Writer with no Readers

To Sunder the World

2011-12-31T09:19:00.006-05:00

Man, it's been a while.

I've started six different stories between the last entry to this blog and this one. All of them sort of failed for one reason or the other. But now, over the last three days, I've actually managed to put something together and I think it will be a source of amusement to many of you.

It is called To Sunder the World and it can be found here. It is about a supervillain's ten year campaign to bring about the destruction of the Earth. It's a simple enough story, but I certainly had fun writing the thing and I think it'll be mostly fun to read. It might be overly cute at times, but the key with this story was mostly a way for me to prove to myself that stories can still be written after months and months of failure.

I hope that my next entry will come in a bit less time than the last. Until then: Enjoy!

Imagination

2011-08-14T03:27:00.002-04:00

So I'm editting Grace, which is an arduous and grueling process that feels like it's going to take a long damn time. I find that the main problem with editing is that while it is creative work, it's really about sorting out fine details. If I change something in the second chapter I'll have to be like "okay, what does this mean for this scene in chapter 13?" Rather than calling it editing, I've come to really think of it as unification. What I'm essentially doing is taking the 500-600 pages of work I did for this thing over three years and making it into a coherent whole. And that's goddamn harder than it sounds.

But the fact that I can't escape from is that I really like writing fresh things. So I figured it wouldn't hurt to put together a short story between chapter edits. The first of such things is now down and it is called Imagination.

I personally think that this one is going to be a story that either will be a big hit and which people will tell me to write more of or a disaster that will never be spoken of again. Though I personally like it. It's different.

Notes for the story:
- The science fiction is intentionally minimized, though it takes place in the Grace universe. I wanted this to be a story that could conceivably take place now, but which is happening in a different universe.
- One thing I wanted to try with this story is quick scene changes, which are designed to force the reader into my pace. You know, like the Old Spice guy. I think that worked out pretty well.
- I also limited the physical description of things to see if that would make it more punchy. I also limited the amount of character backstory given significantly.

Let me know if you like the end result.

Memories

2011-05-17T03:21:00.004-04:00

So this has been done for a couple of days but I was sick so I couldn't wrap it up. Here it is. This is a bit long overdue. It's about ships in space shooting each other.

Things to say about this story:

1) It changed quite a bit as it was written.

At first the narration was much more conversational, with the narrator addressing the reader quite a bit. I was trying to create the atmosphere of being told a story by an older working glass gentleman in a dimly lit (though warm) room. The problem with doing a story like that though is that the way a character like that shouldn't be a master storyteller. I thus felt a real tension between my own technical writing skills and know-how and the character.

I resolved this by making him a bit smarter and less of a rough and tumble character. But I still don't know if I got the balance between those two things right. It felt good to put a story through 2 rewrites though. Probably could use a 3rd really.

2) One year after I first bought the Hound of the Baskervilles I still feel as though I (and all other writers with me) have been forced to live in the shadow of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is both humbling and reassuring to know that there is a standard of writing that I shall never surpass.

3) The ship is named after the NDP guy that got rid of the Tories' foreign minister.

-------------------

Grace itself is such a mess. I think I need to rewrite the first chapter. I may as well wait till I'm completely done with teacher's college at the rate I've been going at this rate. Which will be in three weeks.

I found these notes for a short story hidden away on my desktop. I have no memory of writing them (I think I threw them down during one of my practicums when I was contemplating the injustice of this world), but they're actually pretty good as far as short story ideas go. So I'm going to try just picking them up and writing them. Should be interesting.

-------------------

In my desperation to create something during Teacher's College, I rounded up three people and started a DnD game. It's a homebrew world of my creation. If not for the fact that I'm abrasive and occasionally get into fights with my players about bullshit, I would be prepared to say that I'm running the best DnD game in the world. I mean this is top shelf shit right here.

That said, making a DnD campaign is easy. The three rules of making it happen are:
1) Don't kill all the players intentionally
2) Make their decisions actually matter
3) Add riddles.

I especially like #3. That's the one thing I've learned from playing DnD... I can now write riddles. I never knew how to do that before, but then I glanced through the DM's guide and was like 'oh! You just start with the ANSWER and go backwards!!' So that's cool. It's easy writing though. If not for the drawing maps part (which I actually enjoy) my prep time for like 8+ hours of adventure is about an hour and half that time is just spent figuring out what monsters to throw at them.

Eventually though I will probably kill them. Probably.

-------------------

With the Liberal Party's bones ground into dust, the Greater Good shall soon raise its banner over this land. It'll be funny when those fucks start talking about Proportional Representation in an election or two. Let me be the first to say: Hey assholes, maybe you should have thought of that one when you were in power? ;D

What's annoying though is that while most Canadians are done with those weak-willed fuckers, the Canadian media is still filled with Liberal Party hacks. And now that so many of those fucks need new jobs, there's only going to be more of it. I swear, if the NDP ever got coverage of its internal political wranglings when it was the third party... but whatever, if there's one thing this election proved it's that Canadians aren't overly influenced by Canada's old media.

-------------------

Little kids are hard to deal with. I don't get those creatures. But that's my life these days.

The Negotiator

2010-12-26T23:37:00.003-05:00

I wrote this little number right here. I think I've certainly written better stories before and hopefully will after, but it turned out alright.

The thing sort of morphed as I was writing it. When I look back at my notes for this thing I really can't recognize the story from it's original conception (other than the names). I basically had another idea that supplanted the old one and while I did revise the story extensively as a result, I do fear that it may still be lacking in focus.

I also set the goal of not going over 15 pages with this story. I have trouble compressing things sometimes and so setting a hard limit like that was challenging. Though I went right down to the wire (it is 15 pages exactly), I was happy to be finished with the story without breaching it. That was one tough job.

Anyhow, I can say now that I've gotten back into the saddle now after the ravages of Teacher's College. I have a week of holidays left, which I'll try to throw another story together for, though I'm not sure if I can deliver on that. Hopefully it will be possible though.

What am I doing?

2010-09-16T03:37:00.006-04:00

So I've been in teacher's college for a week now. Some of you may be wondering why that is. It's certainly a question that I've asked myself more than once.

I'd say it started about a year ago. I had spent an entire summer sending out one job application every day to no avail. I had no job and no real prospects on the horizon. Other than my writing, I had no real avenue for productive work or intellectual stimulus. In Japan, the common term for a young person in such conditions is NEET, which stands for Not in Employment, Education or Training. It has a bit of a more derogatory connotation in Japan, meaning someone that just sort of mooches off family members while pursuing nerdy hobbies. It felt fairly appropriate to me, as at times it felt like I was essentially living from anime to anime, game to game.

So when my father suggested that I go to teacher's college on a Friday afternoon last September, I said sure almost automatically.

Why'd I do that?

It's not because I have a terrible amount of enthusiasm for helping young minds blossom. I"m not against that, sure, but it's not something that really gives me a high. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the work I did teaching English to immigrants a few months back, but it's still not something that's essential to me.

No, the reason I said yes to that suggestion is I didn't know what else I could do. The prospect of grad school and getting a History PhD did not appeal to me. I was limited by my lack of languages and the enormous investment of money and time that that would require (for no tangible gain, getting a Professorship in History is the longest shot one can take) made it an awful prospect. Law was completely out of the question. My resume could not get me even the most demeaning of work.

So I said yes. I said yes so that I could tell people that I was doing something with my life. I said yes because I couldn't find a real justification for a no. I said yes because I'd essentially given up.

And so here I am.

I can say that after one week as a Teacher Candidate that everything they've asked of me is well within the realm of the possible. Preparing lesson plans, following curricula, throwing together 'Ideas forums' and generally making all the sounds that a teacher is supposed to make is something I'm perfectly capable of. In spite of my introverted personality, I can even do public speaking fairly well. If I apply myself, do all the readings and listen to the Professors, I think I can easily do quite well.

But no part of me wants to.

When I'm over there I take note of the raison d'êtres the other Teaching Candidates have on display. The people that have wanted to be teachers since they were 4. The people that have already spent a year teaching primary kids in Inner City London. The people that earnestly want to pursue the profession.

Do I belong with such company?

When I think back, I really did enjoy my after school tutoring last year. I liked playing Magical Banana, I liked coming up with creative writing assignments, I liked teaching essays and I liked my students. So maybe this is all nerves. Maybe when I"m waking up at 7:30 in the morning to go to teach actual students in November I'll actually feel a bit less horrified at what I've done to myself. Maybe it'll all turn out fine.

The problem is though that, given the choice, I've always known what I actually wanted to be. I finished a novel just two weeks and it's a pretty good piece of work, if I do say so. But the problem with having any sort of writing aspirations is that you are told from the get-go to presume failure. Not one person that I've spoken to sincerely believes that I can feed myself with my writing. Ever since I was 15, I have been told that I'd need a day job.

And so here I am, putting three years of work on Grace aside to try to get a day job. Is that the right thing to do?

I feel as though no matter what I do I shall have regrets. I fear that I shall be stripped of my very identity and live a miserable lie of a life that grants no succour. I fear that I'll snap and breakdown, failing the entire thing because it's just so alien to me. I fear to disappoint the parents that insisted I try. I fear myself and the many mistakes I shall make.

So what should I do?

I really don't know. It seems, however, that the inherent social drawbacks of my personality are starting to snowball together and roll down at me. It is a difficult thing.

Faith

2010-09-07T07:25:00.006-04:00

So this is a um... hmm.

Well, it's about God and Angels and Daemons and stuff. I spell 'Daemons' with the a because the word demon seems so frail in comparison. And I tend to say 'day-mons' instead of 'dee-mons' anyhow when I have occasion to deal with Daemons. If I were to describe this story, I would call it 'strange'. But maybe it's kind of cool? I don't know. I kind of liked writing the fight scene.

I guess this type of fiction isn't really in my comfort zone, so let me make the following points before you read it:

1) I don't know anything about Doctors or Medicine.
I googled a bit and found out some interesting stuff, but a lot of the details in there are almost certainly wrong.

2) I don't know anything about parties.
And I know even less about upscale rich people parties.

3) I don't speak French.
But when has that stopped anyone?

So yeah, here it is. Enjoy(???)!

Grace 20 - The End

2010-09-02T06:49:00.002-04:00

Here's the last chapter.

I might write an epilogue if I feel there's a need for it. Right now I'm really on the fence so I'll pretty much just see what my beta readers think and act accordingly.

With the exception of the potential epilogue though, now that Grace is done, it will no longer be appearing in any form in the blog. My plan for the editing process is to do it solo and to come up with a few coherent edits. I might consult with the beta readers on a broad topic here and there, but I won't be updating this blog with "I changed a few paragraphs in chapter 4" or what have you.

The editing process will take place over the next few months. I don't know how long it'll take. I might make one more blog post compiling my list of things that need to be fixed with Grace later on, just so that I have something to look at that I can't wriggle away from.

Anyhow, after nearly tree years, Grace's first draft is finished. Hope it's worth it.

Later.

Shaw and Touma - The Puzzle of the Cracked Ship

2010-07-22T07:14:00.002-04:00

The last Shaw and Touma story could most generously be described as a Sherlock Holmes homage, but would more accurately be called a blatant ripoff. It was also not what I would describe as a success. Everyone that read it claimed to like it well enough, but the problem was that the thing was supposed to be a mystery and yet everyone who read it solved it before the halfway point.

I thus have tried to do two things with the second Shaw and Touma story, entitled the Puzzle of the Cracked Ship.

The first is make Shaw and Touma my own. This necessarily means straying outside Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's perfected formula, which is an act that invites all sorts of disasters. This made the story a lot harder to write (five days to write this one compared to five hours to write the first one). I suppose that writing is a lot easier when another man has done the heavy lifting for you though and that there is sense in attempting to emulate a master.

The second is to make the mystery harder. I'm always weary of the JJ Abrams/Higurashi 'stupid' brand of mystery though, which makes the mystery so impenetrable that it ceases to be a mystery at all, so I can say that this story's puzzle is still perfectly solvable. It just hopefully will not be as ludicrously easy as the last puzzle.

Lastly, it should be reminded that this is set in the Grace's setting. While I've tried to make it readable for anyone, it still helps if you've read my actual novel.

Also, while on the subject, for the people that do read the novel: I haven't actually decided whether or not this is canon or anything. The idea of a super detective in the Grace setting is kind of random. For now just consider it a non-painful way for me to do some of the World Building.

I'm not sure if I'll write more of these. On one hand, they're fun, but on the other I'm not that good at them. Still, who knows what may happen as I suffer in Teacher's College. In any case, tomorrow I shall return to the finale of Grace.

Grace 19

2010-07-13T06:25:00.002-04:00

Grace 19 is done.

It's important before you read Grace 19 to read the beginning of this revised Grace 13. It's just 3 pages (it's an Archivist Report). It should have been put in a while ago but being a complete bastard I put it off until writing was unavoidable. My bad. Sorry.

Anyhow, next chapter is probably going to be the last chapter. And then after that it's an epilogue. And then the story of Grace is finished.

Damn.

As a side note, I'm not sure if this should actually be called Grace 19. Traditionally Archivist reports are outside the chapters (I put them in before writing "Beginning of the x part"). But oh well, 19 makes it easier to sort in my Grace folder.

Cars and bikes.

2010-07-06T03:09:00.003-04:00

So I was hit by a car last Friday. It wasn't so bad. The story basically is that I was riding my bike along the sidewalk on Dovercourt, looking for a convenient traffic light or crosswalk to get over the street with so that I could start riding in the bike lane. I found a crosswalk at Dovercourt and a street called Shanley, stopped my bike, hit the button, waited until I saw traffic come to a stop and then slowly rode across the street. It was broad daylight.

A lady in a van then turned from the intersection and plowed straight into me with the front-left side of her car. I screamed "What are you doing?!" as I got dragged along for a bit before somehow, via either luck or spontaneous acrobatics (I like to think the latter, but most likely it was the former), I stumbled off the side. After hitting me the lady hit her accelerator and slammed her car into a fence, doing some seriously impressive damage to it.

I came out of that with a few badly scraped knees and an injured foot, but nothing so bad that I couldn't walk out of it by my own power. The local people called the police and the paramedics wrapped a bandage around my largest wound. The lady's been charged with some sort of offense and I fully intend to have her pay for my now-destroyed bike and the pair of jeans that was torn in the accident.

But geez... not to be a drama queen or anything, but that fence was bent 90 degrees. If I hadn't stumbled off the side of the car five meters earlier, that shit could have killed me.

I am someone who often wonders whether or not there's any rhyme or reason in the world. I consider whether certain things happen for a reason or if everything that happens in the universe is just a series of dice rolls. That sort of thing. I sometimes like to think that there's method in the madness of the world and that everything is just a story inside a story, but man is there any greater counterpoint to that than being run down by some lady's van? I didn't die, of course, but according to Google 39,185 people weren't so lucky back in 2005.

Whole thing makes me think of that scene in the Dark Knight where Harvey's flipping his scraped coin to decide who lives and who dies. I guess that sometimes that's all life and death can boil down to. Some people end up between the car and the fence while others don't.

Strange world we live in.

Anyhow, I'll post a pic of my destroyed bike later on.

Grace 18

2010-07-02T06:33:00.003-04:00

Here's Grace 18. It's an action chapter. Hopefully it will be enjoyed.

The story is nearly over. Two Chapters and maybe an epilogue is my current estimation. I'm already mentally composing a list of major issues that will need to be mended during the editing process. It'll be a lot of work, but the story that I want to tell will come out the other end having been told in a way that satisfies me. That's the goal.

One such change involves this chapter. I wonder if I could split it down the middle, flesh out both parts a bit more and make it two chapters. But I think that the pacing works for the most part and that two chapters of pure action would be a bit overwhelming and out of character for Grace. I'll think about it.

One of the origin of Grace as a story comes from this Dryden passage by the way:

And for this glory, after I have seen
The canopy of state spread wide above
In the abyss of heaven, the court of stars
The blushing morning, and the rising sun,'
What greater can I see?

Specifically the phrase 'Court of Stars'. Jacob suggest that that be the name of the book. I imagine that I'd actually call it "The Court of Stars Book 1 - Grace" or something. But it's an idea. Not sure if that's what I'd go with though.

Shaw and Touma

2010-06-06T04:36:00.004-04:00

So today I wrote this.

As anyone who talks to me will know, I've recently discovered and read through Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes books are easily one of my favourite series ever. My only complaint about the series is that I didn't read it earlier and learn of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's methods earlier in my writing career. I saw a glimmer of them through Asimov, but everything only became clear once I found the source.

I'm not a fan of fan fiction or pastiches, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in the introduction to the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: "Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place [in a literary Valhalla], while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage they which they have vacated." This statement indicates to me that I have that good man's permission to attempt to emulate him. That's the primary objective of this simple little mystery I've drawn up. I call it Shaw and Touma and I can tell you off the bat that it's a story that tries to be pretty reverent towards the Holmes formula.

Mind you, however, that this mystery is set in the Grace universe and its deepest meanings will only be apparent to people that have read at least a portion of Grace. It has only a tenuous link to the actual story, but I am quite proud of the ending.

Though if anyone says this is better than Grace I will shoot them.

Grace 17

2010-06-04T06:18:00.003-04:00

So here's Chapter 17.

I'm thinking that this Chapter is maybe longer than it needs to be? I'm not really sure, really. So I figured I'd just ask people for some impressions rather than pour over it and do rewrites for a month. I hope that this is a good plan and not another act of abuse against my readership.

I hope I can finish this thing before the summer ends. It should be about 3 chapters left from here. It's been a really long haul, but I guess I'm almost done.

Grace 16

2010-04-29T00:17:00.003-04:00

Chapter 16 is done.

The reason why Chapter 15 took so long is because the events of Chapter 16 were originally going to happen in Chapter 15, but I moved it back here so that it wouldn't be quite so sudden. Still, this was a hard chapter to write and I very nearly chickened out of writing it. I managed to do it though so go me.

Enjoy!

The Grace 15

2010-04-02T03:54:00.003-04:00

Dusting off the old blog here.

Believe it or not, I've been working on this constantly since last entry. I wrote something like 90 pages for this chapter. Of these 90 pages, 24 became a chapter. I guess that's how this business works.

Here it is.

I hope to get the next chapter done in good time. No more predictions about when this thing will be done.

Also I got into teacher's college if anyone cares about that.

So tired.

Grace 14

2010-01-02T06:42:00.002-05:00

So here's Chapter 14.

Four to six chapters left, I think. Hopefully this won't fall apart before I get to the end. I don't think I've ever worked on one thing for this long before. I posted the first chapter in December 22nd 2007. Geez. Two years and counting. Almost done now though... I hope. Once it's done, I should do something special. Like edit it, maybe. Yeah.

Every time I make a post about Grace, I promise to make a compilation post but then I never do. I think it's mainly because I really need to change Chapter 1 and 2 a bit and haven't been up to it. I'll get to it though. No really, I will. I swear it.

Anyhow, gotta go.

Grace 13

2009-12-14T03:56:00.003-05:00

It really is getting close to done.

First of all, Grace 12 was put through a major revision. As only one person that I know of has read it so far, that's not a bad thing. I'll provide the person with a little something something so that he knows what's what. Here's the new version of Grace 12 that is meant to be read, in case you downloaded the old.

