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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 9:12:22p: *
Don't get me wrong, I love Slashdot just as much as the next geek. But surely I'm not the only reader out there who is marginally disturbed by the icon that site uses to denote stories regarding Apple's latest version of the Mac OS. Yes, it's a big blue X. As in "Their destiny was foreordained" X. As in "Hey look, we're the Dragons of Heaven and one of us seems to have left the rest of her clothes at the soapland" X. As in "Satsuki can 0wnz0r my h4rd dr1v3 any day" X. Don't mind me, I've just finished watching End of Evangelion and am still pissed at Manga Entertainment for turning every dub they do into a piece of unadulterated shit.Wednesday, July 2, 2003 2:56:48p: *
Between things exploding both here and in the field... today has been stressful. I've been making slow but steady progress in Advance Wars 2... the Blue Moon missions have been getting a little hairy-- I panicked at the sight of Adder's platoon of Mid Tanks-- but nothing I can't handle. And to be completely honest, I've had that one song from End of Evangelion stuck in my head. Not "If I Can't Be Yours"-- I think it's titled "Komm, Susser Tod" but in my shivering, huddled state I can't be sure. Oh well. Back to work. I promise to do work on the site tonight. Really. Trust me.Thursday, July 3, 2003 5:23:03p: *
Hey all. Real updates to the site are on hold this weekend-- it being the 4th, I intend to spend the day celebrating my freedom by tormenting my little sister. Drawback being, of course, that the parents' place only has a 56K connection. So yeah. Email should still be good, just don't expect a rapid response. And I might put up some entries later. My big project for the next few weeks should probably be editing my old blog's content into something more usable here. Leareth: Sorry I've been out of the loop. Drop me a line, OK? I'll respond this time because my mail server won't eat it. ^_^ Sorceress and Knight: You probably already got my ironic statement. Amusing how quickly these things come up, no? To everyone else: See you all in a bit.Friday, July 4, 2003 4:08:36p: *
DMG Ice is left with the cryptic message "mercury". Defacement? Or has Philip actually gone off the deep end and shut down the best damn Game Boy site out there? Anyway. Torment of the sibling is on hold, as she is doing that well enough on her own; having injured her ankle not two hours after I get home and all. I will be attending two trips to Baltimore this year. And I miss my air conditioning. We will resume the normal bitching and moaning after the weekend. Addendum: Go to Neko Machi and read the "UFO Catcher Theater" strip, from Wednesday. This means you, Sorceress. ^_^ Driiiiiiiift, driiiiiiiiiiift.....Saturday, July 5, 2003 8:37:31p: *
July Newtype. Good stuff in here, especially (and this is surprising to me) the Art of Brigadoon feature. I think my weakness for all things CU+3 has started to affect my resolve in certain matters. For example, I've found myself perusing some of CLAMP's more... shall we say, estrogeneous selections. But no matter. I'm confident enough in my manhood to have ignored the Saiyuki preview disc; something like Brigadoon or even A Little Snow Fairy Sugar is nothing to me. Chiiiiiyooo-chaaaaaan.... How do you flyyyyyyyyyyy....? Ahem. Also of interest in the magazine was the concept art for the live-action Evangelion (which I harbor serious doubts of actually happening, regardless of the amount of pants-wetting that would occur should it be released); the announcement of a few new titles like Shadow Star and Sailor Moon Uncut; and oh yeah, the Real Life book. I like. While we're on the topic of The Lunar One, I'd like to express a certain amount of displeasure with ADV. The company which is responsible for two of the best dubs in existence-- I'm referring to Evangelion and Noir, here-- seems to have conveniently forgotten to dub Sailor Moon. Or at least that's how it looks when one peruses the full-page ad. In some ways, I can understand why they may have chosen to do so-- it's impossible to use the old broadcast dub because of the bits left out, and dubbing from scratch is expensive and time-consuming; not to mention the fact that regardless of if you find a better cast or if you re-hire the original US voices, people are going to bitch-- but I can still feel a little left out. I solidly do not agree with anyone who says that dubs are unconditionally evil. This is not to say that I haven't heard some excruciatingly foul ones-- I'm looking at you, Manga Entertainment-- but for the most part the ones I've seen have been good. Yes, even... shudder... Galaxy Fraulein Yuna. Let's go on to some new business. Well, sort of new business, if you're not one of the six regular readers who probably already know this anyway. This coming August, I shall be attending the convention known as Otakon. This comes hot on the heels of an additional trip to the Washington, D.C. area two weeks prior to attend a wedding reception. Yay. There are merely three things that make me a tad afraid. First, I will be undertaking the journey to Otakon on my own. Secondly, it is the first such convention I will have ever been going in attendance to have visited. (Stupid tenses.) Finally, I have been threatened with the use of Excessive Evil by my two closest friends. Make of those seemingly disparate parts of the previous sentence what you will. Star Trek: First Contact is on. I bid you adieu, for now.Sunday, July 6, 2003 7:49:28p: *
