The homepage of Forky McBlergenstern

Crushing souls

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:17:25 GMT

Seriously, the God of War collection (720p God of War 1 and 2 for PS3) has hit me where it hurts. I was Hell-bent on getting it, and don't get me wrong, it's awesome to be playing the game again, but it's kind of not the same game. For reasons unfathomable to me (and to everybody in every forum, everywhere it gets addressed), they took out the experience reward for ending a 10-hit throw with a throw-kill. It's a persistent goal throughout the entire game, and part of what made it so fun and rewarding. It's just gone. What the hell, guys? It actually kind of ruins the experience, not only because the game is less fun without it, but because now I have to go through both games looking for more little adjustments that hurt gameplay.

But I made out like a bandit this Christmas. Terabyte external hard drive for my mad backupz, little zen garden, the aforementioned game, and the bossest Mp3 player that can be found without having to install special software to manage. I could write a whole post about how badass this thing is, but I'm having so little time to post as it is. My cup, she runneth her ass over.

Some of it is music, and the acquisition thereof. Just about every band or musician I would want an album from has either put one out this year or announced that there will be one in early 2010. I'm getting collector's editions all over the place. After Forever (I figure I owe them some money), Bo Burham, Epica, Dethklok, Rammstein, Leaves' Eyes, and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head. Just the collector's editions. The amount of new music that has hit me has just been overwhelming, and full of total awesome. Epica's doing something new with their singer. It's different, but it's definitely working. I'm so glad they left the corny, singsongy tunes of The Divine Conspiracy behind them. This album rocked my face off.

Speaking of musical influence, I am now officially supportive of the breakup of Azure Ray. As tragic as it sounded to me at first, it led to the development of some incredible individual styles, and the resulting projects have been delivering unceasing soul-crushings over the past month or so. I have heard some truly staggering musical pieces in my day, but though I've heard of the experience, I've never actually had my mind blown by a solo. And this was a banjo solo, and it wasn't even being played like a banjo. It am utterly had. I would take a bullet for Orenda Fink, and I'm willing to put that to paper.

Since I'm already talking about music, lemme just go ahead and say this. Fans of Nightwish. Come on. Shut up. The band really liked their lead singer. She was their image. She was their focus. And you'd have to mess up pretty bad in order for them to come together as a band and say "Okay, it's gotten to the point where we have to rip this still-beating mother out of our chest." She's gone. And you know what? She wasn't even that good. You're just used to her. Really listen to her on the long notes. She breaks down. She wobbles. She warbles. She's uncomfortable a lot of the time. She had her really good moments, sure, but she had some very audibly bad ones, too. She wasn't Nightwish. Tuomas Holopainen is Nightwish (holy crap, I spelled that right on the first try). Marco helps like a sumbitch, Emppu and Jukka bring the vision to life, but Tuomas is the dream weaver here.

Sure, Anette isn't as intimate a singer, but listen to Sahara or The Cadence of her Last Breath. She's strong. She's accurate. She can bring it. She's a little poppy, yes, and she does her little girlish dance around on stage, but is that any less embarrassing than Tarja waving to the audience with big grins no matter which song they're playing?

BUT ENOUGH OF THAT.

I did not go see Avatar. Why pay any amount of money, or give any more of your time to see a movie that you saw in its entirety the first time you saw a preview for it? There's nothing in it that's going to be significantly more visually impressive than what's in your average video game these days, so no thank you.

Oh, hey, I found the entire script online. Reposted with permission from 20th Century Fox:

FERN GULLY happens, but with ALIENS. [end]

So stop asking.

Randomness now.

I've heard the word "superficial" a lot of times, but I've never seen a super fish.

People who get bowl cuts cannot be trusted to make their own decisions.

ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO SPEAK SPANISH: "R" does not equal "L." You guys are worse about this than any Asian culture. Listen to somebody rolling an R. More than likely, they're being lazy bastards and rolling an L. Know who's the worst about this? Latinos. Eric Estrada, remember his appearance in that Burger King commercial, pitching his imaginary personalized shades? Remember him pointing to it, and saying "Est-lala?" You want proof? Watch Dexter. Watch Maria Laguerta try to say "Miguel Prado." It's like she's going out of her way to emphasize that it isn't being done right. I wonder if she's making fun of the culture.

I'd like to find the guy who coined the phrase "Latin America" and punch him in the face. Words mean things, asshole.

You know, the Pilgims could also use a shot in the pills for leaving from a place called "Plymouth," and naming the first place they came to "Plymouth." Squanto shoulda set your boat on fire.

I'd also like to meet the first person who said "I could care less about..." and find out whether he/she actually intended to say that. How did that ever catch on?

Geek out over this link.

The commercials for 2012 made me laugh. Scene. "Predicted by the Mayans." Scene. "Confirmed by science." Like that's not hilariously vague. They might as well have put quotes around the word.

"Hands down." People use this to describe an easy or decisive victory. "He just kicked that guy's ass, hands down, man." This has always agitated me. Do people not wonder where these expressions come from, and whether they sound stupid saying them? That kind of reminds me of that bullshit explanation of where "Mind your p's and q's" comes from. ARGH. NOW I AM ANGRY.

No, I can't be angry listening to this song. My serenity > people who talk without thinking.

I want somebody to send me too many text messages, so I can threaten to kick them in the texticles. Don't you?

Come on, guys. Orgasm as a verb? Now you're just getting lazy.

Oh! That reminds me. PEOPLE NOT IN CALIFORNIA: Where you live, do people ever refer to a movie as a "show"? I need to know that it's isolated to the drones in Sacramento, or at least to this brain-dead state. "The Matrix? Oh my god, I loved that show, it was so deep!" This is why I write exceedingly violent books. I need an outlet to release what these people give me or it will rupture my cerebrum.

I know, I bitch about the degeneration of language a lot, but that's because complex ideas require specific references in order to be conveyed. If all similar words end up carrying the same meaning, new ideas cannot be developed and spread. I see it everywhere, and I have to explain myself in nearly everything I do. How many times have you found yourself telling someone "I didn't SAY that, what I SAID was..." and they're just not getting it?

I absolutely, truly hate having to explain what I meant by something. I also deeply, aneurysm-havingly despise having to tell somebody they're wrong about something, which I have to do far, far too often. In order to understand a lot of what I do in my life, I have to point out to people the inconsistencies in their own lives, their double-standards, and the many time-sensitive hypocrisies that they carry around all day. You know those people who say "rules are meant to be broken"? These are the same people who throw a big fit every time someone sneaks into their house and rapes their nine-year-old. No, dipshit, rules are meant to identify, stop, and/or punish people who are doing things that are detrimental to society. You don't get to satisfy your urge to be naughty if you're going to freak out when your kids do the same thing, either. People get defensive when you tell them this, and deny everything, and start hating you, and decide to be an ass to you at every opportunity, which is one of the reasons I (as mentioned above) hate telling people when they're wrong.

Boy howdy, do people need to have it prettied up when I tell them that they have no more self-awareness than a Roomba.

That reminds me, I should integrate the phrase "I don't want to talk about it" a little more deeply into my daily routine.

Hey MS Word, stop trying to predict what I want to highlight with the mouse. What I want highlighted, I WILL HIGHLIGHT.

Take ten seconds and go here: http://www.survivingtheworld.net/Lesson149.html
You will be a better person for it.

Final note: ENOUGH ABOUT TIGER WOODS. JESUS, PEOPLE.

Musical experience

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:29:10 GMT

I'm probably going to talk about other things, but I wanted this to start off with what just happened to me today. I understand that this probably won't affect any of you even the least little bit, but I had my brain knocked right out of my skull by a sloppy, poorly-recorded song. I am musically violated. It is inside me. It's like when you get a song stuck in your head, except it's in my soul. And not in my head. That would be awesome and annoying. This is merely awesome.

See, the group Azure Ray broke up a little while ago. They're just two people, people split up, especially if they've been creative partners for like ten years, since early high school. They want to branch out and recharge. It's cool. Tragic for Dave, who had just discovered their full discography, but at least I had something to remember them by. They were working on independent projects, ones that I anticipated would turn out like Mary Fahl's pet project, which appears entirely unfindable, and seems to have defuncted her home page simply by existing. Trying to re-imagine "The Wall" (the entire album) will do that. She had to know it when she started in on it. She's Mary frickin' Fahl, she can do what she wants. She has gobs of credibility to waste, but the album I waited so long for came out without me knowing about it, or being able to find it. The same thing happened to Steve Burns for his second album, and I don't even really know what it's about. His site (homepage AND photobucket) is down (his MySpace remains, sorta), and I haven't been able to get that album. I assumed that kind of thing would happen for Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink.

So when I heard the unmistakeable voice coming through an episode of Dollhouse, I was compelled to investigate. Maria Taylor seemed to have kept herself pretty busy, and I haven't opened up any of the stuff of hers that I found online, but Orenda Fink really seemed to be unavailable except through the traditional means. Was there really that much of a divergence of public acceptance, or does Maria Taylor just know a better publicist? Anyway, I was thinking about whether I would ask for some of her stuff for Christmas, and the ordering link appeared to have a couple of free downloads. I figured I might as well click on one to see what she was up to these days, and...oh. Emm Jee. I don't think I've ever been so powerfully and immediately taken by anything as I was with this. The words may or may not play a part in it, simply by phonic impression rather than by meaning, but it's the music that knocks me down and steamrolls me. I don't expect any of you to even enjoy it, but this is like remembering that you had a twin brother.

Mom was impossibly awesome. It will be "here" on Friday. Whether that's to her house or my house, I don't care.
[RETRACTION]
Bullshit, yes I do. It seems to be getting sent to her, which is fine. I will get it for Christmas. I can wait. I will spend that time dreading the amount of disappointment I will face for actually getting excited about something. I don't get excited about things. I get interested and curious and even happy, but excited is a rare, rare gift.

(I shared my vulnerability with you. I am so gay.)

Enough about that. I need to get my mind off of the awesomeness.

I was sick last week. It was harsh. Coughing, phlegm, hacking all night long, not getting any sleep, everything except feeling bad. I actually felt great. If my lungs would cooperate, I would have happily gone running. Some diseases are congenital, and some are congenial. Mine was the friendly kind this time. It was absolutely not cool to be hacking that much, but I think I hated the cough drop more than the coughing.

The disease just plain lasted too long, that's it. A day or two would have been fine, but it had been growing since the concert.

What concert? Oh, right, the DETHKLOK CONCERT. I went to see that. Didn'tcha guys know? Yeah. I thought it would be Mastadon opening for them, but that just shows what I know. It was a four-band tour. High On Fire was impressive from the standpoint that they were able to play their instruments. Putting together a song, perhaps having some sort of progression or continuity? Not impressive. Or fun to listen to. They were thrash. It bored me.

The next band was Converge. If you're up for a laugh, look them up on Youtube. The first video result I got was for the channel "MusicIsFuckingDead." That about sums it up. That guy, who's making noise with his mouth but doing everything he can to avoid speaking or singing? He bounced around on stage the whole time. He doesn't play any instruments. Making that noise is all he does, like the dancing guy from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, but without the occasional musical involvement. It was hilarious, in a "people will mosh to anything" type of way. By the way, don't bother looking up two of their songs. They're all exactly the same.

I absolutely do not see what the big deal is about Mastodon. Nothing against them, the non-metal-conductive speakers made it sound like they were playing all over each other. One thing I did notice is that they were delightfully terrible at distributing their energy. Intensity needs to be measured and displayed with at least some regard to what's going on in the song. It's called pacing, and if you don't know what you're doing with it, all of your stuff is going to sound the same, which means nothing you do will ever be special.

I am so glad that the bong that is SJSU's auditorium was mostly cleared out by the time Dethklok took the stage. Really, guys? Weed is the drug of choice for a metal concert? Really? Thrash just doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd want to be mellow to.

I got excited when I spotted Skwisgaar's Gibson Explorer being tuned by the roadies.

Everything it's showing there was amazing live. The band is very scantly lit, since the performance is based around the fictional side of the band, but Brendan Small saw Gorillaz do only that, and wanted to be different. He wanted the live audience to be able to see what was going on, and it really works out great. Gene Hoglan makes the impossible look pedestrian.

The video for Bloodlines was awesome, and the visuals added a lot to Murmaider and Black Fire Upon Us. Seeing the solo in the Coffee Jingle done in person was humbling. The kind of talent hurts to see. I was afraid that they were going to end it with Go Into The Water, but then they turned off the video, turned on the lights, and did Fansong without the band-obscuring darkness. It paid off wonderfully. It was an awesome night, and I'm glad that my sister asked me to take her to it. I know she's glad she went, because she also won a raffle for an XBox360 version of Brutal Legend. She doesn't have the system for it, but she's resourceful. She'll find a way.