Second, here's Grace 13 in all its glory. Not too shabby. I think the writing style I chose for Grace is really serving me well as I get to the last bit. I didn't really like the way my initial plan for these chapters was turning out when inspiration struck and bam, it suddenly works. I just had to go back and adjust chapter 12 a bit and then suddenly we're in business. Just goes to show that novels aren't meant to be written by the outline. I'll need to go back to the older chapters at some point and add foreshadowing, but for now I think it's looking pretty good.

I think I'm pretty much on track to get this done by around March or April, which is a rate that exceeds all expectations.

I said last time that I would make a compilation post and never did. I will this week. I'll put it on my to-do list.

Speaking of stories, some of you may know that I'm teaching some kids English these days. I do this via storytrains mainly. Storytrains are fun. Here's one they came up with:

Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

Margin pics by me. Apologies for the poor quality of my scanner.

Anyhow, until next time.

Grace 12

2009-11-18T05:46:00.002-05:00

My webspace was taken down for a while for some reason, so I was actually about to look for a new place to put up my stuff. But now it's back. Yay. I still want a new place to put my Webspace up. Plus I want to make a compilation thread for all the Grace chapters. I'll do that tomorrow.

Anyhow, Grace 12. It has words in it and some of these words combine to make sentence.

Yeah I know. I take too long to make this stuff. On average, assuming that I haven't mentally collapsed (which happens often) or that I'm not busy with anything else, I take about a month to produce a chapter. That means that barring any interruption or distraction it would take me two years to write a novel. I think that if I were a professional doing this for a living I'd need to get my speed up to a chapter every two weeks to get one finished (pre-editing process) every year (as every author should at least strive to do, I think). That would be tough but I like to think that I could maybe do it. But first I need to finish this thing.

I'm doing other odd stuff these days. Nothing that interesting though.

Grace 11

2009-10-13T04:07:00.004-04:00

Grace 11 is here.

I've changed Eyce's name to Evelyn with the nickname of 'Ice'. The reasons for this change:

1) The name Eyce is too close to Eisa. Seeing two people talking with four letter names that start with E is disorienting.

2) Evelyn has always been Eyce's real name (see Grace Interlude 1)

3) Eyce is pronounced Ice and the reasoning behind the name is that Eisa was literally calling her 'Ice'. So why would it be spelled Eyce? That's retarded.

If there's a fundamental flaw with this change, let me know.

The Interlude is high on my 'to cut' list by the way. As soon as I can figure out how to get some of those plot points into the normal narrative, it's totally gone.

Only one person is reading this regularly now because Jacob's really busy, but maybe that'll change soon. It's getting close to almost (sorta) being done. If I were to give a rough estimate, I'd say it'll be done in April. Maybe. Probably not.

In any case, thank you for your continued aid and support.

Grace 10

2009-09-07T05:30:00.004-04:00

Grace 10 is complete.

It struck me that I really should remove 'The' from the title. I mean, the reason it's tentatively called Grace is because the story sort of deals with the concept of Grace. It's not really about the ship called Grace. Although that may be a bad idea, considering that this random hack is using the title. But I've been saving my files as 'TheGrace' for almost two years now so the files are going to stay the same.

Anyhow, I've had a chapter like this in mind for a while. It took a long time to write though because I had a lot of competing ideas for it. I think I've sort of got a handle on it, but I'll want to talk to both of you after you guys read it to be sure of that. For now though, I'm lifting the pen on this Chapter.

I'm sometimes asked if I have a plan for this stuff. The answer is yes, but also no. I know where I want to get to in the next few chapters and then in the story itself, but I'm not completely sure how I'll get there. But I think that's good and proper. Grace would have sputtered out if I'd been writing to an outline all this time. I need to be able to actually be given the luxury of thinking of some new characters sometimes, you know?

Anyway, I also revised Chapter 3 about a month ago (maybe more). The early parts of the Chapter have some more Etherege, so you can read that if you're into that. Though the Chapter was pretty much completely rewritten in its entirety (although the story is about the same) because it was a bit of a mess. Thankfully none of the other Chapters are in such bad shape.

The Grace 9

2009-06-26T04:02:00.004-04:00

It's been a long time, but the Grace 9 is now complete:

Link is right here.

I know that Grace is a hard story to follow along with as it goes along. I add things in earlier chapters and sometimes I take a fuckload of time between one chapter and the next. All I can say to the people that regularly read my work as it comes out is sorry and, also: Thank you. I think I would be writing Grace regardless, even if you guys both dropped it and called it shit, but having people to say some things at the other end of chapters is a tremendous help.

Few notes for the future:

1) I consider this chapter to be the halfway point of the story. I can't say for certain how many Chapters are left, but this is certainly a spiritual halfway point at least.

2) This may make the story even more confusing for everyone reading it right now, but I'm going to add two more chapters to the earlier parts of the story. One chapter will replace the First Interlude (probably) while another will be something I was going to do in later chapters but really belongs in earlier parts of the book. It'll probably end up between chapters 2 and 3.

They will be good chapters though, so don't worry. One will have lots of Nari.

3) I worked so hard on this bloody space battle and the concepts behind it, so if you feel it completely sucks and want to condemn it as garbage, please don't. There's only so much a man can take. That said, I do want to hear your takes on how it went down. A good two months of rewrites went into that stupid space battle.

4) The 'Grace Discarded' file that contains a fair chunk (though not all) of the crap I write and then throw out of the story is now longer than 4 chapters put together.

5) The song that will play during the space battle in the movie/anime version will be Kawai Kenji - Emiya

Re: Address to the Muslim World

2009-06-05T22:12:00.002-04:00

So I figure that since it's directed at me (I guess?), I may as well talk about it. It's here in case you want to hear it, although ever since this speech was uploaded Youtube has been unusually slow. I'm not sure if this is because it's handling that many incoming connections from crappy Middle Eastern cybercafes or if Zionists are interfering or if adding an HD feature to a website that doesn't make any money has proven to not be such a great idea.

When I said after his election that I didn't expect him to do much in the way of change from the status quo, I guess I sort of underestimated him and his speaking abilities. It doesn't cost much to deliver a speech after all and he apparently has a speechwriter that has a passing familiarity with Islam, which is a lot more than Bush could ever say. Indeed, I suspect that they probably brought in some Muslims from somewhere when they were writing the thing and consulted a couple of academics at a few of the big universities' Near Middle Eastern departments.

It was well researched, it was respectful and it was eloquently delivered with the kind of power that one normally associates with Obama's oratory. And let me say, this is not what Muslims are used to hearing from American presidents. And I'm not talking about Bush, I'm talking about all of them. That reason alone makes it a bit of a historic change-of-tone and most likely a positive one. Talk is cheap and all that, but it's better than nothing. So good thing a man such as this was elected President.

But nonetheless, there are a few things that gave me pause. First the content, then I'm going to talk about the structure of the speech because I'm an English minor geek.

The content is the easy part, because he said nothing particularly special. Reiterating long-standing calls for freezes on Israeli settlements was nice and I think he might almost be serious about them. That's great. I don't think they actually will stop building the settlements, but at least we as a world are starting to recognize that the militant asshats swimming in their pools amidst Palestinian drought might actually be an aspect of the problems of the region.

Calling on Hamas to renounce violence is an old line, though for what it's worth I think they probably should. Speaking from a perfectly practical perspective: Violence only really works when you have it in sufficient quantities to serve as a deterrent against an aggressor. Right now whatever meagre losses Hamas inflicts upon the Zionists are outweighed severely by the political effects of Palestinian disunity. That's a harsh reality that one must acknowledge.

Overall, the speech is pretty much what I imagine a lot of us would have wanted to hear from an American president. It's a bit preachy, but it at least offers some of the basic respect that most of us feel has been completely absent from American-Muslim discourse since the last forever. So that much is nice.

The structure is pretty important. At a very basic level the speech's objective is to sort of butter up Muslims with flattery and Obama's certainly good at that sort of thing. His campaign strategy did often boil down to making people feel so good about themselves that they just had to support him, after all. I personally enjoyed the reference to Cordoba.

But there's this problematic quotation:
... when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.

I honestly think this quotation will spoil the speech for a lot of the people it's directed at.

Isra is the story of the Holy Prophet's Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. The short of it is that the Prophet was taken to Masjid Al-Aqsa in a single night, where he met with his predecessors and led (not joined, that's a complete distortion) them in prayer. This story is the reason why Al-Aqsa is so holy in the first place and it sorta encaspulates on a symbolic level the doctrine of Islam as the ultimate and final successor to the Abrahamic religions.

But... well let me explain:

The faith of Islam is composed of two aspects. First there is the acknowledgement that there is only One God and that he has no partner or offspring. The second is that Muhammad (pbuh) is the legitimately inspired Prophet that He employed as His Messanger. Both aspects are extremely important.

So at the center of the Night Journey is the issue of one's faith in the Holy Prophet. Muhammad is a Prophet of few physical miracles and there is no physical evidence that proves that the Night Journey occurred and that Muhammad travelled from Mecca to Jerusalem. It is an article of faith that each Believer (and Disbeliever) must come to terms with. If one acknowledges its truth, one is for all intents and purposes a Muslim.

Barack Obama obviously did not convert in the middle of his speech, so one can say that he's using the story in the same way I use the stories of Menelaus' battles at Troy to illustrate why Frank sucks at DotA. And that's a really bad idea. Most Muslim will know that story as well as I do and the theologically-minded ones will recognize the manner in which he's using it.

It won't kill the overall effect or have destructive results, but it's still something that will have a souring effect.

Anyhow, that's all I've got to say about it. I'll release more Grace... soon. I'm not sure when.

The Grace 8

2009-04-05T03:37:00.004-04:00

Wow, I managed to finish Grace 8 without taking months to do it! Here it is.

My comments on the Chapter:

1) I think I should have described the Reception Hall a bit more last chapter, but that might just be me. Let me know if you have any trouble keeping track of the action here and things will go well.

2) Does it feel that the story is going anywhere from a reader's point of view? From my own perspective, I'm slowly revealing mysteries from the past while Eisa struggles in the present, but I was thinking the other day that Eisa keeps running into superior forces in the present storyline. I hope that doesn't leave anyone with feelings of stagnation? Please let me know.

3) I've been meaning to go back and alter Weedy's backstory from Chapter 3 for a while, but haven't got around to it. Originally Weedy was going to be from the Lantern, but that back story has sort of been transferred to someone else. I'll get to writing Weedy's real back story soon.

4) Next Chapter is in space. Finally!

5) Only two people read this. The rest of you are bastards.

The Grace 7

2009-03-15T06:15:00.005-04:00

Man, it's been a while.

Okay, so Grace 7 is complete.

Few things before link:

1) Ignore the last revision.

Yeah, sorry about that, but I ended up changing my mind and going back to the original chapter idea. You know, with the Archivist at that reception and Eisa planning Something. So err... that's what's happening now. Here's the remodified Grace 6. It's not that much different than what it was originally, but the names 'Claude' and 'Wire' were dropped as being members of Eisa's faction back on Solar, who will got to war if it comes to that. Ctrl + F them in the document if you're curious.

Once again: I'm very sorry.

2) This took so long because I wrote it four times.

There are about 90 discarded pages of this chapter. Probably more if you count the ones I just deleted. Sometimes writing this damn story can be bloody painful. Ugh. I hope the next chapter flows a bit more smoothly.

3) I will try to get Chapter 8 done a bit more quickly.

So, all that aside, here's Grace 7. Yay.

Be sure to check out Unity Plaza if you want to hear about other things by the way.

Open Office is a steaming pile of garbage

2009-01-31T04:59:00.003-05:00

Here is my extended review of Open Office 3.0:

This shit really sucks. It's designed for assholes writing reports for their superiors in the corporate world. The plugin system is unintuitive and you spend so much fucking time playing with this setting or that bit of interface that it's impossible to get anything done. The layout is sexy, but the whole program is a fucking mess and needs to die. After a month of struggling with this thing, I think I'm just going to give up. I blame this at least partially for Grace delays.

I'm sorry, Microsoft Office 2003... take me back. I shall never be unfaithful to you ever again.

The Grace 7 woes and Unity Plaza

2009-01-21T01:13:00.005-05:00

So some news for these parts.

First, about Grace...

There are times during the writing where I hit a brick wall. I've thrown down a lot of keystrokes in my attempts to write Chapter 7 and it was, in fact, 'finished'. But the problem is that I hate it and it doesn't feel right. So I'm scrapping it and starting from scratch. This required a bit of an edit to Chapter 6, which you may find here.

All that's changed is Eisa's conversation with Vincent at the beginning of the Chapter. The gist of it is that instead of the deal with the Archivist, Eisa is going to stay focused on Abel. This actually doesn't change much of the overall direction of the story. It just changes the order of a few events, really. So hopefully that'll work out.

Next... it's been mostly true for the last year that this has been my writing blog. Occasionally I post about something else, but it's mainly Grace in here. Which I think is cool, I like this blog like that. But I do miss the spontaneous sort of blogging that just sounds off about anything. So I have now made a second blog dedicated to non-serious topics. You might still see posts in here about politics and other serious life-related matters, but for your gaming, your anime and your books you should head over to Unity Plaza. I intend to update it two or three times a week. I also intend to make it bloody awesome.

And to answer the unanswered question: Unity Plaza is from this. I like the name mainly because its origins are obscure, but also because in Tau we are strong.

So anyhow, stay tuned to both my blogs for more great stuff.

This and that

2009-01-07T13:06:00.002-05:00

Quick update.

Firstly, Grace 7 is being worked on but as always it's hard and my efforts have borne little fruit so far. I've been on the down for the last week or so, which makes the whole process a bit difficult. I'll get it done sooner or later though. I'm not really sure when.

Second... I don't see much value in talking at length about Gaza. Everything that's happened in the last few weeks is rather predictable. Israel is exploiting the odd period of political flux in American politics to do whatever it wants. Abbas is happy to see his Hamas rivals suffer, since it will mean his reinstallment in Gaza. The Arab states don't want to do anything about it and, even if they did, couldn't do anything about it anyway.

The main innovation I see in this particular conflict is that the IDF now have a Youtube channel (which I refuse to link here) that lets the 4channers of the world see their precision airstrikes in action. One of those precision air strikes ended up being on just some truck that was carrying gasoline, but never mind that. Key is that it looked good.

Obama has been criticized for his silence, which is I think a bit silly. I would be very doubtful that Obama would be a check on Israel. But okay, even if he wanted to do something constructive right now, he couldn't. He hasn't been sworn in and if he contradicts the Bush administration on a foreign policy matter at this point he'll be getting into a counterproductive spat with the outgoing administration.

Though of course, that's an easy excuse. The timing is just as convenient for Obama as it is for Israel itself. His international celebrity will be preserved for a long while longer. But as I said in the post on that matter, all indicators seem to point towards Obama's primary agenda being domestic. He won't do anything for the Palestinians... but that doesn't really differ from what any other American president would do.

I don't believe that the Zionist state in its current form is viable in the long term. Brash thuggishness is not a long term strategy, no matter how many billions in gun money comes in. I know that Israel has a strongly martial culture, what with the draft for both genders at 18, but you have to wonder if war fatigue is ever going to set in there. The Arab states are about the same as ever in their non-action, of course, though one wonders how long that can go on too. The only encouraging thing I've heard from the region is the Turkish Prime Minister making a tour of the region in opposition to Israel, though this provoked at least one Arab guy saying 'what is he doing? This is an Arab affair!'

I have little hope for any short term solutions. But in the next few decades, maybe this sort of thing will stop.

The Grace 6

2008-12-14T06:21:00.003-05:00

So we're done another chapter. Incidentally, this is also apparently my 200th Blog entry.

Grace is a challenging story for me to write because it isn't really what I usually do. I mean, sure there's conflict, but just as important as the conflict is the gradual exploration of Eisa's character. I'm six chapters in now and I really haven't revealed a whole lot about his past. I think I've got a character in him that is pretty interesting, but what I'm always trying to do with Eisa is make him sort of ambiguous and almost contradictory. I consider that to be very hard and I'm never really sure if I'm succeeding. But I sure do try.

Grace 6 probably leaves something open from Grace 5 that I imagine a reader would normally want closed. But that sort of mystery is part of what I'm going for with Grace. But in any case, here it is. Enjoy.

Few fresh ideas that came in this chapter:

-I was often using the Arabic names for stars when thinking of names for places while writing, so it occurred to me to just do that consistently. And so I did. I'm not sure if I'll stick to this system (the story is already pretty Mid-East oriented, what with Vincent's Arabic oaths and such), but for now if you want to know what star is what just click here.

-I gave the Chapter a name ('Manipulation'). I think that I'm going to do that from now on. Here are some tentative names for the other five chapters

1 - Arrival
2 - Letter
3 - Clash
4 - Blood
5 - Choice

Though I might decide to just go back to generic 'first part' stuff.

- I was thinking of removing the 'The' part of 'The Grace'. But for now it can stay.

In other matters:

- My computer melted down. Getting a new one Wednesday, most likely. Right now I'm on an old junk computer that cannot open PDFs. Though at least the new one will be a bit of a powerhouse, at least compared to what I had before. And I obviously didn't lose any of my data, so it isn't as bad as it could be. I was thinking of getting a new computer next year anyhow.

- I've been tutoring high school kids lately and I have to say, I really enjoy it. It's easy and refreshing.

- I wonder if anything will ever come of any of this stuff.

- Ugh @ Canadian politics

Metal Gear Solid III: Snake Eater

2008-12-11T01:02:00.013-05:00

So Andres lent me his Playstation 2 with a copy of Metal Gear Solid III: Snake Eater. One can speculate on his motivations... Perhaps he wanted to read the resulting blog entry or maybe he thought I'd genuinely like it or it's possible that he hates me. Maybe all three.

For those who are not familiar with Metal Gear, it's... ich. How can I even describe this thing? The only word for the first two games is awful. Take my word for it. I don't want to have to even think about the other two games again.

So Metal Gear 3 is the prequel to the other two. It's the 1960s and you are a guy called Snake and have to infiltrate a Russian facility in a jungle somewhere in order to stop a rogue Russian Colonel (who has the power of lightning) from overthrowing Khruschev and making a nuclear battle tank. If that sounds stupid, it's because it is. The less said about the story, the better... it is penned by a braindead hack by the name of Hideo Kojima who fancies himself an artist. I will simply give you a few choice quotes as a taste:

A name means nothing on the battlefield.

There's no such thing as luck on the battlefield.

So they've no place to die but on the battlefield, huh?

Politics determine who you face on the battlefield.

That's the kind of writer we're dealing with here. Mounds upon mounds of tripe being passed off as something original and deep. There are people out there that consider Metal Gear to be art. Such people make me very sad.

Anyhow...

The actual game is supposedly a stealth game, wherein you're supposed to sneak by a bunch of guards without alerting the authorities... you infiltrate the facility without being detected, etc. If a guard does spot you, he'll get on the radio and call even more guards and they'll all shoot at you. So you better sneak.