As has often been said, life is full of surprises. The two most notable examples of this being this month's Newtype preview disc-- yes, both of them are the one disc. Case in point. ADV is releasing King of Bandit Jing, which started off interesting, but wound up being, well... not so. Needless to say I do not care for it as much as I initially thought I would. Second case. KO Beast, released by Right Stuf. Sounds like your run of the mill chop-socky guts'n'gorefest, right? Wrong. This is a delightfully screwed up furry comedy. Think "Slayers" meets "Teddy Ruxpin" and gets beat up by "Voltron". Newtype picked Episode 4 for the preview, a good choice-- you got to see the interactions of the characters and plenty of comedic and giant-mecha fighting. Oh, and did I mention it's furry? Yes, the main characters are weresomethings. Except for the weird hyperkinetic little girl with the Cyclops/Dejiko eyebeam thing going on. I still stand by my decision that Brigadoon is next on my list of releases to start. X is the priority to finish, and Noir and Wild ARMs can wait until I get some extra cash-- though I'm thinking of ditching the Wild ARMs box and disc 1 on eBay and just waiting until the set comes completely out. Then again, there are at least two people I know who may be interested in it... We'll see after Otakon. And I intend to get at least ONE more series at that particular event. Thus, I subject myself to excessive overtime these coming weeks. Again, we shall see. Anyway, for the time being, I'm done writing about anime. We'll probably have a gaming rant or a life in general rant next to spice things up. Back to work, ladies and gentlemen.Wednesday, July 9, 2003 11:11:15p: *
Latency. Delays. Hesitation. Hiccups. Slowness. Reduced speed. Sluggishness. Lag. High ping time. Call it what you will; it sucks regardless of what name you give it. And I can't believe I'm experiencing it on a text-based game. I have to bust some heads tomorrow at work. Knights of the Old Republic is reported to have gone gold. That's good. Can they get it all out within a week? I hope so-- I'll probably be looking into it if the reviews are good. Knowing Bioware, however, the Xbox version will land in my collection soon. Acclaim has pulled itself out of the GameCube business. This too is good and I share Gabe and Tycho's assessment of the situation, seeing how as I hate Acclaim with so god damned much fervor that even if I were dying of poverty and they were the only people to offer me a job, I still wouldn't take it. It's like getting a job clubbing baby seals, you know. It's something that is just not done. Speaking of bashing mindless, innocent animals, EverQuest Online Adventures Online Gaming Live Online still sucks. EA still does not know when to quit. Rather than spending time improving their Madden football franchise into something that is not explicitly designed to be thrown away in seven months, they have instead elected to develop "NFL Street", presumably an edgier, more action-oriented football game. Hmm. This sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before...? And apparently the entire RPG community has simultaneously and spontaneoulsy remembered that Magical Vacation exists and still hasn't been translated. This may be because the game might not be as good as we all think it is. Just because Brownie Brown developed it doesn't automatically mean it's worth porting. Take a look at Legend of Mana, for instance. Playable, yes. Enjoyable, for a little while, yes. A good game? Close, but not quite. You know, fewer people are grossed out by the fact that I can bend my elbows about 20 degrees backwards. I wonder why.Saturday, July 12, 2003 11:26:32a: *
I have found a new definition of pain. It is called "Dance Mania". I played two rounds of that torturous game in the arcade yesterday-- surprisingly enough, despite the fact that the instructions were in Korean, I was able to get how to play fairly quickly-- and that was enough. My elbows still ache. It wasn't until an hour later, when reflecting on the impossibility of some of the moves, that I said, "You'd almost have to have four limbs to do some of those combina...tio...ns.... D'OH!" Yeah, I'm probably going to go back a couple more times, but not this weekend. I have other business to attend to....Sunday, July 13, 2003 6:49:10p: *