I had a whole lot more to say, but this is already too long. I'll come back later on.

Big love.

Linguistically disgusted

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:00:40 GMT

I hate this language. Suddenly, favoring a leg after a sports injury can now mean that you walk more on that one, or on the other one. This is bullshit. Nothing means anything anymore. Just think of all the things that can mean its own exact opposite. I'm not talking about the obvious and celebrated "inflammable." I'm talking about things like "resign." In sports, you can quit when your contract ends, or you can resign (as in, re-sign) with your team. Or you can resign and tell them to fuck themselves. And sanctioning something! If an action is sanctioned by the UN, it usually means that they didn't put sanctions on it. Shelled nuts? It means they do and do not have shells.

When somebody calls a picture "the older one," do they mean that they're older in the photo (making it the newer one) or the one that was taken longer ago, making them younger in it? When people strike, sometimes it means they do something, and sometimes it means they intentionally do nothing. If something is lost to your enemy, does it mean that you have it, or he has it? This is just a matter of people using an expression they don't understand, so often that it loses its meaning, but when something is all but ruined...is it ruined? Most of the time, when people say it, that's what they mean. The English-speaking masses need to be put in lots of pain for their offenses.

People just don't think about what they're saying. People use the phrase "went off" to describe something that activated, or something that deactivated. And if you have outstanding test results, did you ace it, or did you just plain not turn one in? If someone asks you about your AIDS test, and you say that the results were positive...DO YOU HAVE AIDS? Also, do the rest of you have AIDS? I'm trying to keep track of who does and does not, in case I suddenly need to take a cross-country road trip, and somebody needs to be loved up.

Speaking of that, how about ascending order? That can often mean that you're starting at the largest number and counting down. Craziness.

Some terms just sound too much like each other. Some, when spoken out loud, are each other. Doctor Dave says that those are homophones, which are not to be confused with homonyms, which are spelled the same. They're also not to be confused with homo phones, which have been getting heavily advertised lately, usually by hand models demonstrating the functionality of simulated screens based on nonexistent data transfer rates. Like when you rid yourself of or use something, you exorcise or exercise something. When you raze something, you burn it into uselessness and cackle madly while it crumbles (if you're doing it right), but when you raise something, you bring it back, or build it up. If someone asks you to resend something, you'd better not rescind it instead. Theoretically, there should be a subtle difference in pronouncing those, but that's the thing about theory.

Some words just got lost to intellectual laziness. People don't know what a beeline is anymore, but they still use the word. And I have to believe that people did that with "oversexed." Shouldn't that mean you're getting too much?

Oh. Since we're on the subject, when you say something like "He wasn't able to give her what she wanted in a relationship. Read: impotent," it's pronounced in the past tense, like "red." I don't see how people are trying to get it to make sense if they're pronouncing it in the way that rhymes with "breed." It's not a command for someone to read something (though we could use a few of those here and there), it means "This is how it is read." Although now that I've mentioned that, I should express how much I hate the way letters just get chopped off when people drop words into the conjugation fan. "Pronounciation." Was it too hard to put the "o" on there, fellas? Did you have a hard time in school, necessitating that you make things more complicated for future generations? I've given up correcting misspellings that make more sense.

[EDIT] I had to come back and confess that if I was ever working with a twisting tool (pliers, wrench, ratchet, tire iron, etc) and you told me to turn something to the right (or to the left), I wanted to punch you. There is no "to the right" or "to the left" when you're turning something in a circle. I'm a loving guy, which is why you didn't get punched.

TOPIC CHANGE.

Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's as good as they say it is. They even got the actors from the animated series. It's good to hear Luke Skywalker as the Joker again. And it's surprisingly respectable to hear Kevin Conroy playing Batman a different way. There's a lot less character to the voice in the video game, which matches the suit and colors much better. It was a choice that could have turned out horribly, and I'm glad to see that it didn't.

I now share with you a line from my book.
"I swear, if crazy were gold, we could just cut out the violence and use you to buy the whole damned continent."

Line subject to change, based on edits.

Oh, and keep in mind that if you stopped what you were doing right now, went to a vocal coach, studied for the rest of your natural life, and tried as hard as you could, and really applied yourself, and went about it intelligently, and took the most rewarding risks, and if they paid off in spades, and if you learned new things about yourself that you never imagined, and found a talent buried within you beyond your imagination, and if you nurtured it, polished it, and refined it until the end of days...
...you still wouldn't be as good as a woman named Floor. (link goes to a video, she pwnz j00 at 3:39) When the shit starts flying, words start getting thrown around, and a sista gotta whip out some vocals to put people in their place, you don't want to mess with someone who's capable of melting your brain. I lost a lot of respect for my favorite singers much earlier in the year, when I found out what this one was capable of. Fuck After Forever for not using her properly in more than a couple of songs. Annie Lennox may be able to open her mouth and knock you on your ass, Mary Fahl may be able to pick up any note she finds lying on the ground and kick your ass with it, but they're not bionic (re: 4:22-4:57).

Sheeeet.

Lastly, why does nobody in this overused genre ever think of this?

It's time

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:57:26 GMT

Okay. Now that they're heavily advertising the second one, I can't ignore the urge to ask. I'm going to try to address people who were interested in Assassin's Creed, and I'm hoping there are some reading this.

Now, what was it about the game that interested you? Was it the laughably cliche-ridden dialogue? Was it the poorly-rendered, slow-looking combat scene that consisted of about eight frames? Did you just get all tingly at the idea of a game that included jumping on wooden beams? Seriously, I do want to know all this. This is not a joke. What was it? What did you hear about the game that piqued your interest? Somebody, please tell me, because for the life of me, I can't think of a single aspect of any video game whatsoever that looked like it was being done well. And here's my promise to you: I will not contradict you on anything. I will not speak ill of the game or of your decision in response to anything you say. I want to go into it with an open mind. Please, change my opinion on it. For the love of Barry Who Was Betrayed By Jesus And Then Killed The Devil, somebody just tell me. Post anonymously if you have to.

Know what really was a great game, though? Resident Evil 5. I don't know what people were complaining about with the AI partner, I never had a problem with her. It must just be a problem with the XBox 360 people and their adorable little system resources (lack thereof, bitches). The controls were as responsive as they needed to be, the replay value was very high, and the graphics were just plain gorgeous. I'm not sure why they said it wasn't a zombie game, as most every zombie movie or game produced after 1985 involves some sort of disease being the catalyst, transmitted by fluids. This indicates a parasite. Saying that they're not zombies because they're being controlled by parasites is kind of not a valid argument. It's seriously okay, though. If that's the game's biggest flaw, uh...I'd say you have a pretty frickin' awesome game.

I miss askaninja.com. They haven't been producing lately. They're expanding, so, y'know, good for them, but I wants me my videos. Also, CreativeJuices7 is still dead in the water, and it's been what, nine months? No word at all. I can't even find anything in the forums to suggest that the owners are still alive. This, and how long it's been since a new Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged episode has come out...it's just horrible. I feel empty and abandoned. COME BACK, GUYS. *sniff*

At least I still have My First Dictionary. Yes, start at the first. It's more of a journey that way.

Also, try www.survivingtheworld.net (really good stuff in there) and www.itmademyday.com . These are both full of positive. Not like this post so far, which is full of negative.

In the last video for AskANinja.com, somebody asked where ninjas come from. The answer was utterly perfect. "Out of nowhere." Glorious. It doesn't make up for the wait, but it almost made me weep with its gorgeous simplicity. Almost as perfect as when I was at Hometown Buffet and I asked my (think I'm getting the age right) seven-year-old sister how the potatoes were, because I was thinking of getting some myself. She made a face and said "Instant." Never in my life had a question and all conceivable follow-up questions been so completely answered, and she did it in one word. That's the definition of poetry. Also, wit. Also, genius. Depends on whose proverbs you prefer.

That reminds me, I'm Dead And It's All My Fault is also full of super. Not quite as positive, but funny in an almost-clean way, and not directly hateful. Start as far back as you can. It might not feel like a journey, but it totally is.

Yes, this has turned into Linkathon '09. I'll stop now.

Now I'm going to ask for a little bit of audience participation here...

I have devised a word! This word is VAGENIE. I need you all to tell me what you think it should mean. I do this for you. Because I love you. Alright, everyone, I've been meandering around this for long enough, and it's time for me to finally ask...WILL ALL OF YOU MARRY ME? Allie won't mind. She knows she'll always be my first wife, because she alone wields the power of a vagenie.

Oh, hey, that reminds me. ASHREIGH. I am willing to make this concession to you: If you come to California and marry me, you will get to have a large, SUV-or-larger vehicle. Anybody else would be DENIED. Grounds for a DIVOASIN'. But you? You're special.

Crap, I just remembered that rule. The First Wife gets any and all priveleges afforded to any other wife. 'cause she's special. Fine then, just you and Allie.

Behold my mighty sudden change of topic. Here are the rest of the RPG quotes. Those of you not in the game, please let me know if any of the starred ones are actually funny. I am being pressured to add these, and I don't know that they're worthy to stand alone. I do know that some of these were already posted, and I'm realizing that I didn't have a good way to track which ones were or weren't, so bear with.

* "Can you help us lift this debris off of these orphans?"
"WHY WON'T SOMEBODY BUILD A WALL?"

"Why did you sleep with that guy?"
"So he would give us more of those potions we need!"
"THAT'S NOT THAT GUY."
"Oh. Where's that guy, then?"

"Congratulations. You are now being promoted from Cinnamon to Cinnabon."
(Dave's note: They hired a low-level mercenary and forcibly named him Cinnamon. This is the kind of thing these people do.)

"I think Neckra would tire BlackRazor out."

"I probably got that when I became a virgin."
(At first glance, this one isn't confusing, it's the kind of thing that makes you go ".....wait, what?!")

"You don't want to work a pregnant horse."
"Don't worry, we'd get them pregnant one at a time."

"If you thought about what you said, you would say a lot less."

"I'm awake, I had to drink a yucky potion."
"It's still better than option B."
"Drink a yummy potion?"

"I go to the inn and spend some time with my slave."
"So in five minutes, he comes back out?"
"Screw you, it takes longer than that."
"What are you talking about? I shared an apartment with you."
"Okay, okay, enough of the impotent real John, let's get back to the impotent fake John."

"I know how I'm going to finally cross the gap between evil and good. I'm going to give everyone a puppy."
"Or a baby!"
"I'm pretty sure that's called rape. That's not going to get you out of 'evil.' "

* "Dave, your TV stole my change."

* "You'd have to be dramatically disrespectful to the dead."
"Ooo! Oo! I'll do it!"

"Oh man, what happened to HER?"
"She tried to chop down a treant."
"........why?
[incredulously] "We wanted to make a canoe."

"Mark is a dirty room that can't be cleaned."
(This is probably only funny to people who know poor Mark)

"What happened to Neckra?"
"She fainted at the sight of blood."

"What are we going to do, go through their pockets and look for loose change?"
"Well, yes. How are we going to pay them if we don't take their gold?"

"Okay, gotta cut this log, I guess. I'll take the axe, and we have that invisible scimitar."
"Yes. But here's what I want you to understand: We also have a saw."

"Brakius told me to do it."
"I see. And is Brakius perhaps your dog, or a song, or a squirrel who sits on your shoulder and tells you to do things?"
"No, that's Skitters."

"You guys need any help here?"
"Oh, we're gonna burn all the bodies tomorrow."
"I can cook!"

"I think I should let her do me, that way I can use my bow."

"I have a good idea. We need a mage who can cast 'Fly.' We take a mage hostage, take him out on the bridge, and say 'Do you have the spell 'Fly'?' If he says yes, we say 'okay, prove it!' and toss him."

* "It's okay if you mess up, because we totally gave you terrible directions."

"I want the magic people dead!"

"What you have in this bag is Dust of Sneezing and Choking."
"So, basically....dust."

"She's got a lot of her mother in her."
"And just what is that supposed to mean?"
"YOU'RE LIKE YOUR MOM."

"Are you going to burn the treants?"
"Well you can't make canoes out of them."

(Dave's note: Obscure, terribly lame reference ahead)
"Chad comes to a door."
"I look inside."
"Jim Morrison is there."
"I close the door."

"Hey, you should check to see if they skeletons are coming under the table after you."
"I only have one point in that skill."

"You're my brother, screw you!"

"I pour the poison down his throat. Does anything happen?"
"He should poop!"

(By now, I'm realizing that most of these are just memorable indications of fun times.)

"I'm not pretty enough to get him to do it by sleeping with him."
"You're not ugly."
"Yeah, but I'm not five."