But what I discovered early on though is that the best cure for a bad case of guard is either a bullet to the head or a knife to the throat. The fact that the guards you're currently fighting will call more guards doesn't really change that. Couple that with the your uncanny ability to regenerate all your health in a minute or so by devouring (almost) any of the tiny creatures you stumble across and the fact that when you shoot the guards you can raid their bodies and take their stuff and you can pretty much forget the whole stealth thing.

And herein lies the virtue of the game. In every area I came into I would immediately open fire at the first guard I saw, in the tradition of Gordon Freeman. And I would keep shooting until there were no guards left, pausing occasionally to munch on raw goat meat or raid bodies. As my advisors continued to prattle on about stealth, I couldn't help but get the feeling that I'd caught the game designers unawares as I killed three guards that I was supposed to be hiding from with one shotgun blast. Even at the point of the game where they took all my guns away and left me with nothing but a fork, I still went in head first and killed every single guard I could find using my bare fists and liquid malice. And hey, this part of the game was quite fun. I mean, sure the guards were so stupid that it was pretty comical... I don't know how many of the buggers I killed by just standing at a corner waiting for them to come looking for me... But in spite of the repetition, it was pretty fun.

But the problem with the game was... well pretty much everything else. But that's a lot of game to cover, so I think what I'm going to focus in on here are the bosses. In the game's storyline, you're fighting the Cobra Unit which is an elite commando that is creditted with winning the Second World War. They are led by 'The Boss', who is a blonde lady that is also Snake's mentor. Anyhow, so long and crappy story short, the Cobra Unit comes after you one by one and you have to kill them in boss fights. Let me go through these boss fights one by one...

First up... Ocelot. Actually, fuck Ocelot, that guy is boring.

First up... The Pain...

As you can see, The Pain commands the power of bees. I was thinking of speculating about what his role in the Second World War might have been, but it made my head hurt.

The Pain will use grenades against you, but he doesn't actually throw them at you... no no, that's far too pedestrian for The Pain. What he does he gets his bees to slowly float them over to you. He also sends his 'bullet bees' to buzz at you, though it makes little different because all you really have to do is dive into the water to avoid them and then shoot the stupid bugger and then he dies. Thus does Snake prove once and for all that bullets >> bees.

The obvious question here is 'Why?' ... and it is, I feel, a legitimate question. This is, after all, supposedly a story about espionage and intrigue and such. Why the hell am I fighting a Bee Man? Previous Metal Gears have featured Vampires and Psychics, but really... bees? Fuck you Hideo Kojima.

Next up... The Fear...

After the failure of The Pain, the Cobra Unit decides to upgrade from bees to bows. The Fear is an unlikely combination of poisoned arrows and the very latest in cloaking technology. He also is apparently Spider Man and jumps from tree to tree invisible shooting arrows at you. But here's the catch! His cloaking technology draws on his life force in order to work and he thus has to replenish his energy by catching food in the middle of a fight!

Let me repeat that. In order to power his cloaking device, he needs to eat food. Just imagine this stupid bugger flitting from tree to tree shooting easily dodged arrows at you until he gets hungry and starts hunting rabbits. You can actually set up poisoned food for him and basically stand there with your shotgun waiting for him to come down for a bite.

Tedious and badly thought out... and not only that, every time he hit me with a stupid arrow, I had to go into the cure menu to use my knife to pull out the arrowhead. Pointless menu work that makes the fight last longer artificially. I've heard it said that the 'cure' system, wherein you have maybe two dozen healing knicknacks (bandages, disinfectant, ointment, splints, etc.) to patch up your wounds as opposed to one generic healing kit, is in place for the sake of 'realism'... but why the hell are we doing tedious realism stuff for when I'm fighting a guy with a crossbow and a cloaking device?

Seriously, fuck you Hideo Kojima.

But even the Fear is nothing compared to...

This guy is possibly the dumbest thing I have ever had to fight in any video game. He has Hideo Kojima's name written over him. At first glance, I actually thought he was going to be a bit more legitimate of an opponent in this story that is supposedly about high politics (at least compared to Bee Man and Arrow/Cloak/Spider Man)... he looks like some old hobo with a sniper rifle after all. But in actuality, he is a plant. He can use photosynthesis to replenish his health and is also able to commune with the forest spirits.

So he's a sniper and you have to kill him. He's hiding in a really big forest area waiting for you. The theme of this battle is PATIENCE! You're told by your advisors to search for his position on the map and to be ready for a long battle of endurance and stamina. But what The End actually does is sit around doing nothing waiting for you to either provoke him or find him. It took twenty minutes for him to fire the first shot. But here's the thing... he doesn't use bullets. He uses a tranquilizer round, which hits stamina instead of health. So when he does shoot you he doesn't actually hurt you and you can replenish whatever stamina by eating whatever animal is nearby (and there are a lot). So what you essentially have is a boss that is incapable of actually killing you, but who is a complete bitch to find.

The End is, in essence, the ultimate timesink.

I killed him in what is possibly the least stealthy way possible. I pointed an AK 47 at the sky and fired into the air like it was an Afghani wedding. The End then shot me. I would then run in his direction, eating a goat if the need arised, until I stumbled across him and shot him. Repeat that process for about forty minutes and you get my battle with The End.

Only Hideo Kojima would think of something this stupid. It's completely typical of him... you see, Kojima loves to innovate. If he can cram something into his game that he hasn't seen anyone else do, he'll put it in. "I've never seen anyone make the player swap controller slots from first player to second in the middle of a boss fight before," thought Kojima when he made the first game, "I will do it, even though it is utterly pointless." The same line of thinking went down here when he made this stupid fucker. It doesn't matter if it aggravates the player... it's new.

Fuck you Hideo Kojima.

Next is this joker...

He has a jetpack and a flamethrower. I think he was supposed to have been an ex-astronaut, but I guess he gave that all up so he could become a jetpack flamethrower man. But he is unfortunately also blind or something. I was talking to Jacob and my sister as I fought this guy and only occasionally paying attention to the fight and I don't think he landed even one hit, which is a bit of a feat when you're using a flamethrower. So I shot him until he died and that was the end of The Fury. It was a relief to beat a boss so quickly after the horror of The End.

Though of course, the cutscene after the fight lasted a good three times longer than the actual fight. So once again: Fuck you Hideo Kojima.

The Sorrow is a ghost.

Yeah, I know.

When I commented on how stupid this sequence was to Frad, he defended it by saying that Snake had just gone through a bad experience and that it was really all a dream. But no, after the sequence Snake calls his advisors and they tell him that a guy called the Sorrow, who Snake had no way of actually knowing, died in the same place where he had 'the dream'. So he was a fucking ghost that visited Snake with a ridiculously stupid vision (you walk through a river that is filled with the ghosts of everyone you killed, which for me was a lot of guys) that took a good eleven minutes to walk through and finish.

Another Kojima idea at work. Fuck you Hideo Kojima.

Anyway, with that guy gone, you're done with all the Cobra flunkies. Next up is...

Volgin here is the bad Russian who stole a nuclear battletank and wants to use it to overthrow Krushchev and make the Soviet Union rule the world. I don't really know what it is about a tank with nukes in it that makes it so much better than a... you know... nuke dropped from a plane or nuke shot through a missile. The logic is that the nuke tank can shoot from anywhere... but can't submarines pretty much already do that? What does having a tank that does it really change? But whatever, Kojima says that this will completely alter the balance of power so let's take his word for it.

So you eventually rig Volgin's nuke tank with explosives and he naturally reacts by challenging you to fisticuffs. Volgin isn't an ordinary Russian though. No, he is a Russian with the power of electricity. It's never explained why he can do that, which is something I'm thankful for as I'm convinced that whatever explanation Kojima provides would inevitably be stupid. But regardless, he shoots lightning out of his hands and has an electric shield thing that makes it so he can't be shot from the front and you need to get around to the sides. This makes for a really tedious fight that involves dodging his silly lightning attacks and waiting for him to bend over to pick up a penny so that you can shove a shotgun shell up his ass.

But it doesn't end there. A few little old bullets aren't going to stop a guy like Volgin and, after a really long and silly motorcycle chase, he uses his command over electricity to physically merge with the aforementioned nuclear battletank. Strangely, however, the nuclear battletank is easier to kill than he in on foot. All you have to do is get in a turret and shoot him and he'll die before he can even hit you.

The game's broken difficulty progession really boggles my mind. I was fighting all that time to destroy this stupid can of crap? The cutscenes took longer than the fight! Geez. Fuck you, Hideo Kojima.

Anyhow, just when I was hoping the ordeal would end soon, I had to suffer through another motorcycle chase and then shotgun a few dozen more guards (which was getting old by this point), until finally I reached the end and faced...

So The Boss appears at various points in the game, usually riding her white horse. You're treated to various cutscenes of her punching and flipping Snake around and she occasionally helps him, because she was Snake's mentor as the game repeats over and over. She is constantly descibed as the greatest warrior ever and all that crap. She appears at the end and gives Snake a really long and stupid lecture about the Second World War and how the world lost its unity after that war. Because obviously everyone got along before WWII. Anyhow, Kojim... I mean The Boss eventually shuts her yap and challenges you to a duel.

Unfortunately, the Boss turns out to be nearsighted and all you really have to do is run away from her, get out the sniper rifle and shoot her in the face as she goes around saying 'DURRR WHERE'S SNAKE?!' Occasionally The Boss does manage to spot you (usually after being shot several times) and charges you for a kung fu duel. I'm not really sure how this worked. I would basically mash buttons when she got close to me and this would somehow result in Snake flipping her onto the ground. Whatever, it doesn't matter. She died as easily as a guard with too many hit points and the game came to a blissful end.

So in summary, we have in MGS a unique combination of the frustrating, the disappointing and the downright stupid. The game wasn't completely painful thanks to the wickedly stupid guards, but it came close to being taken out of my borrowed PS2 and broken in half a few times, either due to disgust with the story or frustration with the shitty gameplay.

As I always have said though, Hideo Kojima gives me hope. If a man so thoroughly talentless can through some accident of fate forge a ridiculously popular video game franchise that is lauded as art in some circles, then any idiot can succeed in this world.

Oh and fuck you Hideo Kojima.

And that's all I ever want to say about Metal Gear from now until... forever.

The Governor General

2008-12-05T04:49:00.003-05:00

Next Grace will be finished soon. Not as soon as I'd hoped, but I shall strengthen my resolve.

But let's talk about something.

I felt a twinge of anxiety on Tuesday when I heard a lot of talk about Stephen Harper meeting with our Governor General about proroguing parliament. There was a lot of talk on the news about the Governor General's decision and how Stephen Harper's fate really rested in her hands... but the reason this gave me pause isn't really because of the high politics aspect... what made me nervous was something deeper than that: The Governor-General was going to make a decision.

For my foreign readers, the Governor General of Canada is our symbolic head of state. She is supposedly the Queen's representative and is not supposed to have any actual power. The usual functions of our Governor General are purely ceremonial. She dresses in nice clothes and travels the world smiling and making friends, at taxpayer expense. The Governor General also has some vestiges of the old royal legal power in theory, but it was always been my working assumption that the Governor General would always accept the political reality in the House by default. So, for instance, if two parties were to band together to throw out the ruling party and presented a pledge to forge a working government, her only answer would be 'okay'.

So hearing the words 'Governor General' and 'decision' in the same sentence felt just a little alien. I dimly recalled that our Governor General was named Michelle Jean and that she was appointed by Paul Martin. I think she was a journalist at one point. But who she is is completely irrelevant. She is a symbol and, more importantly, appointed. The very idea that this woman could have any practical effect on our politics is absolutely insane. The Governor General should decide what sort of dress she wants to wear and how she wants her hair done. She should NOT have any real power over our parliament.

Stephen Harper is really the master of parliamentary dirty tricks and certainly the bulk of the blame for his dastardly tactics lies on his shoulders. But one must question the state of Canadian democracy when a silly and egotistical woman is able to, with the full knowledge of the intentions of the majority of the elected members of the house, prorogue Parliament to save a Prime Minister from a non-confidence vote? And for what reason? I can understand Stephen Harper using legal dirty tricks and abusing his office to preserve his power... but why in the world should a Governor General's ceremonial power be made into one of his gimmicks?

I've been reading up on the prorogue process and its history throughout the British Commonwealth. Thus far, I haven't found any precedent for this ever happening in a British-style parliamentary democracy. If Harper is ever successfully removed, serious thought needs to be given to some of the 'traditional' aspects of our government. The Governor General... The Senate... all these relics of the monarchist system seem benign and nostalgic when they're not doing anything other than collecting a paycheck from the taxpayer, but we've just seen how open to abuse they really are.

Tradition be damned. This kind of thing should never be allowed to happen.

Grace 2 Revised

2008-11-30T02:38:00.004-05:00

Quick update. Image unrelated, but in Tau we are strong.

I've made some revisions to Chapter 2 of the Grace. The reason I am able to maintain my enthusiasm for Grace is that not everything is nailed down. If I have a good new idea, there's no reason I can't just put it in. Though of course, that means having to change things from earlier chapters to fit what you're currently doing.

So here's the revised Chapter. And here's a handy change log that details will tell you what was changed without you having to go through it all. The big changes were to Abel and Nari. Abel had a minor backstory change, while Nari had an important bit of dialogue about her completely altered. Foreshadowing is easy when you can go back and change things!

I'll talk more about this when Grace 6 is done, which I think will be around next week.

Other matters:

- I hope the Liberal and NDP team-up works out. We act as one, lest we perish alone.

- I now have a fan. Most of you are my friends or family members, which I think really colours perception of a story. It's a story by me, after all, and you all know me really well. But I met a smart guy called Itsuki on a forum who is a really voracious reader and has literally read almost everything I've written over the last half decade, minus my two unfinished novels. And he really treats the stuff pretty much like anything else he might read.

In the last two weeks he's been reading Grace and... well, let's just look at this piece of a conversation:

Itsuki says:
Nari deserves the world
Itsuki says:
and then some
Naelok - "Abort the plan! Abort! Abort plan!" says:
man you really like Nari
Itsuki says:
yes
Itsuki says:
Anyone who hurts her shall receive divine punishment

I don't think I've heard any of you guys talking about my characters like that! Or really, maybe you guys do think that but don't say as much? Or maybe it's a personality thing. Still, it's pretty disorienting to see that kind of reaction, though it tells me that I'm at least doing a fair job with the characters, if they can inspire the sort of fanboyish protectionism that usually gets linked to say Hermione from Harry Potter or Kallen from Geass.

It's kind of funny for me to think about what it would be like if the book were finished and published and read by a decent audience. Would the Weedy and Eyce fanboys argue with the Nari fanboys over which is perfect for Eisa? Would it generate crappy fanfiction? Hm. Let's leave that in the realm of fantasy for now.

Until next time.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

2008-11-20T04:35:00.005-05:00

So the purpose of this blog is not to review games. In fact, while I've talked a fair about a bunch of games in the past, I don't think I've ever done an actual review of one before as I have with anime and books and voice actresses. But I'm going to do one today for Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World. Why? Well, there are a few reasons, but the main reason is because IGN hit the game with a 6.7 review, which I thought was rather shocking score for a game I've been anticipating for months to receive. I usually trust IGN's judgement, but I got the game anyway and have discovered that they were... well... pretty wrong. And I figured that it'd be interesting for a few of you to talk about why that is.

Let me start by saying what's wrong with the IGN review. It's pretty simple, really: The guy assigned to review it hadn't played the fucking first fucking game.

Imagine someone going to a bookstore and picking up a copy of Harry Potter of the Prisoner of Azkaban without first reading Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Now imagine that same person publishing an article in a big name literary review site and complaining about how he had trouble keeping track of what's Hogwarts and Voldemort and all these weird details about Harry's early life that he just can't get his head around. It's an absurd way to premise a review and it's more or less exactly what this Daemon guy did here. The IGN guy complains about how he has trouble following the dialogue, but that's because half the dialogue in the game is referring to events of the first game. Geez.

So anyway, I will now give the internet a review of the game from the perspective of someone who has actually played the first game.

In short: It's not as good as the first Symphonia, but it's still a pretty damn good game.

Dawn of the New World is set two years after the events of Symphonia. I won't talk about the plot, since Frad is a lazy fuck and hasn't even started the game yet, but the new story centers around a fellow named Emil and a girl called Marta. The original Symphonia cast are still very important (Lloyd especially plays a rather surprising role), but the focus of the story is on those two.

Often when you have a sequel to successful game, you have a tendency on the creators' part to be conservative. Just make the same sorts of sights and noises that the player is used to and you'll go far. And to a certain extent, this is what Namco did. I'd say about 60% of the game occurs in locales are places that are from the first game. Which makes sense, of course. Why, after all, would Meltokio suddenly look completely different? Although I do wonder who it was that went into the old dungeons and refilled all the chests.

But when it comes to story, Namco was much bolder. The original Symphonia hit on themes like racism, betrayal, slavery, revenge and just generally trying to walk the best path in a difficult situation. The Affection system could provide a love subplot, though that was just a subplot. In any case, Lloyd's unwavering optimism could make me feel a naceous at times, but it really was part of his charm. Dawn of the New World, on the other hand, does touch on those themes but make no mistake: this is a love story.

When I heard that they were scrapping Symphonia's famous Affection system, I wondered what the hell they could be thinking. I figured it was because they were making budget cutbacks or something, but the real reason turned out to be because they wanted to focus in on these two in a deeper way. And while occasionally the story lapses into bouts of cheese, you do have what I think is an interesting tale here. Emil, while initially extremely hatable, has a few interesting surprises inside of him while Marta, while being a tad over-the-top in some respects, is pretty well made with recognizable human emotions. Most importantly, the two go well together and I applaud the creators for taking this path rather than rehashing their past success.

Beyond Marta and Emil, there is still quite a lot to be said. The original Symphonia cast was way more rich and well-developed than pretty much any other J-RPG I've played, but what the creators seem determined to do in this game is fill in any gaps in their dynamics from the first game. You get to find out how Sheena gets along with Regal and how Presea interacts with Raine. It's not just random ToS fan service, but rather genuine character development.

Going beyond story, the biggest change to the game is probably changing the world map into a sort of Mario 3-esque level system. When you clear dungeon A or town A, you pick the next point on the map and go there. This saves time, but it really brings the immersion level down a notch and Namco actually admitted that the only reason they switched to something so low-grade because of time constraints. Weak. Also, since I was pretty interested in the main story I spent most of the time just clicking ahead to the next town, so needless to say I missed a crapload of subevents. Oh well.

The combat system is a sort of beefed up version of Symphonia's with a better camera and the ability to run in any direction you like. Occasionally you'll have a giant dragon ass blocking the entire screen, but that hasn't been a huge problem. The game also isn't as hard as the first game and being able to map 16 move keys (B + stick/D-pad/Wiimote shakes) makes fights more engaging as you aren't locked into a certain move pattern as you were in the first game. It isn't too difficult, though there is a hard mode to be tried.

Less exceptional is the pokemon system they added with 'monster pacts'. This addition is retarded for many reasons, but here are three:

1 - There are only four damn slots in the party. Why do I need to capture monsters? I have humans I can put in those fucking slots.
2 - Capturing the fuckers is a pain.
3 - It's horribly abusable. The second creature I caught was a wolf who has evolved into this snow-wolf demigod thing. It's around level 90, has as many hitpoints as Emil and Marta put together and deals like 1500 damage a hit. I rarely use the damn thing because it's stupid and I'd rather have humans in my team rather than some stupid snow dog, but its existence bothers me.