The lack of communication on the site should in no way convince you of any trouble affecting me. Life is good, life is normal, la la la.... OK, to be serious, I've spent the last week slacking off playing on the MUD. This was mostly due to the urgings of Pez. Not the candy. You know who I mean. It's also due to the fact that I still can't find my C++ book. I know I had one, I know there was one that I didn't sell back to the university... I just don't know where it is. I'll probably abandon the search soon in favor of going in to Erie some weekend after Otakon and picking up a new one. Come to think of it... September would be a perfect time to do that, wouldn't it? I could swing by the Gannon bookstore and take a look at what good ol' Dr. Yoo has recommended. Or was it Dr. Vitolo? Hey, who did teach me C++, anyway? And why didn't I pay attention during those classes? My notes from there are mostly "look in the book" and "Roger is a crackhead". Which, of course, I meant in the nicest possible way. Oh, and "blah blah blah manipulate the private parts of a class" scrawled across one particularly suspect page. Of course, some pretty good quotes came out of classes. The one jumping to mind is when the professor asked, in reference to a C++ structure, "How would you describe this class?" to which Roger quickly responded "Boring!" Then there was the one where Dr. Frezza was introducing the assembler environment we'd be using for a different class, and Drabes shouted out, in perfect crone-voice, "I don't like SPIM!" And finally, later in the semester, when Dr. Frezza was talking about the looping nature of traffic lights, this particular exchange: Dr. Frezza: Embedded programs do not terminate unless they're bombs. A stop light is not a bomb. Me: That really depends on your definition of "traffic control device". Anyway, that's enough for now. Expect a gaming rant soon. And by "soon" I do not mean "about two weeks from now". Probably tomorrow morning. We shall see.Sunday, July 13, 2003 6:52:14p: *
Why did updating result in a banner advertisement replacing my main page? I don't know. It's gone now, though.Sunday, July 13, 2003 8:14:45p: *
Added Game Listings and Anime Listings to the site. Peruse at your leisure. I want to be offended by Fox's new offering, after the Simpsons-- called Banzai, it's supposed to be "America's Funniest Home Videos" meets some kind of guessing game. Fortunately, by utilizing revolting stereotype in the book, they're not making it too difficult. I'm not even Asian and it pisses me off.Tuesday, July 15, 2003 8:59:13p: *
Of all the unlikely sources... well, she doesn't want to be identified just yet. But she's given me a lead on someone who may possibly be interested in The Campaign (see above). So, so far, that's... um... one. Wait, no, one-half. The lead hasn't responded yet. Does anyone happen to know, for example, at what point the word "no" loses all meaning for grown-ups? I mean, I understand it just fine, myself. But a few of the people who called in to me today basically did not buy the fact that Adelphia could not fix their DVD player. Nor would Adelphia be willing to help them send out pornographic spam, remove a floppy disk from a drive (or parts of it, as it turned out, because while I was explaining this to the woman, she ripped the disk in half), or increase the amount of email from friends that arrived in their inbox. So, apparently, they no longer understand the concept of "no". Why, then, do they insist on utilizing the concept of "bad language"? Video game rant coming soon. I promise, this time.Wednesday, July 16, 2003 5:16:43p: *
We're going into extra innings, folks. I've forced myself to try to do a little bit of overtime each week, whenever I feel like I can handle two more hours of abuse. This way I won't show up at Otakon in debt (then again, I do have a little leeway with my credit card). Naturally, I almost killed things on the way home the past two days, but today wasn't so bad because one thought occurred to me. It can't possibly get worse. I have faced every challenge that has been sent to my phone so far and am still here, and can still at least feign geniality (even if it's through clenched teeth sometimes). So yeah. The fact that I have promised myself a big, juicy double cheeseburger after work for not killing anyone is also an incentive. You know, the one drawback to being an admitted sociopath is that you can't use hyperbole anymore without people looking at you funny.Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:21:39p: *
Some people have asked me why I hate the Legacy of Kain games, back when I worked at the store. I asked them in reply, "What makes you say I hate them?" To which they said "Well, for starters, you just called the game 'Legacy of Krap' and are currently preparing to urinate on the disc." To which I said "Then you'll really be impressed with what I did to the Gex discs." To be honest, it all stems from the Soul Reaver demo I played long, long ago-- yes, the infamous "this is in no way indicative of the gameplay" Soul Reaver demo. When a company puts out a demo that is as half-assed as that pile of feces in the guise of digital entertainment, I tend to take a jaundiced eye to the rest of their products. And you know what? Crystal Dynamics has consistently succeeded in sinking to my expectations. Not that they haven't tried. But they haven't. Tried, that is. How difficult can it be to make a game that thrills me? And lest you think that last question is sarcastic, let me tell you what I have been playing of late. Dark Risings, a text-based mud that is far more interesting than any Everclone. Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, a turn-based strategy game that is just as fun in single player as it is against other humans. Mega Man 8 and Mega Man Zero-- sequels. Sequels. Come on. If I still prefer blasting Dr. Wily's ass the eighth time around to your newest waste of plastic, there have got to be some fundamental design flaws in your games. Think about it. Acclaim has the sense to stop befouling the Gamecube. Why can't you stop punishing us, Crystal Dynamics? Is this an abusive relationship we're having? Do I need to call my girlfriends and get all teary-eyed about how we think you'll change your ways, but every night it's the belt and the Captain? Have I taken this metaphor too far? And in case I haven't belabored the point enough, Everquest sucks, too. You know, now that I think about it, I wonder if I could get search engines to list me as the top result for "Everquest Sucks". That would be an accomplishment. In any event, other news approaches! Xenosaga 2 has been revealed, just a little, and I'm sure I'm not the only one with mixed feelings about the character redesigns. I liked Shion short'n'cute. I liked KOS-MOS just fine the way she was. I liked... all right, so I never saw Jin (sue me, I blinked during that cutscene). Then again, I'm all right with that just as long as they don't decide to make MOMO's panties a regular cast member again. I swear, there was at least one panty flash for each cutscene in the game, even the ones she wasn't in. Still no news regarding Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, though to be honest there's not really that much to tell. Localization is always the hardest time on an American RPG player because all the really good details came out before the game's Japanese release, so there's no scraps to toss us while the game is being meticulously mistranslated. I shudder to think what the Europeans must go through-- "All right, U.K., this game is already in your native language, but we decided that since you didn't want to wait another year and a half for the game, assuming we didn't decide to pull the plug three weeks before release, we're not going to release it over there anyway. All you other countries can sod off." Of course, it's not like they're missing too much. Just the good stuff, which is a shame. A lot of discussion lately about the stereotypical gamer. We're not all geeks, there seem to be an equal number of girls and guys, we don't always jump for the goriest, games can be educational... Naturally, all that is simply the product of a media deprived of a war to exploit, and it will all be swept neatly under the rug the next time little Timmy frags six of his classmates during lunch. But it's nice to see it out there. And for the record, I fit the stereotype mostly-- male geek living in a dark apartment with little to no physical exertion. But I play Final Fantasy. So there. Well, that's about all there is this time. We'll see what's going on for the next spiel.Thursday, July 17, 2003 2:29:09p: *
Something occurred to me, after having watched bits and pieces Akira last night. (Aside from the fact that I was far more impressed with it than I was seven years ago, that is, aided in part by the fact that the Pioneer dub does not suck.) China would make an excellent backdrop for an anime. Not ancient China, which of course has been covered-- think Fushigi Yugi and Dynasty Warriors-- but modern China. This is partially because CNN just ran a story about a motorcycle gang mugging caught on tape in Guangdong. I couldn't help but think of the scenes from that particular anime. More than that, apparently a British reporter is under fire for falsifying a report of a cruise missile assault this past April. Whatever. We'll see what's going on later.Thursday, July 17, 2003 7:17:07p: *
Now this is interesting... Jen Taylor is credited as the voice of both Cortana (the AI commander in the XBox smash Halo) and the "official" voice of Princess Peach (from Nintendo's flagship Mario franchise). I probably won't be able to play Halo anymore without at least snickering every time I recieve orders... I mean, come on, Master Chief taking orders from Princess Toadstool? Something seriously warped about that. No pun intended.Thursday, July 17, 2003 9:13:29p: *
Exclusively on the webcam this evening, the rare domesticated cabbit. Here we can see him (felis lagomorphia miyaa) observing filmed entertainment. He seems to prefer CSI. Don't miss this once-in-a-lifetime event.Thursday, July 17, 2003 10:16:09p: *
Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you "Disturbing Search String Theater". This weekend's meditation on "why did you search for that?" is as follows:
weapon otakon 2003
Thank you. Next week we hope to bring you more completely whacked-out search strings that have lead at least one person to the site.Saturday, July 19, 2003 5:45:31a: *
No updates this weekend, folks. Off to Baltimore for a family get-together.