"It stands for 'Dave's never gonna see my boobs again.' "
"I thought we had already established that, with you being in a relationship."
"Hey, just because I'm in a relationship doesn't mean anything!"
(Give you all three guesses who said that)

"His uncle Mark had a flamethrower once. He set the fire on carpet."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:29:44 GMT

Forgive the typos, it is late.

Real quick: People who make commercials for cellphones either need to take a different approach to their products, or die. Either way, this needs to stop. Nobody in the history of the universe has ever seriously referred to their cell as their "wireless." Just. Call it. A cellphone. Or a cell. Why is it that so many companies have this blind spot to their customers? What is with this love affair with the word? It was functionally the exact same word as "cordless" until people fell under the illusion that a cord and a wire are different in the context of phones. This is the word that they're clinging to in the face of all business logic?

Speaking of which: "Bath Tissue." Seriously? Who put any thought into the construction fo that term? Let's not get into how I feel about the people who need to disassociate the idea of wiping their asses (and other things) with the word "toilet." "I will drag this fabric over my anus and remove the particles and smears of fecal matter, but for the love of God, don't make me use the t-word. I'd much rather think about a bath. Oh, even better, a puppy! I like kitties! Hey, can we call these kitty sheets? I like that much better. I'm going to drop by Target and pick up some kitty sheets. While we're at it, can we stop calling it a toilet? Can we get a French word? Wait, it IS French? Well, let's get a better one."

Okay, rant over.

I remain as militantly anti-take'n'bake as ever. The business model of Papa Murphy's remains baffling to me. Don't tell me there aren't better pizzas out there for the same amount of money in the frozen foods section of the average grocery store. If I pay someone for pizza-related labor, they're not going to go through the trouble of bringing it to me, or even operating an oven? This is a despicable corruption of the I-give-you-money-you-give-me-pizza tradition.

I'm finally getting to RPG quotes. Bear in mind that we're usually decently tired when these get logged. Also, keep in mind that most of these are less hilarious out of context. Case in point, the first one.

"How much are you going to drink?"
"Enough to where I stop feeling lousy."

See, if you didn't know that he'd been poisoned, and I was asking him how much anti-poison stuff he was going to drink, that wouldn't be as funny. More as follows.

A mystical voice arises outside the lair of the Seer...
"What is your name?"
"I am Mickey the Monkey Wrench, Fucker-Upper of People's Shit!"
"What is your function?"
"I fuck that shit ALL THE WAY UP."
"What is your purpose here?"
"I'll give you two guesses. But hurry it up, time's a-wastin'."

"We've only had time to break a window and throw a badger out of it."

"Apparently, I'm some sort of mystical monkey god with powers I didn't even know."

"When the monsters come to raid your town and eat your children, you can use these weapons to kill them! ...I mean the monsters, not the children."

"That's what happens when you leave things in things...they stay there."

"I'm not going over there and just taking that. I'm not a thief."
"Says the guy with 'some guy's wallet' written in his inventory."

"I think they should invent a ring of protection from child molesters."
"I'm pretty sure they call that herpes."

"You realize these spiders are about as big as your head, right?"
"Those are the tasty kind!"

"You shouldn't have slept with that guy!"
"Well, Greg was wounded, and we didn't have the money to get him healed!"
"YES WE DID."
"Well, now we can afford it again. See if you can get injured around a cuter priest."

"Okay. I'm going to shoot at the owlbears."
"Alright. Are you going to aim for anything in particular?"
"Yes. The owlbears."

"What do I see?"
"To the left, there are worgs, who are eating your henchman."
"What else is there?"

"Hey guys, I think I found a clue!"
"Jinkies!"

"Ew! This pencil smells like...pencil!"
"It takes a special kind of audacity to be surprised by that."

"Sure, I know a little bit about him. And for fifty gold, I'll know a little more."
"That doesn't make sense. I've had plenty of gold, and it didn't make me any smarter."
"I can tell."

"I don't think my brother wants me sleeping with anyone else."

"This is your own trial. You must face this alone. But do come back and let us know how it went."

"Where would you find a closet?"
"In houses, where closets live!"

"Us try find invisible bag that way."
"We didn't see any invisible bags."

"Hey, this not feel like bag!"
"But does it feel like invisible bag?"

"I thought you were a virgin!"
"No, I'm not! That's how we have a priest!"

"Baku has trained the mounts to hate. He brought them to the dark side of the horse."

The party opens the door to the room of the man they want to get to identify their items. They ask him "Are you the loremaster?" He peers at the one who speaks, and says "Are you the gatekeeper?"

"What's the cinder block for?"
"In case I'm a dick."
(This may or may not be better in context...anybody remember what the lead-up was?)

"Say...you're pretty cute."
"Er, no thanks, I have a...uh...brother."

"So you're going to go through and kill all the evil people? Sure, we'll tag along. That's fun for the whole alignment spectrum."

"Logic? I think you'll find that pointless. Just go with it. We do."

"Any idea where the dragons went?"
"You mean the ice dragons? Yeah. Toward the snow."

"Why am I getting wet?"
"Because you let somebody eat your tacos."
(believe it or not, this one had a non-perverted origin)

"Oh come on, you're saying you don't have value, like you're not worth anything?"
"Not me! I know what I'm worth!"
"Nothing, that's what we paid for you."

"I think those guys were priests of a dark god!"
"Which one?"
"Both of them."

"Okay. I set the beached boat on fire."
"The spiders inside begin fleeing for their lives, some on fire, some not. They jump around, run onto the sand, and panic. After the fire grows higher and covers the person-sized hole you made where you found the webs inside, you begin to hear a screaming from the back of the ship."
"Like, a person screaming?"
"Yes, like a person screaming."
"Is the fire back there yet?"
"It sure is."
"Aw, crap, we have to save him."
"Whoa, whoa guys...says who?"
"He's going to burn to death."
"Well, he should have thought of that before he got on a boat full of flaming spiders."

That does it for page one. Page two later. I don't want this post to go supernova.

Just for the posting's sake.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:58:34 GMT

I said I was going to post more often, and I may be sacrificing quality to do so, but I'm going to make myself stick to this. I used to just let thoughts pile up, with the intention of posting them "eventually," but I misjudged my own capacity to recognize an opportunity to make it really happen. So here are some more scattered thoughts. P'raps later I will get going into some actual story-like situations, but that all depends on me not being creativity-taxed to death.

Not running a game last weekend might have helped with that. My tabletop game meets every two weeks (usually), conforming to the schedule of Senor Greg. This happens partially because the party runs off and does things without him that they, as they're doing it, acknowledge as being wholeheartedly stupid. Also, he's the only original character who has been at more than half the sessions who still shows up for the game, which, I'm not sure if he realizes, will land him some nifty in-game benefits, and give him much, much more lenience as far as going out of my way to avoid killing him. I try not to just throw my arms up and say "Okay, you finally did it, there's no way for the party to win now, the game is done," but if we don't have any original characters, I'm not really going to have a choice. I told people at the beginning to stick with their original characters. It was sorta important to the plot. Tracy was going to be the only other one to reap the benefits, and now that she has a new girlfriend, and is likely falling into some even less respectable habits, I'm almost able to count her out entirely. It sucks.

Big up to jelarin for being our stenographer. She scores big points for it, too. It's cool to be able to go back and read what was happening a year ago. Some of it is outright incorrect (miscommunications do happen), but since it's in character, there are bound to be discrepancies. You'd all have access to the log of what's going on, but I don't think she has an LJ for her Corlana character. The more we play, and the more I write, the more worried I get about how similar she is to a character in my second book, which is at page 647 now. Since I haven't put page breaks between chapters, I could call it longer, but since I put a space between each paragraph for easier on-screen reading, I could also call it much shorter.

There's a very dirty joke to make there, but I don't want to make the two people reading it as I write it feel grossed out.

It weird. About halfway through my first book, I gained two readers. Same thing happened for the second one. I wonder if they'll just plain not read the next one I write, like my last two, those not-readin'-my-crap bastiches.

I had a lot of fun playing The Force: Unleashed. Same for Heavenly Sword. Both were solid games that took a lot of getting used to in order to understand what went into them. Both had stories that were much better than I anticipated, and TF:U (hehe...the eff you) actually had a canonically-sound story that did not make me roll my eyes. The premise annoyed me, but there was enough in there to earn my forgiveness. Some of you may know how hard that can be. Heavenly Sword, though, was actually worthy of the term "fantastic" when describing its execution. Aside from the little hanging scene that was promptly ignored in-game, it was more than just entertaining, it was well-written and fun to watch. Not just the FMV, but the game as well. That puts it a step above Metal Gear: Solid 4, which, while decently engaging, was full of cut scenes that were overly long, hackneyed, and, at times, outright pretarded. We forgive it, because it makes sense of the other games. It sounded impossible, but they managed to excuse some of what went on earlier. Still no excuse for having Cam Clarke do the voice for Liquid Snake. I've been a hater of his since the onset of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series. The first one.

That paragraph was meant to be about love. I've played some really good games lately. Dead Space never got terrible. A little predictable in spots, sure, but always fun. Bless Gamefly. Bless it so much.

Apparently, Cold Stone (Coldstone?) does indeed have rigglar ice cream. I say "apparently" because I was just told.

Cassie was totally right about Leaves' Eyes. Awesome band, once you're acclimated. Hits and misses, of course, but that's a given with any band. Njord captures (almost perfectly) the feeling I wanted for Vanek Kell-Hath. It might replace Reise Reise as his intented entrance theme.

I'm totally gay for the song "The Kill" by Thirty Seconds To Mars. They strike me as a band that exists to produce a single really cool song, and then vanish. This one is it. It's one of the few that's much more fun to listen to than to play on Rock Band. I'm just jazzed that they released the best of Queen for the game. Somebody To Love? Yes plz. I Want It All? Gimme! Under Pressure? For the love of God, yes. Bohemian Rhapsody? Not available. Not a bad call on their part. It wouldn't lend itself well to the game.

Now for that freefloating aggression:

There is no argument to justify having a program put saved games and character profiles in the "My Documents" folder. I'm not talking about there NOT BEING A WAY TO CHANGE THAT, I'm not talking about how THEY ASK YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO INSTALL THE GAME AND THEN PUT YOUR FILES SOMEWHERE ELSE. I'm talking about the idiots who somehow think there's a benefit. If you're fucking around with your profile to the point where where you need to go to My Documents/Black Isle Studios/Fallout 3 for your convenience because you have to alter those so often, how do you not know how to make a link to your own program files? If you mess around in there, why do you need a new folder for every game you install popping up to clutter up your folder? If you have ever argued for that behavior, you need to have the direction of your knee reversed with a tire iron. You're an idiot. There is no valid argument. Even if you later said "Oh, I see your point. That really is kinda dumb," that tire iron thing still applies. Think before you speak. Don't make me track you down for being a moron.

Speaking of being a moron, does anybody know why there are people who intentionally hang toilet paper so that it falls away from the person who needs to use it? I mean, I know there's not a good one, but has anyone had this conversation with someone who tried to put forth something that they thought was a valid argument?

H1N1 is called a pandemic now. "Epidemic" is officially phased out, I guess. Greg, don't start with that. You know as well as I do that this is due to media-driven hype. Search your feelings, Jeff-effah

Like Adam said to Eve, this thing got way longer than I'd anticipated.

Ducked it.

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:29:42 GMT

That's right, I had a hugely eventful series of months, and said nothing about it. And I'm not gonna. Neener neener. I got this LJ partially to have a place where I could discuss an event, and therefore not have to tell everybody I know the details about it, and why I didn't do this instead of that. Because you guys know you love to do that. I'm actually thinking about carrying pamphlets around with me to shorten the amount of time having the same conversation with everybody I meet. Why don't you have a girlfriend? Why aren't you in college? Why don't you eat regular food? Each one of these conversations has turned into a Dave-centered accusation-fest every single time I've had them. Hatin' it. So this LJ was supposed to fix things like that, but as it turns out, getting people to read it was a failing effort. It would be one thing if I said "Go to www.DreamWorkssucks.reasonsofdave.com" and they said "meh, that sounds like too much reading" and dropped the subject, but no, they're curious enough to bug me, but not curious enough to read anything.

Now, it's not that I've been avoiding this thing, I just haven't felt the urge to share any of my thoughts. It might be related to how many people are giving me the impression that they just plain don't read anymore.

Scattered thoughts:

Have you ever found yourself avoiding a conversation with somebody because you know that half the things you're about to say, you're going to have to immediately repeat?

Am I the only one who notices (and fucking hates) how often people will repeat out loud the last thing somebody said?

Any time you ever see anybody playing a video game on TV or in a movie, that is not how anybody plays video games. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're part of the problem.

