreshments again, either. Fine with me, really, though I still need to get that new Sum 41 CD.

Had an odd dream about being in Tokyo (except it was really more like New York with a large beach between it and the ocean, and buried under a ton of snow) with Libby, McCoy, and a bunch of other people that I didn't know. We were walking through the ICU wing of a hospital, for some reason, and were looking out a bunch of windows at the beach. It was late and snowing really heavily, and we could see this massive thunderhead formation moving in from off the ocean, but as it got closer and bigger we realized it was moving too fast to be a storm. Someone said they thought it was 1 1/2 minutes away, then someone else said thirty, and then it hit the building like the blastwave from a nuclear bomb or an asteroid impact or whatever. Had the faint concept of a mobile nuclear bomb/explosion thing that generated its own storm system and ran a muck as it traveled, and then I woke up. Weird, but kinda funny how it reflects some of the real things that are going on in RL that you're thinking a lot about. Maybe Chew(baca) wasn't entirely off about your dreams having meaning...well, not meaning, but certainly influenced by the state of your emotions and thoughts. Not about Tokyo or monstrous roving nukes, though - actually, that's a really terrifying idea. I guess that'll make its way into LiZ at some point. Kinda thing that would make sense there, really.

the hardest part is letting go, especially when the reasons are so trivial yet so unbridgeable.
thinking about what may have been if things had been different...but they can't, and that's what is so hard.

- Veracity Out -
damn you, geography! damn you to hell!

I am officially ridiculous

2007-07-30T21:08:00.001-07:00

Don't really know why, but I guess I feel that way. Indeed, I certainly do think that I am, and with good reason (or, of course, I wouldn't feel that way in the first place). It's just...I don't know, ah well ...I suppose I'm just about ready to make that last little adjustment. Funny how a few mouse clicks seems to be so important, so symbolic.

- Veracity Out -

My Feet=Sore

2007-07-29T20:39:00.001-07:00

Ugh, first day of lacrosse camp and I already want to shoot myself in the face. Not because of the actual lacrosse part of it, but simply because the people there are so unreservedly asinine. It really does make me want to die. No, better yet, "I hope you all die." Thanks, Connor. "I hate you all," works rather well too. Again, Connor. The fact that as soon as some of the other guys there discovered a telephone booth (sans telephone) the immediate speculation ranged from a booth for jacking off to a sex box...God. Yes, I realize they were kidding (hopefully), but nonetheless, the fact that many of them couldn't figure out what it actually was...Jesus, it makes me worry.

In some ways, no, actually, in many, it makes me realize how much fun WCATY was. Part of it is just the Nazi-ishness of the camp. Everyone in bed by 10, if you want to order a pizza you do it through one of the coaches; can't go out wandering after the evening session is over (granted, the desire to is minimal, given both the heat and the atrocious level of ugliness that pervades the campus). True, there are a boat load more kids here than at WCATY, but nonetheless. The idea that I would spend all of my free time reading was utterly foreign to most of the guys there. Again, disturbing, but not singularly surprising.

At least the actual lacrosse part of it was nice. I sucked horribly, at first, but I worked out most of the kinks, scored a goal right at the beginning of the game, and generally did quite well. Bungled two fast breaks, but at least the first one was due more to good defense than an out and out failing on my part. And there are a few guys from the Regents on my mini-team, which is also nice, though no Virnoche or Caleb. Oh well. We actually beat their team, which was nice.

I actually managed to get some writing done this morning, but that obviously isn't going to continue over the next few days. At least I don't have to get up super early. And I have AC, and no one else there does. It's kind of weird, not even making an attempt at being social, but I don't really care. Kind of like being back in middle school. But the thing is that I just have absolutely no interest in talking to anyone there other than Nick. I'm not going to try and pull shit like this at school, because there are people there that are actually fun to hang out with, but this does remind me why we were so antisocial during middle school. I look back sometimes and think it was asinine, but at least now I remember that there was a very legitimate reason for it, and at least now I don't regret it. Granted, I'll probably forget all of this eventually, but whatever.

[Deleted because better sense finally won through]

- Veracity Out -
My, what funny words we play with. Attached, for example, is deliciously mutable. Ah mutability...

oh noes!

2007-07-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

Ugh, Lacrosse camp starts tomorrow. It'll be nice to see Nick and Caleb, assuming they're there. But other than that...I'd rather be sitting at home reading and working on my little projects and whatnot. Oh well, I hope it'll be fun, and if nothing else, not too hot.

Major development for today was plowing through the entire first act of Gears on Insane. It was weird, actually - I don't know why this happened; I don't think it has anything to do with the time I put into Rainbow, cause the style of gameplay is totally different when it really matters (shooting people & knowing when to get your fool head down) - I played the opening tutorial bit and got through the whole thing without dying or even getting close. Very strange, considering that I hadn't managed to get through it previously with much effort spent on it. So blowing through that bit was weird, and I was like "Hmm, maybe I can make a run at this." It got weirder when it didn't get any harder. Honestly, I've only spent as much time on it as I did when playing on Hardcore. So I'll probably spend some time beating the snot out of it. It'd be fun to get through it and be like "Damn, I just beat this game on Insane...Holy shit." Kinda makes me wanna play some multi, but at the same time, I don't know that I wanna drop $50 into it. I'm definitely not going to have the time to do it during the school year, and I don't know that I'd get a whole lot out of it, when I've got Rainbow and Resistance for free on PSN. I guess I'll see.

In other news, The Diamond Age continues to be delicious. I'm just hoping he can hold the plot together this time around.

Ugh, had to see the Simpsons movie with Jack. It was painful. The best parts were the Green Day and Schwarzenegger cameos, and the last 20 seconds where Homer nails a bunch of shingles into his leg. Slapstick never gets old, but the rest of the movie was just kinda meh, at the very best.

Only real positive about lacrosse camp will be that it will keep me from obsessively checking my gmail. Funny how sometimes I think I'm too invested in this, and other times I wish that I could even get mopey about it.

And according to Cali I'm amazing. I don't know that I'd agree, but I'm kinda curious where that is coming from. True, everyone who went on the Italy trip is automatically made awesome/amazing by that simple fact, but still...

- Veracity Out -
you save me and I will save the day

Sooooooo Tired

2007-07-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

My eyes are dry and my brain is rotting out of my head. Oh well, never needed it that much.

So, my pathetic subsistence on teh internets continues, and likely will until my friends list has reached reasonably large, socially-acceptable levels (and God Damn proper grammar, Reginator).

Incapable of putting myself through more of the Butlerian Jihad, I started working on the Diamond Age and, of course, was hooked immediately. Big friggin' surprise. Stephenson's forte is certainly creating very vivd, believable worlds, and I'm a sucker for that. I'm just hoping that the plot and actual execution of the story are better than they were in Snow Crash. I miss VR, but I guess the...oh, damn, whatever it was called, in Otherland, was cooler than its counterpart in Snow Crash, so big shit.

Got some more writing done today, which is better than nothing, I suppose. Indeed, I would have done more, but I got distracted by reading, still, I wrote more today (by a page) than I have over the last few days. I suppose I should just be grateful I'm getting any writing done at all.

Played Scrabble with the paternals and won, by virtue of a dirty vocabulary and a lucky find in the dictionary. I was looking for the proper spelling of queef, and stumbled upon quim instead, which is just as dirty, but was sufficient for me to rack up 45 points. Tacking screw descending from the end of that provided another splurge of points and mortified the other participants. But I won, so what the hell.

Only other news was reaching the distinguished position of commenter on Kotaku. Apparently you have to "audition" to get the slot - basically so that they don't have to ban a million people, instead of just hundreds. Basically I wrote something sarcastic in a couple threads, and bam I got a user account, etc. I don't know how much I'll feel motivated to actually use it, but I do want to know who nabbed the "veracity" user name. so I went with ubiquitous instead; sufficiently polysyllabic and cool for my purposes, but slightly more difficult to type correctly when you're trying to get something written quickly.

- Veracity Out -
NB: sam has thrown a sheep at you

annoyances galore

2007-07-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

the overbearingly easy access that I have to facebook/gmail has made it nearly impossible for me to get anything decent written. granted, being social isn't exactly a bad thing, but it makes me worry that the Warzone Project, or anything else for that matter, may never get done. i will certainly have to curtail my usage by the time school starts.

god damn you, gmail.

yes, i am an addict. now i must go read

- Veracity Out -

"no chance of finding a woman who/will love you in the morning and all the nighttime too" - tough lucky, you fat fucks

God Damn You

2007-07-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

So Lair is hitting on August 14 which would be nice...if I had any money. As it is, it'll be joining the list of games I need to buy, along with Bioshock, the Darkness, perhaps Overlord, Supreme Commander, etc...

