Fighting Futuristic Fungus Festivals

You know what really grinds my gears?

Buying mushrooms in the supermarket.

I love mushrooms. I do. They're one of my favorite foods. But I can't eat 100 mushrooms every day. I just can't do it.

And yet, in the grocery store it is seemingly impossible to find any packages of mushrooms that come with less than you would need to feed a full standing army who'd had nothing to eat in days, the long march to war draining the strength from their bones as their stomachs begin to consume themselves for sustenance.

Mushrooms go bad, according to Big Y, within 2 to 3 days.

I bought the package with the least amount of mushrooms, big portabella slices, 13 of them. 13 big mushroom slices. You're telling me I have to consume between 4 and 6 mushrooms a day?

Ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. I'M NOT A GODDAMN MONSTER.

YOU'RE THE MONSTERS.

Dear readers, have I been blogging too much lately?

The answer, of course, is no.



Today is a goddamn beautiful day. Now normally my ideal weather is gray, a little cold, and possibly wet, because the sun hurts my eyes, my body does not deal well with heat and I think colors look better during and after rain.

But some days even I have to admit the sun is pretty fantastic.



I went to Quiznos today and had a black angus steak sandwich. It changed my life. Today's gonna have to step it the hell up if it wants to top that.



I have a shirt I recently got from Questionable Content that says Cogito Ergo Nom.

Cogito Ergo Om means I think, therefore I am.

Cogito Ergo Nom = I think, therefore I nom.

It's an awesome shirt, but I have realized I will have to explain this to every person I ever see for the rest of time. It looks really good on me though, so I'm going to take one for the team.

The team being irony I guess.



I'm feeling really postmodern this week.

In a related story, I'm feeling really pretentious too.



See I could have made this into like six blog posts, THEN what? I'm saving you time, people. Saving. You. Time.

DID YOU KNOW: The cigarette lighter was invented BEFORE matches?

Ho-lee-crap is it ever warm in my apartment. I feel like someone put me in a sauna and instead of pouring water on the stones they poured raw magma, and it splashed on me but cooled a little bit so instead of searing through my body it just made me feel slightly uncomfortably warm. I could and should have turned the wall fan on hours ago but I haven't and I don't have the slightest idea why. I'm still not going to do it. Maybe tomorrow.

I am in a thousand times better a mood than I have been since...well last Sunday really.

I didn't get to sleep until 5 or so this morning. Like I said, I have this terribe gripping fear of break-ins, the kind of fear that makes me not think about logic or the fact that I have a third degree blackbelt but instead gives me panic attacks.

If it came down to it, I know I would be fine. But in the moment that all goes out the window, which you can tell from my insane post that makes it sound like they went around murdering people instead of opening doors and getting scared away. Today? I'm fine. Last night, not so much.

In any case, after a crappy week and a crappy weekend (actually I got Chilis which is always cathartic and saw Hamlet 2 which is a very strange but very enjoyable movie) I am the perfect picture of good spirits. You could say this is partly due to the fact that other than a potential break-in situation nothing that happened to me was actually that bad compared to real problems and you'd be right probably.

Today I was like "my last two blog posts have been depressing and stupid and paint a terrible picture of me" so I thought I'd make a happy blog post but usually they're "about" something and the thing I have planned that I'd like to say is being saved for a time when I'm not sweating profusely so instead I'm freewriting this blog, which gets you things like this long run-on paragraph where I'm not letting myself think about anything beforehand and it kind of feels like I'm slowly slipping into insanity but really I'm just stalling going to bed because it's only 1AM and it's super early also I'm cheating because I'm typing fast and correcting typos but I'll be damned if I'm going to have this post look like a shaggy dog just come in from the rain but as a rule I'm not letting myself think ahead even when I stop for a half second to cough or go back and make the word aagfo into a real word.

That was fun, wasn't it readers? Sometimes you just need a good word vomit, and since I haven't been getting a chance to do it out loud much lately I suppose I'm doing it here. I'm in the kind of mood where I feel like I have a thousand things to say but no context in which to say them, except for here but I like my blog to maintain some sort of ill-formed integrity, which is a roundabout way of saying that I have a good sense of what people do and do not want to hear about, and I allow myself a relatively small (I should hope) quota of the latter category and I more than went past it this weekend.

Here's some things.

This is NSFW. It's blurry but there's a penis in this video, to tell you in what context would ruin it. This is a movie made in Turkey, in which Captain America and the famous masked wrestler El Santo (who was actually a real person but played by an actor) team up to fight Spiderman, who is a powerless mass murder.