Any argument centered around the sanctity of marriage is a stupid one. I've been tiptoeing around that one, but if anybody brings it up, it's a clear indication that the person doesn't think about what they're saying.

It is always improper to refer to a person as "they," but nobody gives a shit. It's like ending a sentence with a preposition. Even I, the gramer Nazi, am unable to dig into my pile of rat's asses and finding two worth committing to it.

Internet Explorer is now officially too slow for me. I'm going to start leaning on Google Chrome again, and its bookmark difficulties will just be a surmountable hurdle.

I got something at Coldstone (Cold Stone?) without realizing it was yogurt. It took me a few bites to place it. Is it all like that? I'm too lazy to check, and besides, sometimes wondering is more fun than knowing.

Bo Burnham is my new favorite comedian.

I haven't caught the first episode yet, but I have the feeling Jeff Dunham's show (comedians enjoy having ham in their name) is going to suck.

Zombieland did not suck. It was pretty consistently entertaining.

I so profoundly do not care about collecting trophies in PS3 games.

The way Microsoft produces is poisonous to the gaming industry. Treating intellectual property like office equipment and putting developers under strict time frames is ruining games. Putting a business man at the head of a game company is like putting an accountant in charge of a choir.

Also, you don't hear PS3 owners complaining about their games crashing. You don't hear them complaining about anything. It's hard enough to find a PS3 owner.

I am woefully behind on my Strong Bad. Like, months. Has it gotten bad? Can anyone tell me?

I don't miss Amber. I just miss having a girlfriend.

Dethklok's new album is more solid overall than their last one, but has fewer songs that are good to listen to by themselves. Interesting tradeoff. I'm going to see them with my sister on the 21st of November. DON'T LET ME DOWN.

Dead Space is a conceptually solid game (so far). The story works perfectly for the genre and the platform. One complaint: Knock it off with the flamethrower ammo. I use a real gun. One that hurts my enemies. Thanks. Oh, and the outfit could stand to look a little bit less like Lord Zedd from Power Rangers.

I almost bought GTA 4 for the PS3. Then I remembered that I own it on PC. I just wish they didn't require you to have A GODDAMNED GIGABYTE OF RAM on just your VIDEO CARD in order to use the higher texture pack. wtF? This was like a year ago, and they still don't make good cards like that for under a hundred fifty. And before you mention anything about what ATI is doing, notice that I said "good."

I was unaware that Dollhouse was such a phenomenon among everybody I've ever met. I heard it just wasn't what people were looking for. This bears investigation.

Does anybody else find it stupid when Darth Vader says "What is thy bidding, my master?" Where does "thy" come into it? It's a location/period specific word. That also reminds me of why I lost faith in the Star Wars books...I can't remember who it was, but somebody was sipping on a cup of a curious beverage, and he/she was asked about it. The answer was a small smile, and a mention of something called "hot chocolate," picked up on a tiny little planet called Earth. Apparently "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" gets overwritten for cheap fan service. If you know anything about George Lucas, you know he's wholeheartedly against any kind of service to the fans.

[EDIT]
I ran into this email a while ago, and I decided that if I ever made an LJ post again, this would be in it. I actually sent this to someone.

"Also, a few minutes ago, a spider came down on my monitor. He seemed a little frustrated by the staticky glass in front, but I took my eyes off of him for a second to talk to someone else, and when I looked again, he was gone. He didn't go back up to the ceiling, he wasn't anywhere around my monitor, and he didn't climb onto me. He was just gone. He must have been a phase spider, and those usually have at least 40 hit points, so I might be in trouble. Get 5000 GP worth of gems ready in case I need a cleric."

[FURTHER EDIT]
How is it that there was a petition to stop Uwe Boll, but not one for Michael Bay?

I link you again. It's how I do things.

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:19:23 GMT

This is the best misheard lyrics video I've ever seen in my life. I propose that it is unable to be topped.

Also, if you haven't seen this, you are not my friend. Look up the lyrics some time, and you will find that it's just as hilarious in print.

Fascinating.

Fri, 29 May 2009 02:16:15 GMT

There's this thing.

My brother, Josh, wishes with all his might that he had it.

It's this thing I do where I tempt the universe. I make one little step toward the road, and, like a Loony Toons cartoon, I watch thousand-mile-an-hour traffic go hurtling across, horns blaring, music pumping, drivers shouting. It is an organic thing, this system of forces in my life. It listens closely and, with all due ponderousness and pomp, throws the image of certain actions against a fun house mirror, creating gargantuan situational echoes that let me know just how swiftly a flick of the wrist can turn into an avalanche of motion.

Case in point: I got tired of online dating services. Nine out of ten emails I send are unanswered, about a third of those being unread at all. They come over, look at my profile, and don't read the email. It's rather hilarious, when you consider what they other people are supposed to be on the site to find, and it brings to mind my closest coworker's novel impulse to create a profile (despite that she's happily married) just to see what kind of attention she'd draw. Perhaps this is more common than I thought, but in the end, the closest I get to come to actually getting a match is sending a few emeails to that one person out of ten (ten? It's much closer to twenty...), meeting that person for coffee, and watching them kindly wait for me to stop talking and go away. I email them afterward, and then they're on the ignore-Dave train like everybody else. This, I'm used to, I've had my fun with it, I got bored with it, and I've heard more than enough people tell me I'm not trying hard enough. Since I'm finally in a position to do so, I actually visited Great Expectations, and reviewed their service plans.

As it turns out, seven thousand dollars for eighteen months is the lowest plan they had. They did have limo service to special events, shows, bayside parties, etc. I figured, screw it, I needed to buy something that would finally silence the people who said I wasn't putting enough faith into it, and I talked the manager down to three thousand for one year. Yes, I belong to a dating service. Thing is, it doesn't set you up on dates, but it runs thorough background checks to make sure that the people are who they say they are, absolutely aren't married (they actually make you sign something authorizing them to punch you in the throat and slash your tires if you lied about not being married), and can afford a dating service.

I got some good pictures out of it, but since I'm not going to create a photobucket account, you can just ask me individually if you're interested in those. There are only two.

Anywayzesses, the universe noticed my leap of faith, and decided to pour some similar energy into my life. I immediately got four connections on a completely different dating site (I belong to, I think, five now?), and they seemed pretty promising during the jump-through-hoops phase, but now the energy is receding and the sand is getting gritty again; after about two weeks, I can't get in touch with any of them all of a sudden.

Like the calm before the storm, I knew this only to be a prelude.

Guess who's in town, fresh from getting married, and demanding answers from me about what I think of her?

That was a fun conversation.

That aside, it's just interesting to see what sort of power I have. Invoke the right word, and I can watch the landslide engulf so many things around me.

Case in point: I just committed to three grand, and today, I got word that the department is downsizing about eighteen people in my building. Guess who's low on the seniority pole! :D

What they're going to do is "place" me somewhere. Now, this could be in Sacramento, it could be in San Francisco, it could be in frickin' Fresno. I'll have to either accept it, or deal with no placement at all, and be unemployed. Joy of joys. Now, my name hasn't officially appeared on any lists, but again, as far as state service goes, I'm definitely on the bottom rung as far as who's left in my building after the last three years of Arnold financially pulverizing my department. We were officially understaffed, and now we're cutting back more. What gives me comfort is knowing that if I'm cut, I'll be the least screwed person there. Being absolutely critical had its upside, but them's the breaks. I hope I get put somewhere nice.

That was all fun. Then the Check Engine light in my car came on. The car's running fine, so it can't be the evap leak thing again. This is something all new.

Oh, and I'm still having problems with one of the roommates not paying rent. So I'm paying double rent, plus my car, plus the two hundred a month for Great Expectations, and I'm not sure where/if I'll be working after the first of Jewlah.

I was about to spend about six hundred bucks on a new mattress set. This old one squeaks too much. I've had a lot of time with it (like, since I was what, fourteen?), and I've totally broken it all the way in. It's comfy, but it's too loud. Like a husband who's sometimes a little rough when the biscuits aren't done right. I'm going to go ahead and suppose that it won't be happening now.

Here's the fun thing: We might still get busted down to federal (not state) minimum wage in the very near future, whether I can accept being moved or not. Wouldn't it suck to have to move, and then live on something far below the state minimum wage?

Fun fact! Burger King hambugers in my area are 89 cents. A double hambuger? $2.50. I order two burgers and hand the buns and wrapper for one of them right back over the counter.

RPG Quotes:
(important note...most of these are intended to be taken out of context)

"Why can't we pee in the river?" "Because then the gorillas would drown."

"If it's not glass, then I don't want it for my fetus."

"She's not here. She could have showed them her feces."

"We'd get the horses pregnant one at a time."

"They're highly potent focal points of magic and chaos rolled up into a tiny little...bitch."

"I could not recommend a competitor. I'm sure you understand." "Actually, I couldn't understand. You're kind of French."

"That's why it's fun to kill people. Cute has nothing to do with it."

"It will be a long way. Especially since you lost your horses." "Neigh!"

"That horse is gonna die in a knife fight."

"What did she die from?" "Murder."

"I told them to get more ballistas!" "They were busy building walls to put the ballistas on." "Walls don't work on dragons!"

"What happened to her?" "She tried to chop down a treant." "Why?" "She...wanted to make a canoe."

"Where will you be aiming?" "I dunno...I want him to die and leave me alone." "Ah, the 'die and leave me alone' shot...that's tricky."

"You know what? The gorilla fetus is cute."

"If that thing were smart, it would be catching the arrows." "It IS catching the arrows."

"Neckra, would you like to destroy Baku's monkey?" "No way, you stay away from my monkey!" "But mine's all used up!"

"She's just a big ol' softy on the inside." "Yep. Reeeeaaaal squishy." "Yes, but she's sharp and pointy on the outside, which is what we keep her around for."

"How much are you gonna drink?" "Enough to where I stop feeling lousy."

"Apparently I'm some sort of mystical monkey god with powers I didn't even know."

"We've only had time to break a window and throw a badger out of it."

"I know a bit, but for fifty gp, I'll know a little more." "That doesn't make sense. I've had plenty of money, and it didn't make me any smarter." "Yes, I can tell."

"When the monsters come to raid your town and eat your children, you can use these weapons to kill them! ...the monsters, not the children."

"I think those guys were priests of a dark god." "Which one?" "Both of them."

"I'm not a thief!" "Says the guy with 'some guy's wallet' written in his inventory."

"I'll shoot the owlbears." "Are you going to aim for anything in specific?" "Yes. The owlbears."

Reboot

Fri, 01 May 2009 02:32:20 GMT

Dave had to restart. I had too many system-draining programs going at once. Some data may have been lost, but things are running much more smoothly now. Whew. (FYI: If we don't talk anymore, I've prob'ly deleted you from a few things. I'm pretty sure it didn't affect anybody who reads this thing.)

Book number two is at about page 525. I haven't made a whole lot of progress lately, but I'm really happy about the quality of the progress. I love my characters to death, and I hate what I'm about to do to them. I'm a bastard.

I actually heard Rammstein's "Reise Reise" on the radio a little bit ago. I was shocked. It turns out the college has a legitimate station that's relayed through the local high schools, and they actually do play non-top-twenty songs. Oh, the wild stuff I've heard.

I want to mention that the art of blowing a person's mind isn't about intelligence, it's about a new take on old perspectives, things that have settled long enough to be taken for granted. I was humbled and thrilled to be knocked on my ass by a compelling and staggering new theory that will forever change the way I see a movie.

It's going to be a great year for music. Rammstein, Epica, Amberian Dawn, Steve Burns, and Lacuna Coil all have albums coming out (Epica's coming out with TWO, Dido's is already out, and I think I'm forgetting someone important). I'm a little giddy. This will rock. It so will.

Dimitri and Jess still have my books. I fear I shall never have them back.

One more Ask Doctor Dave, then I rest.

--------

Dear Doctor Dave
You are sooo awesome. Why can't all men be like you? You know how to talk to a lady. Guys seem to have a hard time really expressing themselves, but that's makes you who you are!

Like I went out with this guy, and he paid for my meal which was sweet, and he opened the door for me and everything, but all he would do is talk about himself, you know, didn't get to know me. And worse, I could see through his shirt, he had bacne! EW! Is there anything worse than that?

Laura in WI

Dear Laura

Thank you for your kind words. To answer your question, there are two things worse than bacne, and I hope you didn't have to experience them:

1. Cracne
2. Sacne

May you never find either.

-------

Big love goes out to anybody who still reads this damned thing.

Don't read this.

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:29:17 GMT

NUMBER ONE.

I'm going to go rob a bank tomorrow. I plan on dressing up in a clown wig and make up and only wearing a thong and nipple tassels. I'll carry a goat and a can of fluorescent paint in one arm and, while in the bank, I'm going to fuck the goat and throw the paint over the walls, all the time ripping up pages of a phonebook and swearing my head off. After getting the money, I'll take a shit on the floor and piss everywhere. I then will escape in a van shaped like a giant pink cock.