...not necessarily mine, mind you...Monday, July 21, 2003 7:22:22a: *
Not much to tell of the trip, really. Traffic was not that bad, and we managed to make it without any major catastrophes. What I went to-- a family reunion kind of thing with a wedding reception afterwards-- was pretty cool. I got to see a bunch of my more distant (as in physical location) relations, and it was good. This morning is less eventful... thunder and rain. Oh goody. We'll see what needs to be done later, OK?Tuesday, July 22, 2003 8:30:58a: *
It seems that some major disaster just had to befall me this weekend, but I wasn't around for it. So naturally the tornado waited until I was at work yesterday to touch down in Coudersport. I'm fine-- a little hungry, mind you, but fine-- and we expect power to be restored by noon or so. How am I writing this, you ask, without power? Well, the answer is simple! I'm *fzt*
NO CARRIERThursday, July 24, 2003 12:11:50p: * The siege of the city is over. All services have been restored. Expect a status report later today, and regular updates will resume tomorrow.Thursday, July 24, 2003 9:41:22p: *
If the movie Hollywood Homicide tells me anything about the state of American cinema, it's that Harrison Ford can still kick ass and that scriptwriting is rapidly becoming a lost art. The plot has more holes than Okashina Okashi and more deus ex machina than all of Spira. Yet all in all it was by no means a waste of . While the script was weak, the dialogue was great and the scenario-- while it could have used some work-- was acceptable. Think of it as "Lethal Weapon" updated for the new millennium and with rapper co-stars. Oh, and with a couple really good chase scenes. I will say this about Josh Hartnett, though. Whatever movies he may have made in the past, I think he did a pretty good job here. I'm a major sucker for brown eyes. Sandra Bullock has the most gorgeous oildrop eyes in movies today-- in bright lighting, you look into them and there's just dark. Look into the right eyes with the right light and you see infinity. Josh Hartnett had the same effect goin on in this movie in a couple scenes, and something twanged within me. I can't explain it, it was just a twang! and I went all goofy-like. Don't ask me to analyze what it means about me. Oh yeah, the tornado. Let's get to that, shall we?Thursday, July 24, 2003 10:24:01p: *
This is how it goes. Monday morning, I go in to work amidst semi-heavy rain. Stuff goes down-- figuratively and literally-- but around 2:00, something weird starts happening. The rain had been off and on all day, but it was starting to intensify. Wind and rain whips and rages outside, and people coming on for 2nd-shifts are drenched, even from dashing from the parking lot. Let me tell you a little bit about where I work. The Advanced Products Care Center is colloquially known as the Tennis Center. It was originally conceived to be, as you may have surmised, an indoor tennis facility. The bathrooms have disabled showers, reflecting this former life. As it turns out, the bathrooms are the most solid part of the place. The rest of it is fairly flimsy-- basically nothing more substantial than some sheet metal and some reinforcement girders. I told you that story to tell you the rest of this one. The Tennis Center is flimsy, but it's sealed up. So wind ordinarily wouldn't have seeped into the building. When the insulation on the cieling started flapping violently, at around 2:45, we started to wonder what was going on. The wind calmed around 3:10. It picked up again about 45 minutes later. That's when the power went out for the first time. Ironically enough, Alex had previously asked if the power could go out in the APCC, to which my supervisor responded that it hadn't happened in 5 years, and was impossible due to the diesel-powered generators. This was about twenty minutes prior. The power went out, during which time I had about fifteen seconds to let the customer know he was about to be hung up on. The phones died then. Ten seconds later, the juice flowed again. We all booted back up normally, and twenty minutes later we were back in business. The power went out again at 4:30. When it was restored, we all calmly hung up on customers, citing an emergency situation, and went about restoring our systems. However, this is when I sighed in exasperation, looked up, and watched the gentle swaying of the air-conditioning ducts. Ducts which, to the best of my knowledge heretofore had been stationary and had always been stationary. I made mention of this to the people in my immediate area, and by 4:45 we were evacuating the building. We were not cleared to leave until 5:20, at which point we all got the hell out of Dodge and scurried home. My power was out completely. I checked in at home, and went about normal evening procedures, in the hopes that the power would be restored. Tuesday morning came, and still no electricity. I again went about what I do normally, sans juice, and got to work. Rumors flew as fast