I'm not kidding. He does some pretty horrible things (the guinea pigs are poisoned, this may not make sense now but it will in context).



I don't think I need to tell you it wasn't licensed.


Here's some Kotaku links. I like linking Kotaku to people because the story names are in the URLs and people are way more likely to click on something with a hilarious title.

http://kotaku.com/5227434/king-denies-little-boys-wish-to-be-named-sonic-x

http://kotaku.com/5228352/kid-wanted-ds-got-a-rock


This is among the funniest images I have ever seen. Go to picturesforsadchildren.com if you're into things and you don't mind occasionally feeling terrible for laughing at things that are secretly hilarious.





I've grown a possibly unhealthy obsession with avocados. I think avocados are okay but they don't taste good enough to warrant the frequency with which I am now consuming them. I can't stop. I think this may be a problem. Tomorrow I am going grocery shopping and I'm getting five because last week I ran out in three days and I spent the rest of the week wishing I'd been more prepared.

Does this lifestyle make me look fat?

It may not be, readers, a monumental surprise, but I have at times a proclivity for television shows that that are, perhaps, what one might call feminine in nature.

I mean, I could explain with absolute certainty why What Not to Wear totally isn't gay to watch, but that's not the point.

The point is that today I had a debilitating headache and no hot water when I awoke, which meant I would not step foot outside my apartment. I have been watching TV all day, and I have always had a critical eye for advertisements. I have a good sense of what an ad is doing, who it's targeting, and why. I am, for the most part, immune to their black magic.

But I have to say, having just happened by chance to watch girl-oriented shows today. People have been telling me in twenty different ways that I need to lose weight so I can fit into my skinny jeans, I've been warned to death about yeast infections and bad skin, I've been assaulted with advertisements for shows and movies where people more attractive than me find true love and goddamn it I know it's a natural medical thing but yeast infection commercials are gross okay.

Ladies, you have it rough. Guy commercials treat us like one-dimensional idiots but girl commercials try to make you feel inadequate in every way.

Anyway, I'm off to drown my sorrows in a bag of chips.

And then cook a steak and attempt to pick up the pieces of my shattered masculinity.

The Story of Greek Easter 2: Philectric Boogaloo

Anyone who has spent more than fourteen seconds with me will likely tell you that I am literally a perfect gentleman. My manners, my presence, my scintillating wit and nearly superhuman good looks, all have been pristinely crafted to make me the ultimate in class.

But there is a change, readers, when certain foods are placed before me. The thousands of limiters I have erected in my brain to keep the beast within in check are released. It is a terrifying and beautiful sight.

Lamb (or, in this case, goat, as it ended up being) does this to me. It must be understood that when cooked this way, there is very very little of the animal that is not attatched to bone. This makes it far more flavorful but renders it nearly impossible to eat with anything approaching tact or prudence.

It just so happens that this particular goat was apparently a personal trainer or something because it was almost entirely devoid of fat, essential to these kinds of meats. The result was that, while tasty as all hell, it was a little tough and did not, like the fattier lamb, fall off the bone easily.

I hope I am understood. The manner of eating that was required to get at the meat was devoid of all the ingenuity and evolution of humankind. One needed to summon the ancient animal within to partake of this bounty.

And lo, I did. Let me illustrate, for convenience, the transformation that takes place when lamb or goat is placed before me.


This is me normally. A fine, upstanding young man whose bright eyes reflect unwavering hope for the future. An almost impish smile highlights the face of someone who has nothing but joy in his heart.


This is the beast within, ready and more than willing to do anything it needs or desires to for sustenance. Dread orbs in its head see only prey, only that which is to be consumed. What once held hope and joy now has nothing in it but rage and hunger, and the black fog of death sprays from every orifice, the destroyer of worlds rising to devour all life.

I am not proud of it, readers. I take no joy in it. But this is what I become, and we can none of us deny our true nature.

But goddamn if it wasn't ever a good meal.

The Story of Greek Easter

Tomorrow is Greek Easter. Some of you have heard about this most amazing of days from me before, but for those who have not, I offer you this moist, delicious morsel of a Greek Easter tale.

It was a day like any other. I had just finished surfing a shark through lava, leaping through twenty two consecutive laser hoops and pole vaulting over some razorthorns using a pole that was also made of laser, no biggie.

Anyway my dad came home, and told me to go get lamb out of the back of his truck.

For those unfamiliar with A.) This holiday and B.) My father, it should be noted that any time he references an animal in this way, it could easily be a small portion or the entire animal. This was the latter.

So I go to the truck and take the whole lamb out, and bring it to the kitchen. I go downstairs, where I am assaulted with a loud banging. I can only imagine what's going on, but I was to get a taste (badum PSH) soon.