Let's see America's most wanted fucking stage a reconstruction of that.

NUMBER TWO.

Obama goes up to Saint Peter on his way to the pearly gates. Peter says, "Barack, before you enter, we'd like to know how you used the time our Lord gave you on the earth. What deeds have you accomplished to better your fellow man?"

Obama thinks for a moment, then says, "Well, St. Peter, I guess the greatest accomplishment of my life was becoming President of the United States. I am humbled and proud to serve...blah blah blah..."

Pete looks at his book, puzzled. He turns to Obama, "I don't have that written here in the record of your life, when did this happen?"

Obama says, "About five minutes ago."

Glad that last one's being proven wrong so far.

Speaking of that, I suddenly have a dislike of our use of the word "president." And it's not just because I hate the letter P. I agree that you can be a president of a council, president of a government, or president of a book club, but President of the United States? It really rubs me the wrong grammatical way. Maybe my concept of government is just sliding away from my concept of a country.

Still grooving from time to time on the Lazy Town/Lil John remix.

Also, I dare you not to laugh at this. I tried not to, but when Mom (yes, my mother) showed it to me, the juvenile nature of it wasn't bothersome enough to stop me from busting up.

Gah

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:38:48 GMT

Annoying dream last night. I was trying to use a free-access computer with a small movie-theater-sized monitor to look something up on Yahoo (of all things), and for some reason, the computer had no problem with the www part, but it couldn't type Yahoo. I diagnosed the strange-as-hell keyboard/mouse plugs (like an N64 power plug with the actual wires in the middle, and decide that the problem wast he keyboard. I was going to go into the control panel to open up the accessibility options and pull up the on-screen, point-and-click keyboard, but apparently I had to minimize a zillion other things first, despite that I only had one program open. It was frustrating. I think I got through twelve minimizations before I woke up. That was my brain trying to prevent me from understanding that the part of the brain that actually handles letters doesn't work in dreams, but I didn't understand that it was a dream, otherwise I'd have been trying to sue that to my advantage (and failing). The weird thing is, I remember very distinctly the finger-pointing patterns of typing Yahoo.c (because I would get that far before realizing that it wasn't working), even if it came out Yclbb. Those B's stand out very clearly in my memory.

Computers have been pretty prominent in my dreams lately. I often dream that I'm trying to get use out of very obsolete compies at work, switching files from hard drives to those huge old-style black floppy disks in order to make it happen. Other times, I dream I'm being moved to a different, slightly less awesome computer and I have to wonder what I'm allowed to do on it and not allowed to do, and what will happen to my old files. Strangely, this new style of dream does not dishearten me a bit. Showing up at school late on the first day, with no idea which classes to go to, or suddenly realizing that I've been signed up for a class that I haven't been going to for the last several months, those were annoying. Especially when it's for high school, and the first thing that happens when I leave school is realize that my car's been stolen or broken into. In high school.

After reading about ingrown hairs, I've decided to stop tweezing my nipple hairs. Just thought you should all know that.

And I've decided that if you've experimented with any drug, at all, you have no right to criticize full-blown junkies. They experimented too, and just had better results than you. They had the experience you were going for. That's what experimenting is, finding out how much you want this new thing in your life, whether it's homosexual activity, drugs, or autoerotic asphyxiation. You openly and knowingly took the risk that you were going to enjoy something to the exclusion of all other things, especially if it was a chemically mind-altering substance you were experimenting with. I'm not speaking out against people who do any of that, I'm just trying to turn off those hypocrisy faucets. Don't be a hater if you once looked down that road and said "Hmmm...maybe." On those last two, don't be a hater at all. Then again, I'm not thinking that any of my readers are concerned with what gender drops your pachinko balls, so it was kind of pointless to say that. Sirrah, sirrah. I just know that I got unwisely addicted to this chick down south, whose silence is making me behave rashleigh.

And so it can be said, yes, I'm getting the mandatory two days off per month, with the corresponding ten percent pay cut that's hitting the California state employees so far. We don't know whether more cuts are coming, because the governor has been able to exert almost no control at all over the legislature or the heads of many of his departments.

For the love of things that are not crap

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:59:58 GMT

For those of you who have seen this,
I humbly present the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. You have to stick with this until the very, very end to suddenly burst out into spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter like I did. And those of you who know me know that I don't do that.

For those of you who haven't seen these, bear with them. Just go with it. They're worth it. I know, I'm just posting a bunch of links lately. But I'm increasing the hilarity in your life. Just ask my mother.

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:36:00 GMT

I spent all last night being approximate as sick as death. I won't claim to have been sicker than death, but it was pretty harrowing.

This has been an extremely depressing winter for most people in my life. Fights with the boi/girfran, breakups, job losses, house losses, career pressures, school troubles, and, for me, this blip right in front of my left eye that renews every time I blink, ever since this afternoon. Man, do I hope it's not permanent. At least this winter smells nice. There's been a burning-cedar scent that rises through downtown Sacramento a few times per week, and really makes it easier to deal with the fact that I'm at work before the sun rises and out of work after it sets. It's kicking my sleep patterns where they don't like to get kicked.

I'm scrambling to get this promotion that I'm eligible for, but it involves jumping ship to another department, and there's a lot of paperwork involved in that. The applications I put out are being lost in those of the people who have already been working in that classification, so I guess I can say I'm being pretty well affected by the economic downturn, too. If those manpower cutbacks are put into place, things might get even less comfortable, since I've only been in state service two and a half years, and I'm not sure how close to that bottom ten percent I am in terms of tenure.

In other news, I am completely head over heels, balls-to-the-wall in love with my second book. The first one can officially go fuck itself (but keep with the feedback, 'Mitro). I've been churning out a couple of thirtyish-page chapters a month, and feeling really good about it.

I know, this is the second time in a row I've posted something pet-related, but someone sent me this and I felt it was mostly spot-on. Typos are left in for artistic purposes. Also, because I'm lazy, and over the last few months, I've found that I hate correcting typos.

The ten commandments from a dog's point of view:

? My life is likely to last 10-15 years. Regular separation from you will be painful and can even cause depression. Think before you buy me.

? Give me time to understand what you want from me don't be impatient, short-tempered or irritable.

? Place your trust in me and I will always trust you back, respect is earned not given as some sort of inalienable right.

? Don't be angry with me for long, and don't lock me up as punishment. I am not capable of understanding why I am being locked up. I only know I have been rejected. You have your work, entertainment and friends. I only have you.

? Talk to me sometimes. Even if I don't understand your words, I do understand your tone. "You only have to look at my tail" to know that.

? Be aware that however you treat me, I will never forget, if that treatment is unjust or bad, it may spoil the special bond between us.

? Please do not hit me. I cannot hit back, but I can bite and scratch and I don't ever want to feel the need to do that.

? Before you tell me off me for being uncooperative, obstinate, or lazy, ask yourself if something might be wrong with me. Perhaps I'm not getting the right food or I've been out in the sun too long, maybe my heart is getting old and weak, or maybe I'm just dog-tired.

? Take care of me when I get old. You too will grow old and will also want care, love, and affection.

? Go with me on difficult journeys. Never say, "I can't bear to watch" or "Let it happen in my absence". Everything is easier for me if you are there. Remember, Irrespective of what you do I will always love you.

I'm going to see Avenue Q with my sister in March. I'll let you all know how that turns out. Apparently, seeing the show will help you understand what the internet is for.

I'm going to add this to the freaky shit pile: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/24 Erin posted this on her blargh, and it's the kind of thing that you just can't look away from. There's "I'm into art" and then there's the kind of people who do this. Even the people who swing from hooks embedded in their flesh cannot hope to be this hardcore about art.

Today's big love goes to Ash, in hopes that it will get her to email me back quicker.

Just do this one thing for me

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:52:43 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyUec-lv_jI

Hasn't this happened to everybody a few times?

Good golly, do I loves me some tea

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:21:31 GMT

It's been too long since I've had a really hot, really good cup of regular ol' tea, and I got to do that again last night. I mean, I always had the opportunity, just not the inclination. Mmmm. Peaceful stuff.

I'm also noticing that I have the ability to take off my pants and socks in the same move. The trouble is, I have no idea how I do it. When I wake up the next morning, I find that my socks are still in the pants, as though someone were in them right then. Most people would take off their socks, then take off their pants, abut apparently, I've mastered an art that stays only in my subconscious, because if I try to do it on purpose, I have no idea how to make it happen. It's just a surprise that happens when I'm not paying attention. TMI? A-OK.

PC gaming is pretty much dead, I've noticed. Not testing games before you sell them for fifty bucks really is a kick in the crotch. There's also the annoying habit these days of having menus take forever to come up and react to entries, because slow transitions are cool. Today's annoying-as-hell thing is that you can't play GTA 4 if you don't have an internet connection. Woulda been nice to mention this on the box. Like that other game I won't mention that you pay the fifty for and only get to install three times. Hey gaming industry, if you want to stop losing customers to hacked versions of games, maybe you should allow us to save games to our hard drive instead of an online fucking database, or at least stop cluttering up the My Documents folder with user files after we SPECIFICALLY FUCKING DESIGNATE ANOTHER INSTALL PATH.

I'm angry now. I will soothe it with Dido.

Has anybody else noticed that her new album is extremely laid back, and lacks any of the passion of her earlier work? I think she's focusing on songs that are easy to sing in concert and won't require her to strain herself if she's on the road for six months. Looking at the abortion that her live album was, I'm willing to go ahead and pat her on the back and give her my support on this one. She has officially Sarah McLachlaned herself. Well, the first part of the McLachlanation process. She'll get lazy, and then she'll completely lose track of the flow of a good song and get obnoxiously self-indulgent. Baby, we love you, stop trying to add to something that already works beautifully and isn't stressful on you. Anybody remember Dirty Little Secret, and what a wonderful little song it could have been? I sigh.

But it seems that ol' Dider has now reached the point that she's reaping the consequences of the live-by-the-feeling lifestyle that characterized her first album. She was strong, she was passionate, she meant what she said and considered each emotion to be a divine truth, and in the subsequent Life For Rent (no, I'm not going to punctuate that), she seemed to be beginning to realize that maybe, at her age, she should have had some more accomplishments in her love life, instead of being passed around like a cigarette between fifth graders behind Taylor's house. Now, we have this, on her latest album:

Track 1: Song about being afraid to love
Track 2: Song about a failed relationship
Track 3: Song about being afraid to love
Track 4: Song about a failed relationship
Track 5: Song about not feeling anything for the relationship you're in

Sensing a theme?

I want to send this album to somebody, but I know for a fact that she wouldn't understand.

Hey, does anybody else hate the way IE now puts a little view-tube on every link and gives you a preview of where it goes, whether you want it to or not?

I have links. They are seriously, seriously worth the watch.

What, son?

Put the snacks in the bag, and I'm ghost like Swayze!

Seriously, all these lists are awesome and adorable.

The obligatory gamer-oriented link that I won't expect anybody to follow. Warning, the first one is a little gratuitous, but bear with it. Yes, Felicia Day is in everything these days. World of Warcraft players should look up The Guild. I won't link it, because it's not my thang. This blog is about things that are Dave's thang.

Freaking hilarious series of videos. Go through the whole series if you have the time.

This'n, too.

Few things have ever made me bust up laughing (especially a forum) quite like this did.

Maybe I was just in a good mood at the time, but I got a huge kick out of this. I don't even know why Plaxico Burress was in the news (I don't keep up), but it got really funny halfway through for me.

And of course, you're a bad person if you haven't seen Doctor Horrible.

Today's big love goes to Jamie, even though she doesn't wanna talk to me no' mo'. I still loves you, babe.

A simple explanation, followed by some tired arguments

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:22:49 GMT

Behold as I join the whining masses.

A war starts in an oil-rich and politically volatile area. Prices naturally increase, driving investors to the commodity. This again drives prices up, and it keeps going until gas is five bucks a gallon in the US, and several times worse in other places of the world. Commuters lose disposable income and with prices rising quickly (but hey, the economy is doing great! Just look at the payoffs on those gas investments! :D ), are less confident in their future ability to afford anything else. Spending therefore decreases disproportionately to the rising of gas prices. Fewer loans are taken out, which leaves the banks with the need to raise existing rates in order to cover their costs and keep their own investors happy, which makes more people less able to afford their daily financial indulgences. The cycle continues until it hits critical mass, and the banks become entirely unable to operate. Reports come in of people who were given eviction notices and have still been living there for over a year because the banks don't even have the money to pay somebody to tell the police to go over there and kick those people out. Jobs are cut in all areas of the economy as a result of fewer purchases made, resulting in less spending cash, resulting in yet fewer purchases made.