Tried to start reading the Butlerian Jihad, but the writing was just so atrocious I couldn't bring myself to press on. Ugh. Honestly, it probably would have been best if Elder Herbert had quit after the first book, gone and done some other things. He had a hard enough time keeping his thoughts coherent through two books (read: Whipping Star and the Dosadi Experiment), and three was too much for him, and then he just couldn't content himself to let it lie, Jesus. And then the kids start playing with daddy's sandbox and the shit really hit the fan. I really have to wonder whether Herbert the Younger had any writing experience WHATSOEVER, because it certainly doesn't seem like it. No, he was probably just like, "Damn, dad had a pretty sweet gig going on, I guess I'll try dipping my hand in the same pot..." And now we're stuck with a two-bit piece of shit that claims to be a NYT Best-Seller (I seriously have to wonder whether that was this specific book, or maybe just the original, cause all of the praise quotes are a hodgepodge of different ones for the newer books, not just Butlerian Jihad). Basically, I'm just bummed cause I don't think I can bring myself to read that sort of shit, despite really wanting to know what happened. Though if Elder Herbert didn't leave a whole stack of notes that it's based on, then I guess I just don't care.

Played a lot of Odin Sphere and got to the end of Cornelius' story, but haven't been able to beat the final boss yet. Part of that is certainly due to the fact that I'm horribly under-level and haven't realized it until just about now. Problem is, I'm not really sure I care; the story has more or less taken a major nosedive, and every level is one that I've played before, essentially, so it's losing its appeal fast. What a shame.

And for Christ's sake, how many days can you spend doing stuff in the Boundary Waters? This is fast turning into an East Coast scenario. Kinda wish it were happening to me, though. Then I wouldn't have to be faced with the pathetic progress that I'm trying to make on the Warzone Project.

- Veracity Out -

high5 for sexytime

Registration and Whatnot

2007-07-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so we had registration today, just in time to remind me that school's looming in the background. I don't know, I'll probly be ready for it in like a week. God.
Spent well over an hour trying to get my schedule sorted out because AP Chem ended up being 2 mods long, but only every other day. It's weird as hell, but I kinda like the idea. So basically I ended up having to take weightlifting instead of fall team sports - big shit, i don't care. And Reflective Living instead of Morality - which I supposedly have to take next year, but if I don't have room again I'm sure as hell not sacrificing a class in order to have room for it. If Tahaney wants to fight about it, the bitch is gonna get beat down.
Claire's the one who's really fucked though. She's only got one slot for either Algebra 2A or Humanities, and there are only 3 or 4 other people who have the same problem. Doubtless unless someone really gets on TY's case, this is just gonna slip by until 2nd Semester, and then they're just gonna be like "Oh noes, too bad 4 u". Fun stuff, but I'm all set so I don't give a flying fuck.

I've been playing a lot of Odin Sphere and it's fun, and the frame rate hasn't been as bad as it was in the beginning, but it's super repetitive. You basically end up running through the same levels over and over, but with different characters. The differences are minimal, other than appearance...So yeah, the story w/ Cornelius is far less interesting than the opening Gwendolyn/Oswald dealio. I guess I'll see how it goes, but I might put most of my effort in God of War 2 and Rainbow. I should really play some multi on the latter after I get better at it.

Picked up The Butlerian Jihad and The Diamond Age at Barnes and Noble today, as well. Hopefully I'll find one of them interesting, but I'm loving the book we have to read for Euro. The last 15 pages have been about the ridiculous extent to which medieval people were crazy horny. I laughed at several parts of it, and had to just kinda shrug it off when the Parentals got too interested. "Yeah, Mom, it's about how the measured who could ejaculate the most, it was friggin' hilarious..." That would go over like a lead balloon.

Did a little shopping @ Kohl's, got a couple pairs of jeans, and a shirt. The last one's a bit of an experiment, more along the lines of what WCATY Sam would wear. I guess we'll see how that one goes over, but the jeans are good.

Haven't really written anything. Probably should, but I kinda feel like just curling up and reading some more of my Euro book.

And I probe further into that dark reaches of the foreign realm known as Facebook...added a bunch of people from WCATY that I barely know, but whatever. Sam and Toler are cool, and I definitely wanna keep in touch with them. In a similar vein, I talked w/ a few people @ registration and then Barnes & Noble from Edgewood that I don't know that I've ever really talked to before, and I didn't catch on fire or anything. Pleasant, actually. I guess I'll have to eschew the whole "fuck you, im gonna be antisocial again" idea that I've been fostering since I got back from WCATY. I probably could have done it, but I don't really want to have a redux of middle school any more.

- Veracity Out -

watch out or Jack Thompson will blast you with his doucheray

Check this shit out - this is why I love WCATY

2007-07-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

so....what now?

2007-07-22T21:26:00.000-07:00

Well shit.

Finished Dune today, plowed through HP yesterday, and suddenly I don't really have anything to read...except for all of the crap for Am Lit and Euro, but whatever. I kinda felt like writing something profound, or whatever, but I'm all outa juice.

Been sporadically working on Hazel Ridge, but for the most part it's been 3 or 4 pages here and there, which is certainly better than nothing...Just not the sort of progress that I'd like to be making. So, whether it gets done by the end of summer or not remains to be seen, but being home now ought to help, but I guess we'll see. If nothing else I'd like to get my video game load cleared out too, though books really ought ot be my priority considering how much reading i get done during the school year.

So I'll be home for a while now. I really ought to fire off some emails to other people from WCATY, see what's going on. I'd like to keep in touch with Perky the Elder and Jenni. If only so that I can eventaully get my hands on the tape ball.

So, profundity is not coming tonight. Oh well.

Long live ninja warrior!

- Veracity Out -

33 Minutes

2007-07-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

So, yeah...excited, but tired. We're leaving in about 15 minutes for the bookstore. I really should upload some of my musings from The Other Book here, or maybe just write here. No actually I'll stick with The Other Book and upload anything that is safe for public consumption.

I now remember why I love God of War. It is primarily a great game, both in terms of combat and the platforming elements, but also because it is loosely based on Greek mythology...and then flys in the face of all of that. Killing Theseus by slamming his head in a door was spectacular. I honestly giggled and wriggled my toes in delight.

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't finish Dune, but I don't really care. Too tired. Not sure how late I'll stay up reading, but probably not very.

Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind.

- Veracity Out -

my ear=numb

2007-06-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

Long time no see. And soon to be a slightly less long time but still no see, in all likelihood, unless learning arabic turns into sitting around doing nothing important on computers, which I doubt. Yes, it's that time of year again, off to nerd camp to do....nerdy things.

So we'll see how that goes, but in the meantime I'm super, super bored, which is really depressing given that I just got a 360 to complement my PS3. Yes, I make them play nice...actually, I keep them in different rooms on different floors of the house, but thats only cuz I want internet access for my PS3 so I can murder people in Resistance, which the good old English Church is apparently trying to get pulled. Yeah, good luck with that. (hundreds of people killed in gun battles in "photo-realistic" recreations of the Manchester cathedral) Yeah, sorry, it's not even close to photo-realistic, you're fighting friggin' bug/alien things, all in order to save humanity. So, yeah, settle the hell down. So, I tore through the Gears campaign on casual and hardcore, and then ran into a brickwall on insane and decided that I'm just not mysoginistic enough to put myself through that. Between that and Oblivion sucking major cock (I'm sorry, I don't want my games so "realistic" that I can get my allies to try and kill me for no god damn reason, never mind my fucking HORSE getting pissed cuz I saved its ass from a wolf; they need to tone down the aggression factor on all your buddies and neutral NPCs, Jesus...), I've basically got nothing to play other than the last couple bits of God of War, which I just got back into today. I kinda tried with Disgaea, but it's wearing off quickly. Whatever, Mom & Dad get back from Italy tomorrow, so I ought to be able to procure Crackdown/XboxLive access soon, which should keep my busy until WCATY, which is only a week away.

I put LiZ on the back burner for an indefinite period of time, and I'm working on a fun little mash up of Gears, Starcraft and Heart of Darkness as a little summer project. 50 pages in and its gonna be shit, but I don't singularly care.

So, yeah...I need to do SOMETHING other than just play videogames this summer cause they're not holding my attention all that much. Resistance is fun, but I can only ever play 30-45 minutes of it before I want to go and do something else. Gears online sounds super fun, and I guess I could track down Ty's gamertag and play with him too. Whatever, I'll be clean for 3 weeks, and that might be all it takes to recharge my gaming batteries for the rest of the summer.

Got through school fine, firmly on top of the competition now, so I guess this little foot race is more or less locked up unless something catastrophic happens. Like apathy.

And now I have an interest in greek emo/metal, but the whole damn site is in greek and they're still too small to have popped up on anyone else's radar. Oh well, just looking at the art that dan did for the site is fun. That and trying to pronounce the words to the songs.

spice must flow!

you can't turn the Titanic on a dime, but a euro would work nicely

2007-04-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

Alright, so after 11+ hours of sleep I'm actually able to form coherent thoughts and have mustered a high level of sarcasm in past conversation. (the last one included something along the lines of "he's called smiles because when he stops smiling the sun starts to die and god bleeds out of his ass"). So, there is certainly some potential for this to be an interesting rant. I don't think that it helps things that I've been sitting at this computer for over 2 hours reading a bunch of crap about things that I'm not certain I even care about any more.