as the wind had the day before. Power would be out until Friday; roads between Coudersport and Olean were blocked or destroyed; and, most disturbing of all, the power would be a while away because the substation, some 40-odd miles away, had been obliterated by an F-3 tornado. I began to panic once I got home-- and my folks came to my rescue. Or they would have, but inclement weather washed out the bottom of our driveway. Again. Wednesday comes. I manage a shower-- being in the city, we still had water, and it was hot because the tank must run on gas-- and head back to work. The plan is that the parents will drop by with emergency supplies and some non-perishables. They arrive around 10a and stick around until 12:30, when I come home for lunch. We trade food and I go back to work, a little more confident. Wednesday night, and still nothing. I'm on the back porch, and have just returned from the grocery store (which, in a rare show of ingenuity, is grilling hamburgers and selling them instead of letting them thaw and rot). Word is that power would be restored by 7p. So I sit on the porch and do some more planning work on the campaign (I had spent Monday and Tuesday afternoons studying the D&D and d20 Modern manuals). Around 7:30, my air conditioner flares to life. Glorious, blessed electricity has been restored! The TV and internet wouldn't return until today, sometime around 11a, but it came back. And so here we are. I'm down by about worth of food, but I'll make it up. More than anything, I'm glad I get paid tomorrow. I can replace a little of what was destroyed, and I can still put away some towards Otakon. Speaking of which... I found that the paycheck that will be delivered on day one of the con will include my 15% bonus for the month of July (I get the June bonus of 7% tomorrow, and that gets shifted immediately into the funds). So, counting overtime being loaded in, and bonuses... I think roughly 0. That's plenty for the room, the registration, parking, and so on and so forth. Anyway. This weekend, getting the oil changed in the Gustaff and heading up to Erie. I've been dying to head back, and this is the perfect opportunity. Seems that, for whatever reason, Media Play et al have been sending me gift certificates for increasingly larger amounts. So far I'm up to , and I'm torn between the Monster Manual and the Urban Arcana sourcebook. Then again, Knights of the Old Republic came out recently... no, I need to finish Neverwinter Nights first. I can really only handle one Bioware masterwork at a time. Tomorrow begins the final countdown. Two weeks from tonight I'll be ready to rock. Let's do this up, folks and folken. I'll be in touch tomorrow morning.Saturday, July 26, 2003 10:18:34p: *
Spending time at home without the folks. They're at Gram's in Sharon. Picked up a couple neat things during my trip to Erie-- these would be the Monster Manual and the Urban Arcana sourcebook, bringing me to a total of two complete and ready-to-run games. I also picked up one of the fine Cheapass Games products-- Escape from Elba, to be precise. It was either that or Help Doctor Lucky Escape The Moon. And given the fact that I'd rather Kill Doctor Lucky, I picked the one with Kovalic's artwork on the front. Escape from Elba looks to be the starter game I'll run at the initial meeting. If I ever have it. Still no takers. Anyway, off to watch X vol. 6. I didn't know it was out already, nor did I know it was . Those two facts alone make the trip to Erie worth it.Sunday, July 27, 2003 6:52:53p: *
Watchin' X. I can't possibly be the only person out there who is having a really hard time caring about the whole Subaru vs. Seishiro thing, can I? I mean, yeah, ol' Milky Eye killed Subaru's sister, and Subaru has descended to levels of Aerobic Brooding that I can only hope of ever achieving... But on the grander scale, who really cares? Personally, I think including Seishiro and Subaru was kind of a cop-out for CLAMP (though heaven forbid I say that to any of those wonderful ladies' faces)-- I mean, yeah, they had a rivalry already set up, and it could easily be shoehorned into pretty much any "good vs. evil" storyline. And yes, I am fully and exceptionally aware of CLAMP's self-referential nature. I'm just sayin', that's all. It's like Jerry Bruckheimer staging his next movie in Las Vegas solely to have the CSI crew do cameos. It would be cool, no doubt, but more than a little unnerving and cliche. FLCL also finished up. Whatever sense it may have made previously now no longer exists. Off to write a couple more TMBARs.Sunday, July 27, 2003 7:42:29p: *
Welcome back to TheFurryOne, now with 50% more They Might Be Anime Reviews. In other words, I could only think of two. I didn't think it would be that hard, but as it proceeds, it's probably going to be a dead joke the next time I get around to updating it. I did some work on the campaign over the weekend, and as a result I've got about 40 pages (handwritten) of material for the sourcebook. And this is still with just the two initial missions I had in June. The rest is all reference and NPC listings for future missions-- plus a few magical items, some more background material, and other goodies. Off to do more work now. By the way, for all who've missed me online, rest assured I'll be back in action soon. Very soon.Sunday, July 27, 2003 11:21:10p: *