Yep. Chevron gas is under two bucks in Sacramento now. GW is putting gas prices right back where he found them, and all it took was a total collapse of the US economy over a war that we were drawn into. No, seriously, it was ~~because their operatives attacked us on 9/11~~
~~because there was a link between Bin Laden and Saddam that we somehow misplaced~~
~~because they had weapons of mass destruction~~
because it's our job to spread democracy ~~via a president who was not democratically elected with a war nobody voted on~~.

Yes, it's our job. Even if it means leaving ourselves without the national manpower to deal with an immense hurricane that knocks the shit out of our country. After all, we have experience in dealing with hurricanes without the ability to send our military in to help because they're in Iraq.

While I'm here though, lemme see bitch some more, by proxy. It's an old enough and repeated enough argument that it fits this post. That's right. I don't complain about things that are still cool to complain about. I wait until they're right between hip and retro.

Okay, real quick

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:38:12 GMT

Shorties.

Is there actually a good male vocalist out there these days? I can't think of any. Country music is just about the only genre out there that has any singing anymore, and since I don't really listen to country, I'm not exposed to any real talent.

To err is human.
To arr is pirate.

If you've ever been robbed while wearing white ear buds, you were asking for it.

The state of California is about to experience a 5% decline in paying its employees, but at least we'll get an extra day off a month. I'm the only one who doesn't mind. I'm naturally prosperous.

My LJ was violated by someone who apparently had a lot of free time on her hands. After her surgery, she'll have even more. Eeek. I didn't even have time to put up the drapes.

I have apparently talked my Ash off. This makes me sad.

My first wife needs some love. I have much of it. She needs to come get it. I am full of hugs that I haven't had the chance to give away yet.

Fallout 3 is a very hard game to finish. Going around and doing every quest just gets tiresome if you hit maximum level halfway through (which, in the game, you do).

It is also the only game in which I hear my henchman start fighting, and I keep doing whatever it was I was doing. "He can handle it" is not something I found myself saying often in Neverwinter Nights or KOTOR.

Gmail, your new themes are full of win.

I'm doing this for Cassie:
[Comment, then post in your own journal.
If you saw me in a police car, what would you assume I got arrested for? ]
Go on, answer it.

The mandatory cop-op function of Red Alert 3 is much less annoying now. It still shouldn't be mandatory, but it's good to not have to worry about every little thing across the map all the time.

Tonight's big love goes to all the fat girls out there. Be big. Be beautiful. Davey loves you.
Sit back down, pregnant girls. You don't count this time.

...until it's over.

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:11:31 GMT

And it's not over.

One thing is over. Anybody who is really familiar with the situation and who really doesn't have an ounce of sympathy would find this situation absolutely hilarious, and, as luck would have it, I'm that person. That's right, I have no sympathy for myself, because I shed that annoying hang-up long ago. Few things aggravate me like people having sympathy for me (I'll gladly accept "Well, that sucks" on occasion, and little else), and because I do have much sympathy for other people (your pain is yummy for me, I loves me some cinnamon and pain toast om nom nom), the only chance I get to truly laugh at a circumstance regardless of the emotional dismemberment is when it's me who's coming to some very grim conclusions about what life holds in store from here on out.

Foremost is that the theme of my life thus far is best summed up as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I meet the same people, they have the same quirks, and though they fill very interesting and divergent roles in my life, I've noticed the same actors behind the veil popping in to play bit parts and speaking roles all over the place. I never would have thought Amber and Angel would be mentioned in the same context, but the similarities are found even within the most complex of personality traits and even our daily interactions. Every redhead I've ever really gotten to know has played almost exactly the same role in my life (except Haley, who plays the Angel/Amber role), though it bears note that Allie is the queen of them, and earns her first-wife status. I have a list of Lost Lenores, full of opportunities to take what I want and enjoy the more valuable and basic spoils of my pursuits, whom I left behind and turned away because I would have had to sacrifice my honor to do so.

But the threes, the patterns that keep rising to the top, are what let me know that even my outside perspective on the behavior of humankind won't be enough to get me what I need to make it to the next step of personal satisfaction.

When I was much younger, my mother did a Tarot reading for her. She had me commune with the cards, you know, so they'll catch the essence and read for me, and all she drew, that whole session, were indications of three women. Sure, I was hoping mother, wife, daughter, that would be fine with me. Turns out things were going to come true in a different and certainly less traditional way.

Mom's cards weren't making a whole lot of sense after that. I don't remember whether she got rid of those, but the next few readings for other people were completely wacky. I might have broken her deck, which is why I don't let people do readings for me anymore. It'd be rude.

So now, I'm able to see the transitions of the last little mini-era of my life for the circles they were. I did the walk, had my fun, and this time, nothing's changed. I'm just waiting for the last trails to die off and the last traces to be wiped clean by the little storm that's being kicked up at work by the usual suspects.

Perhaps it's time to force a change. I think I'll start putting out resumes for a promotion. Might as well milk the forces of motion for all they're worth, before they peter out completely.

Today's big love goes to Eva, my beloved Canadian wife, and her beloved Canadian Canadian. I don't care who you are, I have slaughtered more digitized Chinese soldiers with her than I have with you (unless you're Dylan, and if you are Dylan, you shouldn't be reading my blog). Whoever else you are, chances are, Eva is hotter than you, too. She's got it like kaboom. KABOOM, I SAY.

Ooo, got it

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:48:37 GMT

Fallout 3 yesterday + Red Alert 3 today = a good reason to have everybody stop talking to me

I actually wouldn't have been very good company beyond yesterday anyway. It might seem depressing, but it works out for everybody. I am still waiting for the "kapow" thing to hit like it normally does, but I think this might just be an interlude before moving on to act 2.

Either way, I wanted to say that Fallout 3 is definitely not really Fallout 3. It's a post-apocalyptic role-playing game set in the Fallout universe, yes, but nothing based on Half-Life's engine is ever going to be a spiritual successor to the holiest of titles. Especially if the darker, self-aware humor is gone. They seem to have gotten Ron Perlman to do the intro, but he sounds so different, and doesn't keep the same tone. It's just not Fallout.

Still, I paid fifty bucks for it, and dammit, I'm going to try to prove myself wrong by going further into the game. First-person shooters do eventually make me nauseous, which is why I'm about to stop posting and go get an easier-on-the-stomach game to play in the admidstwhile.

Real quick, I wanted to send a shout out to my new word "circumbobulated." It pretty much means what you think it means, particularly if you think it means nothing.

Also, I hate the term "blackface." Hated it from back in drama class, and after seeing somebody talk about Tropic Thunder, I hate it just as much. Does it have that want-to-smack-the-person-who-said-it quality for anybody else?

Today's big love goes out to Jamie and her awesome Tarot Deck. She's the only person I know whose nickname is also a learning disability (albeit a very sexy one). Those of you familiar with the Brannigan dictionary will know what I mean.

Brilliance

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:08:08 GMT

Oh, well played, universe, well fuckin' played.

You guys know how sometimes just understanding something makes you feel smarter? I've detected a pattern and intention that attacks like a force three hurricane that studied under Ra's al Ghul. Things in my life are more interesting than they've ever been, and as I look back and see the sequence of events, I understand how each thing had to happen in that exact order to land me where I am. I don't really know how it ends, but I know for sure that I haven't heard the punchline yet. This has crossed the usual month-long limit for these little episodes of incredible transition and revisitations, and the profound ways it's been playing out definitely merits the time frame. This is art, and it's going to take as long as it needs to.

Like any good surgery, there's not only a chance of complete and utter failure, bankruptcy, and death, but also the chance that it will all come to a sudden and dull stop because I got cold feet at the last moment and stepped out of the pattern. I'm definitely not on the road to doing that last bit, but when you see the doors slam shut on you, the lights dim, and you hear Tobin Bell's voice tell you that he'd like to play a little game, it doesn't matter how many times you've passed his little tests, your pulse starts pounding.

Yes, I'm juggling land mines, and any of them could do a pretty big number on me. This, my friends, is what makes me cackle with maniacal glee. If I may draw your attention to this, I think it would probably put my frame of mind into better perspective. Just takes a minute of your time. Literally, just a minute, unless your connection is bad.

Let's see if I can get things moving for some details. It's a long story, so I'll try to paraphrase.

Er.

Crap, that's definitely not going to suffice. You all don't know who I'd be talking about or our history. It's like saying that The Dark Knight was about a guy who was having trouble at work. I'd have to introduce the characters one by one and get into my (ew) feelings about them. I'll see what I can do to TV-adapt it, but like trying to run The Sopranos on PBS, you're going to miss out on just about everything, and have to presume it's about spaghetti.

See, it began with a warning, and that consisted of a couple of people (who had never met each other) messaging me after years and years of silence. Old playmates, you could call them. They came to me like the ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, except they both represented the past. And they stayed there, because the visits, although promising of emails and more messages, were over in a jiff, and now neither respond to any sort of attempt at contact. I figure "Okay. Creepy, but okay." It really just went along with the theme in my life of people vanishing without a trace or explanation. I hadn't seen it at the time, but my aggravation related to this theme had been given a long, painful trip out my mental door, got dropped on the curb, and was presumed taken out with the trash. Hell, I didn't have a tear to wipe when Amber moved out; I'd accepted that it was a temporary thing before she even moved in. I appreciate people while they're here, and smile for the good time we had when they go. It's just the art of not taking things for granted. She was here, things were fun, she left, things were still good. I don't blow things like that out of proportion.

I also usually don't catch on to foreshadowing, because without having read further into the book, a good writer makes it impossible to tell foreshadowing from flavor text, so you really just need to keep your eyes open and context will come post facto. Not to be confused with compost facto, which can probably be found under "mulch" in the encyclopedia. But foreshadowing, these two visits were, because they were inexplicable (I tried to explic them, I really tried) and simultaneous. I should have known the universe was using that as a prelude to the novel's worth of fascinating personal pugilism to the face.

But it does this from time to time. Whenever anything big happens, as I've probably already mentioned, it involves the following:

1) Unfixable computer hardware malfunction on my computer (happened twice so far this time)
2) Unfixable computer hardware malfunction of somebody else's computer (sorry, Mom, you were the victim of my universal mojo)
3) A major car issue (she shut down at a red light while driving to work last month, but the carnival is still playing)
4) Absolute personal financial bankruptcy (usually resulting from the first three problems, and a good reason to not keep any credit cards that would actually require me to file bankruptcy).
5) Always the final major thing among these five, a career-altering change happens

Well, when I got home that one day to find that my motherboard and processor were shot (and would need a replacement of the RAM because my old stuff became obsolete in the meantime and unusable with anything I would buy), I should have known right then, but it was when I'd already replaced everything, fixed what I needed to, backed things up, and come home to again find everything dead that I got the warning sign that I was looking for. The instant I got the side of my case off to find out what was going on, my phone rang. It was my mother, calling to tell me that the exact same thing had happened to her. The eventual diagnoses were found to be different, but the symptoms were exactly the same...power, a beep, a loading screen, and death.

I won't bother you with the series of interesting events that followed and were involved in determining that my video card suddenly won't display anything higher than 4 bits (WTmotherF causes anything like that?), but I will say that I was intrigued. Game on, I told reality. You want to play? Let's fucking play.

Then, out of the blue, Jill messages me. You all remember Jill?

I sure hope not. That would be creepy as hell. I haven't really talked about her. She was an old friend from back when I worked at Radio Shack, and was the one who introduced me to the awesomeness of government work. Even the shit jobs pay way better than the private-sector shit jobs. I have her to thank for my career, but I never really got the chance to, because she's a world-class flake. Seriously, she would just vanish, ignoring your emails, phone messages, and any other way you tried to get in touch, and she'd be gone for years. Then you'd meet her later at the mall, she's be shocked and delighted, and give you her new number, you'd talk for about a week, and off she'd go.

Well, here she was again, and had a lot to say. In emotional trouble again, because she drew drama to herself and it kicked her ass on a consistent basis. It was part of the reason that she and I never hooked up (I had such a chance to kiss her, and I so very, very passed on it, and used to wonder if I made the right choice...she was just out of a relationship, and was very raw, and even though I think the night would have gone well for me, it wouldn't have been the right thing to do.).

She messaged me on Sunday at first. We talked about old times, caught up on what we're doing, all was good, and I was fully expecting her to be on her way. For the record, she might still be on her way and just taking her time about it, but on Monday, she was upset about something else, and wanted me to tell her what was wrong with her, why she couldn't be with a decent guy, why she couldn't make a relationship last, why her career was in shambles, and why she was never happy.