He called me upstairs to look at a letter that came from Uconn warning him about Spring Weekend (I didn't tell my dad what it was about because he would have been disappointed there was an entire weekend of partying I was planning on avoiding). As I entered the kitchen, he was wiping down a huge cleaver I didn't even know we owned. On the counter were several bags of meat. No sign of anything else.

It may seem savage, but the sheer transcendant deliciousness that this meal will bring, the meat with a texture like polished satin, the aroma that takes one to a form of being that has no Earthly counterpart, the taste so unfathomably fantastic that each bite prompts full-body sobbing, so inundated are you with the knowledge that this most sumptuous of banquets must at some point end, is so worth it.

It's my favorite damn day of the year. Hell yeah.

Apollo Anectode Awareness Association

So tonight I was talking with a pleasant older man at work while he was waiting for his take-out order. He asked me if my hair was real (it is).

Then we had a lovely conversation about whether or not Apollo was gay. He seemed to agree with my point that in ancient Greece gay and straight were not distinct preferences.

Anyway I spent all day feeling generally terrible but that was a bright spot.

Also this week's Office which I watched today was incredibly funny.

SPIN MOVE!!

Hey remember how I write things sometimes

I'm not too hot on this story. I wrote the first half of it a few months ago, and just came back to it tonight and wrote some more. Part of me likes it but part of me really hates it. I think the ideas are solid, but the language isn't working, the structure is messy.

One of the reasons I'm posting it is because everything up until the phone call is truth. I don't like to write about real things, more specifically my own experiences, in stories. I don't think it translates particularly well for me. But the point of the story is supposed to be the funeral, which wouldn't make sense without the set up at the beginning.

I dunno. Thoughts are appreciated. I kind of don't know what to do with this, I like the actual funeral scene but the lead-up to it and how to close it are escaping me. But hopefully you will enjoy something in it, be it the whole thing or just a word or phrase.

I used to have these dreams.

They weren't like everyone else's. I didn't know they were different for the longest time, until I actually talked about them.

My dreams were mundane. They weren't abstract, incoherent flashes. They were simple, they were normal. But that wasn't what made them different. My dreams were not random events, snippets of errant ideas clad together with no constant.

I used to dream about a school. It wasn't school, the concept of school, it was a school. I returned to this school again and again, learned the layout, learned the students, the teachers. It never occurred to me that dreams should be happening in any other way; I didn't go there every night, but the dreams I remembered, the ones that would stick with me, all took place there.

It actually wasn't always the same school. It changed, without fail, whenever I changed schools in real life. My parents had to move around a lot for work, so I was a classic new kid case. It didn't bother me as much as it did some kids I've talked to. I always found it pretty easy to make friends, there's not so much pressure when you know you'll be gone soon.

So when I would change schools, the one I dreamed in would change too. The first was pretty basic, though it had a massive attic that was the main passageway between classes for the upperclassmen. My very first of these dreams involved my finding my way up there by mistake, and facing their wrath.

One of them was a cruise ship, another a hotel. Both were absolutely massive. If I try to think about it, I can still see the delicate tapestries, the elegant dining rooms, the escalators that seemed to go up or down forever in facilities that defied any conventional architecture.

The last one, perhaps in a cold parallel to the end of high school, was a simple affair. It was almost art deco in its design, a group of small square buildings arranged like a tiny ivory city. There were large courtyards arrayed with tall, simple sculptures. I stopped going there suddenly and unceremoniously when I graduated from high school.

There were themes I seemed to return to. I was almost always late, and it was almost always for some sort of science class. I got lost frequently; though I knew my way around the dream-schools, I seemed to have a penchant for getting myself lost, wandering through the impossibly large and complex hallways and floors. I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for a bathroom. The classrooms were actually pretty utilitarian for being in a dream despite the exotic layouts, but the bathrooms were bizarre, unintelligible rooms where nothing particularly good ever happened.

Dreams, to me, never felt like something I was creating. They were a place I visited, another life I led, and when I woke up my real life would feel insubstantial and flimsy.

The truth is, life isn't full of rich tapestries, you don't go to school in a grand hotel. You walk into a cold, gray building every day and learn things you're never going to care about once you're not directly responsible for them anymore. Then you go to college, where you're told at once to decide the entire course of your life and waste it away in a sprawling flood of drugs and darkness.

The worst part is that the system works. I trudged through my college years, assuming they were the best of my life, an assumption that was only reinforced by the abysmal office job I ended up in. It's a necessary sacrifice, the hive needs worker bees; if everyone who wanted to be a rockstar became a rockstar the world would fall apart. So, with a complete lack of self-awareness I proceeded down the path to mediocrity that envelops so much of our youth today.