On a brighter note, customization from the first game is also back and beefed up. Enemies will drop all sorts of crap and you can use said crap to make shinier weapons and armour. The system itself works well and if you use it properly you can keep your equipment ahead of the curve, but the interface could really have used an overhaul. Dividing items into categories (weapons/armours/accessories/etc) would have saved me a lot of scrolling. Materials are pretty easy to find, with an abundant supply available through the game's subquests.

But that brings me to the game's biggest flaw. Remember the Sword Dancer from part 1? Or Abyssion? Or any of the many many subquests in the game? Yeah, Dawn of the World has almost none of that. Instead what you can do is go to the local Katz guy and ask from a quest. You then are teleported from town to some sort of quest zone. Quests vary from everything between hunting down some thieves to delivering some food. Interesting, no?

But here's the catch: They're all the fucking same! There's a wind cave, a fire cave, a mine and maybe two or three other quest zones. So if the bandit quest is in the wind cave, you get to her by dropping a rock to open a door and then going in to kill her. If the delivery quest is in that wind cave, then guess what? You do the exact same fucking thing with the rock dropping!

I don't know what the hell they were thinking when they made that crap. The things are optional and don't detract from the main storyline at all, but the fact that Namco decided to make these stupid pointless things rather than the robust subquests you had in Symphonia tells me that they are lazy fucks.

The voice acting... sigh. Rie Kugimiya originally voice Marta. I've chosen not to rant too much about what a crime it is to dub over Rie though, so I won't. (Oh, and for the record, in spite of what impression you might have gotten from the last entry, I am not stalking that woman. Or well, not yet at least.)

The voice acting is solid. Of the returning cast, some of them retain their original voice actors and some don't. Quite frankly, of the ones that have been changed, I think they sound better. Don't get me wrong, the new actors sound a lot like the old ones and only Lloyd's voice sounds completely different. But their delivery is just a lot better. Genis especially I think sounds a lot better now.

There are a lot more battle quotes, though occasionally they'll clash and break the immersion. Like for instance, this is something I often hear in boss fights:

Marta: "You're using too many items!"
Emil: "It's to win!"

*two seconds later*

Emil: "Don't use so many items!"
Marta: "But this is more fun!"

So apparently they think alike. Or something. But other than that, the battle quotes are still nice and quirky. There have been a few times when the victory quotes have made me laugh aloud even.

Still, while the game lacks some of the depth of the first game, what with no world map, pokemon and a paltry number of real subquests. However, the story has many virtues, the characters you know and love from the first game are back and better than ever. The voice acting is good (though it needs a dual-audio Japanese) and combat is fun.

Overall, I would give it an 8.5 of 10.

As a side note, do you see how this blog has a 'There's More' and 'Contract Post' button? Anyone know how I can do that here? That'd be nice, I think.

Obama, Foreign Policy and the Homefront

2008-11-18T00:37:00.004-05:00

So I said I'd write an Obama foreign policy post last time, but I was hoping that Obama would announce a Secretary of State soon and that hasn't happened. The leading contenders that I've heard of are Bill Richardson, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. The latter two I think of as complete scum, while the former I have no real opinion of.

I was listening to Al-Jazeera English talking about the signals that Obama's cabinet sends to the world. The host pointed out that Rahm Emanuel is about as Zionist as you can possibly get (I can see Googling him that his middle name is, in actual fact, 'Israel'). And none of the three names Sec State names can be expected to harbour much personal sympathy for any particular Islamic cause. Hell, Hillary certainly did her fair share of saber-rattling against Iran during the primary. So the AJ host I think had a good point... what the hell is going to change if that's his team?

Well, the answer is not much. Obama's foreign policy agenda has never really been as ambitious as he's made it sound. It boils down to cutting American losses in Iraq, pursuing a dialogue with Iran and making a few token gestures in Afghanistan. Beyond that, he seems most interested in pretty much preserving the status quo. Obama has no radical agenda to reshape the Middle East to suit American purposes. The impression I have is that he wants to basically live the quiet life while he pursues an ambitious domestic agenda.

And you know what? I think that's actually a really good thing. It's not really realistic to expect America to see the error of its ways and work towards building a better world. But an inward looking America is less dangerous and given to fewer bouts of imperialistic hubris. If the Americans stay at home and worry about getting a decent healthcare system and putting together a good economy, then I think we can count on the next four to eight years being relatively peaceful.

So on that note, how about we take things down a notch around here? I haven't really blogged seriously this year. Guess I kicked the habit. But I think I'll make another post after this one about some lighter matters.

Obama and the Power of Speech

2008-11-06T16:15:00.005-05:00

Okay, so now let's talk about the recent American election.

My attention first turned to Barack Obama after I listened to a few of his speeches after Iowa. I'd first heard of the man when he got into the Senate in 2004, when they showed clips of the guy on CNN with his daughters and wife. After that, I heard little of him until I read an article at the BBC about him launching his presidential campaign. I didn't think much of him or his chances. He was black, he was running against Bill Clinton's scummy wife and he had a sort of idealism about him that felt too sincere for politics. Such men running in such conditions do not become president.

As the months wore on, I learned a bit more about who he is. He had a mixed racial background, was raised by a single mother and had spent a few years in Indonesia. This made me conclude that he was an interesting man, though his peculiar 'attack Pakistan' position seemed (and still does seem) more than a little boneheaded. I remained ambivalent towards him as I saw clips of him on the news along with the Daily Show and Colbert. In the lead up to Iowa, I watched an ABC interview with him and easily preferred him to the unscrupulous and power-hungry Hillary Clinton, but I did not expect him to win.

Then there was Iowa and then I heard the man give a few speeches.

For obvious reasons, I am a big believer in the power of words. After I heard Obama balance out the pathos, ethos and logos and weave in impassioned words of hope and that spectacular phrase 'yes we can', I did not just become a fan... I became fairly convinced he would win. Why? It's simple... he was bringing poetry, high-minded rhetoric and lyricism to American politics. He can elevate the discourse and speak in broad strokes of American history and then, in the same breath, outline a three point plan for bringing about Universal Health Care. Unleashing such a force into the American culture of Hollywood one-liners and primitive political jingoism that has prevailed for the last few decades is like bringing a tank to a knife fight. As his opponents tried to mock him as an empty suit, you could feel the terror inside of them. It wasn't a simple matter of their policies against his... they were facing someone who could make the English language itself into an army and send it to war.

I could speak at length about Obama's techniques... I've probably listened to all the Obama speeches that he put up on Youtube. But let's save that for a future blog entry. Essentially, my belief in Obama's victory stemmed from those speeches. Firm sets of ideas persuasively brought forth are what change history. And so it was that my belief in words was vindicated last Tuesday.

The power of speech cannot be underestimated. The right idea expressed with the right words at the right time can change the course of history. It's a talent that so very few people have, but which absolutely demolishes all opposition when used correctly. There are all sorts of stories about how Obama did it... Newsweek has a series of stories that detail the campaign from start to finish. But I think the thing that made it all possible in the end was Obama's voice.

One more issue:

I'm a sceptic of American exceptionalism. I don't think America is as unique a place as Americans would like to believe. But credit is due where credit is due and I certainly can't think of another country that's gone in 50 years from sending black people to the back of a bus to electing a black person to lead them. I certainly don't know of many prominent Algerians in French politics, for instance. I believe that the bulk of the credit for Obama's victory lies on the shoulders of Obama himself... only a candidate of that magnitude could ever acheive such a thing. But Americans could and should take pride in being able to make a lot of collective political progress in a very short space of time. Not many countries can boast that.

Next time I'll talk about Obama and foreign policy.

Grace 5 - Yes We Can

2008-11-06T06:32:00.004-05:00

Obama reacts to the death of his grandmother

I know. I haven't updated that in ages. But like many things this November, that soon will change.

Grace 5 is now done. Some of you might ask why it's Grace 5. Last Chapter was Grace 5. Well, last chapter was scrapped and redone with what you see here. That's one of the reasons why it took so long. I don't mean to come off as whiny, but Grace is hard to write. And no one reads it either so I sort of wonder why I write it instead of just random short stories. More people read the random short stories of last year. But oh well, I guess the only conclusion is that I really believe in this story and these characters.

Next part of Grace is the fun stuff, so it should be a bit easier to go through. I hope that the second swing at Grace 5 doesn't prove to be a disaster.

Here it is.

On another note, I intend to update the blog more over the next few weeks. Not just with stories, but with normal entries like I used to do. I still want this blog to be primarily my writing blog, but I'd like to comment on recent events a bit.

The Grace 5

2008-07-25T05:08:00.006-04:00

So I think this is more or less done. Man that took a lot of work.

Here's the Grace 5:

Doc format//RTF format.

Edit: Some bloody asshole took a bunch of images from my fileden and ran it out of bandwidth. Fucking jackass. I don't have anywhere else to put it, so here it is on bloody Megaupload.

Grace is a really hard story to write. The story is always looking backwards, to Eisa's past, even as it goes forward. It's really hard to balance that out. Then on top of that I need to make the non-Eisa characters engaging, which is also very hard as Eisa is the sort of guy that keeps a few degrees of separation between himself and those around him. And, of course, there's the actual plot which is probably a little bit more complicated than it strictly has to be (although I do like the current pacing).

Sometimes I wonder if the ideas of Grace are simply too complicated for my writing ability to handle. It's really difficult to know whether to offer one piece of information now or to save it for a chapter or two down the road. With this chapter, I chose to bring something in first and explain what it is later on. The idea behind doing that is to make the reader think 'hey what's up with this' and read on... to risk temporary confusion for long-term reward. But I have no way of knowing if it works.

I guess it's at least good that I'm giving it my all (or at least as much of my all that I have to give right now). I'm never going to be able to make anything good if I don't do that.

Other matters:

- Dr. Horrible was really good. Great and catchy songs. But Joss Whedon is such a damn tool. I read an interview with him about the thing where he talked about his influences and, of course, he didn't mention Jonathan Coulton. No one can look me in the eye and tell me that Joss Whedon made that thing without first listening to Skullcrusher Mountain or the Future Soon. Because the whole fucking musical was just the lovechild of those two songs.

Hey, did you hear Fox is making a live action Cowboy Bebop? At first I thought "Man, that's going to be a total trainwreck" but then I remembered they'd already made a live action interpretation of Cowboy Bebop. And it wasn't so bad! Although it's a shame that they cancelled it after fourteen episodes.

Yeah, that's right. Fuck Joss Whedon.

- I have class in like 6 hours and haven't slept. Yay.

- I was thinking of seeing the Dark Knight again, but I'm not sure. Anyone want to?

Aside: Why so serious?

2008-07-19T06:02:00.003-04:00

Grace 5 is technically done now, but it needs another scene and a crapload of polish. I expect to release it by the end of next week though, depending how it goes.

Let's talk about Dark Knight.

It was excellent. A true masterpiece, I would say... it was well scripted, planned and executed. Batman Begins was a solid movie, but its main flaw was that it spent the first hour on the origin story.. I mean, is there honestly anyone who doesn't know why Batman is Batman? Considering that that problem is erased by default in Dark Knight, I had extremely high expectations going in. I was not disappointed.

If you haven't seen it yet, then you should. That's all there is to say.

Spoiler discussion:

Holy fuck the Joker.

I really don't know anything about this Heath Ledger fellow. Looking through his bio, I see that I haven't even seen any of his other films. But man, what a spectacular actor. He had everything down about the Joker, right down to his strange mannerisms, stutters and small gestures. He was doing so much more than reading from a script as so many actors will do. He was the Joker. I heard tell afterward that Ledger was a method actor and that his playing the Joker's mind brought him into a sort of downward cycle as he peered into that void. I don't know if that's true, but it seems plausible. And I have to admit that I find the idea of the genius actor being killed by his own craft to be a bit appealing. But whatever the case may be, what a loss.

I honestly never would have thought that the Joker could ever be such a serious and sophisticated character. I mean, he's a crazy clown. The way it was done here though made him into a sort of genius schizophrenic. hey never really give a straight answer about why he is the way he is, though the strength of Ledger's performance made that unnecessary. He's completely believable. A twisted nihilist that wanted to validate his own existance by proving that, if subjected to sufficient pressure, anyone would be like him. It wasn't that he just liked hurting and killing people, but rather that he wanted to prove that laws and human order were fleeting and flimsy institutions.

In a way, I feel as though the movie backed away from the brink a bit at the end, with the boat detonator scene. It's as though the director himself was afraid of what would happen if he gave too much validation to the Joker's anarchistic philosophy. I thought it would've been more compelling if the civilians hit the switch while the criminals didn't. The way both sides backed out... it felt a bit artificially moral.

Harvey Dent was amazing too.

The way Two-Face was done in my memory is that he had two personalities, one good and one evil. So I kept waiting for that to happen in the movie and it didn't. A lesser film would have made it so that Rachel told him she loved Bruce and then have her die and him go crazy and somehow find out that Bruce is Batman and go after him with his evil personality. This took a much more arduous route... Harvey Dent was one guy throughout the film. His breakdown was a steady downward transition rather than a product of multiple personalities. Much harder to do.

I know this is a bit silly, but I've got to say that I really liked the symbolism of the coin. I've always liked Two Face's coin... it's one of the cooler little villain symbols. Even back in the old 90s Batman cartoon it was pretty menacing. But the way it was done in the movie was cool... using a coin with identical sides to make decisions is really a way of saying you're in control, after all. The scraping of the coin after the Rachel incident... that's such a great way of conveying what Harvey went through mentally. It's a great visual symbol of the loss of control.

What else? Oh I guess there's Batman.

I'm glad that there was a lot more Batman and a lot less Bruce Wayne in this movie. There were times in the movie where his detective work actually reminded me of L vs. Light. I have to say though that some of those gadget things were a bit farfetched. Cellphone sonar on the whole city? Say wha? The way he was steadily pushed to the edge was really cool too... the way he took Rachel's death with a stiff upper lip was just superb.

One of the things I always was disappointed in with the Spider Man films is that they never really highlighted his role as a detective. With Batman though, they really go all out with that. It's not just a matter of beating up the bad guy and winning... there's a planning and investigative stage. Gathering information actually matters. I like that... makes for a much more intellectual hero, rather than just the brute force.

The style though is without peer... gotta love it when he has a chat with Commissioner Gordon on a rooftop and then the Commissioner turns away for a moment to contemplate the skyline of his city for a moment, only to turn back to see that Batman is gone. I love that.

Anyhow, I could go on and on about this film, but that is all I will say for now. In summary: It was excellent.

Look forward to Grace 5.

Grace Revised

2008-06-04T04:04:00.006-04:00

(We act as one... lest we perish alone.)

Okay, so I've now finished going through the first part of the Grace and changing what needs to be changed. Here's the edited document and here's the handy guide to the important things that I changed. The changes aren't huge, but they are fairly important. I know not many people are reading this now, but now I can be accused of less contradictions if it's ever all done. There's one big change to the end of the chapter that I still might make (I noted it in the guide), but not at this moment.

Only one person (Jacob) has read Chapter 4 so far. He seemed to really like it. Like he made a line from it his MSN name, which is pretty high praise since he usually has various quotes on alcohol and politics in there. Go me! The other two people that are reading this haven't got to it yet, but hopefully that will happen soon.

What happens next is I write the fifth part. I'll fix up what I don't like in the second part after that's done, but there's less to do. The main offender was really the first part. Right now I'm anxious to do the fifth part, as there are many ideas I've had for a while (and some more recent, of course!) that I want to put down into writing. It's going to be cool. Or at least I think so. You may disagree.

Other matters:

- My foot is good. Nothing was broken in there. It still hurts a bit when I put all my weight on the heel, but less-so every day. I can ride a bike and everything now though, so yay.

- Me and Andres are an unstoppable TF2 team. If we go Heavy/Medic on a 2fort server then we invariably end up in first and second place. It's bloody amazing what we can get done. There are times when we'll be planted outside an enemy spawn point, slaughtering everyone that even tries to dislodge us. Once we break through enemy lines, we usually get a solid 15-25 kills before we finally are brought down. Sometimes even more than that.

- Do any of you have some really weird friends? I have some. One's name is Fradener. That isn't his real name, but allow me to share this tale:

There's an anime he wants me to watch called TTGL. TTGL stands for something, I forget what exactly... A bunch of moonspeak words. It's about a world where people live in holes... this little kid is digging a hole in one of those holes and finds a stupid looking mech. Joining forces with this other dude and some chick that doesn't wear much clothing, he goes out into the surface world to fight the beastmen and have an adventure or something.

If this sounds horrible to you, then the reason for that is because it is. I watched two episodes of it and just couldn't bear the pain. Frad though? He loved it... And hey, nothing wrong with that... different strokes and all that. But the thing is with Frad is that whenever someone he knows doesn't like something he likes, he takes it as something of a personal affront and tries to convince them that they are wrong and should like it anyway. And that's okay, because I'm actually kind of like that too. Over the years, this has resulted in a system of barter, where I'll only watch/read some of the things he recommends if he'll reciprocate by watching one of my series or reading a book or what have you. I got him to read the Grace that way even. The most recent trade involved him getting the Name of the Wind, which is a book that I think he'll enjoy. I think I generally like the system... after all, some of my tastes are so obscure that it's necessary to just sort of enforce them on others if I'm going to have anyone to talk to them about. I'm sure Jacob has noticed my doing this over the last few years too.

But in the case of this TTGL thing it's just gone too far. I was talking to him about how I'm not going to watch the crap and he was insisting that I should anyway, because it totally gets good after I watch like twenty episodes. While talking to him I was reading through some info on the upcoming Tales of Symphonia sequel, and so I went ahead and said 'hey play ToS and I'll watch this thing'.

Now in any negotiation there are certain tactics one uses to fulfill one's objectives. I remember very well the words of the Fuhrer to Henrich Himmler concerning what tactic the German Nationalist Parties in the Sudetenland should take in its negotiations with the Czech Republic, mainly: "We should always demand so much that we can never be satisfied." I wanted Frad to stop pestering me and so I said 'hey why don't you spend about sixty bucks on a Gamecube controller, a memory card and a Gamecube game, and then I'll watch your stupid crap.' I figured that since he just bought a new computer, such an expense would be out of his budget range and he'd be forced to say no.

But instead he ordered it that night. Moreover, I think he paid like 90 dollars because he has this weird eccentricy where he refuses to buy anything used (even if it's a five year old game). Now Symphonia is a fantastic game and I think he'll enjoy it (although I'm not sure if he'll get ninety dollars worth of enjoyment. That's like double what I paid for it when it was newly released). But the fact of the matter is that he still put down ninety dollars in order to make me watch something that I hate. In my opinion, that's just going too far.

So yeah, in conclusion, I know some weird people. Also: Shit, now I have to watch a shitty anime. Fuck.

- Obama won, yay!

The Grace 4

2008-05-27T06:23:00.006-04:00

(I honestly tried to find a pic that wasn't of cats, but nothing I could find compared to this one)

So Grace 4 is finally done. Here it is in rtf format for those of you into that.