So, needless to say Italy had a massive impact on me all across the board. Interesting...I'm starting to connect the dots on some things, given that I've had ample time for personal musings and whatnot. Right, so on to the thesis: WCATY was a big deal, so was Italy...And so was that writing conference thing that I did a few years ago at the art museum...Now, the funny thing was that the connection here is not an intellectual/learning sort of thing but that fact that there were a large number of cool people there that I got to hang out with. Perhaps I ought to spend more time with real people. This in turn has led to some questioning about videogames' appeal. Certainly they are fun, and can be a good way to kill time...But coupled with a review of God of War 2 on Action Button that I just read...I'm not sure that I really want to spend all or even a lot of my time playing games any more. I started working on the AOE3 campaign (expansion) and it sucks, to put it mildly. I've also lost my taste for God of War because it's boring. Puzzlish things are still entertaining, and I haven't played any shooters yet, but this could be the beginning or something worrisome. Maybe I should start developing some other slightly more useful skills or something. I could just start writing again.

(Side bar: wrote a cute little ditty that was about 1.5 pages long that was generally well received by my comrades on the plane ride)

Well, I seem to have been slightly sidetracked from my original point of pondering. Essentially, I feel like I would like to hang out with the people from the Italy trip more, perhaps even at the expense of spending time with certain parts of my current mass of friends. Lunches with them are never the most interesting things in the world...I've been also pondering what groups of girls in the freshman and sophomore classes are equivocal to the Nikki/Cali/Anneke cadre and the freshman one is obvious and many of them are in my art class, but as far as the sophomores go...I can't quite pin one down as they are either slightly too nerdy or preppy, but I guess I don't know all of them particularly well. This whole plan could certainly become problematic...but you can never have to many friends so it would be a good problem to have.

So, new friends, less love for videogames...These are some rather large changes, but Big Sister (aka Nikki) and others have effected others as well. Big Sister managed to convince me to buy some aviators and I've moved past the initial phase of feeling like a flaming tool and am starting to actually like them. I've also decided that my baggy pants look absolutely atrocious and aren't amazingly more comfortable that jeans, so I might have to pay a visit to Kohls again in the near future. There's another change. So, three rather large ones, and the greatest looms over the horizon.

There isn't any putting this off any longer, and yet I'm still rather hesitant about delving into this subject. The fact that I'm not listening to 3rd Eye Blind helps slightly, but the Refreshments aren't particularly upbeat and bubbly all the time. Good band though; I just put a few CD's worth of their music on my iPod and am rather enjoying it, while at the same time being disappointed with a different Spin Doctors CD that I found to the point of near physical illness. So, Pink Floyd is next, hopefully to remedy the somewhat low opinion that I have of Animals with Dark Side of the Moon. We'll see how that one goes. I suppose I need to read Tess as well...

So, after a slight bit more of procrastination I don't think that I can avoid this any longer, though I have an interesting little opening bit of musing on a slightly related subject that I would like to relate. Needless to say, this subject weighed heavily enough on me during the course of the trip that I felt compelled to write about it, first as a fauxwar story that was an allegory of both the events and emotions that went along with this whole thing, then simple documentation and mulling-over, journal style. This blog works just as well, and in some ways is more convenient given that I can type, which is infinitely more rapid a process than writing, though at the same time it loses some of the personal connection that I have with scribbling down thoughts in my none-too-neat script in the back of a notebook. The point, though, is that both of these forms of writing are at least semi-public: there is always the potential that somebody other than me might read them and decipher my sideways manner of talking about important things (note the use of "subject" and "thing" as opposed to what this really is). I like that, in a strange sort of way--it feels like I'm at least sort of putting myself out there, rather than just thinking about it. In a way, if I can't output all of my thoughts and feelings into even a remote corner of the public sphere, then it's not really much of a venting process, even if writing is better than thinking. Once my thoughts are out in the open, they aren't mine any more, but rather have transcended personal possession and public objects of manipulation for the use of the general public, even if they are often difficult to find. They're out there, and that's the important thing. (NB: I like this little section of the rant, and shall extract a copy of it, given its potential to grow into a larger essay, perhaps Wayfarer material, similar to the short story I wrote on the plane)

Now, this has gone on for far too long, and this rant is far too long for it's own good. Now that I think on it, I would like to rant on my short story that I wrote, but there isn't much to say other the fact that I love it because it is compact, concise, efficient, and simply well crafted. Best writing I've done in a long time, certainly. However, the weight of this looming beast requires my attention.

I've already written about this in other places, so if anyone out there is particularly interested, you could raid my history notebook and find at least some parts of those musings. For the interest of privacy (not so much my own but that of others involved who may end up being maligned by my slanted point of view). The narrative is simple and can be disguised easily as war, and in some ways it initially was--on an emotional level, certainly. It is comforting, at least, that the whole thing wasn't some great hallucination of my over-active imagination, even though this would be infinitely easier if it were. Simply put, I was rather soundly defeated over the course of much of the trip following the initial plane ride, why I cannot say other than my obvious inability to start conversation, though I started to get better at that toward the end. But even as far as that is concerned, I'm not certain whether that was a failing on my part, or whether there was some resistance to it (another of those double-edged things where it being my fault would help in the direction of this specific case, whereas the opposite would help me in the long run; maybe it's both and I'm just fucked). Oh dear, only three minutes left on my CD and I'm hardly even into this. Let's see...so toward the end I would like to think that thanks to what I perceive as rather large bungles on the part of the opposition and a slight improvement of my own work, I might have managed to salvage something of a stalemate out of this whole debacle. Certainly there is the possibility that this perceived retrograde action of the "opposition" could be nothing at all and I have in fact completely fallen on my face, but I would like to think that is not the case. Indeed there is also the possibility that the occasionally mentioned third party may have beaten both of us out, and that would be a much easier pill to swallow, but given certain actions on the initial plane ride I find that slightly difficult to believe. There may simply have been a combination of war weariness and general fatigue contributing to a bout of apathy on the return home. Ah, the possibilities. Now, there is that slight matter of probing and retreat on the return plane ride that is discouraging, and I find it difficult to write that off as nothing at all. What is perhaps most worrying about this is that I still find it hard to believe that the "event" of the first plane ride was entirely meaningless, especially given the second and the subsequent bus ride, but then there is the issue of me losing favor over the course of the week. Certainly, my own feelings can be mercurial at times, and there was a catalyst for change...so indeed there is a potentiality for a reversing of fortunes back to my favor again, and I would like to potentially pursue that, but I just get the feeling that both the opposition and I have more or less exhausted ourselves and are probably going to be passed up in favor of someone else, possibly that third party. (NB: I dropped all of the erudite lingo cause I feel like if someone reads this they might get a rather disturbing idea about my thought processes, etc). Then of course there is that problem of me getting emotionally worked up about mere potentialities and what not. That's probably the worst part of this, that I care so much when there isn't even anything concrete about this yet. At the same time, maybe I'm not that weird or anything, given that the opposition had to have had at least a strong interest in things to keep going for so long (unless my own actions were entirely invisible, which I find hard to believe given the number of not-so-friendly staring contests that we got into). So, there's something to chew on, but at least I'm thinking about this and not things that are even further into the past. The most interesting thing about this, though, is that I've been able to get over concrete things very easily, and that it's these ephemeral ones that are harder to shake. I suppose that unfulfilled longing can be much more potent than possession followed by lose. I guess I'm not sure what else to say here...I feel like there's more to write about this, but I guess there isn't so that's more or less it for now. I'm feeling rather dirty and would like to shower, etc; have to read Tess later (ugh) and clean up Josh's powerpoint at some point. Never mind writing/gaming, and all of that.

PS: A life lesson for all of you: don't give a girl roses when you're not even going out with her; I have the distinct impression that that ends badly, but I guess I could be entirely wrong on that count, still. We'll see.

PPS: I feel like this might be in the running for longest single post I've ever done, but comparing them without a large amount of annoying cutting and pasting is not really possible, so I won't try.

no more thinking, pleez

2007-04-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

Wow...Italy....Just wow. So much fun, yet so stressful @ the same time. Basically, I'm back and I've been awake for more than 24 hours so I'm about to fall asleep and I can barely type. I'll keep this quick if I can. Already vented privately a/b all the "drama" (aka a personal little war) that happened (is still happening, actually, given that nothing has been really resolved yet). Proud of myself for forcing something of a stalemate, but I guess I don't really know the extent of that.

Wrote a lovely little story about a dude blowing up a bridge (God, how did you not get that, PY?). Yeah, so basically Italy (and everyone on the trip sans the New Yorkies) was friggin' awesome (that's what she said). And now it's time for sleep.

And the Weight Falls Away

2007-03-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

Feeling really good right now, for various reasons.