It just so happened that I was full of tell-people-off energy that I wasn't spending because of concerns about it being counterproductive (another long story that I'm sparing you), and I found myself facing that aggravation again, because she was baiting me. She wanted to hear me tell her off for that behavior that I so deeply, deeply hate, that horribly disrespectful tendency to just up and go, severing any emotional ties that other people might have made in the meantime. But I didn't tell her what she was asking for. No, I went ahead and told her that I was busy, and would tell her some other night. She didn't care for that, and begged a little, but I really was busy.

See, I was already dealing with another massive, jaw-splitting blow that reality had dealt me on the same day she sauntered back into my life. More on that later.

So a few hours later, she's still on, I'm still on, and I just start right into it. I spend about a half hour deconstructing every decision she's ever made, told her why she does what she does, what happens because of it, and every wrong turn she's made. I know, I know, this doesn't ever end well for people, but I went ahead and did it. I cited example after example and pointed out pattern after pattern, because hey, she asked. It's fair game. Shut up, yes it is. She needed to hear it from someone, and the kind of people she hung out with were not ever going to even notice this, much less bring it to her attention and make a compelling argument about it.

I knew at the time that doing that with somebody so deeply immersed in drama was a dangerous act, but anybody who's seen me do what I really do will understand my capacity to put a loving spin on a conversational bitch-slap. When it was all over, she had a good cry, thanked me, and for the record, did not commit suicide. In fact, it's been a few weeks now, and she seems much more optimistic, and has thanked me again for being so honest with her and insightful. She hasn't completely vanished yet. This is another thing that is amiss. Normally words aren't enough to break somebody out of a pattern. I had to put some thought to that while she and I went back to our old flirtatious ways. We might not have had any physical contact of a suggestive nature of any kind (ever), but innuendo was pretty rampant with us. We pretty much used each other as ego support (boys, if you're taking note, girls need to feel desireable, and it's not a crime to promote that feeling within them, it's just when you start involving stationery that the law gets involved), and we continue to do so. It's our way.

But I was keeping my eyes open. I thought, Could this be some sort of twisted-ass reward for helping her understand the problems in her life and following up with her afterward to make sure she internalized it the right way and started making positive steps to correct it? because even my thoughts are sometimes obnoxiously articulate. Maybe this was what the universe wanted me to see, and once she got those changes underway, this would be the focus of the transition that comes with a blown-up computer and a threateningly vague vehicular problem. Maybe this would be what it was building up to, a sort of finalization and conclusion to my buried aggravation toward people who just leave. A reconciliation of sorts.

Well, as it turned out, no. This symphony was just in the opening stages. The term "perfect storm" doesn't apply, because this is far too delicate for a bunch of forces to have just collided and teamed up. This was a note-by-note presentation of something unique, personal, and custom-fitted.

Because the thing that I was busy with when Jill wanted me to explain her life to her (and she knew me well enough to know that I could) was that the real and true source of why I was unable to truly kill my frustration about vanishing people was in the middle of being addressed.

A conversation ten years in the making was taking place. Yes, ten years. More than a third of my life (all of my adult life) was an exercise in settling the unfinished story between myself and my first love. The first woman I said "I love you" to, the first woman I kissed, the first woman I touched in a familiar way, my first lots of things.

I can't tell you, I mean, I really cannot express the complexity of my feelings, because I've been working on them for a decade, and everything I've learned in my adult life was built on top of the roiling mix of pain and grief and love and insecurity and adoration and admiration and loss that was wrapped around a person I'll simply call "L." I chose this letter because "A" would create grammatical confusion when used in a sentence. She was the first one to truly vanish, and the horrible thing was that she drifted back a little bit afterward to talk, and would sound like she wanted to really touch bases, but every time I tried to get a little bit of an explanation as to what happened, she would flutter away again.

Beating Nintendo's "The Karate Kid" is supremely frustrating, but a whole new level of superlative was created in my mind for how frustrating that situation was. I could classify her actions very easily just by putting myself on the outside of the situation, but that was a salve for my brain, not for my heart. I needed closure of some kind, and I needed to at least hear from her that things were as they appeared.

It took me ten goddamned years to get it out of her. She messaged me the same day that Jill did, and we just started talking as the ten years had never passed. The events of the day, family, ourselves, she messaged me with something like "Goodness, William is twelve already?" (quote adjusted for anonymity), and I said something to the effect of "Yeah, he keeps on growin'. We keep telling him to drink more coffee and start smoking, but he doesn't want to listen." We just took it from there, and it was the most natural thing in the world. And then, the next night, she actually dug in her heels and invited me to ask all the questions I needed the answers to. And she gave me the answers. And the balloon of angst deflated, and everything that had been built on top of it began to crumble. I was left with an emotional void in myself, and a stillness I hadn't felt since my teenaged years. I was no longer shutting myself off from the feelings that I had buried with my image of her, the irrational pieces of myself that I had poured cement over to give myself a stronger emotional base.

All the maturity and all the ability to say "fuck it" to life's hardships were gone. My personal insecurities, my irrational fear of failure, my sense of career direction, my social anxieties, my desire to impress people, my need to be better, they all came flooding back. I got back in touch with my fear of losing people, and although that means that I get to face it again and overcome it again, it means that it's now clinging to me and has returned to its old room in my personality. For the first time this millenium, I was able to feel nervous about something.

But the fun with her was just beginning, because, well, you people know how I flirt. Well, she flirts, too. This is good, because it's positive reinforcement from somebody who meant so incredibly disproportionately much to me. First loves, you know how you never really get over them.

So my new worry became my feelings for her, which had to be settled.

Also had to reconcile Jill's new role in my life, if she was staying. How far would things go with her, if they would indeed go at all? Her intentions are...well, hard to read. And I can't ask her, because it's pretty clear that she doesn't know, either. (Another thing to take a note on, boys, is that asking a woman what she's feeling isn't as productive as it sounds, because they're usually still talking it out when you start wondering. That's why they're talking to you, they need to hear things out loud and see how they sound in order to solidify them. If they always knew what they were feeling, married men wouldn't have migraines.)

So spending a half hour telling Jill what's wrong with her life was my release from the intensity of reconciling with L. It worked out perfectly, it all happened sequentially, and was part of setting me up for the next big blow.

Keep in mind that this is the extremely watered-down version, and what you're getting is really just the Reader's Digest version. Even as long as this post is, this is essentially just bullet-pointing the important parts.

So now I'm in touch with my old neuroses (wheeee!), and finding out what kind of future I have with L. We astonished one another with what little detailed we remembered about each other, and what closely guarded personal habits we had (like my defensive tendency to break an intimidate moment because it's getting too intense). She's talking like she'd like to meet up, which would be a fantastic way to introduce a little bit of continuity to the old remnant feelings that won't go away. Most of what I remember about her is based upon an image frozen in time, one that wasn't even very clear, and if I were able to stand in her present, hear her voice, see her with my own eyes, the animal part of me that does all the feeling would be able to put context to what's been drifting around in my head. If something happens, if nothing happens, the best-case scenario still lies in a real-life confrontation to get everything settled in a way that all parts of me can recognize.

And if you say anything along the lines of "What if she hurts you again," I will stab you in the spleen with a wooden pencil. I know that the beginning of this post was a long time ago, but read it again. I don't need the LJ-post equivalent of shouting "Don't go in there!" at the movie screen. If she vanishes again, I now have context. She's explained what happened and why it happened, and if it happens again, I can roll with it, old-school neuroses or not. Nothing would be left unanswered by it.

How sad is it that I have to get aggravated by things that haven't even been said yet? That's my next huge pet peeve, completely freaking obvious questions and observations that have already been addressed. If I tell you that I've been mulling over something for days, I don't care who you are, you are not going to come up with any crucial insight for me in the course of ten seconds. I actually think about things, I don't just hop down to the bar, get drunk, and pretend that I saw something that I saw in the toilet afterward was profound. A lot of that comes from a Particular Person who loved to jump on everything I said and argue about it for the sake of a philosophical cock fight, and the arguments were always bad ones that anybody who thought about what I'd said would never have made. This happened for enough years that I started jumping at conversational ghosts.

But enough about that.

Continuity was the key issue with L. I know this because my father turned fifty last Tuesday. How do those two things have anything to do with each other? Well, he wanted to spend his fiftieth birthday at Disneyland. I used to live a few hours from Disneyland. I spent roundabout ten years in the area, and what I consider my original home town to be is in that area. Good ol' George Air Force Base. I was a military kid, if any of you didn't know. Dad was in the Air Force, and I was raised on a base, one with an extremely safe neighborhood (after all, everybody there was in the armed forces), extremely good prices for food, great entertainment facilities (A buck fifty to see a movie, and a buck for popcorn? Hell yeah!), a great pool with concrete that was always the perfect temperature to lie on after swimming, and everything that a home town can offer a kid. It even had a huge desert for walking in when a kid needed time to commune with nothingness.

Well, it still does, but everything about the place is torn down. The base was shut down a long, long time ago, and all the trees have collapsed and fallen onto and into the dilapidated buildings. There are precisely two unbroken windows on the whole base, except around the golf course, which is still running under private management. The grass is long since dead, and the place is a wrecked ghost town. As we were driving around through it, Dad and I, there was a tragic sense of melancholy that somehow made everything feel better for me. We went to visit it to dabble in old memories, but continuity was the thing. Even as depressing as it was to see my childhood home(s) from an adult perspective for the first time ever, to walk across the old ground by the old parks and marvel at how tiny everything seemed, it was extremely therapeutic. I might be able to talk Mom into posting some of these pictures up.

Other homes in the area (we moved frequently) showed that the world had kept turning without me there. Old stores I loved were gone, old restaurants were replaced. The stretches of sandy wilderness were replaced by condos and strip malls, and the old signs were new, flashy, and uniform to what I was already used to in Sacramento. It was hard to recognize anything at all, and that, too, filled me with a certain peace.

Continuity.

Disneyland was fun, by the way. Getting off the Matterhorn, Dad and I were stopped by Disneyland staff and each handed a little card thing that invited us to stay after for an extra hour after ninety percent of the people had been removed from the park. We just walked right onto Space Mountain, the Jungle Cruise, and, of course, a second tour of Pirates of the Caribbean. Let's hear it for micro-promotions.

Back to the subject at hand, though, I knew that the trip through Continuityville wasn't the end of this little transitional period, because I got a little warning sign before I left.

Does anybody remember William Seretta?

Bullshit, no you don't. None of you knew me back when he was my best friend in high school. 'cept Mom, of course, I don't know if even she remembers him. Well, he messaged me, after I hadn't heard from him in thirteen-ish years. Just out of the blue. He caught my name, made sure it was me, and we shared a few words. He's doing fine, was apparently in the Marine Corps, and now works construction. Hell, I'm willing to say I'm proud of him. But I recognized him for the warning that he was. Amusingly enough, we shared a few words in the first days of October, and then the messages stopped without warning. Ha ha, I said to the universe. Cute. Where are we going with this?

Well, I have a Match.com profile. Every so often (yearly), I would pay the monthly membership fee for one month, send out the emails and winks and whatever, just in case the universe wanted to throw me a bone. Or have me throw somebody else a bone, yar har har, blah. This is called keeping the door open, and it usually placates the people who tell me that I should be looking harder to get a girlfriend. This time, the day after I cancelled my paid membership (relegating me back to the people who can't send emails to people), I got an email. From, like, an actual person. Who was female. I mean, it was literally the next morning that I actually got my first actual email. Cute, universe, you really are fucking with me. Okay. Like Kuzco going over the waterall. Bring it on.

We've been talking. I won't bore you with the details, but I will tell you that I've found it extremely charming that we've had disagreements about literary works (like, fundamental disagreements), but we keep talking in a friendly way. This is new to me. Usually, disagreements mean the end of a conversation (especially since I make points and cite examples, which intimidates the shit out of people, which makes them uncomfortable, which ends the conversation), but this person actually disagreed with me, made a point back, and since it was an email, moved on to the next thing. She likes to argue, is good at it, and doesn't take it personally. Doing!

And here's the fun part that makes me leans back in my seat, laugh, and applaud loudly at how sneaky everything was.

Amber needed to get out of the house so I would have time to deal with all the situations coming to me. Not only that, but she would need to do for completely retarded reasons so that I would accept it without being distracted with the hope that she was actually moving up somehow. Then she had to do something to make me thoroughly annoyed with her, which she was extremely gracious in doing again and again, so she was properly out of my mind.