This thing has been in the making for months. I think if you were to add up every discarded and deleted page of this chapter, it would be longer than the rest of the story put together. I don't know what took so long. So many times, I'd thought I'd figured it all out only to run into one snag or another. Hours and hours of work went into making something work that wouldn't. I had to restart from scratch at least four times. At one point, it was so discouraging that I actually considered abandoning the whole story. But in spite of everything, I still believe in Grace and so I pressed on.

The result is a 25 page chapter that I think is pretty good. It's probably not the best chapter so far. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the way that it ends... and there are certain parts that I think could be somehow better, although I'm not sure how. But it's done. In the process of making this chapter, I also managed to shape my vision for the story a fair bit. Some details are still in flux, but I have a much better idea of what's what now. In any case, I hope you enjoy it. A lot of work has gone into it.

Since it's been months since I last posted a story, here's a brief primer for those with poor memories:

Eisa's old friend Abel wrote him and told him he was being held by an Associate Lord by the name of Aerien Kaistor. Eisa was relying on Abel to do him certain favours to place him into contact with the Archivist and was persuaded by Vincent and Nari to try to fish Abel out of the grips of the Associate Lord (against his better judgement). Oh and Eisa was also shot last chapter.

The Associates are to be the last element of the story that I introduce. Now that I have the Lantern, Solar and the Associates introduced I can tell the rest of the story. No more need to introduce factions every chapter

Over the next few days I'm going to be going over the parts of the story that have already been written and edit a few things. I'll make a post about that later on. There are a few story things that I need to adjust... nothing too big... mainly things that I've already mentally abandoned. The one big change is to Vincent's character. You'll probably notice it in the next chapter, but here are the changes for your reference:

- He is now a potty-mouth and a bit more aggressive (he always was aggressive, but he's just moreso now).
- He will now occasionally will make oaths in Arabic, which suggests that he is Muslim although not a particularly good one.

I would hope that this is a step in the right direction.

Other semi-related matters:

- While I was considering how to change the ending of this chapter yesterday, I took a bike ride. I often do that when I need to go over things in my head. Anyhow, while riding down the northern half of the Cedarville Ravine and thinking about a few minute adjustments to Aerien Kaistor's wardrobe, I hit a rock and lost my balance. I fell at high speed onto my side and skidded for a while. The result are some bad scraps on my left shoulder and knee, a pair of torn jeans and the loss of the ability to walk.

Okay, okay, I'm exaggeratinat the last one. What actually happened is I've hurt my left heel in a weird way. I can no longer put weight on the thing without getting hit with a shot of pain and so I have to walk with all the weight in my left foot set on my toes, which gives me a weird sort of limp. I guess something might be broken or what have you. I'm seeing a doctor about it later on.

- I really don't update this blog so often. I've been thinking of making a non-writing blog, but I don't know how interesting that would be or what I would even put on it. It's not like I do anything else worth noting these days. An entire blog of 'lol today me and Sput rocked in TF2' probably wouldn't be that exciting.

- I've gone through a bunch of anime in the last little while. I won't go into them all here, if only because I'm really tired and also in a bit of pain, but I will mention Clannad which was this beautiful drama/comedy deal. That was good. Yeah.

So anyhow, that is all. Enjoy the chapter. Please. I worked really hard.

Aside: "Do you think that love can bloom, even on the battlefield?"

2008-04-10T13:02:00.007-04:00

I have some time to kill before I hand in an essay, so let me just explore a topic that's on my mind.

I've previously referred to the fact that American journalists are a bunch of stupid assclowns. Not all, but most. I mentioned one name as I went through my list of 'American Journalists who are incredibly stupid'... a guy called Marty Peretz. He's an editor over at the New Republic. The New Republic is a site I started checking out regularly when the American election piqued my interest. It has two regular blogs (The Plank and The Stump) that are normally at least worth reading, even though they really only amount to a bit of quirky political opinion trading.

Then it has a third blog, 'The Spine'. The Spine is basically a series of juvenile Zionist diatribes written by Martin Peretz. Now it's no secret that I don't like Zionism, but what I dislike almost as much as Zionism is profound and willful ignorance. Now Peretz is an uncritical Obama supporter, if only because he really doesn't like the Clintons. But looking at his column today, I see that a nice blanket condemnation of Jimmy Carter on the grounds that Jimmy Carter hangs out with dictators and hates Israel. The fact that unconditional meetings with dictators is one of the cornerstones of Barack Obama's foreign policy programme is completely lost on Peretz. He picks and chooses what he wants to hear to suit his agenda. Jimmy Carter is an opponent of Israeli Apartheid and therefore Peretz tries to tear him down. That's the long and short of it.

Not to mention that he throws in this line: "Many historians think that [Jimmy Carter] was the worst president in American history." As a fairly competent scholar of history, that kind
of bullshit infuriates me to no end. I'm sorry, what kind of fucking historian is out composing "Top ten lists of teh worstest presidents?" Peretz, of course, doesn't bother to cite any.

Oh, and did I mention that he's not just stupid, but also a filthy bigot? Here's a real gem:

Poor Tom Friedman. He is looking for a Muslim Martin Luther King. There is none, Tom. If one were living on earth, they'd break his windows. Imprison him. Or kill him. Finished.

Matthew Yglesias, an excellent American journalist/blogger, thankfully pointed out the profound irony of that statement. But the key fact is that this guy still has a job at an otherwise respectable American news magazine. It's just mind-boggling. To be so profoundly stupid and yet still be given creditability... the other TNR journalists have similar biases, but they at least think before they hit the 'publish' button.

This is why the US media is in such shambles. There are good journalists, but they all have to share the same page space as these sorts of semi-literate buffoons. It's scum like Peretz that just cheapen the entire enterprise of journalism.

Anyhow, I haven't done one of these sorts of blog entries in a while, so consider this a treat. Oh and don't forget about Grace Interlude. No one's got to it yet.

Oh and someone remind me to add a picture to the top of this post later on. Thanks.

Ok, there, pic added. I really like lolcats, as you might guess.

The Grace: First Interlude

2008-04-08T06:53:00.002-04:00

Okay, after nearly two months, I finally have more Grace to release. The Grace: the First Interlude awaits you!

This is the alternate perspective I mentioned last time. I hope you find it interesting. The Chapter is intentionally shorter than the others (10 pages double space, rather than the normal 20-30). The reason for that is that I felt that while a short break from Eisa was necessary for the story to go forward smoothly, it's still his story and the less time I spend away from him the better. Obviously they'll be more interludes eventually, but not for a while I don't think.

I named the chapter the 'First Interlude' rather than Chapter 4. Next chapter will be Chapter 4. Though if people think that the numbering scheme is needlessly complicated, I'll just make this 4 and next 5.

I was thinking of adding a quotation to the beginning of the chapter, but I figure that's a bit of a cliché by now. Oh well. Lemme know what you think.

Other matters:

- I finished this Chapter instead of finishing my last major essay. Said essay was actually due yesterday, but Professor Smyth graciously offered an extension till Thursday. I promptly answered his generosity by doing something else.

- Geass has finally resumed. I think Geass is possibly one of my favourite things ever. It's not a perfect show... hell, there are probably a half dozen or more superfluous characters that could be
just not be in it without effecting the storyline much. But even with that caveat, it's just a magnificent piece of work.

- I rock at Smash. When I play as Snake, the world trembles as my rockets fly and mines explode.

Though I tried one of Snake's games and it was sort of horrible. Though it's probably one of the few games where it's actually funny to be killed. "Snake! No! Please! Get back up! Snake.... SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!" I'll try the sequel soon.

- No, I really don't have any idea what I'm going to do once I finish my stupid degree.

Aside: "It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."

2008-03-23T03:06:00.016-04:00

(Code Geass season 2 is coming two weeks from now. Hard to believe isn't it? I know I can't wait...)

I feel as though I ought to update the blog more so long as the writing is going nowhere. So let me talk briefly about why the writing is going nowhere.

The short answer is school. And Brawl. But mostly school.

The long answer is that I've actually written a good 30 more pages of Grace already, but I've discarded more or less all of it. This is the problem with developing the story as it goes along, I suppose. I had an idea of what was supposed to happen next, but actually making it happen was a bit awkward. I wonder if that's the fault of the way I ended chapter 3... but there are also a few details that took some sorting out.

Like let's take for example the Associates... I had two ideas of them. The one is that they're a bunch of cabals of mystical geneticists that trade in human life to create bizarre and terrible things. The other idea was to make the Associates an oppressed minority that the Lantern lies on the back off in order to assure its own prosperity. You may make your own political analogy for that phenomenon. In my mind, these two ideas were perfectly compatible... I imagined a bunch of higher-up figures actively colluding with Lantern higher-ups in exchange for local political power and such.

In practice, it hasn't been so easy to reconcile the two concepts. It's a choice between social degeneracy and political corruption... I can't really have one and the other without really detracting from both. This hasn't been my only problem, but it's taken up a lot of mental space. I think I have a fair idea of what I'm going to do now though, so it's good.

Another matter is that of pacing. I've been torn about perspective... do I stick with Eisa from start to finish or do I have another perspective inserted now and again? I've gone back and forth on this... my gut feeling was to add another perspective, though the question of who to add was harder to get around. It came to me a few days ago that there is someone who could potentially contribute a lot to the story with a bit of her perspective, though this thought came in the midst of my conceiving of Eisa's next part so as a consequence I'm sort of writing Chapter 4 and 5 at the same time.

So yeah, if you were wondering why Grace was taking so long to continue, then issues like this would more or less explain it. Two of you seemed to be sorta enjoying it, while one person stopped reading it in disgust after two chapters, so I will try to redouble my efforts after the essay I'm presently working on is complete.

Other Matters:

- The presentation went reasonably well, in spite of my presenting on 3 hours of sleep and no food. Thanks go out to the one person (Jacob) who listened to the podcast. I might make another podcast sometime if it ever strikes me as a useful thing to do. I'd probably need a better microphone though.

- I was very impressed with Obama's speech on race, however its reception was predictably discouraging. The speech was not only profound (and I found it particularly so from the perspective of a brown-skinned Muslim South Asian'er), but it was strikingly honest and sincere. But then you have drooling savants in the US media (and on various websites, but I'd pin it mainly on the media) saying "durrr but da preacher man said bad tings about Amerreeka, why he not swearing at him lots?"

Americans often wonder why they have a global reputation as being a bunch of uneducated louts. It is an unfair reputation (or well, sort of). But the source of that reputation is the horrific shitstorm that is the American media. I learned to avoid the American media shortly after a few weeks of shoddy Iraq war coverage... give me the BBC, CBC, Channel 4 and Al-Jazeera any day. But as figures like Obama and Ron Paul (who seems to be being proven right more and more these days) piqued my interest, I started looking through the American media more and more. It makes me remember why I stopped.

There are some good American journalists. Hell, I own like three Bob Woodward books. And in spite of his reputation and evil aura, I've always thought Bob Novak's columns had something worth reading in them. And Tim Russert always runs a strong interview (peppered occasionally with retarded questions). But for every one of those, there's a Peretz, an Anderson Cooper, a Joe Scarborough and let's not even talk about the assclowns that I see in those Fox News clips. Ich.

All major networks and newspapers have editorial direction. Accusations of bias get thrown around down south left and right. My view is: Yeah, news organizations are biased but the question is how they go about putting in their angle.

- Now I'd like to talk a bit more about Brawl. Feel free to stop here if you aren't a Brawler or at least interested in hearing about Brawl

It is in many ways the gamer's game. One need only look towards the game's 300+ song soundtrack, representing some of the greatest talents in the industry, to see why that is. Stupid limitations on online play aside, the whole game is really just a love letter to the long-time enthusiast.

Before the game came out, I was thinking about which characters would be my regulars. Story and game wise, my favourite character on the Brawl roster is obviously Link... and yet, I don't play him that often. Instead I've settled pretty comfortably on Snake (though I also like Zelda, Pokemon Trainer [why can't we just call him Ash? In fact, from now on that is what he will be called], Pikachu and Marth). Now Snake is a character whose games I've never even played (yet). So why play him? I think the reason for this comes down to a fundamental question of play-style...

I play Snake because in all games I love artful characters. There are few things more satisfying to me than seeing a guy getting blown up by a mine I placed a minute before. It's something I liken to Sleep on a level 5 Dread Lord in WC3 or the Siren's Net in DotA. People think when they see the mine 'I just have to not step on it and it's worthless', but when you use it well... heh, well, I think a fair few of the people that bother reading this can attest to how it works then. And even if the opponent deliberately avoids it, it's still having an effect because you're checking their movement. And his other skills are just as tricky-though-rewarding... with Snake, I'm always jumping into the thick of things to beat people up and then backing off to shoot a rocket or toss grenades. It's a play style that fits me like a glove.

I think that some of my friends have similar thought processes for selecting a character... Franco, for instance, is a long-time veteran who uses Mario and Luigi. I can't speak for him, but both those characters are well balanced though generally defensive characters, much like the Terrans in SC or Imperial Guard in 40k. Fradener seems to be gravitating towards characters that are steady and sure like Marth and Toon Link, which fits what I know of him as well. The point is that it's not just that Smash has the huge roster of characters from all sorts of games... its that there's really a play style in Smash that can suit more or less everyone, but no single play style truly (in my opinion) reigns supreme.

Also: I thought about this too much.

(No one should play Ike though. He's not hard to beat, but he's very easy to play. Ike is for the 'lazy' play style, as he has two charging attacks that can easily be landed in the chaos of a 4 player match. Whenever I'm in a game with Ike, I beat the living shit out of him so as to discourage newbie players from playing him)

I used to also think that Smash was a purely 'for fun' game and laughed at the blowhards that insist on playing with no items on final destination. And I still think that... the most fun you can have in a game of Smash is with four people on a stage like Spear Pillar with lots of Smash Balls. But after Franco called foul about my beating him with Smash Balls last week, I said 'okay, let's have a match on Final Destination with no items'.

Needless to say, my Snake dispatched his Luigi not once but twice, but the matches were very close, particularly the second one. So much goes on in a Smash game that it's impossible to remember every blow, but I distinctly remember being thrown into the air at least three times. Each time, on my way down, Luigi leapt up to try to hit me with a coup de grace and each time I performed an air dodge to avoid the hit. An air dodge isn't a big deal, but it strikes me that if I'd missed even one of those dodges, I'd have probably lost the match. Makes me sort of admire the folk that do this stuff at tournaments.

So yeah, the Brawl is where its at. Come join us.

Anyhow, so that was a nice big long entry. Don't expect another until I've got more Grace done.

Aside: "The only plan is to persevere"

2008-03-14T04:13:00.006-04:00

I know there haven't been updates in a while. Sorry. But I have here a special treat for you. The first ever WwnR podcast!

Now before you click that link, let me tell you what it is. It's a rehearsal for a seminar I'm going to do this Monday. The subject is Intelligence and the Allied Strategic Bomber Offensive in the Second World War. If that doesn't sound interesting, you should not click that link. If it does though... well, sure, go ahead.

I'm listening to it now... I think the introduction could use some tightening up, along with the explanation of Luftwaffe resistance. Also the way I introduce about the Transport Plan and Oil Plan could be better. You'll notice that I tend to stumble over numbers and dates. That's sorta how I am. If you do listen to it, note that I'm a guy with a charisma penalty. I'm not what you'd call silver tongued and my throat hurts now after all that talking. But I try and this is really the first time I even have gone through the material aloud. I try to make a balance between the analysis and the evidence, but... well, this isn't what I'm really used to.

It's a bit on the long side right now, but I think it's all right. I hope this goes well when I give the actual presentation, as I've put a lot of work into this. I don't expect any one to listen to it, at least not before Monday, but on the off chance that it is listened to let me know if it makes sense or if anything's wrong.

Oh, and yes it's staticy. Blame this crummy microphone. Sorry. It's my first podcast, be merciful.

The reason there's a Phoenix pic by the way is that Phoenix is my reference point for all public speaking engagements. Plus I love that pic. No one but Phoenix can make presenting a document in court look so very dramatic.

Other Matters:

- One of the reasons I'm trying to make this presentation so good is that the Professor of this class (Smyth) has heaped on an unusual amount of praise on me. Like he's referred to me as 'brilliant' and remarked that 'those people with your kind of analytical mindset are condemned to become historians'. I'm not really sure what to make of such words. I don't consider myself particularly exceptional and no, I'm not saying that to look humble. I think to a very large degree, my doing well in school is a consequence of my really not having much else going on in my life (not working while in school, too introverted for extracurriculars and certainly no significant other) rather than any innate talent.

But it's not often anyone has anything like that to say about me, and so I really don't want to disappoint.

- Grace is still on, but I have no time to work on it right now for reasons partially displayed above. I've got eight pages of the next part done. More details on that process when it's done.

- I have Smash Brothers Brawl now. It's amazing, but I've banned myself from it from now until I give this presentation and finish the essay that's also due this Monday.

My main character has rapidly become Snake. I've never played a Metal Gear Solid game before, but Snake's play style really suits me. His attacks consist of various explosives, along with this helicopter thing along with brute strength. He's not so much about getting in close as he is about controlling the flow of the battle by laying those mines, shooting those rockets and tossing those grenades. No other character can surprise an enemy like he does... especially the mines. I've got a fair amount of wins by planting mines, waiting for a good moment and detonating them ("NOW!") at the exact right moment. And they aren't as easy to avoid as you'd think... I even caught the hated Andres in them a few times (though it was hard to).

Speaking of Andres, I dethroned him the other day when I defeated his Mario with my Snake in an epic game. Not only did I win, but I won with two lives to spare. A decisive victory if there ever was one.

- Before the crunch really started, I watched an anime called Full Metal Panic. It's an amazing piece of work. It's a sci-fi mecha romance comedy drama. Genre mixing rocks. One thing I found about it is that the mixture of comedy and drama really did work quite well. The comedy made me care about the characters, so much so that when bad things started to happen they really hit home.

I don't know if any one I know that isn't already watching it would like it, but I thought it was excellent

- The podcast is compressing now. I just hope that the damn thing can be brought to a reasonable size, as in wav format its bloody 2.5 GB.

- I played Apollo Justice. It was good. I talked about it more here.

The Grace 3

2008-01-26T08:05:00.000-05:00

(Japanese comics are read from right to left)

Grace 3 is done. In pretty good time too. I was almost not going to write this chapter and instead forge on ahead with something else, but I'm glad I went with this.

I like this story, but I'm not sure if people will agree due to the retarded boycott. I need support to keep up my writing. Not very much... but seeing how people react to these things is educating. Some of the feedback I get is more useful than others, but just knowing 'I liked this' or 'I didn't like this' is better than the nothing I've been getting for the last two months. So stop it already. It's not helpful.

Other Matters:

- lol John McCain. When I first heard Ron Paul hit McCain with that question in the debate, I thought 'Wha? Huh? Why is he asking about something like that?' Still, even though I'm not exactly an economics expert, I could tell that McCain had no idea what Ron Paul was talking about when he gave him a vague laundry list of economics names and started talking about 1982. But when you actually understand what Ron Paul was actually asking about and what McCain actually said, I think it becomes very funny.

And of course, it's even better in light of what Ron Paul pointed out about the people he named afterward.