Got a new, really good computer and got it CHEAP. $1600. Yeah, so cheap is a relative term, thats only a PS3, a 360, a Wii, and 5-7 games. Anyway, my faith in PC gaming might be coming back. The fact that I will now be able to play Shadowrun and Halo 2 has taken a big piece out of my desire to get a 360, but Gears is still lurking, and Lost Odyssey and Eternal Sonata (wait, there's fighting in it! Where'd the music go! WTF! actually i like it better that way) are upping my interest, and then there's bioshock...hmm. Well, I'm happy w/ the PS3 now and Motorstorm is fun as hell. I need to get some of the Devil May Cry games, but I need to work on God of War for now. Oh, and shit--I'm actually gonna be able to play that big ole stack of games that've been waiting on top of my computer for attention.

Went and saw 300 w/ the group and that was a lot of fun especially because it was only part of the group, sans the members that tend to cause issues and distress. Thoroughly kicking myself in the balls once more for my own stupidity last fall which was accutely underscored tonight...we'll just have to see how things go, but just when you think you're done...you're not. At least 8th grade stayed in middle school. Talked to Jenny yesterday, though--that was fun, I guess she was sorta surprised by it though. I'll have to say hi to Rya next time I see her.

Lacrosse practice yesterday as well; didn't die like I did the first time, and I'm not the shittiest player there either, so that's nice.

Oh, back to 300--it was awesome, and the fact that I played God of War right before going to see it had me in the perfect mood. I think that fact that Caryn leaned over at one point and commented "in a weird way, that's really beautiful" in reference to some dude getting diced and blood spewing everywhere really sums up the appeal of the movie. Needless to say, I was squirming in my seat like a little school girl getting a new, fuzzy kitty. Never mind that old Fuzzy is sitting in the other room with a malignant cancer eating away at his face (yes, I love health class). That was part of the metaphor too, in case you were wondering--figure it out.

Let's see...went shopping w/ mom yesterday and..gasp, I got blue jeans...for the first time in, oh, 10 years of so. Only 2 though, in addition to some awesome new converse shoes that aren't the stereotypical piece of crap ones and three shirts--green eggs and ham, nirvana, and a pacman one that is also subtle reference to something...or not so subtle. Kinda like the new clothes, but the jury's still out on the new look.

Umm...on the dating front, things are not so good. In fact, a full retreat due to inclimate weather has been issued, but never mind that. The sun may decide to show up, and if not we can always move somewhere else. Jesus, what's up w/ all these conceits tonite? I'm sorry, it is nearly midnight afterall, and I do have a Brit Lit essay to work on tomorrow.

Got good grades for the quarter, happy a/b that.

So...basically I'm happy b/c everyone hung out together and had a great time. Makes me hate school and actually gives me some motivation for getting my driver's license.

Still no progress w/ writing. My little Halos short story died b/c I had no idea what I was doing with it, though it was nice just to write something different. I don't know that I have the time or the will to write a whole lot any more. Oh well.

I'm leaning toward not doing WCATY this summer, just to have time to play games, write, and hang out w/ my friends. I really like how that plan's sounding, actually. But then again, it really was fun last summer...Ugh...this is gonna be a hard decision.

Night everyone. Egad. This might actually be read by someone, b/c apparently someone actually found this. Dear god this could be trouble.

PS - more DoTS!

Wow, Penny Arcade is completely off

2007-02-24T19:05:00.000-08:00

My feelings about video games, ephemeral as they may be, have once again taken a shift, however fleeting it may be. I am once again firmly on the PS3 bandwagon after perusing some more in-depth info on FFXIII which really didn't tell me anything other than some details on the combat system, which, from what I have read, could be really cool and a nice marriage of all of the different combat dynamics Square has used throughout the years. I guess I like the gambit system, but there is the annoyingly persistant feeling that you're not quite in control of things. In fact, you're in even less control than you think, but still... Anyway, my point here is that I'm excited about both PS3 Final Fantasy games, and they really are selling points for me far more than any other game for any of the platforms...until we get word on where Kingdom Hearts is going. I could maybe handle it on the Wii, and I guess that would be enough to push me to get a 360 (esp. if the much muttered about HD version ever appears, though it never should unless MS wants to take over Sony's position as most hated company in the gaming world). Right, so I think I might have lost my thesis (speaking of theses, I still need to find on for Joe Andrews...ugh) somewhere, but my point is that, despite whatever Penny Arcade and others may caution about buying a particular platform for one or two games, at this point that's the only way you can make that decision. When you have major games like Unreal Tournament, Darkness, etc. going to PS3 and 360 (and how can they not, if you really want to make some money on them? [not that Epic needs more money, but...]). There aren't going to be naerly as many platform exclusive games like there were last time around because there doesn't look like there's going to be a run=away winner like there was last time. I'm not buying into the analysts' idea that the PS3 will somehow end up winning, as much as I would like to. It's certainly the best platform from a hardware standpoint, if you're willing to swallow the pricetag. Xbox live is nice...but that basically counteracts the PS3's higher price. So, really, all things are more or less equal except for a few exclusives. Bioshock (which I have no opinion on as of yet) and Halo 3 (which, *gasp*, I don't care about) are the sellers for 360 (and Gears, of course), and then you have 2 Final Fantasy games that I do care about, and Metal Gear, which I might care about, for the PS3. Again, if KH were to pop up on the 360...well I'd have to do some parental arm twisting. But really, everything is so much more equal, and there are so many good multi-platform games that you need to find the ones that you really care about and buy based on that.

Oh, and I'm having a lot of fun with Trauma Center, though I'm not sure that I would really enjoy playing the same thing on the Wii. Speaking of the Wii...I'm not entirely certain that I would be surprised if the Wii ended up crapping out. Sure, you've got Zelda, and Metroid, but that's really it unless someone steps in and does them some real favors. Well, I should rephrase that...I think the Wii will do fine, but it's going to do so because, as Nintendo plans, it'll be selling consoles to, you know, old people, stuff like that, and they'll be playing...I don't know, pool, or something. And, frankly, I'm not gonna waste my cash on that. Super Smash Bros could be fun, and if there's a major price drop I might grab one, but there just isn't anything on it that I want to play, and I think that that reflects the feelings of a large part of the US gaming community. So, Nintendo will be forcing off into their own territory, boldly bringing weird video "games" to new people and stuff. But as far as I'm concerned they're really not a combatant in this console war, that's for Sony and MS. They're welcome to shred themselves as far as I'm concerned. In fact, if I had more expendable cash I wouldn't even be concerend because I'd just buy both consoles. Which brings up the point that there really should be a universal format for gaming consoles, but with Nintendo doing its own thing with control design and what not, I can see how that would get really troublesome

Meanwhile, I'm praying that Square doesnt pull a bunch of asshole shit and keep the Kingdom Hearts Final Mix in Japan this time around. I might even be persuaded to play Chain of Memories if it were on the PS 2. I guess we'll see. I suppose I could at least get the first one cause it's in English w/ Jap. subtitles, I believe.

Well, I should go read, and my brothers watching some...interesting anime. how do you do a show about tennis? well, maybe some monsters will pop out or something. Omygah! the old lady has a beard! I must watch this. And please, God, let the Gophers win. I know I already got my wish with Duke, but come on, just one game!

ouch

2007-02-23T20:01:00.000-08:00

Wow...Last weekend was looking like the end of an ordeal, beating the crap out of CC...It was all fun, and now we go and get raped by St. Cloud. Well, tomorrow is @ home against them, and if we can get some retribution I'll be very happy. If nothing else, Wisconsin got owned too...by fucking Michigan Tech.

Anyway, Pride and Prejudice is a bitch, but I managed to get a little less than 100 pages read today, so things are starting to look like they're in pretty good shape.

Once again my console blues have been setting in, and I constantly wonder why I thought that I could ignore all of the fun little goodies that are attached to a 360. Funny thing is, I have absolutely no desire to get a Wii, because there is absolutely nothing on it that I want to play. Yes, I like Trauma Center on my DS (my good console purchase of the year), but if I'm gonna shell out several hundred dollars, I better be getting something other than a lazy man's version of tennis for chirst's sake. (I cannot type tonite, by the way). Really funny thing is that it's all of the analyst predictions that the PS3 will somehow come out in good shape if not on top this time around that make me the most depressed. Okay, so there's final fantasy, and metal gear...maybe tekken, but is that enough to hold off the ravenous horde of halo followers? I see ads for halo 3 and go "well...the first one sucked, never played the second one...but I almost wanna jump on the bandwagon just for the sake of being on the band wagon." I'll feel better when rainbow six and oblivion hit, assuming they're entertaining. still, the fact that there isn't shit on the playstation store pisses me off. We should be getting stuff like Vagrant Story, jesus christ. That's how you sell consoles, and sony needs to get their heads out of their goddamn assholes and start twisting square's arm about that one (or throwing money at them; either one would work well). Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that all of the selling points of the 360 aren't really selling points. Yes, there's Gears of War, but Resistance is still a great game, and I have my doubts about the multiplayer, though I haven't yet played either (gotta figure out how to either a. set up a wifi network in my house or b. run a cable from my PC down to the basement...or, maybe move the Beast upstairs, though I'm kinda afraid it might start blistering if exposed to sunlight or something).