It's pathetic, isn't it? We spend our whole lives preparing for something that we don't even realize we don't want until it's too late. You begin to look over the grand design of your history and see all the things you could have done with yourself, and then you feel horrible for complaining because you have a job and money and so many people would kill for what you've got.

That was the conclusion I came to, after a phone call brought me out of my daze, out of the cloud of denial that kept me from thinking about things too deeply. I didn't recognize the voice on the other end. Turned out I didn't know her at all, but I did know her daughter. Her name was Maggie, and she was dead.

When you've been to three different high schools, you lose track of people easily. However, I was immediately able to recall Maggie. The details of her face were a little blurry but the concept of her was intact in my head. I wasn't sure, however, just where I'd known her. I called Danny from my first school, because he was that guy who somehow got along with everyone when they couldn't get along with each other. He didn't remember her.

The next few calls went the same. No one remembered Maggie. But I did, so distinctly. The truth was, I always had a thing for her. The kind of intense, world-ending crush you could only have on someone you didn't actually talk to. We'd hung out a couple of times, always in groups. We would exchange words, and smile at each other, and then I'd turn away and start talking to someone else. It's ridiculous, isn't it? I suppose it's funny now, but at the time it seemed so huge.

I sat in my cubicle, rubbing my eyes. Some shit you try not to think about. Like I said, we build up these blocks. I remembered my dreams, sure, but I held onto the memories the way I did everything from that time, with a sense of distant wonder. I kept making calls, but I knew that nothing was going to come of it.

Blocks. The only way to keep going in a shit job like this is to not let yourself feel how utterly soul-draining it is. You joke about it, you complain to your coworkers, but you don't explore it, you don't actually dig down and look at your life. Maggie never existed. Not really. She was a dream. One of the people in the schools I used to attend at night when I was asleep. The phone call from her mother was a dream, too. A random subconscious callback to something I hardly thought about anymore.

I guess what really bothered me about the whole thing was how shaken I was by it. Once I was sure she wasn't real, that the phone call wasn't real, I let it go. But something was wrong. Everything seemed insubstantial and meaningless. Here I was, years out of college and no real passion for anything, and I get one dream phone call about a person I didn't really know and all of a sudden I felt like my world is dimmer.

People started to notice it. I was told, on several occasions, that I seemed like I was in a “funk.” I thought about explaining what had happened to someone, but any way I phrased it in my head seemed ridiculous and unbelievable.

I remembered the first time I saw Maggie. It was right before a class, one of the few I actually managed to be on time for. There was a small pavilion outside the lecture hall, and she was sitting with a kid I'd gone to elementary school with and a couple of people that I was actually classmates with at the time. They were talking, and I said hi as I passed. Her hair came to me again first; she had this short brown bob, but it was edgy and uneven, as if she'd cut it herself. She used too much makeup, I remembered thinking, but somehow it worked for her. Eyeliner applied a little too liberally outlined blue orbs that seemed impossibly big. Her features should have been too exaggerated, like caricatures, but somehow they combined perfectly. She was beautiful.

Her image was so clear, now. The more I thought about her, the more real she seemed to become. And she was dead.

I'm not sure when it was that I decided I was going to go to her funeral. It was an insane idea; you don't choose what you dream about. But I had gotten the phone call. She was a friend. And I felt a sense of duty that was stronger than anything I had experienced in years.

I started to try and draw maps. I figured if I was going to dream about the things I used to dream about, I had to try and make sense of them. I couldn't get much down; there were some rooms and hallways I remembered, but in general it was a dead end. It was too utilitarian, I think. This was about feeling, about emotion.

So I drew her instead. It started as an idle exercise while I was at my desk, just something I did to kill some time. When I got home I did another, though, and within a week I had an entire notebook filled with them. I saw her so perfectly in my head, but she wouldn't translate at all to paper. I've never been an incredible artist but I had some talent, so it was frustrating not to be able to capture her.

All that time, I kept trying to have the dream. I would think about her as I lay in bed at night, try to imagine her funeral. The sound of her mom's voice, the way she looked back in high school. Nothing worked. I had drearily boring dreams about nothing, but never about Maggie.

FAST FORWARD BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO PUT HERE

My eyes closed slowly, and I remember thinking that I was hearing rain, but it had been crystal clear outside. As I adjusted to the dark greens and grays, the cold rain soaked into my jacket. I took a deep breath. Asleep. I didn't have to think about it, I knew it. I looked around, saw the gravestones.