Lest we forget, I am proud (?) to present again to you: Disturbing Search String Theatre. This week's meditation on insanity is as follows:
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Don't look at me. I don't search for 'em, I only report 'em. Tune in next week for another installment of Disturbing Search String Theatre.Thursday, July 31, 2003 6:30:23p: *
Let me be perfectly frank with you. Cabbits hold a few things sacred that other people do not. Food, mostly. Carrots and seafood, specifically. Rest assured that I will be bringing some carrots with me to Otakon, but actually today's topic has to do with seafood. Betcha never saw that coming. About a month ago, a seafood place opened up in Coudersport. Small, kinda unassuming. Until now I didn't even know it existed. So I went in and ordered a shrimp dinner. Not a jumbo shrimp dinner, but just a shrimp dinner. It came with french fries and cole slaw-- I told them I didn't want the cole slaw. It cost me . While the food was being prepared I happened to take notice of the radio, which had some cockamamie advertisement on it about how the "unbelievers" were going to Hell because they didn't follow whatever sect of Christianity the speaker-- presumably a pastor-- was advocating. I sighed, knowing that such advertisements are becoming too aggressive. I mean, come on. It's God, for crying out loud. Show some respect by not threatening potential converts. I'm firmly of the school that if someone wants to believe one thing, then that's what they will believe and to try to change that is wrong. The advertisement was over. The usual weather report followed, and then the DJ announced the station's call sign... "Cross FM-- Family Christian Radio." That put me off my dinner completely. I'll be frank, again. I don't like "in your face" religion. God is subtle. That's why he's God and why we're down here-- because he was subtle enough to put the sky between us. I think of God as subtle. I think of religion as being subtle. I become extremely offended when you try to inject God into absolutely everything you do with the intention of winning converts and to the exclusion of actually enjoying the activity. That's part of the reason I don't like so-called "Contemporary Christian" music. Number one, its main purpose is to get money, and number two, the vast majority of it is bad. Very bad. It's like you're dragging Jesus into a perfectly atrocious love song just so people will listen to it and pay you to write more bad poetry about God and set it to a feeble attempt at pop music. I have no qualms with people who like Christian music-- Philip included. People have their likes and dislikes and I have no intention of changing that, because that would be wrong. To be honest, I enjoy Evanescence, and get a kick out of Five Iron Frenzy sometimes; and yes, Pez, that was your doing. I'm not writing this to spur anyone into action, I'm not ranting about religion just to attract the Religious Right (which, more often than not, is neither)... I told you that story to tell you this one. When I finally got the meal home, after enduring about four different variations on the whole "I love God, give me money to write about God more" theme, I opened the styrofoam container. There was about fifteen pounds of dry, smoldering french fries which covered up eight overspiced, underweight shrimp. And one big-ass leaf of lettuce underneath it all as if to say, "Look at me, I'm green! That means I'm healthy, or at the very least less poisonous than the french fries!" The lettuce was mostly inedible bits anyway. I've digressed. The point is I'm not going back there again because a) it seemed like they could have actually put some shrimp into my shrimp dinner; b) I can easily spend .50 on a bag of cooked frozen shrimp at the store and on some instant rice, and eat my fill for three days straight; and c) regardless of how well the shrimp were done, and I had to admit they were tasty while they lasted, no amount of desperation can force me to endure Christian music against my will for eight damn shrimp. That is all. Expect a gaming rant tomorrow.Thursday, July 31, 2003 11:31:09p: * Character-O-Matic added to Storm Chasers page and Dynamic Toys page. It's still just a beta version-- I haven't even started working on implementing basic skills or feats, nor have I even decided whether or not I want to. But for now this will greatly expedite the character creation process by automatically calculating from the basic tables. Plus, this can help me roll a couple basic Insta-NPCs should I need them. And with that, I'm going to get something to eat and collapse into bed. 'Night, all.