It's not exactly the kind of debate zinger that the vast majority of viewers were going to be able to understand and appreciate, but I think it shows why Ron Paul is just a cut above the other candidates from either party. Alas, if only...

- 4chan and its ilk has declared war on Scientology. If you don't know what 4chan is then... well, to be honest, you probably don't want to know about 4chan. Ever.

Thing is, one would normally expect the buggers to get bored with the whole thing and move on to the next meme within a day or so. But somehow that video managed to get mainstream media attention. After getting this much attention, you can count on these guys keeping up this stuff more or less forever. It just goes to show how clueless old media is about the internet. I mean, seriously, it's bloody 4chan. No one who knows anything about 4chan takes anyone that comes out of there seriously.

- I'm assembling a picture collection for the top of blog picture. I've quite a few so far. I guess if I get too many of them, I can start putting a pic at the bottom too.

The Grace 2

2008-01-15T04:40:00.000-05:00

I liked the pictures last time. I think I'll put one in at the top of each blog entry. They won't always be World War 2 ships though. What you see here is the pride of the British fleet, HMS Hood, being sunk by the Bismarck. Hood had been sent to intercept the Bismarck as she rampaged through the Atlantic, only to be utterly annihilated by Bismarck's superior firepower. Out of a crew of about 1400, I believe only 3 survived.

So part 2 of the Grace, which many people are boycotting, is now complete.

The nature of the Grace is still something ill-defined. I think it's a solid idea with a lot of potential for expansion. The only real plan for what happens next is in my head. There are no notes for this thing. That, in a sense, makes it a bit exciting to write because it's a lot more fresh. If I can keep the thing coherent and consistent, I think this thing has the potential to fly pretty far. The key, I think, may be in keeping things fresh. It also has this weird narrative style that I'm enjoying, but which is also not completely defined.

So once you get over the boycott thing, go ahead and read it. You might even like it.

I haven't forgotten the Refuge. I've started the next bit of that, but I'll be honest... it isn't as exciting as Grace. But I will finish it sometime. I can't say when. As well as writing, I also have to deal with the Bismarck and many other things. So who knows what I'm doing and when I'll do it, really.

Other matters:

- Smash Bros got pushed back to March 9th. This news fills me with despair. But if it has Mega Man and (more importantly) Zero, all will be forgiven. Mega Man and Zero would just be so perfect for Smash and it would really complete the all-star cast that Nintendo has so lovingly assembled. So yeah, one can hope...

- I like how Stephen Colbert is just as funny as he always is, even without his writers. Can't say the same for Jon Stewart though.

- Which do you prefer - a series that ends too soon or a series that ends too late? I was talking to Fradener about Slayers and he wants more of it, but I made the argument that it was better that it ended to soon rather than that they kept going with it until the franchise was run into the ground. Slayers certainly had a good long run (like 76 episodes), but at no point in the series was I thinking 'okay they're just milking it now'.

It was a great and funny series, let me say. Not often that you get Epic Fantasy Comedy, let me say. I think a lot of its comedy value came from identity play and subverting cliches. Like there's one character who consciously tries to fit into the mould of the mysterious badass magic-using swordsman. He was transformed by a evil magician into a hybrid of golem and demon and is on a life-long quest to cure his condition. But what's great about the show is that even though he has the right back story and the character is trying to be that mysterious badass, they don't actually let him be like that. Instead, the other characters will use him as an anchor, force him to dress up in women's clothing, make him sing and just generally make a fool out of him. The difference between what he thinks he's like and what he's actually like makes for great comedy, I think.

Though I'm probably overanalyzing that.

- Gundam 00 is getting pretty good. I'm glad, the premise of the show I think has a lot of potential and I don't think it ought to be squandered.

- I'd like to mention a book Jacob lent me the other week called The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It's a very eloquently written book. In this age of Songs of Ice and Fire, it's rare in fantasy to have an author who goes beyond simple plot and looks towards sophisticated character development and artful storytelling. Indeed, the plot in The Name of the Wind isn't actually that ground breaking (Basically: young orphan out for revenge) but the characters have such depth and the writing is so subtle and (dare I say it) beautiful that that doesn't matter.

I think I may actually pick up my own copy once it's in paperback so as to support the fellow. Skilled writing deserves support.

Aside: "A Battleship of the BISMARK class and a HIPPER class Cruiser have arrived in Fjords..."

2008-01-07T22:21:00.000-05:00

This is a sorta aside blog entry. No story is contained herein. Apologies. I haven't had much in the way of creative juices lately.

So I'm taking a certain course this term... HIS 488 - the Secret War, which deals with the role of intelligence gathering and analysis in the Second World War. It's taught by one Professor Denis Smyth, who was my Statecraft and Strategy Prof way back in my first year. He's probably the most inspiring Professors I've really had and it was his course that led me down the educational path that I have, for better or worst, taken. So I figure that it's kind of appropriate that the last semester (hopefully!) in my undergrad should conclude with him.

So I took his Secret War course... I know a crapload of stuff about WWII, after all, even if I don't know quite as much about intelligence gathering. So anyhow, when I get into the class, I'm handed this:

The first thing that struck me is that this is a pretty nice envelope. In all my times in University, I've never seen a Prof spend extra money on... well... anything. They'll make powerpoint presentations, they'll make overheads and maybe they'll make a website. That's pretty much it. This officious envelope is more or less unheard of.

In case you can't read that, it says 'Analyse the nature and assess the significance of the enclosed historical documents'. I think he should have gone a step forward and wrote 'CLASSIFIED' on it in red ink.

Inside the document we have this glossy photograph:

This is a photograph taken by an RAF reconnaissance plane over Scandinavia in May 1941. The large shape you see at the very bottom is the Nazi Battleship Bismarck, the other shapes you see in the water are her escorts.

Here we have the first page (of four) of a copy of an accompanying intelligence report by one Interpretation Officer J.G.D. Clark, which analyses the the composition of the German fleet, its position, its potential movements, its fighter compliment and its supply lines. You can skim it if you click the image, I think it came out clearly enough.

And that's it. The paper is to be 1500 words and its due in a month.

I honestly have no idea how I'm going to go about doing this. My conclusion upon reading the full report was "We should probably sink the Bismarck", which is not exactly refined. But this assignment was just so off the wall and strange that I felt the need to share it. I'm not sure if that view will be shared though. Maybe.

Other matters:

- Next story will come out soon. Maybe. I think I'm going to stop using the term 'Read-A-Week' until I can actually release them once a week again. I'm writing the sequels to Refuge and Grace at the same time, which may explain some of the delay

- I'll write a big old thing on Slayers after I write said story.

- Jacob watched Haruhi. Jacob liked Haruhi. His soul belongs to her now.

- I'm disappointed that Ron Paul isn't doing as well as he might, but am pleased that Obama is doing well enough. I still hold out some hope for Paul, but I won't give in to unrealistic expectations. Oh, and Hilary should die somewhere.

The Grace

2007-12-22T16:54:00.000-05:00

I know, it's been a while. My only defence is that I've been awfully busy. Essays first and then exams makes for a rather crowded past six weeks.

I haven't been completely idle though. There wasn't enough time for me to work on something as involved and sophisticated as the Refuge Part 2, I'm afraid. That's the next story on my to-do list. What I did do though is I'd occasionally open up Word and type out whatever came to mind. After exams finished, I took the story to what I figured was as good a stopping point as any other.

The result is The Grace. The setting is a sort of space opera deal. This isn't a short story, but is more like the first part of a novel. The plot is really something I honestly just made up as I went along. If you ask me what happens next, my answer is going to be: 'uhh... I dunno'. I'm not sure when/if I'll work on this again. I might, as it's an easy write. Really, who knows? The next thing I'm going to do is Refuge Part 2 though. That's been a long time coming.

Other matters:

- I was thinking of making a second blog to make note of general day to day stuff, but screw that. If anyone wants to know what I'm up to, they can just bloody ask me.

- I am a fan of Ron Paul. I've never actually been a fan of a politician before (much less an American politician), but there's something about Ron Paul that's just fundamentally appealing. In terms of image, he's an old guy... not very charismatic at all. But what you can say about him is that he's completely sincere. You can see as much by the way he talks... one thing I've always noticed about American politicians is that they'll always accompany their policies with some local sob stories. Like take Barack Obama... now, I like Obama (my favourite on the Democratic side of things), but if he's giving a speech about health care he'll tell you a story about some cancer survivor who's in a lot of debt now. It's all very emotional, but it's also incredibly contrived.

Ron Paul though... he doesn't do that stuff. He doesn't try to tug emotional touchstrings to get points across. Instead, he'll just tell you what he thinks without the window dressing. That, I think, is why people react so well to him. He makes an argument without the political grand standing.

His policies though are like a dream. Non-interventionist America, with foreign aid completely cut to the likes of Musharaff and a distancing from Israel and a drawback from confrontation with Iran. Ron Paul would mean the end, as we know it, of American Nationalist Globalism. A man like Barack Obama would do great things for American diplomacy... he would leave Iraq and visit Iran, something that would change American diplomacy in the same way that Nixon changed everything when he opened China. But Ron Paul would do so much more. There would be no more Washington sabre rattling and no more of this arrogant American presumption that the world can be remade as they see fit. I honestly and sincerely think a Ron Paul presidency would be a turning point in world history, perhaps the greatest turning point since the end of the Cold War.

Though, of course, he's still considered to be the longest of the long shots. Though every day has been looking better for Ron Paul, so if any American Ron Paul supporter stumbles on this blog and reads this, let me say that one guy up in Canada is wishing you guys a lot of luck.

- I got Mario Galaxy like a month ago. It's a superb game. Not much else needs to be said about that. As you leap from planet to planet, stomping goombas and evading fireballs, you will know joy as you have never known it. I do wish that I had a second Wiimote so that I could costar with any guest that comes by to play it, but even without the second Wiimote it's worth coming by to sample.

- I've watched more anime this year than usual. I watched a series called Code Geass last month and it was, let me tell you, superb. It is truly fascinating to see a protagonist who manages to be so morally dubious (and sometimes downright evil) and yet still quite thoroughly likeable. Right now though I'm watching an anime called the Slayers, which is a sort of fantasy comedy. It's pretty damn good.

- Speaking of anime, Jacob was over here the other day and I got him to watch the first episode of that masterpiece, the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Much to my surprise, he liked it a lot. Was laughing all the way through even. Thus are more souls claimed for Haruhi's cause.

Anyhow, updates should be more frequent from now on. Stay tuned and enjoy the story.

The Refuge, Part 1

2007-11-01T03:46:00.001-04:00

It's been a while, but the latest story is now complete.

The long gap between this story and the last isn't due to laziness on my part. I've been working quite hard on this. A consistent request that I've got from my few readers was for a longer story set in that same 'dark' world that I've been using for the last while. So I decided to start up a three-parter, with lots of characters and a fairly complicated plot. It's a nice change of pace from the 'three major characters max, nice and straightforward' deals that I've been doing for the past few months.

Anyhow, the result is a 29 page piece that I am really hoping people will find reason to enjoy. If you don't like it, please tell me why. I want to see what people think of part 1 and fix any problems they might have had with it before I write part 2. Hopefully people will like it though... I mean, this isn't a story I usually write and it took a lot of agonizing and editing to get it right. The title of the story is: The Refuge Part 1.

Oh, and to liven things up: I'm going to go ahead and offer a free lunch (nothing too expensive... I'm thinking Chicken Shawarma or Falafel) to the man or woman who guesses how it'll end correctly. It's a contest! Isn't that exciting? No? Oh. Well, whatever. Free lunch. Post your guess in comments. If you're one of my internet friends and therefore not in a location where lunches can be easily bought, then... uhh... I don't know. I'll think of something.

But yeah, enjoy the story nonetheless.

Other matters:

- I'm 22 now. I don't really care about my birthday all that much. I'm not one for parties or friends or whatnot. I had a lot of people on Facebook message me happy birthdays, including people I literally never talk to, but the only reason that happens is because Facebook tells people when it's your birthday. It struck me as a bit insincere. But oh well, what can one do?

There was cake though... and my parents seemed to enjoy themselves. So it's all good. I also bought Phoenix Wright 3: Trials and Tribulations for myself.

- Phoenix Wright gets his own bullet point, of course. I'm doing my best to savour the delights of this game. I know that if I put all my effort into it, I'll beat it in no time so after every new revelation I've been shutting my DS to reflect on its potential meanings. So I'm not that far into it yet, but it's just so great to see the old gang again. And the story is already full of the usual twists and turns. I'm going to be lending this to Jacob next time he's in the city. As an actual student of law, I wonder what he'll think of it.

What's heartbreaking is that this is the last Phoenix Wright game of its kind... after this, Ace Attorney is going a different route with a new lawyer called 'Apollo Justice'. That's such a Capcom way of doing things... instead of thinking of new things for Phoenix to do, they introduce a new character. Screw you, Capcom. Phoenix is the only way to go.

I'll have more to say about Phoenix as I progress.

- People keep asking me what I think about Dumbledore being gay. I'm tired and don't want to talk about it at length, so here's what I posted on the forum after it was revealed:

I always wondered why there was no mention of a Dumbledore girlfriend in book 7, which had all the stuff about Dumbledore's past. I guess that this explains that. I think people are making a huge deal outta nothing though. She said he was gay, not a pedophile. It doesn't affect his relationship with any of the characters in the book (except Grindewald of course).

I see a lot of people going on other forums going on and on about how this is was a political/liberal gaygenda thing. I consider myself a social conservative, but I don't think this is a big deal from any perspective. Though this will, of course, give the Harry Potter book burners a lot more ammunition.

What is interesting is that it means that Dumbledore was in love with the Wizard World equivalent of Hitler though.

That is all.

- My anime habits continue. I'm starting to dip into Gundam 00, which is the new Gundam series airing in Japan. It's the most political Gundam series ever. It's not set in an 'After Colony'/'Cosmic Era'/'Universal Century' era like other Gundams, but rather takes place in 2307. There are real world places and real world conflicts. Big difference, that. It still has the traditional Gundam ideas of pacifism, but there are a lot of new ideas in here. I attribute that to the fact that its being directed by the same fellow that directed Full Metal Alchemist.

I'm also checking out a show called 'Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion'. That's about a Japanese nationalist uprising against a British (yes, British) occupation. Also: the British have mobile suits. That one I'm not too sure about yet.

I wish Haruhi season 2 would hurry up and come out. Haruhi is the only true answer.

- I have essays to do this November, so stories might not be coming as often as I'd like. I'll do my best, but no promises.

Demon in the Cage

2007-10-03T04:35:00.000-04:00

This week's story is entitled Demon in the Cage. There's been a lot of continuality in my stories lately and this one is no exception. I'm wondering if it'd be possible or advisable to write a novel in this world. Writer though I may call myself, I still don't have a fully completed proper novel. That probably ought to change.

Whatever the case, this is a story that takes place in a prison. My knowledge of prisons is limited, so I'm not sure if it'll ring true or not, but there you have it. While there is continuality between the stories, it is my intention to make each of them readable on their own. Thus, you may find a few concepts that you already know about being re-explained.

I find that my ideas come out easier when they're fresher. I had the idea for this particular story a good month ago and it thus took a while to get it going. I think it turned out okay though. Let me know what you think.

Other matters:

- Darker than Black finished last week. By far one of the best animes I've ever seen. It was cleverly written, with a well executed plot and engaging characters. I won't spoil anything, but here are some reflections on it:

Often when you have an imaginative speculative drama (like Darker than Black), the writers will get bogged down in the premise. They'll feel the need to spell out a thousand details and explain the nuts and bolts of the world that they've thought up. Not so with Darker than Black. Rather than explain every small detail, they just jump into the plot and give you interesting characters with gripping stories. The writers make no apologies and are confident that the viewer will get it. That's the best way to go with speculative writing, I think. In the Taint, I think I really went way too heavy on the exposition and explanations.

The way the characters are presented is also spot on. Often in western dramas, characters have a tendency to wear their inner selves on their sleeves. When Mal, Picard or Spike do something, you probably can immediately understand why. In Darker than Black, the characters are well developed but there's a gap left in what exactly motivates them. When Hei makes a decision, there's room for you to think 'but why did he really do that?' I think that's another sign of good drama.

The way death was handled was quite good as well. I've spoken in the past about my distaste for what is considered 'dark' drama. Long time readers will remember my controversial Sin City review. Darker than Black, however, is not a snuff show. Many people die, often extremely violently, but each death has weight. Whether it be an innocent child or an assassin, the humanity of those that die is always well emphasized.

If the show had one weakness, I'd say that it was that the female lead character, Yin, did not get enough screen time. That's not to say that she wasn't a good character... what little that was shown of her were, in my opinion, the best parts of the show... but rather she didn't reach her full potential. I've heard that there's going to be a 26th episode released next summer with the DVD. Hopefully it'll be about her.

I'm hoping that the show gets some kind of follow up or sequel. There's certainly room for one, although any sequel would be much different from what the show once was.

- I read a Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin last week, which is the first book of the popular Song of Ice and Fire series.

Martin is a fair, if uninspired, writer and he's quite good at weaving intricate plots within plots. If you're a fan of conspiracies and political manoeuvres, then you'll probably like this, as there's lots and lots of that. It reads like Shogun, except instead of being set in Japan it's set in a fantasy world.

But where he falls flat is in his characters and in his pacing. His characters are fairly two dimensional. There's not much evolution or development. The honour and loyalty guy is honourable and loyal from start to finish without a hitch. The tomboy sword girl is a tomboy sword girl on page 40 and is still a tomboy sword girl when you get to page 700. The pacing is what just kills it though. Like I said, there are lots of intricate conspiracies and plots in the book and each chapter switches from character to character. The problem is that often the plots are completely independent of one another and the switches occur almost randomly. So, just before the big battle between the armies begins, the next chapter will abruptly switch over to tell you about what the princess is up to back in the castle. It's really damn annoying.

Those two things by themselves wouldn't be damning if not for the fact that the book ends in a cliffhanger. I would describe the ending as an ad for the next book. I hate that to no end. A novel should always have a proper ending. Look at the Harry Potter books. It's a series, but each book has its own definite conclusion. Compare that to a Game of Thrones ending, which doesn't resolve any of the intricate plots and essentially says "Tune in next time!" Screw that. If after 800 pages you can't give me an ending, then I'm not going to bother with you again.

So yeah... Can't say I can recommend it.

- My lower right wisdom tooth hurts. I fear that I may have to have it yanked out.

- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is out, though I haven't gotten it. I was going to, but then I remembered how much I disliked Wind Waker. Plus I'm a bit low on funds these days and I need to be able to buy Smash Bros Brawl and Mega Man ZX Advent. Still, I'll have to pick it up one day.

- I was going to delete my Facebook, but certainly people seem to insist on only E-mailing me there.

- Everybody Votes had an interesting question. The question was: "If you could go back in time or forward in time, which would you go?"

I think, for me, the answer depends on how long you're staying. If you're allowed to stay forever, then I'd go forward to the future and see how the world turned out. If it were a limited time trip though, I'd go back in time, if only because going to the future and then coming back would be frustrating, as one would get used to there being holodecks and such. While in the past, I would do something world-altering, of course, like give Wilhelm II a nuclear weapon. That'd be awesome.

I ended up voting future nonetheless. What would you vote?