Well, then. Time to say goodbye.

It was a little distracting, at first. I had forgotten the feeling of seeing so many people from different parts of my life. Someone I bumped into once and had never seen again was standing next to me. His head was down, so we didn't make eye contact. They all looked so grown up. All this time I hadn't been dreaming about them, but I still managed to construct them. Or maybe I wasn't constructing anything. I had given up on the notion that this was my world. Maybe I created it to begin with but this place, these people were their own entities. I was only visiting.

I noticed a couple of sidelong glances. It wasn't surprising; I'd been gone for years. As the preacher started to speak, I found it hard to follow what he was saying. I'd forgotten how people speak in dreams, the non-sequiturs and fragments that everyone seemed to be gleaning meaning from. I closed my eyes and let the sound of the rain fill my ears, felt it weighing down my suit.

It was all so terribly poetic. A funeral in the rain, old friends coming together, saying goodbye to a girl I never got to know well enough. I hated it. Life isn't like this. Life isn't cinematic, it's not pretty. None of this was real, I knew that, and yet I had never felt this way about a real person. I bit my lip and closed my eyes tighter, attempting to staunch tears. I couldn't do it. I was crying, and I was ashamed of myself. I was crying for Maggie, that stupid girl I could never quite talk to, the person who made all my real-life crushes seem less important without me ever realizing what was going on.

But I was crying for myself, too. For all the time I'd wasted in my life, for all the decisions I'd made and all the things I did that suddenly seemed so insufficient in her presence. I knew that I'd wake up soon, that I'd probably never see any of these people again, that I would go back to my life and have to go on knowing that Maggie was dead.

I bit my lip harder, and I could taste a hint of metal as I broke the skin. I was angry. Angry at this stupid world, for feeling so much more real to me than my reality. I was angry at Maggie, for bringing me back here, reminding me of everything I used to have, the world inside me that I gave up. And for making me feel this strongly. For a moment, I hated her.

People began to shuffle out, talking amongst themselves. A couple of people came up to me, shook my hand. One of them had died in real life, a few years back – I couldn't look him in the eye. Soon it was just me and the grave, and I sat down on the spongy turf and stared at the fresh-dug mound of earth, turned to mud by the downpour.

“Hey, Maggie. I have to admit, I don't really know what to say here. I mean, we never really talked much. I don't know why you wanted me here. Why I had to be here. I don't know what I am to this world, whether it's something I made for myself because my real world wasn't good enough or --”

I paused for a minute, then sighed and continuee.

“Okay, listen. Ever since I heard about you death, all I could think about has been how much my life sucks. How different this place was. I don't know. Maybe none of it really matters. Maybe it's all just a bunch of synapses firing off in my head while my brain rests. But goddamn it, I miss you. Two weeks ago I didn't even remember that you existed, and now all I want is to see you again. If I could have just dreamed that...

“It's not fair to you, I know. You don't make the rules. Neither do I, I guess. I just wanted to tell you that I wish we'd gotten to know each other better. That I don't get what all this shit means. And that I hope that you're at peace.”

When I woke up, my pillow was still damp. After being in that black suit, heavy with rain, I felt so much lighter. I sat on the edge of my bed, with my eyes closed. There was supposed to be closure. There was supposed to be meaning. I was supposed to make peace with my dreams and wake up with a new sense of self-worth. But all I felt was that I couldn't really be sure of anything.

I showered and got ready for work, and tried to put it all into perspective. It wasn't like I could just quit my job and suddenly lead a life as rich as the one I had in dreams. The world doesn't work like that. You take what you can get, and hopefully you come out of it happy and healthy.

I used to have two worlds. I had lost the one, until recently. But then Maggie died. And she reminded me what I had lost. I can't say for sure I've lived my life any differently since. Every dream ends, no matter how much we wish it would linger. Maybe it's for the best. This is the real world, or at least the one where I spend the most time. I have to continue to try and make things work. But maybe it's just enough that I remember.

Mythical Tales of This Week

So I had to do a ton of work this week, writing an essay and preparing an oral presentation and applying for internships. This might not sound like a ton of work, but prepared to what I do usually it's actually pretty extreme.

And now, because the #1 people are interested in are the mundane adventures of other people, here are highlights from my week.

-Applied for a couple of internships, most notably the editorial department of Marvel Comics. My resume isn't terribly impressive but I think I made a pretty good sell for myself given my experiences. I recieved an automated response, which includes the high volume of requests they recieve and how I would probably not be contacted at all unless I was chosen.