In order to make all of this work, and to avoid drawing her back into my life, I needed to be free of the urge to respond to her request for a conversation about why I'm not talking to her, and that's where Jill came in. The energy I was going to put into telling off Amber went to Jill, which turned my attention further away, enabling me to focus on L. With my attention on her, I was able to look down every emotional road I could travel, understand what real dangers were there, and put forth a logical solution to either reconciling my feelings, or continuing down the path that I'd thought we were on ten years ago. I also needed my hands free so I could juggle the emotional hand grenades that came with the old memories, and deal with the clingy personal weaknesses that crawled out of that hole and latched onto my face.

In order for all that to happen, my computer needed to die so that I could take my focus off of my games and put it on these events. I would normally just fix the problem, but as a fascinating coincidence, Fallout 3 is coming out at the end of the month, and I can't buy a video card yet, because if it won't run that game screamingly fast, I will want to be able to return it, and most of the time, there's a thirty-day return period. I need, need, need enough time to get the game, see it running at its highest performance mode, and determine whether my video card needs to be replaced. DIRTY PULL, REALITY. Because now, the dinky little replacement card I pulled out of the closet won't play any of the games that would tide me over and take my time and attention away from dealing with this curious series of not-coincidences.

L also brought to light the importance of continuity, which flavored my trip to my old home town, which now has me in a different frame of reference. You see, right now, it's like I had the last ten years of personal development erased, I'm flying a little emotionally blind, and I no longer have the patience I once did. My new beefs got settled, my old beefs got resurrected, and the woman who summarized my dating history for the last five years is out of the picture. My childhood memories are put to rest, my relationship with my father has had some of the kinks worked out of it, he was able to see me as a man, I was able to see him as a person, and I'm closer to my past than I've ever been. Hell, it's like a reset button just got hit. I'm kind of right where I'd be if I'd actually finished college and gotten that degree, just like I wanted to do right out of high school.

I'm at square one. And if anything had happened even slightly out of order in all of that, it wouldn't be anything like this.

Right on time to find out what part this new person from Match.com is going to play. I'm off-balance, wrestling with thought-dead neuroses, and, for the first time in as long as I'm able to remember (and I fucking remember being born, people [sucked, btw, but not as much as you might think] ), I'm unsure of myself.

Brilliant, universe. Truly brilliant orchestration.

But it's not over.

No, no matter how it turns out with her, there are pieces of this masterpiece still unfinished. What will happen when/if L and I have that confrontation? How long until Jill meanders off again? Is this the end of my car troubles? What will happen to my finances to bottom them out (besides a trip to Disneyland, a whole freakin' new computer, Christmas around the corner, birthdays galore, a trip with L in the works...)? Where is my career headed?

I just got an email that's about to start pulling those answers in.

Bring it on.

I'm out.

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:51:45 GMT

I'm at Disneyland, which is why I'm ignoring you. I should be back on Wednesday.

The Magic Kingdom > You

(except those people who know otherwise)

Wild ride

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:05:26 GMT

The most eventful week I can remember, since...well, ever. By standard measures, it's fair to say that it began last Sunday (with an ominous prelude hitting home on Saturday), but there has been enough going on that I can't call the whole thing over. These things happen in fairly predictable patterns, and they always involved a breakdown (or sudden unavailability) of my current vehicle, the kaputting of my computer, a sizable change to my career, an adjustment to my roster of friends, and the depletion of all of my bank accounts to the single or low double digits. During this period, some very interesting changes usually occur, some old scores get settled, and the outcome is usually for the better, but why tempt fate?

And before anybody says anything about keeping a positive outlook, keep in mind that forgetting my birthday, forgetting where I live, and forgetting what color my eyes are, are things that other people consider insults. Not me. Completely forgetting who I am is the thing that sandpapers my tender bits, so please, don't give me cause to think that you've done so.

No. You may not have details. Mine. Mine mine mine. Instead, deal with some old Ask Doctor Daves that have been building up.

Dear Doctor Dave;
How much would wood a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Mike, ID

Dear Mike,

Six.

Dear Doctor Dave

I've been single for three years. I know a lot of women and they tell me I'd make a great boyfriend and they keep giving me advice on how to meet women but I still can't meet any. I go to the library and I go to church and I do dating sites but I still can't meet anyone. What am I doing wrong?

Kraft American Single in Texas

Dear Cheese,

Well, I can see what you're doing wrong right now. Don't ever listen to women for advice on how to meet women. It's like asking a person who spends all day playing minesweeper what his motherboard's front side bus speed is. They may move their mouths and make sounds, but so do cows, and I'm not going to them for advice on configuring my network. Nothing against women, of course, but their exposure to the male courtship approach generally relies on the having men come up to them and start hitting on them while they're at the supermarket. This barbaric and impersonal practice conditions women to accept only what comes to them. They don't study the social interactivity the way people on the outside of it (i.e. guys like you) do, because they're too busy being hit on to notice the nuances. Besides, even if they knew, they wouldn't want to make their gender look bad by being honest. Let me stress again that this is not the rule, but merely the norm.

My advice to you (even though you technically didn't ask for it on this subject) is first to stop believing that people who have a gall bladder automatically know the best way to handle it when things go wrong. Get out somewhere. Go somewhere new, somewhere off the internet, and most importantly, a place where you are likely to see the same people over and over. Join a book club that you would otherwise have no interest in. Volunteer for something. Ask to meet the families of your friends from time to time, some of them may have hot sisters.

Dear Dr Daveman
What is it about sex that changes a man?
Trish in Lodi

Dear Presumed Fellow Californial Trish,

Tough question, being so vague. There are a lot of changes that happen to a man after (and sometimes during) sex. The change usually has to do with the kind of sex it was. I break them into three major categories: Love sex, conquest sex, and chemical sex. Chemical sex is the easiest to work with, because it has nothing to do with you. The juices were flowing, the juices needed an outlet, you were there, and that's as complicated as it needs to be sometimes. I'd go ahead and call this the majority of sex between married people.

Conquest sex is only a little bit more involved, primarily because there are standards to it. You don't have to be more than a four, you only have to be there, with the necessary equipment (boobies and a vagina, or even just a vagina if you catch them at the right time, for those of you who actually had the brass tacks to wonder). And be willing. And sometimes, even that's not an issue. Conquest sex is about the part of the male brain dedicated to spreading the experiences around (and perhaps their itchy rashes). If you think that's piggish and morally reprehensible, bear in mind that it's for the survival of the species, so lighten up. The reason Russ isn't calling you back is because the continuation of the human race may one day depend on the genetic predisposition to get a "No Fat Chicks" tattoo on his underbelly and then get jiggy with overweight girls just to be ironic. He's not going to develop staying power before you develop standards, honey.

Love sex is the fabled city of gold that sounds a whole lot more pleasant than it actually is. Not only will the sudden impact on the precious metals market cripple the other businesses that once relied on gold distribution, but the financial investment required to protect it from unscrupulous global entrepreneurs would probably bankrupt you before you were able to get your Yukon's rims sized. Plus, you can't really eat gold, so after the economic collapse you cause, you won't be able to trade anything for what you really need.

What that was intended to mean is that if you broke it, you bought it. Once you get love sex from a man, his attention, his neuroses, and the depths of his dedication are yours to endure. Love sex doesn't change a man, it simply changes your role with him. Sometimes, he'll officially consider you a part of himself and start treating you like he treats himself. Trust me, this can be a completely horrible thing if your man doesn't have the self-esteem you think he does. Sometimes, love sex will produce an absolutely intolerable amount of devotion, and in many cases, dependence, because you've filled one fundamental void, and you will be expected to solve several more problems than that one.

The most underestimated thing that love sex can do, though, is validate a man's mistaken beliefs about a woman (or a man, hey, I don't judge, I'm just using women because they're a more classic example). It can make him think that she's something she's not, and either she'll do or say something eventually to show him that his faith and love were misplaced in a horrible and life-altering conflict, or he'll have his illusion chipped away, bit by bit, day by day, in the slowest and most agonizing way possible as both parties involved sink into the sad realization that short of a horrible and life-altering conflict, the only hope is to email some dope on the internet. Man, do I hope that's not you! =D

If that's what you're looking for, though, I know a guy in Texas.

Now for some personal ones.

Dear Doctor Dave

How did you learn all this stuff?

Chas, NS

Dear Chas

MacGyver taught me.

Dear Doctor Dave,
Whats the bigest lie u ever told
Jessika, ONT

Dear Jessika,

The one I just told Chas.

Dear "Dr" Dave...

Do u even no what ur talking about???
anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

Of course I do. I'm on the internet.

Dear Doctor Dave
Is there anything you DON'T know?
Alison, NY

Dear Alison,

Yes. These things are as follows:

1) Exactly what sagging represents to the people who do it
2) The square root of cheese
3) How bacon can be so awesome
4) Who can explain string theory without sounding stupid ("The reason that we can't see these dimensions is that they're very small..." Come on.)

But trust me, I'm working on all of these things.

Big love.

Whew

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:03:14 GMT

One hundred fifty crunches, eighty push-ups, and twenty standard sit-ups. What's going on? Do I suddenly just not have an outlet for my energy anymore? Did my three shitty work weeks boost my metabolism? I didn't even sufficiently wear myself out. A couple of weeks ago, I was barely able to do twenty push-ups.

Went to see Hellboy 2 and Wanted. I went into Wanted expecting a whole heapin' helping of flashy bullshit that insulted the intelligence. I went to see Hellboy 2 for a moderately interesting bunch of scenes with a routine amount of imagination, just to see something slightly different, maybe a twist or two. Well, I got what I expected on both counts, just...reversed. Hellboy 2 sold out big time, and in some parts, was hard to watch without wincing at the dialogue. I was similarly shocked to find an enjoyable plot in Wanted, which, yes, lost track of any meaning the title had about fifteen minutes into it.

I think I might be out of games to play. I'm indulging in the original Toejam and Earl, but that won't last. Same for F.E.A.R.: The Perseus Mandate, and that entertains me, but fails to capture me. Also, I get motion sick playing it sometimes. Sometimes, not at all. But I might have to just go ahead and buy a PS3 to keep myself entertained. I Gameflied Splinter Cell, but it's a matter of having to know where everyone and everything is, so basically, you have to memorize everything, and the save points aren't generous, so you have to do everything over and over and over as you learn where the things later down the line are. I need a new game before I'm forced to either march down the Romance of the Three Kingdoms path (sucking me up for weeks at a time), or shell out the five hundred bucks for a used PS3, because goddammit, I need one with the Emotion Chip. I'm not paying that much without backward compatibility. No. Fuck you.

I've also revised m'book. It's going to a local friend here, then, for the love of crap, I'm going to make sure Dimitri finally gets it.

Also, I was previously exposed to askaninja.com and was not impressed, but some of them are freakin' awesome, and the guys doing it have started putting a lot more effort and creativity into it. They get my kudos.

[EDIT] I just found out the History Channel has a new show called Jurassic Fight Club. I don't care who you are, what you've done, or whom you know, you will never, ever be able to match the metric ton of awesome that the idea of Jurassic Fight Club weighs. Not with pirates, not with ninjas.

It says "exhausted" back there, but I'm about ready to hit the floor again and wear myself out again. Peace out, m'loves.

There's no "inspired" feeling...is that just the LJ client?

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:33:35 GMT

My fall
will be for you.
My love
will be in you.
You were the one to cut me
so I will bleed forever.

I don't know why, but that verse cuts right the hell into me. It might be the way it's sung, or the way it's performed on the End of an Era DVD, but I can't think of it without getting all misty-eyed. I also hear the first two lines out of order. 'sweird. It's also creepy to see that this performance on the DVD was so beautiful, and was the last non-encore performance Tarja did before she was forcibly removed from the band.

Also, I would like to confirm that I have, in fact, developed a childish puppy-love for Gina Carano. Muay Thai fighters normally aren't my thing, but she has this strange glow to her that draws me in. Charisma out the wazoo. It's not even an "I want to marry her and have babies" thing, it's more like a "let me gawk at you" type of thing. I'm not going to use the C-word to describe it, because that's her name on American Gladiators and I hate making bad puns. I will say that on the subject of American Gladiators, I really miss Fury. She had style, and made the show fun to watch. Watching Gina pulverize the shit out of people just isn't fair to them. Come to think of it, it's kind of unfair that she's even a gladiator.

'nuff about what's inspiring me. Here's what's bothering me:

It's too hot in Sacramento.

Ugh. I mean, it was bad enough before the state caught fire and a cloud of ash started sealing in the sun's rays. Yugh. Today, for some reason, it's strangely tolerable.

Also, I need a third roommate because Chad's a cheap bitch. Anybody? Jess, come on over, I know you'd like me to be your sugar daddy. Jamie, we have an army to raise. Evasaurus, I need your mayhem down here. ALLIE. BE WITH YOUR HUBBY. Or D'leenz...you're old enough to get a job now, right? Be down here, where all the concerts happen.