This would all be so much easier if I, you know, had a job, could buy more than one console without having to save up for years and years in between. Unfortunately there's that whole get-perfect-grades-in-school-even-though-you're-still-not-going-to-get-into-harvard-cause-you-have-to-fucking-cure-cancer-to-get-in
thing...Yes, there have been some parental concessions that I need a means of getting money. However, they have done little in the way of offering up solutions beyond vaugeries that do little but forstall the inevitable conclusion that they will not be supplying said funds, likely in the belief that I will forget about it with my (they think) typical teenage attention span of all of about 5 seconds.

Yeah, so basically I hate this whole generation of consoles because they all SUCK. I just wanna go and play some finally fantasy 12, maybe pick up God of War and Okami and have some good old retro (jesus, is that shit really retro now? almost, I guess...) gaming. Or I could start dealing coke. That'd make some money.

I guess I should work on writing too...I'm getting the feeling that I'm really in over my head on this whole HiTN thing, even though I haven't worked on it in fucking forever. Trying to deal with multiple major emotional/spiritual tribulations for several characters while at the same time orchestrating a stupidly complicated plot is...daunting, to say the least. It's probably a good thing that I've been on this hiatus. I just don't think that I could handle it right now, not with school and all that stuff.

Basically I'm just feeling really bummed out right now, and barring ~$1000 falling in my lap, I don't think I'm going to feel a whole lot better any time soon. I could pull the whole "fuck school, I'm gonna get a job and get money for videogames" thing, but then I'd feel shitty about not doing well in school, and at this point I don't think that it's physically possible for me to do the minimum amount of work required for all of my classes, which is really all I ever do (it just so happens that that minimum involves reading pride and prejudice within a motherfucking week)

On a lighter note, I've been wondering about what kind of person, in highschool, has a DS with TRauma Center and Pokemon in it, simultaneously, and has a pokemon named HaHa I gave U AIDS on the aforementioned game. It also worries me that my brother has recently been uttering such nonsense "cracker I'll kill you" which I know is my fault, especially since I have failed to impress upon him the importance of dropping the last syllables of the first and third words in that phrase. Hmm...this could be a problem.

Yeah, so basically I'm stressed and pissed, and I really just wanna go skiing tomorrow and forget about all this crap. I'm also entertaining the idea that asking [someone] out might be a) good for me, on various levels, social, emotional, etc. and b) help take my mind off of all of this crap. Or it could be just one more thing that I have to deal with and just make everything worse. In the meantime, I'm just trying to get through the weekend so that on monday (well, tuesday, I guess) the usual shenanagins may resume. I'm particularly looking forward to some more extreme rock-paper-scissors and further culinary speculation on the best way to eat cancerous human FACE.

...thank you Sony, you have caused me to lose faith in video games...

urgh

2007-02-22T19:59:00.000-08:00

Let's see...I'm sick, I'm tired, this is the second weekend in a row that I've been staying at a shitty hotel in some stupid hicktown in the middle of nowhere...Oh yeah, I have to read a gazillion pages of fucking Pride and Prejudice by Tuesday (cause we all have time to read 300 pages in a week, Mr. Regina...okay). Oh, I have to get quotes for my essay, do normal homework, and did I mention that I'm sick and I'm supposed to be skiing tomorrow and the day after. Yeah...we'll see how that one works out. Basically I just wanna curl up on my couch in my basement, play some Final Fantasy, watch ESPN and go sleep for a million years.

By the way, State for Ski Team was fun, all party shenanagins aside (That was really what made it fun). So yeah, boo. I hate everything right now. And advil/sudafed don't work for shit, by the way.

emo kids sux0rz

2006-12-30T20:27:00.000-08:00

umm, yeah, sorry about all the l33t and shit, don't really wanna go there, but who gives a shit. Anyway, writing has been on hiatus for a long time even though its 1/2 through break. Oh well, working on FFX, almost done--could probly take on sin and win, but I wanna take another crack @ getting the last crest for tidus' ultimate weapon...not sure how long I wanna fucking RACE GIANT CHICKENS. we'll see. watching box lacrosse for now, though. mmm...lacrosse...in a box ^_^ (wow, sorry about that one too...ugh)

yeah, so been skiing my ass off for the last five days or something like that and we've still got another two days to go, race on the last one too so that's gonna be long as hell. ugh. can land a 180 on various jumps though, and jeff and i are bombing off of the "big" air jump. not as beastly as the one last year, but given that they're having a hard enough time just keeping fucking snow on the ground, having a jump of any reasonable size is an accomplishment. not to say that I can't get 5+ feet of air & ~8 ft of horizontal off of a jump thats literally less than a foot tall.

feeling slightly depressed about my absolutely pathetic-ness in the realm of chicks, but i guess brit lit has a way of fucking all of that up. no, not really, i'm just good at using brit lit as an excuse for covering up my own retardedness, socially speaking (got a 96 on the BL final, so hopefully I got an A in the class; only other thing to worry about is that I flunked two parts of the LG final, so I guess we'll see how bad that rapes my grade. Oh well). Yeah, so I guess I might get cracking on that. Then again, I also need to work on getting my fucking license (been driving a little, but I fucking hate it w/ mom hanging over my fucking shoulder all that time [no, i am in the fucking middle of the road, thank you very much, and yes, you actually can drive 5 over and not get ticketed]).

oh, guess i should yack a/b xmas a little bit, just on the off-chance that anyone actually cares. or is reading this. yeah, that might be a good place to start. readers. not like i really want anyone to read this shit, just more like a place to vent, you know? yeah, so i got the new castlevania game and its fun but hard, trauma center (also hard, but fun, & crazy as hell--silly japanese people), bully, umm, what else...oh, yeah, digital camera for italy trip (that's gonna be so sweet), the black parade (interesting...Dead!, House of Wolves, Teenagers, and Blood are all funny as fucking hell, good too, though, the rest of it is a little questionable, but not too bad, on the whole), oh, and a hell of a lot of cash.

been waffling on which console to get...i guess i have to get a PS3, just no choice on that one what with tekken 6, MGS4, oh, yeah, there's that whole final fantasy 13 thing, yeah...just a bit important, you know. thought about a 360 for a while, gears of war was looking fucking awesome, but then i just kinda sat there and went, you know, i really dont like shooters that much, and its not like resistence is a bad game or anything, certainly enough to keep me entertained for a while, probably better than gears. actually, i might get a wii, if the opportunity presents itself, and hold off on the ps3 until ff13 comes out, just so i dont get fucked, cause that really is the main reason, and the others are just supporting points. mmm...elebits looks crazy fun, but i guess i am also the person who went to best buy today with the express purpose of looking for animal crossing for DS (not true, actually, I was more worried a/b ff12). oh, on that note i would like to point out that whoever thinks that final fantasy is in trouble should get their heads out of their asses--if i cant get a copy of the new one a few months after release (in WISCONSIN), there is no problem (w/ sqaure--for me, yes, this is a problem, i need something to play, but clearly their sales are doing fine, and i would also like to note that releasing dragon quest 9 on DS is an awesome idea, and all those japanese douchebags who don't like it should get their heads out of their asses and start playing more interesting games, jesus H christ).

yeah, so im just rambling here...sorry a/b that, just kinda felt like blowing off some steam, primarily about chicks, though i guess i never really got around to that much. just feeling kinda moody about that right now which is weird cause i hardly ever get down about anything. well... i guess we'll just see how things go.

Archetype Does Not Mean Plagiarism, Chris

2006-11-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

Yes, I realize that I've touched on this topic before, but it was rather light (I feel), and with the slew of advertisements for both the Eragon movie and video game, I feel it is my civic duty to take up the keyboard once more and launch a bloody assault on the Monster of Montana.

NB: I'm going to try and keep this as civil as possible, but if snide cracks at MM's being homeschooled, his rural, supposedly bucolic location(hick...cough...cough), please forgive me. On the other hand, his writing will be duly and effectively eviscerated. Oh, and something about the Soul Eater (oops, I mean PS3) might sneak in there too.

So, I've already hit on the fact that Eragon is the twisted bastard child of a threesome between StarWars, LoTR, and the MM. Granted, Eledest was a (slight) departure from the starwars theme...but only slightly. We have a recreation of training with Yoda (the only major difference being the presence of the Leia/Arwen hybrid and a strange instance of hot, steamy dragon love turned foul [not to imply that it was not foul to begin with, but you get my point] that was entirely not necesary). Murtagh being possessed or whatever the hell happened to him was slightly interesting, but too little to reverse the flaws in the rest of the story (especially given that his very name was lifted from a Raymond Feist story). Now, I will grant that since he set out to write an "archetypal hero story", there are certain conventions, especially in the realm of fantasy, that can be expected--major character development, outrageously disproportionate odds, some period of training/learning, and usually a love interest to satisfy all of those horny nerds. However, it is not necesary that the main character be a hick (OK, so he's like you, I don't care) on the edge of an all-powerful Empire (could you at least change the name? c'mon!) that has taken over after the fall of a great order of universal knights...Need I go further? I certainly can. Eragon--Aragorn; Arya--Arwen...This is fucking weak. The dwarves' land was kinda interesting, but only slightly, and still locked well within the confines of the expectations of fantasy readers.