- For next week's story, I want to do something different, though I'm not sure what yet.

The Taint

2007-09-19T03:21:00.000-04:00

This week's story is a lot different from the previous ones. I had the original idea for it back when I wrote the Curse of Life, though it really didn't fit into that story and so I initially shelved it. When I came back to it, the story was altered radically and was soon set in Muslim Spain, circa maybe 900-1000 AD. I actually took out a book from Robarts entitled the Ornament of the World by Maria Menocal before I wrote this to get a general picture of the society. Special thanks to her. But yes, without further ado, the story is called the Taint.

This story honestly really took forever to write, as you might have noticed considering how long it's been since the last Read-A-Week. There isn't one sentence in the thing that I didn't have to revise twice. Originally, the narrator (it's first person narration) was a lot more talky, giving his retrospective opinions on what was happening, sort of like what I did in Curse of Life. I cut a lot of that out and, while I think that was for the better, I fear he became less interested in the process. But in any case, I've worked very hard on this and I'm very sorry about the delay. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know what you think.

Other matters:

- It's Ramadan now and I'm fasting. Some decent spiritual regeneration going on.

- My classes have been going for a week and a half now. Summary: They're boring.

- JK Rowling is coming to Toronto, but to get tickets to see her you first have to be able to get into Raincoast's thoroughly crashed website and then basically hope for the best. Chances of success are not high.

- I beat Metroid Prime 3. Its end boss was a lot easier than the bosses from Metroid Prime 1 and 2, but I think that's because of the flawless Wii controls then any toning down of the difficulty on the part of Retro. I can't emphasize how good the controls on MP3 are. You can strafe, run, jump, dodge and shoot at the same time so effortlessly. One of the staples of Metroid bosses is attacks that come from every direction, but when this game filled up the screen with missiles, I was able to run back and shoot them all down while still jumping over the beam cannon shot. I couldn't do that with any control set.

- Speaking of Metroid 3: Phazon will soon consume us all. All hail Dark Samus!

- Ever since I discovered this site, I've been constantly tempted by the prospect of easily accessible anime fansubs. I've always been able to get whatever anime I want, of course, but now it's gathered together in one convenient place. You're all probably aware by now of my Darker than Black fixation, but there are like a hundred other animes on there, all nicely laid out. If some Japanese lawyer doesn't take them down soon, I'll probably end up as a full blown Otaku, which as you know is a fate worst than death.

One such anime I tried was the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya... let me talk about that for a moment:

I'd heard of it through Kotaku and random videos on Youtube and downloaded it on a whim. I haven't ever watched an anime comedy before and really didn't know what to expect, other than some bizarre combination of overblown expressions, hypersexuality and childishness that are the mainstays of anime comedy. Fortunately, however, it has almost none of the first and not an overwhelming amount of the next two.

The premise of the show, as I've told many of you individually, is that the eponymous Haruhi, a high school girl, has the power to alter reality but doesn't know it. So if she gets angry or bored, the world as we know it will be destroyed and recreated from scratch into something she finds more interesting. So the plot is about her essentially trying to get the most out of life. Alien superintelligences, espers and time travellers are also involved. It's not just a comedy either, mind you, but rather has some serious/semi-serious bits.

It's a clever show, I think. The first thing to know about it is that the episodes are aired out of chronological order. It goes something like: 12, 1, 2, 7, 3, 10 etc. That made it really interesting, though also disorienting. The show is narrated by the lead male character, Kyon, and it really lives and dies by that narration. Kyon is basically the straight man. His job is to react to all the things the bizarre things the other characters do. When his reactions are human and natural, the show is hilarious. When he starts getting annoying/whiny and acting stupid himself, the show bites. Generally, I think it does succeed though.

It also gets a lot of mileage out of parody of other animes. Here's a clip of it that I uploaded that has a go at things like Gundam. And gamers too.

- Next story will probably be out next week. Hopefully. Remember though, I do have school now.

The Price of Mercy

2007-09-01T18:56:00.000-04:00

Here I am again with this week's offering (the story posted on Monday was technically last week's). It's entitled The Price of Mercy. Nice dramatic title. This one took a lot of editing to really make it flow. What's great about writing these short stories is that I'm really learning the value of good editing and of reasonably concise writing. I'm mainly curious if people like this or the Debtors more. The stories are somewhat similar, but they're told from different points of view (1st vs. 3rd person narration) and I want to know what works better for this style of story.

I like this world. I'm not sure where I'm going with the last three stories, but I think the place I'm heading might be kind of cool.

Special thanks to this site for this week's story. Bloody useful thing there.

Other matters:

- I think the fact that there is a story this week is a testament to how serious I am about this Read-A-Week thing. Cause let me tell you: Metroid Prime 3 is just thirty types of awesome. Seriously, I've never had so much fun playing a shooter before. Well done, Retro. Now release the damn soundtrack so I can pirate it.

- Jacob's off to law school. I'm still hoping that he'll return as Phoenix Wright.

- Hilarious.

- A poll of my friends has revealed that I'm apparently the only person that actually likes Tay Zonday. Everyone else is apparently just making fun of him. Oh well.

- From now on, all story posts will have the actual title of the story in the blog post title, rather than a random quote.

Until next week...

The Curse of Life

2007-08-27T17:00:00.000-04:00

So, this is the first officially late Read-A-Week. Sorry. This story morphed from one thing to the other to the other. I was honestly thinking about scrapping it all together, but I toughed through it and finally found an idea that made everything work somehow. I've edited it a lot and I think it's more or less in a form that I can take some pride in.

The title of the story is 'The Curse of Life'. That sounds kind of emo, but don't worry, it isn't. It can be read alone, but I would recommend reading last week's story before this one. The genre is a bit odd. The closest I guess would be romance. I think it turned out pretty well and so I can at least give it my endorsement. But please, by all means, let me know what you think.

Other matters:

- Metroid Prime 3 comes out tomorrow. That will be all kinds of awesome. I've got mine pre-ordered and have in the past two months grabbed used copies of the first two games to play. Honestly, I can hardly wait. It's going to ROCK.

- Jacob was at PAX. Jacob did not deserve to go to PAX. But Jacob was nonetheless at PAX. I look forward to hearing his stories. Next year maybe I'll go, dressed like this.

- It'd be nice if more people were reading these stories, but oh well.

- I met up with Shirley Sum the other day. That name should be familiar to some of you. It's amazing how she's the exact same person she was four years ago. I'd like to say that I myself have at least evolved a bit. Apparently the reason she wanted to meet me is because I've dropped off the high school gossip radar.

Anyhow, until next week...

The Debtors

2007-08-16T15:28:00.001-04:00

Just when you thought I wouldn't be able to keep up the 'Read-A-Week' deal going, here I am coming at you with another story. Yeah, that's right. I rock this world.

It took me a while to come up with the idea of this week's story. It occurs to me that I'm not going to be able to keep up this Read-A-Week deal for very long if I need a shiny new idea every time. Coming up with brand new ideas for characters and world every week is no small task. A solution is to have something that I can return to whenever I feel inclined. The result is that this week's story isn't quite as self-contained as the last two offerings have been. There are elements to it that are hinted at but not fully explored. The reason for this is because I want to write within this world and probably with these characters again.

I'm not afraid to say that I sort of like this story. It's nine pages long. I'd be lying if I said it isn't pretty influenced by an anime I'm watching right now called Darker Than Black, at least in terms of tone, but I think this is still very much my own. Anyhow, it's called the Debtors. Let me know what you think.

Other matters:

- Darker Than Black is a spectacular anime. The word I would use to describe it is 'Bebop-ish'. Not to say that plot or character wise it's like Bebop, but it's at that same fantastic level. The episodes are (so far) all two-parters that generally tell independent stories, though there is an overarching plot. The story is extremely well done and will surprise you. An unexpected death here, a small tragedy there... it's called Darker than Black for a reason, let me say. The series is not without its sense of humour though. They spend a fair bit of time making fun of anime fans and breaking the fourth wall even. It's awesome.

Oh and Yoko Kanno soundtrack. Yoko Kanno's songs are just things that you want to listen to over and over. She is amazing. But in any case, you really should be watching Darker Than Black. You embarass yourself by not doing so.

- Next week's story will be entitled: "Cold as Ice: The Russo-Canadian War". Yeah, I know, but I'm going to try to make that something other than a disaster.

- Recently Scott Kurtz is actually writing good comics for once. Nice one Kurtz.

- I saw Hot Fuzz yesterday. Funny, if bizarre, movie. Worth a watch though.

Mourning the Dead

2007-08-06T15:46:00.000-04:00

So I'm announcing a new project.

Jonathan Coulton, a name you all should be familiar with, once did a thing he called 'Thing-A-Week'. Basically, every week for an entire year (I don't know if he managed to do it every single week) he'd come up with and release a song. Drawing inspiration from this, I hereby announce Read-A-Week, which will hopefully see me trying to write something up to be released on this website once every week. They might not always be short stories, but then again they probably will be. Considering that classes resume for me in about a month, I probably won't be able to keep that up, but I intend to go into this with the best of intentions.

This week's offering is called Mourning the Dead. The title doesn't really fit the contents. It started with me thinking of the name 'Brooke' and then going from there. I think it turned out okay, but fell short of my initial vision. Oh well.

I'm already nervous about this Read-A-Week thing. There's no way I can keep that up. Damn it.
Other matters:

- I forgot to recommend Eureka 7 as an anime. It's a pretty good one. Plus you can download all of it easy right here.

- I'm maintaining a 40k fluff blog based on my ongoing campaign against the hateful forces of Franco. Such things are dangerously close to the hated realm of fan fiction, but I find it fun to write things like this.

- I bought used copies of Metroid Prime 1/2 to play on my Wii. They're really fun, though I feel bad for the Space Pirates that you always have to shoot. The poor guys never get a break. I wish I could open a dialogue with them and negotiate a peaceful settlement.

- I think a Warcraft movie is a stupid idea.

That's all for now. Talk to you all soon.

"Magic is Might."

2007-07-30T03:20:00.000-04:00

Let's go for the quick update.

#1: I wrote a thing the other night. I had this idea that I couldn't get out of my head, so I wrote it down just to shut it up already. I don't want to spend too much time editing it, as it's just a 'thing'. I've been looking at some Deviant Arts lately and a lot of things artists do are 'speed paints'. So consider this a 'speed write'.

I couldn't think of a title, but here it is. Read it if you feel like it.

As an aside, Rol speaks:

Naelok - "Minister: All is Well." (It's over - HP7: DH) says (3:20 AM):
I wrote a short story last night, with a char named Roland Davies and I tried to make him like you, but there wasn't time
Rob says (3:21 AM):
haha
Rob says (3:21 AM):
sad
Naelok - "Minister: All is Well." (It's over - HP7: DH) says (3:22 AM):
you should be saying 'WOW I AM HONOURED'
Rob says (3:23 AM):
cant really say im honored cause it was to be expected/deserved

Rol is awesome sometimes.

#2: I saw the Simpsons movie. One word review: Meh.

#3: We'll have to discuss HP7 more in the future, but for now let us go through some links.

Here are some bits about the epilogue... I personally can't imagine Luna and Neville together, but I guess it could work. Somehow. They wouldn't see much of each other by the sound of things, as Luna would be travelling the world making spectacular discoveries while Neville's at Hogwarts. Though I guess when you can Apparate such things don't matter quite as much.

Here's another interview which contains a bit more good parts, but which has an annoying format (actor quotes thrown in the middle, wtf).

Finally, the dire news:

In a new interview with Rotten Tomatoes, Prisoner of Azkaban director Alfonso Cuaron says that he would be "very tempted" to direct Deathly Hallows.

Fuck. I'm wondering if there's any way to stop this from happening. I'm open to suggestions here. Perhaps a fan petition? Or murder? I wouldn't mind doing some murder if it meant saving movie 7 from Cuaron. But seriously, can you think of a greater disaster then Cuaron on HP7? Because I can't.

Anyhow, that's it for now. Later.

The End

2007-07-21T15:18:00.000-04:00

So if you haven't read Deathly Hallows, then you've got no business reading this blog or being on the internet.

But anyhow... It all came to an end.

I don't very well know where to begin with this, so let's start with how I got my book. Me and Jacob went to Book City, as we have done for the last three books, for the midnight release. Sidrah was there too. We were all nervous, having avoided spoilers from various assholes on the internet over the past week. Fortunately, we were second in line to get the book, with the first person in line being a sweet old man that made good conversation (Book City gave us all manner of swag, by the way, from stickers to bookmarks to posters. Great store). The line stretched all the way to the door of the store and out to the street. We got our books at maybe 11:58 (omg sue Book City!) I had borrowed an iPod to block out outside noise, just in case there was an asshole in the line ready to yell spoilers, though as I left I couldn't help raising my copy of the book high above my head for all those gathered to see. I could hear the cheers even through the max volume iPod. It seemed appropriate, however, that Falling Down was playing as this was occurring.

I dove into the book as soon as we were in the subway station and the rest of the trip was uneventful. A few people saw us with the book and expressed admiration, saying that theirs weren't coming until the next morning. I didn't really pay much attention to them. We got home at about 12:30 and I went straight to my room. I finished the book nine hours later.

So. Let's talk about the book then.

The Harry Potter books have always followed one pattern... as the books progress and Harry gets older, they become darker. Book 2 had a greater form of evil in it than 1, while 3 exceeded 2 and so on. But man, I was not prepared for or expecting the huge leap in maturity between book 6 and 7. Book 7 is amazingly bereft of anything light-hearted. In many ways, I think this may have been the darkest book I've ever read. And let me say, I can't even imagine a 12 year old reading this book.

No one thought that things would go this way. Reading editorials on Mugglenet and such, I know that up to the very end people were wondering if Harry would be Headboy or if he'd get good NEWTs. I myself was absolutely sure he wouldn't go back to school until his task was complete, but even I did not expect the book to take this form. I thought that Harry would be on an epic quest, sure, but I did not think Voldemort would stage a successful coup in the first few chapters and start running the government. The atmosphere of ever-increasing desperation and helplessness throughout the entire book is just suffocating. Up until the very end, you don't get any relief. There are occasional pangs of hope here and there, but they are nothing compared to that curtain of despair that you get from the Death Eater government.

The weight of what's lost is also just unbelievable. When Hedwig died, I sat there with my jaw open. The pet owl isn't something you expect to be attacked in such a way and to see her go like that was just something else. Mad-Eye Moody too was a shock. You don't expect someone that tough and hardened to be killable. And that's just the opening. The deaths of Dobby, Lupin, Tonks, Colin Creevy and Fred just hit the same note. It wasn't the usual movie-style dramatic deaths... you feel them all. You feel what they leave behind them. Dobby's in particular got me. Who would have thought that the annoying little critter from book 2 would reach such heights and then fall? But damn, that scene where Harry digs his grave... that was bloody intense.

The way the plot progressed was just masterful, I think. Her best work. It was written very tightly, with no reprieves. I thought that we'd have at least one fun-happy chapter in this book, with the wedding of Fleur and Bill. I was pretty damn wrong. There's nothing superfluous in this book. I can see now why Book 6 was so romance-happy now. The light sides of Book 6 were really a counter-weight to what happened here. There are no cutesy awkward 'teen' moments in this book. Gone are the fleeting moments of mental relief that you got from chapters like the Yule Ball or a date with Cho. It's all one continuous journey, with no side-shows. It also literally wrapped everything up. I can't think of any plot loose ends... except for how the sword went from Griphook to the hat. Maybe it always comes out of there when called? I'm not sure.

I thought that the way the characters developed was quite amazing. I doubt anyone would have even allowed the idea of Ron deserting Harry again to even be discussed. I certainly didn't see it coming. Him doing that was, I think, the most desperate and agonizing part of the book... and the resulting scene with him shattering the locket was just horrifying. I wasn't sure if he could beat that thing. For a moment, I thought he was going to turn.

One of Hermione's bits just made me shiver... when she revealed that she had modified her parents memory and made them forget her and move to Australia. That was... geez. I couldn't very well believe it. The absolute horror of her torture scene, however was quite nearly too much to bear. She needed skele-gro afterward. Bloody horrifying. No two ways about that. The way she was unwavering in the face of everything was just... I have no words for it. Hermione remains my favourite character, moreso now then ever.

Harry, I thought, was everything you could hope for. When he faced down Voldemort, I could not think of a more satisfying victory. I'm glad Ginny wasn't played up as his motivation. She was obviously always in mind, but never the driving force. It's the quiet purity of Harry's motivations that really set him apart. Elements of revenge and the need to guard what's his are always there, but it's all overshadowed by a selfless desire to do what he knows he has to try to do. You can rarely get a character that's so human while also being so good.

The other characters got really masterful treatment... I especially liked Neville's role as the guerilla-commando-freedom-fighter. I was a bit sorry that Molly got to take out Bellatrix, rather than Neville, but he got the last Horcrux so that all works. Luna and her father were just too sad. Especially Luna's room, with the painted pictures of everyone. Kingsley was, of course, as awesome as always. No one got a short stick in this book. Even Oliver Wood got to come out one last time. Simply amazing.

There's the matter of Snape and the Harry Horcrux...

Frad and I debated both these issues back and forth for months before the release. Frad actually managed to convince me of Snape's true allegiance being to good a while back, when he presented the idea that Dumbledore was already dying due to his encounter with the Ring Horcrux and that Dumbledore had had Snape kill him because he knew that he was going to die anyway and that dying at Snape's hands would serve a greater purpose. I'm glad that turned out to be right.

I still don't think Snape is redeemed as a character. There was too much petty dickishness in the guy. As I've always said, there's no excuse for a teacher to pick on an 11 year old because he looks like his father. Snape may have been good, but he was also an asshole.

We also debated the Harry is a Horcrux deal. From the beginning, I'd been averse to that. Every time I heard the theory, it would remove one of the other Horcruxes from the list, which made absolutely no sense. You don't just make one of the objects say 'Oops, sorry Harry, our Horcrux is in another castle. And by castle I mean your head'. By making it an extra Horcrux though, that problem was thankfully resolved. It also implied Harry had to die, which I'm glad wasn't the case. I don't think a dead Harry would have yielded a good story. The way things rolled worked quite well though. I'm glad.

Oh, and my Grindewald theory was apparently completely wrong. Whoops.

The epilogue lacked one detail I really would have liked to here... what did everyone end up doing with their lives? Sure, the mains got married and made a lot of babies. Cool. But what were their careers? Did Harry become an Auror or an international Quidditch star or what? And what about everyone else? You only find out that Neville is a Prof now. If I have one complaint about the books, it's that those little details was omitted from the epilogue.

Oh, and also: We find out a lot about Dumbledore's life... it strikes me as odd that you never hear about a wife or anything like that. He obviously doesn't have any kids, but still... it seems odd. Maybe he didn't trust himself to start a family after what happened to his sister.

But yeah, so that's that. What an incredible journey these books have been. I'm not sure what JK Rowling will write next, but she has left herself with an incredible standard. I hope she does something else. She's the greatest author living, after all.

I'll probably have more to say of this later on. Let me all know what you think of the book when you finish though.

"You will lose... everything."

2007-07-11T23:44:00.000-04:00

Let's take a break from the grim political happenings in my motherland and talk about Harry Potter 5.