Well, I wake up today and lo and behold, there's an inbox message from Marvel. I was actually ridiculously nervous because I could make a great case for it being pretty much anything. The mail was from Marvel's Human Resources, letting me know personally they were looking at my resume and would let me know if they wanted to set up an interview.

That's pretty damn neat. I mean, just knowing they're going to be looking at it is awesome. Fuckin' Marvel Comics, man. How amazing would it be to work there. Here's hoping.

-Wrote an essay on marketing books. I couldn't make this story interesting if I tried, except that I TOTALLY forgot it was due Tuesday. My bad.

-Prepared an oral presentation about Vertigo comics, also for publishing class.

This may come as a COMPLETE SURPRISE because normally I am completely comfortable and vibrant in social situations, but I am...unskilled at public speaking.

I'll uh. I'll let you absorb that for a minute. Wrap your head around it.

So this is something I know very well, and thus I rehearsed my presentation constantly for a couple of days. I had everything worked out, I could get through the whole thing without any visual aid (I can't do the notecard thing really, it just distracts me) and I had all my talking points down. I was confident.

Our teacher used a random number generator to determine who would go when, but I knew I'd be going today.

My name is called. I step up. I give a slight nod, as if to acknowledge to the universe that I'm ready to tear this shit up.

Anyway about ten seconds in I realize my leg is shaking uncontrollably and I'm skipping over points. I made a nice save midway through by throwing in a joke about the comic Faker, which I hadn't really planned to do, everyone laughed and it eased my nerves. But in general, the whole thing went about as well as any public speaking attempt for me does.

And, for whatever reason, afterward and for pretty much the rest of the day I felt like CRAP. My stomach was a mess, even though on the whole I was happy with how my presentation went in retrospect.

-Still in a dead tired and slightly ill stupor, I wandered into the realm of South and saw part of The Last Unicorn. I have a great deal to say not only about that but about that entire era and style of animated movies, but that can be saved for another time.

-Oh also I got a haircut on Wednesday which was nice. I have started getting special haircuts and they are working out very nicely. Since this blog's inception I have been planning on making a post about my hair because I still get asked all sorts of questions about it (a phenomenon I totaly play into for fun but will probably never truly understand) . Perhaps demystifying it would be detrimental. I do kind of like that it occupies this profound place in peoples' imagination, and the truth is actually pretty mundane. What say ye, readers? Hair post or not hair post?

The fact that I should even be entertaining thoughts about this seems extremely...minty to me.


In general, I feel like this week was way too short. It should not be Thursday night yet. I feel like I didn't accomplish anything non-school related, I definitely did not sleep enough, and I am starting to freak out more and more about the semester ending because (and if you look back you will see that I have mentioned this before) I ALWAYS have the most fun in the last month or so of school.

Anyway right now I am listening to Sigur Ros and realizing that I have forgotten a few more schooly things and also I am writing a blog entry that's far longer than the subject matter allows but really I don't have much going on right now because I've been introspecting much more than extrospecting lately.

P.S. here's a tip, when you're cooking plantains in a pan it looks like they burn really fast but actually that's just black deliciousness accumulating so don't be afraid to leave them on there a little more, this is what I learned this week.

P.S.

If J-rap isn't your thing (although really, if it's not I don't ever want to see you again) perhaps this video will provide some meager entertainment.



That girl was totally trying to get in his pants.

Can't say I blame her.

Yes I can I am not gay for Billy Mays oh god please don't spread this rumor internet.

DJ, play that music louder, onegai

As has been previously stated, I view the coming of summer with feelings of terror and distaste.

However, yesterday I heard this song for the first time in ages, and it always reminds me of summer, a magical summer of unmixed pleasure that gives me hope that the actual one wont suck.

Night of Destiny

So I just saw Dragonball: Evolution.

Let me give you a short preface to this. I am a lifelong Dragonball fan. It was one of the first anime I watched when I was aware that anime was not being made by the same people as American cartoons. I love DB and DBZ to death, and will defend them to no end, which I have had to do a surprisingly large number of times. I get the issues people (geeks) have with DBZ, I have constructed a pretty solid case on why they don't matter to me.

ANYWAY. I got to see this movie with Steve and Eric, the two people who, by FAR, come home the least out of all my friends. We watched DBZ together as kids, and besides Pokemon it was the biggest thing that brought us together and made us such epicly awesome compatriots. That we all happened to be home on the opening weekend of this movie was nothing less than a miracle, the universe excersizing its will and probably expending the equal effort it would take to create world peace and end hunger and badtimes just to make this event special for us.

We knew it would be ridiculous.

But we couldn't have known what we were truly in for.