Now, granted, I can understand tributes to this piece of writing or whatever, but the bottom line is that Chris did a bad job of concealing the little (and not so little) tidbits that he lifted. Of course, the greatest problem with his stories is that their plot is far to reminiscent of StarWars for my liking.

Perhaps the greatest flaw of the writing, though, is that it fails to escape the conventions established over all of these years since LoTR was written, and which have ossified to such an extent that would-be writers who are well-versed (if not downright drowning) in fantasy are entirely incapable of breaking free of these standards and expectations. It certainly seems to be a problem as the great masoleum of fantasy continues to grow. If only Final Fantasy were more accessible to people outside of the gaming community...I cannot doubt that it would help to shake things up, at least a little. Blending fantasy and scifi is certainly dangerous, but its better than taking the safe route and staying firmly within one realm or the other. So, I blaze forward into the dark with few companions, with no idea whether or not this latest iteration of HiTN/LiZ will actually work. Ah well, it's a hell of a lot more fun than writing pure fantasy, that's for sure.

In other news, the PS3 was released recently, and Resistence, though it looks quite entertaining, seems somewhat disappoiting insofar as there is little story to it. Frustrating, given all of the promise that it showed. I was hoping that we were actually, finally, going to get an intelligent shooter...but alas, it seems that we'll have to keep waiting. There's still Final Fantasy and Metal Gear (oh, did I say we still need a smart shooter? my bad). Despite PA's insistence that buying games that begin with Final and Metal is a bad basis for getting a PS3, as far as I'm concerned, it's a pretty good reason, and Resistence still looks fun. Besides, there's that whole free online play, as well. And in case you haven't figured it out yet, micropayments are not going to be a PS3 exlusive, NEVER NEVER NEVER--they will crop up on the 360 before long as well. The Wii looks like it might remain pure, and I don't think that this will become a widespread problem, either, not on this generation of platforms. But that's why I want the PS3 to be milked for all it's worth, it might just be the last console I buy (excluding handhelds, of course).

I don't really want to talk about MM any more, but I guess that I should just get it out of my system so that I don't have to rant about it again. His writing is basic, simplistic, and generally unamazing. Not that that is a problem, but it's certainly not a merit of the pieces. Beyond that, he comes off as being stuffy, academic, and generally a head-up-his-ass-and-doesn't-realize-it prick. Eh, whadya expect out of some homeschooled brat who's never gotten the shit beat out of him for being a fat-headed bitch.

Alright, there's the condensed version of my gripes about the MM and his twisted children. I could go on and on, but I played FFX for close to 4 hours (yes, it's growing on me) this morning, hockey is going to start soon, and I'm just generally tired.

in soviet russia, Progress progresses you!

2006-10-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

LOLlerz, so, yeah, I just spent the last 30 minutes dicking around with photoshop, figuring out how to use layers and all that crap and I'm getting the hang of it, screwing with this picture of Co_Okie from sixkillerbunnies. Tons of fun.
But, yeah, tired as sin, and I've got that whole Brit Lit essay to finish up tomorrow, and I've hardly had a chance to do much writing, lately, so that's a bit of a bummer.

Gophers lost their opener against Maine, so that sucks, but they played rather well in the 2nd and 3rd, it was just those two fluky goals that mucked everything up. The Sabres are still unbeaten, though; they kinda scraped by the Canadiens, but whatever.

God, just uber tired, wanna play a bunch of games like Company of Heroes, Battlefield 2142 and Call of Duty 3 (when they come out), AOE 3 expansion soon, just a lot of stuff to look forward to, and I still haven't got a few platform yet. Keep tellin' myself to just go and get a 360, but maybe ps3 will rock...so I guess I'll get a Wii and wait on the others, get one of those. Can't believe I just said that, but the thing's so weird and...cool, I just figure I have to get one. Should pick up a DS at some point too. God, that's gonna take a lot of cash.

Brit Lit is a maneater, and that coupled with CC has ground me to a bloody pulp lately...I'm just trying to float right now, get through the next 2 weeks, and then it ought to be fine until ski team starts. THat's gonna be ugly on Monday and Wednesday, but otherwise everything should be pretty slick.

Homecoming w/ Caryn was tons of fun, so...yeah.

Oi, fucking tired. Maybe I'll check Clone Manga and Penny Arcade, but I really just need to go to sleep now.

Enough for today, maybe more when CC is over.

time to play catch-up

2006-08-13T09:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, dear God, cross country practice starts tomorrow. Oh, shit, oh god, someone please help! Save me from the Don! Nah, it's gonna be okay, what I'm really worried about is the whole school-starts-in-one-week-and-i-still-havent-done-any-of-the-stuff-i-wanted-to-this-summer thing. So, yeah, I've got 8 days to: 1) learn to draw better 2) get better @ WC3 3)write more stuff 4)do...other stuff. Okay, yeah so maybe it's not that much stuff, but it takes time and I'm desperately running out of that. I guess I ended up doing more shit this summer than I thought I would, I guess chopping 3 weeks out for WCATY does some pretty serious structural damage. Yeah, so we'll see what gets done before school starts...

Went to Madison yeserday for various stuffs, namely shoes & spikes for CC, more pants & stuff (saw maas @ kohls & hung out for a while), and ah, oh yeah there was dress clothes and crap, and then I got my yearbook @ school, but there was no one else there so I didn't hang out there for very long. Oh, yeah and I went to Barnes & Noble for a while & grabbed a how-to-draw-manga book (it's kinda amazing how few books they have on the basics that teach how to draw manga and not some sort of retarded americanization of it that looks more like superman than kimiko) and the first to Megatokyo Chapters (I've read the 1st one & I forgot how fun that stuff is, the art isn't so good though)

Yeah, so I don't really know what to do with myself but I suppose I ought to get around to writing some stuff and maybe doing some character sketches (cause believe it or not, I have almost no idea what any of the dudes from HiTN 8 look like [exception being Oiua who's totally awesome] and most of the chicks are pretty hazy too) and of course I need to get around to WC3 as well. Big thing, though, is that I'm getting into a really tight spot with HiTN 8 b/c the clock that I've set myself in terms of how plot needs to go is running out really fast, and I still need to establish that Kami is a douchebag (I know how I'm gonna do it, I'm just afraid that I'm gonna fuck it up big time). Yeah, so we'll see how it goes, but hopefully everyone's gonna be moving to the next simulation pretty soon, so there's gonna be a change of scenery and that's gonna be refreshing. I'm thinking a lonely outpost on top of a mountain or something, lots of snow, sort of WWII/Band of Brothers-esque, but whether it's gonna be ultra-violent, I don't really know yet. Probly not, just cause I'm shying away from all that stuff after I realized how shitty that sort of stuff is in writing. Violence is definately something you need to see, not read about. Oh dear god, I'm writing something...peaceful? Are you joking?

In other news, I finished Waterland last night and that was probably the best book that I've been compelled to read for school in a very long time. I don't really know what it was about it that I liked so much, cause its really not the sort of thing that I'm interested, all that domesticated crap, but the writing was good, the presentation very...eratic, to say the least, and there were all of the little history lessons in it that I found delightful. Most interesting thing about it, though, is that I don't think that it would have worked with anything other than sort of a domestic story like that. If it were fantasy/sci-fi or something like that, I just don't think that it would have come off quite right.

Yeah, so that's about all that's new on the home front. Oh, and I beat Half-Life 2: Episode One, so that really is about all there is to say...

now, with Battle Royale and my World Cup ball, I am complete

2006-07-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

Woo! Back from wcaty, finally. Actually, I've been back quite some time, but that is entirely irrelevant. The more important thing is that I read Battle Royale in 2.5 days, and it was deliciously excellent. True, it was rediuclously gorey and whatnot, but it was fun nonetheless and quite good besides, though I think that the translation was a bit shoddy in some places, otherwise the dude is moderately out of practice when it comes to writing, though that's just fine. It was good stuff. Alas, they'll never release the movie in America as it would bring back memories of Columbine and be blasted to pieces by pissy parents and security nuts. Never mind what would happen if there were a Columbine repeat within 5 years of the movie's release. People would be sued out of their asses. Anyway, I also got my [fake] World Cup ball, and it's quite finiky, though terribly entertaining naytheless. Lots of fun, oh yes. Also got new headphones, and Half-Life 2: Episode One, though it is my understanding that Episode 2 has also been released, I might need to acquire that as well. Lovely idea, though--releasing the thing in episodes. Fun, fun fun. Been running too, getting in decent shape. Oh, and HiTN 8 is coming along, though I need to figure some things out on it before I go blazing ahead at full bore. We'll be getting there, though, never fear. Anyway, I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do with myself now that I'm done with Battle Royale, as I spent the last 2.5 days literally doing nothing but reading it. Hmm, I guess I'll just have to find something else to read, the only question being: What? In the meantime, however, I shall be working on Half-Life 2: Episode One, as I just got it, and we're going to be going up to our cabin tomorrow/Saturday, and I will not have access to it. Oh, and registration was today. Saw Ty, that was fun, for the five seconds it lasted, and I have good teachers, and an easy schedule, especially at the end of the day: religion, and I only have it 4 out of 6 days per cycle: that's money! Got Totoritis (sp?) for history, which should be better than Husom, I hope. Lovely, lovely, and I Have Regina 4th Mod, which is probably the best I can hope for. Great fun, anyway, I'm almost done updating my drivers and stuff, so I must go. I bid you farewell for now.

parly voo fanzy?

2006-06-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hoo ha! I'm back and I'm lookin for heads! Well, not really. France beat Spain in the WC and that was a pretty cool game, or the last 30 minutes of it was, in any case. Zadine had a pretty friggin sweet goal. We're done with poetry in writing now and we're almost done with the short story unit as well, mine is hovering at 22 pages, but it's not done yet. I would like to finish the thing tonight so I can get AM to take a look at the thing before tomorrow. I was worrying whether I would even finsh the bastard in time or what, but I think I might even be able to get some decent editing work in on it, though I don't really know. We'll see how it goes.

The story itself is rather mediocre, I must say, but that's fine, it works out kinda nicely. The whole idea is that these people stuck on a little outpost on the edge of the universe get attacked by the Flame (I've got a new name for them, but I don't remember what it's called). Not the most stunningly creative thing in the world, but I thought it was rather nice to jump ahaed to somwhere I've never been in terms of the overall story of Crion, so it's cool. He doesn't actually make any appearances, but the characters are just about to chat with him at the very end.

I have no idea what I'm going to do for the play, but we'll see about that when we get to it. I've still got all of tomorrow to work on things.

We royally pissed off Hannah & Emily & Kristina last night, and the RAs too, which was jsut fine. And we called Nate's GF and yelled all sorts of nasty shit at her about blowing Nate and stuff, which was quite entertaining, though rather nasty in hindsight.

So, in short, we're having a jolly good time.

I do wish I could work on HiTN 7.1, though.

yeehaw bitches

2006-06-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

Poem #4 is muthafuckin done bitches! It actually turned out really well, if I do say so myself, and AM will agree with me too, which is pretty cool. Huzza! Oh, and it's almost the weekend. oops, not supposed on the internet see ya.

stuck in the mud

2006-06-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

hoora, day...4, or 5, i dont know, and i dont know what that might happen to go along with, whether it be time @ wcaty or blogging, or what. who cares. i got my short-verse poem done, and it went well enough, but i have to say i didnt like it as much as the other ones, just bcause, idk, they just seemed to work, after a fashion, the 2nd one especialy. now its on to long free verse, that i thought would be pretty cool, but now i dont really know what i want to do with all of this stuff, so we'll just see where it goes. idk even really know what the difference between all of this and prose is supposed to be, really. we'll see where it goes, i suppose. good fucking god, i cant even type right today. fuck. wahtevr. i should get working again, id like ot get a first draft done before class is over in...1 hr. fuck, again, fuck!

oh, and the us lost to ghana quite embarassingly, so theres not going to be any more world cup worries for us little buggers over here in the states. whatever. im just glad that its over and we dont have to listen to people bitching about how the us blows & stuff, only thing is, i think this is just the start of everything. great...

oh, and we played hellz a lot of soccer @ AT today, which was pretty cool, especially scoring 2 or 3 goals, idk, i think it was just 2, but 3 might have been it too...

blech

2006-06-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

i feel like major shit today b/c i've been drinking way too much orange pop and now it sucks and oh yeah, i kinda got up a about 8 so i didn't get a chance to eat breakfast, which also really sucked. and now im bored as all living fuck. got my 2nd poem done, though, and thats sort of cool, cause i think it turned out sort of nice. im getting better at soccer, which is pretty cool--if i keep this up i might actually be able to play next fall instead. working on poem #3 now--free, short verse, not too bad, i've got an idea. these dudes are on some sort of religious mission, looking for the Face of God, but of course everything gets all royally screwed and they float around and ponder their fate until they die--and touch the Face of God, or soemthing like that. i dont know, im not done with it yet, and I dont know what AM is gonna think of it. she'll probly like the idea, but make me rework the whole thing over and over again. gotta call M&D later tonite, i'll get around to it, i suppose, but later like 10 or something like that. we'll see.

2x in one day..shit

2006-06-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

so, yeah, 2 blogs in one day, how about that? not that either one of them was all that long, or that good. oh well. class is almost over and im just burning time before we get out, though i suppose that i really could just leave right now and no one would notice. time to go play soccer in a little bit. i got my 2nd poem done; idk exactly whether its good or not, im sure there are plenty of little things that i need to work on in order to make it more complete and good and what not, so there's that. we've got tomorrow to work, though, so its all good. i called it "to grandma's" house, the characters being Q, X (both guys) and V (a girl) who have run away from some sort of horrible prison/concentration camp where there are these "myths" about a thing called Grandma's hosue that is this nice idealized place that they all want to go to. so these three escape, but it's winter and running away sorta sucks, as they find out, and then they realize that there is no grandma's house, and that they aer going to die, whether by being caught by the patrols, or because of the elements, but it sucks. the end.

cool, time to go play soccer, later bitches.

wow, this has to be a record or something

2006-06-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

ya, so this is the 2nd day in a row i've blogged. that's friggin crazy, i dont think ive ever done that before, though i am too lazy to go and check. now i just have to keep up the streak and maybe even blog--gasp--more than once a day. not much has really happened. carolina won the cup, which doesnt really serve as much of a surprise as far as im concerned, the only issue being that it took them considerably longer to do it that i thought it would. whatever, its all good. yeah, so not much has really happened; i lost my lanyard for about 12 hrs which wouldve sucked a lot more if there had been any meals during that time, which there were not. i went running, too, which was surprsiingly not all that bad. i might actually have to do that with some frequency now, maybe. been playing a hellz a lot of soccer too, and thats pretty cool, i can actually, sorta juggle the ball now, kinda...anyway, i should maybe go get AM to check out the poem im supposed to be working on, just to be sage, you know...

this is...fun...?

2006-06-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

Ya, so I'm @ camp or whatever you want to call it. Just the 1st day of actual classes, which would make it the 1st full day I'm here as well, whaddya know? So, um, yeah, it's, err...fun, kinda. There are some things that are pretty cool, actually finding some other people that like playing soccer is pretty nice, and the writing class is decent, though if I ever have to write something in iambic pentameter with a abab rhyme scheme again, I think I very well might kill someone. The teacher is pretty cool, though, and there's some cool people in the class, which is pretty nice.

The only thing that really blows is I don't know if I'm gonna be able to watch the Stanley Cup final tonite, cuz we're supposed to have activity time or something dumb like that, idk, I've got the Oilers' website up and have streaming scores and stuff, but I just wanna watch the game.

Other than that, and my lack of world cup action, things are pretty good. The food sorta sucks, and most of the people here are, well, pretty damn nerdy. I suppose that's to be expected when you go to nerd camp, but there are some people in my writing class that are pretty normal and that's good cause if another person busts out their calculator and starts playing metroid, I think I might have to shoot someone, not really, but you kinda get the point.

Oh, and I was stupid enough to save all of my story files in Works instead of Word, so now I can't work on any of that stuff in my free time, which really blows. However, I do have internet access, and there don't appear to be any filters, which is pretty cool, cause it means I get to stay all nice & caught up on my webcomics and such, it is good (to be the king).

Also, I've been--gasp--reading some poetry, and while I don't like all of it, ee cummings is pretty good. At least I have my iPod, that's all I can say.

Tah for now bitches.

on the eve of...what?

2006-06-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

Oopa! Writing class tomorrow @ Green Bay o_O. Wow, how about that one! Gone for 3 friggin weeks. Now that's gonna be interesting. Sucks balls I can't bring my computer w/ me cause now I'm gonna have to tote everything around on my flash, including PXI, which I ought to read at some point tonite, maybe. Seth is gonna be there too. All the more interesting. I hear he hasn't changed that much (aside from the fact he's got a 'fro) since 5th grade, which is fine, I suppose. We'll just play that one by ear. Well, we're gonna play everything by ear, really. God, I must be making y'all think I'm a schizo (and, worse, a redneck! egad!). Now, all odd ranting and raving aside, it should be a good bit of fun.

In other, moderately less important news, the US soccer team is still alive (barely), though they ought to have won the game, but the ref was a friggin idiot and ought to be summarily beaten with rotten bananas.