There's roughly two minutes of the movie, the first two minutes, that make anything approaching sense. What follows is essentially an hour and a half (it feels more like twenty minutes) of near-constant referencing of things the average moviegoer will never encounter, while trying to cram years worth of story into what some might call a "plot."

It's AWESOME. I loved literally every second of it. I don't understand how they expect people who don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of DB to understand the slightest bit of what goes on. Yamcha is introduced, and serves almost no purpose but gets to join the good guys for the last 1/3 of the film. Goku's origin is entirely contradictory; he was originally a demon monkey but also came to Earth on a meteor as a baby and would not turn into a demon monkey until his 18th birthday (also he serves Piccolo somehow).

The level of technology in the world ranges from archaic to unreasonably futuristic, the latter of which comes with no explanation (it should be pointed out that this is accurate to the source material, only here it feels disjointed and awkward in a way it didn't in DB). The plot moves at breakneck speed, with no time for thought (such as, "why did you just say we don't need to bother finding the Dragonballs anymore when we just wasted half a movie on it).

Like I said, in context it's all absolutely incredible. The ONE thing that actually offended me in any way was the Dragon itself. For people that seemed to comb the manga for things to reference in obvious but completely nonsensical ways, they seem to have forgotten what made the Dragon cool, and in fact what asian dragons are even supposed to look like. It's a tiny thing, more like a salamander really, also I'm pretty sure they used the head from the American Godzilla movie. Luckily it doesn't talk and is onscreen for all of probably a minute and a half MAX.

I'm just so glad I saw this. I have not had this much fun at a movie in god knows how long. It is just so PERFECTLY preposterous in absolutely every way. There are actually scenes or elements that are genuinely, completely unironically cool, but the majority of the movie is a giant set of references, only they lack any substance. They're either too subtle or way too obvious, and in either case the average person will have absolutely no idea what's going on. It's like they went through the manga and looked for shit to throw in but didn't actually read to find out what any of it was about in context. For a reg'lar old person it makes for a terrible, disjointed, meaningless mess but for the three of us it was nonstop fun.

I'm still giddy. This movie was so freaking awesome. It did exactly what I needed an American-made Dragonball movie to do, and at the same time it made me look back fondly on an awesome story that I will always love.

Too bad there were only eight other people in the entire Odyssey theatre there to see it. And also four guys that came in for about six minutes before leaving.

Let's get started on that sequel.

Twit THIS

In an effort to drive up readership and sales numbers, I'm going to talk about something current and popular.

Twitter.

Twitter has been all over the news lately, and I would like to throw in my two cents to this diverse and complex issue. Here is what I think:

Why the hell is everyone talking about Twitter?

Let me tell you everything you need to know about Twitter in one sentence: it is a site where you can give people up-to-the-minute updates on your life and not be considered annoying because people have to choose to follow it and they expect a lot of updates.

That's IT. That's all the site is. There's no reason it should be discussed to the degree it is. It's fun for people who like it, but it's essentially one Facebook's central features removed from all the other crap that comes with Facebook.

I realize people are trying to keep up with technology and the news wants to stay young and hip, but maybe you should teach people about the goddamn Hadron Collider or something instead of teaching them about possibly the most sinmplistic and (for most of the people who actually watch news) inane and useless types of technology that's on the interwebs.

Disclaimer: I don't think Twitter itself is dumb, if you have one. I myself do not Twit because it would bring to the harsh, shining light of day just how much of my time I spend on here.

Also they'd all just be about Star Ocean or food.

P.S. I don't know whether or not to have pickles on my sandwich today. I got all these pickles but I don't know if I feel like having any. But if I get halfway through my sandwich and I realize I should have had them I'll regret it all day (I don't usually alter a sandwich once it's made, I think it's disrespectful).

I'll let you guys know what I finally choose.

Tick Tock Pick Spock

I have many (many) neuroses, which I do not go into here because I wouldn't be able to do it without feeling like a total jackass (although I will gladly discuss them at length in person!) and I can never tell which ones will come off as interesting foibles and which ones will just make me look lame.

In any case, one of the things I'm kind of known for is being terrible at sleeping. I just never really got the hang of the whole thing. When I was in daycare I used to not take my naps, I would run around trying to get the kids to play because I didn't see any reason to sleep in the middle of the goddamn day.

The strange thing is, I know kids who do all-nighters and stuff, but I would never dream of just not going to bed. I need at least a few hours to function. Where I'm weird is that I pretty much don't sleep more than 6-7 hours on a normal night, and probably 8 if I have nowhere to be. It is very rare I sleep past 12, and then only if I've been up past 4. Usually I'm awake by 10 or 11. Yeah, I have this whole complex math about how much I'll sleep any given night.

Okay, so right now, on an average night I go to bed between 3-5:30 depending on whether I have class at 12 or 2. I have a compulsion to stay up late, which I could go into but I haven't gotten to the point yet and I'm four paragraphs in, so let's do this.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday I went to bed at 1:30 or 2. Not something that happens often. I woke up each morning feeling rested and ready.

Then I spent the rest of the day feeling like shit and just thinking about getting more sleep. It was like trying a drug and getting addicted, all I was concerned with was when I would sleep more. Moreover, I was in a terrible mood and just overall felt bad. Total bummer.

The turning point was yesterday when I went to Quiznos and had a delicious sandwich, and had some nice banter with the employees. I can't count the number of times nice cashiers or foodmakers have made my day better. Weird how that works.

So last night, I went to bed at 4ish. Woke up at 10:30. Felt great all day. Went to the library with Megan and did real schoolwork for the first time in god knows how long (I actually know the basis of an essay I'm gonna write before I've written it. Unheard of!), then we travelled to South where we hung out with some saucesome people I've been meaning to hang out with all semester but never did. It was as much fun as I expected (lots), A++ would hang with again.

Then I had a nice, slow walk to my car. I regard the UCONN campus as a material thing, an inconvenient physical construct keeping me from where I live at to where I learn at. However, I think the campus is fucking gorgeous at night. Whenever I'm there at night I just love it. The lights make everything look nice, it's quiet, there's few to no people around. Throw in some bookend music and you have a pretty perfect moment. If I lived on campus I'd be walking around at night all the time.

On the walk, I composed this blog entry, because I was thinking about how nice it was and how much better than the past couple of days this one was. Admiring the scenery, savoring the cold, rocking out to some mopey walking music, it came out a lot nicer in my head. An hour later it's large and unwieldy, which is why I don't tend to blog all the stuff I think about blogging.

I guess my point is that Skittles are always going to be disappointing to me because there's no chocolate inside them.

My Biggest Regret In Life...

...is that I can't bum things off people. This is going to sound sarcastic and crazy but just hear me out.

Now, allow me to elaborate. I do not smoke cigarettes.

Okay, now that we have all that scientific jargon out of the way, I'll explain further. I don't regret not smoking them at all really, but cigarettes are the only thing you can bum off of people and it actually makes you look cool and edgy.

EXAMPLE:

A: "Hey, can I bum a smoke?"
B: "Absolutely. Furthermore, let me publicly commend you on your in-my-face attitude and smooth, aloof disposition. I hold you in the highest respect, sirrah, so take this cigarette, with my compliments."

Please note that B's speech was mostly a vocal indication of what the average person would think.

Let's see what happens when subject P tries to bum something from subject C:

P: "Hey man could I bum an xbox game?"
C: "Get the hell out of my house."

See? The word bum looks really stupid if you're not asking to do it to a cigarette. I don't particularly want to smoke ever, but the part of me that loves using phrases regrets that I'll never be able to use that one.

But a man can dream...

Not that you care, but...

Suppai no Iruka: I want

Suppai no Iruka: to meet

Suppai no Iruka: the satanic, unloved, unWANTED son of a fucking C*NT

davidlinc1: LLLLLLOL

Suppai no Iruka: who decided that between a very hard MIDboss

Suppai no Iruka: A room where you can fight every boss in the GAME

Suppai no Iruka: And the f*cking marathon son of a sh*t ass f*ck C*CK FINAL BOSS

Suppai no Iruka: THERE WAS NO POINT

Suppai no Iruka: NO POINT

Suppai no Iruka: IN WHICH THEY COULD OH I DONT F*CKING KNOW

Suppai no Iruka: LET ME SAVE

Suppai no Iruka: I JUST SPENT

Suppai no Iruka: LIKE 45 MINUTES

Suppai no Iruka: FIGHTING THE FINAL BOSS

Suppai no Iruka: SEVERAL MILLION HP WORTH OF DAMAGE

davidlinc1: oh dear god i'm laughing

Suppai no Iruka: F*CK YOU STAR OCEAN

Suppai no Iruka: F*CK YOU SO HARD

I censored my language at the last minute because I suddenly got self-conscious about how much of it I did. In any case I wasn't exaggerating, the Star Ocean series is known for being long and arduous but whoever designed the last section of this game is a vile, soulless person, wringing his emaciated claws as he drools the black bile of the abyss, planning ever greater terrors to unleash upon the innocents of the world, and as they cry his dank gray tongue will lap up their tears, his only sustenance besides the raw, screaming souls of those he has wronged.

He's a JERK.