I also finished reading all of my George R.R. (ha, he's a railroad!) Martin books, and having finished them (though the series itself is yet incomplete) I have to say that I am not really a fan. All due respect to ole Georgy, but it just seemed like a waste of time, really. Point in case, Brienne's story. She's a decent enough character, don't get me wrong, but dedicating a large portion of the latest book to her search for Arya and Sansa seems rather pointless given that she is eventually hanged, and by Lady Catelyn, no less. Granted, something else might rise from it, but I don't know. Nonetheless, it illustrates the point that the story really doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I understand there is some setup needed, but four lengthy books that are nothing but that? Come on, move along buddy!

HiTN 7.1 is progressing well, and at the same time I'm working on making the world of IoF and the other Broken Spheres (oddly enough, there might not be any more spheres in the story, maybe) stories more real and whatnot. I'm working on a very complex map, and coming up with little substories for every bloody town! Few of them, if any at all, will actually be making their way, even in small bits, into the main story line, but I think it helps to have a better, more fully realied understanding of my world. Besides, it's fun! HiTN 7.1 is hovering around 210 pages, and doing quite well. I don't know precisely whether I'm going to be writing all that much while at my class, but we'll see. I'm happy with the progress that I have made, and I'm still gonna have a large portion of the summer to work on it when I get back.

So tonite it's time to watch what might, potentially, be the last game of hockey of the season, work on a short story, maybe, and possibly give PXI a read-through. Loads of fun, buggers! Have fun while I'm gone fuckers.

huzzah!

2006-06-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have escaped hell and am free once more to cause vast swathes of terrible destruction all about the earth! Yeah, alright not really, and yes I understand that was a tad overdone. Oh well, not like anyone knows OR cares. Very well.

Anyway, before I went moderately insane for a few moments, school is done, finally. Normally that would be cause for celebration, and while I certainly am happy with that, the prospect of starting to run for Cross Country next year is not something that I am looking forward to with any great excitement. I suppose I don't really need to start doing that until monday so I have a few days off, at least.

In other news, I am moderately pissed off at certain people. Honestly, I'm just sick of the whole situation, and have gone into something of a reboot mode. Next year should be interesting. So, the last I will say on that subject is that I'm sick to death of a few people being absolute shitheads, and manipulative twits, in some cases. That's all from the Pissed Off Corner, see ya next time folks.

HiTN 7.1 is coming along rather nicely, hovering somewhere around 130 pages presently, though you should expect that to climb as the day progresses. I'm working through the initial Laonian sequence, and I feel that Kami needs my attention at present, but I've been having a jolly time with Oiua & Ki'ara and the rest of the Maynoran crew. I really think it adds a certain something to have the group split on two sides of the same war, in the same sector of the city, sorta, though whether anyone reading it will actually find it moderately nerve-wracking remains to be seen. I haven't had them fight in the exact same battle yet, but I suppose I should get around to it. At present, however, there are going to be some peaceful chapters for a time, cause I need to give everyone time to catch their breath. Oh yes, and I decided that Kami is gonna have a friggin' awesome mace, though he won't get that for a little while. Probably near the end of Act One. And Crion has red hair, temporarily, or maybe permanently. I'm still mulling that one over, but I think it's kinda cool.

Yes, so I'm having fun and I still haven't changed out of my pajamas and it's 5 right now. So, summer is lovely. Have fun.

And please tell me you know what hopscotch really is.

--Captain Pacman

sick/lacrosse/dishwalla/other stuff

2006-03-14T17:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, long time, no see, I know.

Well lacrosse started and its fun and stuff, beyond the whole getting nailed in the balls twice over the course of two practices thing, but I figure there is a price to be paid when God hates you. Ah well, I can actually throw now, though my catching could use some work. My mom is being really %#^%#$ about filling out all the paper work and stuff--it's the usual "you need to learn to do this on your own" trip, but the thing is most of the information that they need is stuff that I don't know.

In other news, I've been sick for the last two days so what was supposed to be an already short 4-day-week is now reduced to two, if that. I don't really know how I'm going to be feeling tomorrow; I'm a little better tonite than I have been up till now, but we'll have to see whether or not that holds up. Actually, I'm caught up on all of my work now, but that's b/c not much has happened yet, but I don't think that my luck is going to hold for tomorrow. And I do have two tests to make up and I'm not looking forward to that in the least bit.

Oh, and I'm going to break from the planned order or ranting business for a moment. Wayfarer layout stuff has been going on though I did miss tonights meeting, due to my inability to do much more than see how long it will take to fuse my ass to my couch. On the whole it hasn't really been all that much fun, especially cause Mertens has been really annoying. I did get to lay out my own story, though Lydia really did most of it while I was busy finding pictures, and then Cedric did the whole eye-in-the-trees thing, but that really did end up turning out rather well.

On to Dishwalla. I have been listening to little else lately. Especially AND YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT LIFE'S ABOUT, and even more specifically, "Upside Down". Good stuff, very good indeed. Perhaps its mirroring my agitation with the fact that what promised to be the beginning of spring gave way to more cold weather and even a little snow (though it didn't stick around for long). Well, we'll see how long it is before I feeling like dropping grunge/rock in favor of punk again.

I have actually been making some progress on IoF 2.3, I'm about sixty pages (I think) into it, which is pretty decent considering how many other things I've been preoccupied with. I would like to get back to HiTN eventually, but I'm still hashing some things out. It's actually coming along nicely, and I'm starting to get some great ideas on Cormeria and all of that--the whole idea came from just the opening frame for the "I write sins not tragedies" music video, and now I'm running with it into a strange world of strangely dressed men and women trapped into an eternal late evening ball. Lovely stuff. Oh, and a quick bit of footage from "Enemy at the Gates" has finally cemented me on a place for the Kami/war/thing--the frigid outskirts of a besieged city (New Arkunhael, maybe, idk), where the soldiers are drawn back into the city every now and then on leave, and then go back out to the trenches and ruined bits. Ki'ara is still mired in a dismal view of the future, and I'm going back to the whole idea of her and her pals fighting off gov forces in a mall, then getting airlifted out to a mining tower/corporate headquarters place. Don't ask who is going to be doing the airlifting or anything like that--I'm not there yet, okay?!?! Yes, so it's all coming along nicely--I might even get an explanation for why the evil corporation/government conspiracy is letting its prisoners run around in the virtual worlds, unrestrained. Yeah, actaully, by big thought of the day which I just received would lie along the lines of everything they programming needing some sort of physical representation in the virtual worlds--prisons, keys/passwords, doors/security checkpoints, etc.--cause that would make for easier user interaction with the controls--don't have to train your staff or nuthin. Well, okay so I've kinda used this idea before, just not for the idea of keeping prisoners locked up--pretty good though. Yes, follow me here, so another reason they would want this would be cause they're using a new sort of programming which is really powerful and descriptive and flexible and whatnot--i mean for chrissakes theyre creating friggin universes here!--but its one drawback that they cant get over is that everything needs a physical representation. And they don't really care either, cause they can throw in whatever road blocks they want. But they dont during the story, cause they're busy prepping for their global announcement that they've figured out how to isolate the male and female parts of the human brain--"cured the disease", if you will. No one's paying attention. Back to the code, though, it's this mystical stuff that some college dudes created--they understood it, but the gov found out, took it, and killed them, so now no one entirely understands how it works.

Ok, I'm in danger of divulging major storyline secrets and stuff so I'll stop for now.

a month named after doors?

2006-02-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

all latin cracks aside, this has certianly been an... interesting month. lotsa stuff to catch up on, though i'm not gonna get into all of it, just cause if i ever change my mind and decide to become a politician, well, thats it really...

first off, latin convention rocked. completely. we did really well in certamen and i got 5th in vocab, so that was pretty cool. can't say too much more about that, just because, so there it is.
oh and our latin shirts got banned and confiscated so i hate admin

ski team has been going well. i havent been to an alpine valley practice/race in, oh... about three weeks, cause i was sick and @ high school practice and at convention. yeah, i've been doing pretty well on the high school team though and im probly gonna be on varsity if people keep screwing up, which is just fine with me. the only thing that sucks is that if we go to state, then we'll miss TWIRP, and that would really suck.

in even happier news, the gophers swept wisconsin in wisconsin and that was awesome cause i ran down the halls yelling "the badgers fuckin suck". i swear i almost got lynched, but it was so fun i couldnt resist. it got better when i wore my jersey to school on monday; even more bad looks and not-so-subtle threats. yeah, it was fun. i just wish i had had history that day. oh well.

in other news, HiTN 5 is coming along very well. i'm around page 220 or something like that. it would certainly be very nice to get it all done and taken care of by the end of the year (just the kami part, that is) but i'm not sure that'll happen. maybe once my weekends lighten up a little i'll be able to get soemtihng don. beyond that, i'm toying with a new map layout for IoF and the following, that mainly being a closeup of the big world map, everything focused around a river that runs from the Wall of the Gods up to the very southern edge of the Inner Sea. Very interesting, but i gotta play around with it a little more.

my shitty story got into wayfarer, which i guess i'm kinda happy about, though it really wasnt that goo.

read some of HiTN 3 and was rather surprised by just how good that actually was. certainly too messed up to ever merit working on further, but that summer produced some of my better work between that and misery rose.