In a nutshell: It's the best Harry Potter film to date. Film 1 and 2 were good. Film 3 was an abomination and inflicted horrific damage on the integrity of the films. Film 4 was a decent attempt, but was bogged down with lame teen romance and half-hearted action scenes. Film 5 isn't the straight-translation of the books that 1 and 2 are, but it nonetheless hits the nail on the head. What I think was the key was that this director was a Harry Potter fan. Not like one of these hacks that jumps onto the show for money and for the opportunity to write their name in piss over something labelled 'Harry Potter'. I think you know who I'm talking when I say that much.

The events of the movie aren't 1:1 with the book. Some things happen in a different sequence and certain characters get lines that belong to other characters (Sirius gives Harry the picture of the original Order of the Phoenix and such). But the key is that it all flows together in a very nice and coherent way. Starting with movie 3, HP movies became a series of random scenes from the book being acted out with huge gaps left in the plot ("Marauders? Who are they?"). With this though the plot was tight. They didn't have St. Mungo's, but other than that, I can honestly not think of an essential plot element that they just left out. Or well... maybe one. But it's not that big a deal.

The characters were spot-on too. What I was especially pleased with was Hermione. Starting with movie 3, Hermione got turned into a bit of a ditz. This is a consequence of certain directors wanting to cast Emma Watson as Emma Watson, rather than as Hermione. Now you've got a Hermione that's a lot more Hermione-like. The sort of Hermione that raises objection in classes and is actually smart. Ron was better too. Ron often gets side-lined in the previous films, but now he's in his proper place as Harry's best friend, honest advisor and confidant. Not just 'Comic Relief Man'. And let me say that the romantic tension between them was actually done well for once. I found myself thinking: "Wow, there can be a Ron and Hermione romance bit that doesn't make me want to die. Who'd have thought it?" Not that that's emphasized at all, mind you. This director isn't like that.

For Harry... I had one real fear about this movie when going in. I was afraid they were going to make Harry emo. That would have been so fucking bad. I'm happy to report that they did not. Harry is angry, but it's justified emotion, not generic whining. Breathe a sigh of relief. Radcliffe has improved demonstrably as well, though I think his reaction when Sirius dies might have been better.

A few other characters stood out... Umbridge is appropriately fascist. Hitler dressed in pink. I've always thought that Umbridge is one of the most hideous creatures in the series, mainly for just how real she is. A rosy exterior with a fucking daemon hidden beneath. I clenched my fist during several of her scenes. Fudge was good too, but obviously he had fewer scenes. No one could oppose the ultimate badass, Lucius Malfoy however. Man, I hope Lucius busts out of Azkaban in book 7. That actor is amazingly menacing.

Sirius was also nicely done. They played him up, which is only proper.

I think the real show stealer was Luna Lovegood though. None of the other actors or actresses manage to correspond so closely to my mental image of the book character. Her voice, her body language and her... hell, her everything... was just perfect for Luna. I'm not exaggerating this. The actress is called Evanna Lynch and, by what I read on Mugglenet, she's quite the fan herself. I glanced at her Wikipedia page right now and come across: '... Lynch [for book 5's release] was dressed in a Harry Potter T-shirt and had scrawled "I love Harry Potter" down her arms. She had also painted her fingernails blue with "Harry Potter" written on every second nail and the Golden Snitch on every other one, as well as sporting painted-on black Harry Potter glasses.' Wow, geez. That's hardcore.

I didn't really like their Cho though. I don't like book-Cho either, but I figure she has two functions. 1) To be Pretty and 2) To cry a lot. The actress that does Cho wasn't much of either.

I really liked how they got the plot across as they went. Everything from fascist posters of Fudge to headlines in the Daily Prophet (Minister: "All is Well"). It's amazing how much story they got through with just those headlines. The Dumbledore's Army scenes were really quite amazing.

One thing I didn't like was the way some of the battle magic was. Apparation is a teleport, not a super-speed spell. But it isn't nearly as bad as some previous offences (See: Movie 3). They did Voldemort vs. Dumbledore great though. A truly titanic duel, that was. Oh, oh! That's one thing they did a lot better. Voldemort! In Movie 4 he was just a generic boogy-man. In this he was the fucking monster he is meant to be. Funny what a bit of good direction and better costuming can do.

This director, David Yates, is signed on for Movie 6 too. I hope to God that he stays on for Movie 7. Finally we have a man who's creative, but respectful. A man who clearly loves these books. I pray that he stays on.

But for now, go watch this. Now. Seriously. This is the first good Harry Potter film in many years. It should be met with even more overwhelming financial success than usual.

Lal Masjid

2007-07-05T14:45:00.000-04:00

So if you've been watching or reading the news lately, you've probably heard something about Lal Masjid or Red Mosque. If you haven't, then you probably aren't going to start caring about the matter now, but here's a link anyhow.

Last Thursday, the day before I came back, I was actually in Lal Masjid.

I'm sorry about the blur in my photographs. It was pouring rain that day and it's really hard to take a photograph of something when you're drenched. In any case, Lal Masjid is touted as being your standard radical militant madrassa, with standard radicals that go around doing wacky things to people. You'll notice the sandbag emplacement on top of the walls. They don't really hurt anyone, but they do go around kidnapping people engaged in immoral acts, such as running a brothel or whatnot.

The twist, however, is that Lal Masjid is heavily connected to the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's secret service). This will sound like a conspiracy theory, but the purpose of Lal Masjid is to give Musharaff a means by which he can scare his Western allies on demand and distract their attention from his conflict with the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the Opposition. I did not believe this idea when I first saw it in a Pakistani English newspaper, but as I spent time there it became clear. Whenever the Chief Justice held a large rally or was doing anything that attracted a lot of media attention, Lal Masjid would pull a stunt and kidnap someone (for a few hours). Lal Masjid was essentially being used as a device by which the Pakistani dictator could say to his Western allies that he depends on: "Hey, I may be bad, but look at who will take over if I'm gone!!"

Now, with this 'crackdown' you have Musharaff essentially playing the Lal Masjid card for all it's worth. It had lately been a liability, you see, for people were starting to wonder: "Hey, why do you have this crap going on in your capital for so long?" So now you have a bloody and protracted siege, with nineteen dead at last count.

(Sorry again for the blur)

But here's the thing: Come with me to Islamabad, give me a boost and I can get over those walls no problem. Lal Masjid is not a formidable fortress. It's just a Mosque. In spite of a couple of sandbags here and there, there's really nothing that's going to slow down an army as sophisticated as Pakistan's. Non-lethal force could easily have been used. But Musharaff, I think, wanted things to be bloody. By making things bloody, he gets himself a nice 'terrorist bodycount' (always popular with Washington) and underscores to his allies that he needs their support against the radical menace. No one's going to ask him questions about his actions against the Chief Justice and the Opposition when he's in the midst of the War on Terror, after all.

What's interesting about Lal Masjid is that it's actually a madrassa for women. Its male counterpart is across town. The average student in Lal Masjid believes in the application of a strict Shariah. But their leadership is compromised and corrupt. They are, in essence, pawns in Musharaff's little game.

These students are also civilians with no military training. Sure, they are dedicated to their cause and the preservation of their Mosque from military takeover. But they don't know anything about fighting. And yet, no one mentions that Musharaff is enacting a heavy-handed crackdown against his own people anywhere. It's funny how the word 'militant' can cloud things over.

You will, of course, have heard about the cache of weapons Lal Masjid boasts. You'd think they were armed to the teeth. This picture above was the last picture I was allowed to take of Lal Masjid (for obvious reasons, they did not want people photographing the inside complex), but my father and I did go in. Inside we found fairly normal, if tense, people. They were mostly from Northwest Frontier province. But the essential point: No one was openly armed... not even the gate guards. Musharaff has said that every single person there is a would-be suicide bomber. That just isn't a case. What I saw in there were a lot of nervous-looking young men.

Here's a shot of ISI headquarters, by the by. It's maybe two or three blocks from Lal Masjid. Before Lal Masjid started up with the radicalism, it was known in the city as 'the ISI Mosque'

Here's another shot. See that guy in the window? He yelled 'Hey, don't take pictures!' in urdu as I was doing this. I said 'okay!' after snapping this one and walked off. GG.

So yeah, that's the story of Lal Masjid. Let me know if you have any questions about the place.

"I have returned."

2007-07-02T01:07:00.000-04:00

So I should probably update this.

I returned to Canada at about noon on June 29th. The trip was long, but ultimately a positive experience. I will likely return there one day, though not in the immediate future and next time I won't go just by myself.

I have absolutely no inclination to provide a detailed written account of the experience. A lot of what happened occurred at an intensely personal level and I'm not about to share all of that with whoever happens to drift into this blog. Still more of what happened is beyond description. And besides, I've come to the conclusion that I really am a bit too open a person. I've good friends who I can tell almost anything to, but that sort of thing shouldn't expand to anyone that walks into this blog. So from now on I'm going to make this thing a bit less personal.

It was a good trip. I saw things from a perspective that I never would have otherwise imagined, took in some incredibly intense landscape and learned of the history and culture that I ultimately stem from. There were ups and downs... the downs mainly revolving around things like frogs and cockroaches, which I still have a pronounced phobia of. My health held out though and I learned much.

Let me tell you a bit about the politics there:

It's unimaginably frustrating to live in a country where one's leaders are puppets to another government. Musharaff has no credibility amongst the Pakistani people. If any of you have glanced at Pakistani news as of late, you'll likely know of the Chief Justice scandal (If you haven't glanced at said news, then I'm not going to brief you, as you obviously don't care about this). But, no matter how reprehensible Musharaff's bids to stay in power are, that didn't strike me as much as how damn tame an American slave he is.

Let's compare...

If one looks at American puppet rulers, Hamid Karzai is probably the most dependent of the lot. If American forces were removed from Afghanistan, he'd be assassinated within five minutes. However, in spite of Karzai's utter dependence, he'll still at least bloody say something when Americans fuck up and kill innocent people. But when Nato kills civilians in Baluchistan, does Musharaff say a damn thing? Hell no. It's pathetic.

The speculation before I left was that Musharaff was on his way out of power. That isn't a certainty. There's an election this Fall (supposedly) which will decide this. I think the ideal solution for the nation would be to elect Imran Khan. Imran Khan is a Warrior-Thinker with fresh ideas about social welfare that has a lot more affinity for the common man than any of the other politicals. But unfortunately, it's more likely right now that bloody Benazir Bhutto will get into power, which would be a complete disaster (Bhutto, one of the most blatantly corrupt heads of state in modern history, is best remembered for giving 20% of all government contracts to her husband, who is nicknamed Mr. Twenty Percent)

Before Musharaff came, Bhutto alternated with Nazar Sharif (the corrupt ex-PM that Musharaff overthrew, though not quite as blatantly corrupt as Bhutto) for a dozen years. I really wish those two would just die violently. Pakistan needs new political blood.

Anyhow, so that's a window into life over there...

Most of you will have seen my Facebook pictures by now. I'll add more to those soon and then make a post here with compiled links to all the albums. Stay tuned for that.

Not many of you read my story while I was gone. I'll have to start campaigning for that again soon.

"Sionara."

2007-05-17T07:03:00.000-04:00

Complete.

This is the sequel to Les Filles Du Roi that was asked for...

Here's my preamble to the story... if you aren't interested in my preamble, scroll to the bottom of this post for the download link.

When I decided to go with the sequel, my main goal was to not tell the original story again with new bad guys and such. I wanted to do something completely different. I think I managed to do that, at the very least. This story does not take place on Mars, but rather takes place on Europa. There are no little girls either (sorry to all the little girl fans - I know that they were very popular and well-liked, particularly Allison)

The next goal was to stay true to the spirit of the first story... I don't know if this bit happened. I tried, but the 'fun' aspect of the story isn't there in quite the same way. It's more 'serious', I guess. Serious doesn't always mean better, I know, but that's the way this story rolls.

Is it good? I personally like it... like it a lot, even. But I've absolutely no idea how anyone else will react to this. I can certainly see a large portion of you saying that you liked Les Filles du Roi more, and that's perfectly cool with me...

Finally: Will there be more? Maybe. If you all hate it, then probably not though. Also, if I die, I won't be able to write any more.

The name of the story is The Lost Ones. I hope you like it.

Oh, and there's a normal blog entry beneath this one, in case you're interested in that sort of thing.

"Revenge won't give rise to anything."

2007-05-17T01:06:00.000-04:00

So I'm leaving in 36 hours. Going to keep things brief in this entry.

The last two weeks have been surprisingly... uhh... uneventful. I would have thought that my leaving for two months (let alone possibly being engulfed in flame) would get some of my friends to set aside an hour or two to sit and have a chat, but I guess not. Oh well.

There have been a few highlights though. Franco and I have patched up our 40k-related differences and had a game of that last Sunday. I lost... Horribly. But it was a fair loss and a civil game. I hope to perhaps resume our 40k campaign when I return, with a few reforms to prevent all the usual personality clashes. That should be good stuff. Jacob, on the other hand, has lent me three books for my journey, which will no doubt be quite useful.

I also watched the anime Trinity Blood on the recommendation of Fradener. It was one of the best things I've ever watched. The premise for those that I haven't already told it to:

1) Post-Armageddon
2) The Vatican and Vampires
3) Old/New Technology from before the Armageddon

It was superb. Ending left one with a bit of a: "Wait... that's it?" feeling, but other than that it's really nice.

So. My flight is going to be around 18 hours long, followed by a two and a half hour drive from the airport. I've been told that the next morning I'm going to be going to some kind of seminar in a city I've never heard of. Why I'm going to a seminar I don't know. And after that, it's supposed to be a mountain. I don't think I'm going to be in any condition to go to a seminar or a mountain following my arrival. I guess you can put this stuff down to fatherly enthusiasm. It's going to be a lot of travelling and exhaustion.

I am divided about something... I have three precious possessions. Or well, four if you include my cat, but she isn't a possession but is rather my best friend. So my three precious possessions are: My computer, my Wii and my DS Lite. The computer is a desktop and isn't going anywhere. The same goes for the Wii... I was thinking of letting Franco borrow it, but then I came to my fucking senses. Then there's my DS Lite... portable and sexy, the thing can accompany me to the gates of hell itself.

But since it's so small it's also very easy to get it stolen. Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand... I don't care, I'm still free, you can't take my DS from me. My sister had an expensive camera stolen from her when she was over there, though my sister has a knack for getting things stolen. It would be a real boon to have my DS Lite with me, but I would hate to have it stolen.

What's reassuring is that my father at least has a computer with a (slow) internet connection. Two months without gaming would make me anxious to the point of insanity, but we are fortunately living in the era of ZSNES and VGBA. I've been told to play that Demon Crest game a bunch of times, so maybe if I'm in a position to game over there I'll be able to do that.

I've been working on a story, but it isn't good and it also isn't done. I can probably finish it tonight if I give it my all though. So I'm going to go give it my all.

I leave Friday afternoon. If you want to talk before then, give me a call or MSN me. You know I'd do it for you.

"Ah, I will miss this banter once you are dead."

2007-05-05T04:11:00.000-04:00

Exams are done. They went okay. But who really cares about that? I certainly know that I don't.

I saw Spider Man 3 today. I realize that most of you are going to be wanting to see this for yourself (and well you should) and thus avoiding spoilers, so I'll keep my impressions brief and general...

It was a good movie, but not as good as the first two. If you've seen any trailers or even commercials, you can probably guess why... Spider Man 1 had the Green Goblin... Spider Man 2 had Doctor Octopus... Spidey 3 though had the Harry Goblin, Sandman and Venom. That's quite a lot of Big Bads to fit into one movie. The natural consequence is that the individual antagonists aren't as well-developed as Norman or Doc Ock were. Which is a shame... Venom has always been my favourite Spider Man bad guy.

Another consequence of that is the plot isn't nearly as tight and seems to jump around a lot. Three different bad guys with three different motivations for their acts of assholery is a lot of backstory to cover.

The good outweighs the bad though. Great fight scenes, a nice (though often eye-roll-inducing) romance, excellent humour (one part is just amazingly funny) and its not like the plot treads into X-Men 3 territory (though I sorta liked X-Men 3 anyway). I just really wish they'd picked one bad guy (preferably Venom) and made a movie of just him, rather than trying to do so much at once. Then the movie could have been a lot better. But oh well, it's good stuff nonetheless, just don't expect anything as spectacular as 1 or 2.

Moving on... in two weeks time I'll be in Pakistan. Once again, I cannot adequately explain how much anxiety that I feel over this. Why, you ask? Well, the reasons for that are varied...

The most obvious source of this can be found no further than the local headlines. I'm not going into a warzone, but there have been attacks throughout the last few months and I'm pretty much guaranteed to have a few big booms while I'm there. Am I going to be caught in an explosion? Inshallah, no, that is quite unlikely. A dozen people being killed every month in a city of thousands gives me pretty good odds, but if such is my fate, then so be it. But am I going to witness human death? There's a fair chance... I confess that that sort of unnerves me. Perhaps that makes me a coward. I'm not so sure.

The other source are the experiences of my childhood. There is an unfortunate incident in my family history that took place in Pakistan that, upon reflection, certainly contributed to a lot of my peculiarities. I was very sick, more sick than I've ever been (and I had Pnemonia just a few months ago), vomiting all the time and generally constantly terrified. I'm not sure if I was actually going to die... I was only about 6 or 7 at the time. But I vividly remember the experience. Am I going to get sick again? Who knows. I'm certainly going to boil my bloody water this time around though.

(It may interest you to note that the time when video games went from being 'just fun' to being an integral part of my personality was during those terrible weeks. With no one really around for me, I really survived by diving into my Super Nintendo. The games I played there were Mario, Zelda and Mega Man. Strange how those sorts of things affect you into adulthood. As many of you know, there has yet to be a Zelda or Mega Man game that I can truly resist... except for that Battle Network thing. I was never into that.)

This next bit might sound silly, but another thing I picked up in my last trip there was a rather acute phobia of bugs, most particularly Cockroaches. In Pakistan, there are Cockroaches as big as your fist. I'm not exaggerating here... indeed, these things aren't Cockroaches... they're part of a Tyranid advance force, sent to Earth to prepare the way for eventual invasion by the Hive Mind. I think they can even fly.

I'm also really going to miss my cat.

So yeah... there's the gist of my anxieties over this trip. Am I going to die on this trip? Well, probably not. This isn't Baghdad, it's Peshawar. But what I am doing is going to the one part of the world that I am genuinely afraid of. But I know that the faithful man only fears God, so I'm going anyway. It may be that I'll return as a shell of a man... it may also be that my fears are wholly justified. Either way, the fear will be somehow faced. What comes out on the other end is yet to be seen.

It's not all doom and gloom, mind you. I imagine I'll see and do things over there that are interesting. I'll presumably have a camera, which will result in images being posted here and maybe on Facebook. I imagine a souvenir or two may be somehow procured. You never know what might happen, after all.

Before we conclude, let's briefly touch on a few other matters.

1) I rented, played and beat Paper Mario. That was a great game. I don't play my Wii every day, but it's still given me the highest quality gaming experiences I've had in years. I thus propose a toast to Nintendo... the maker of greatness.

2) I'm working on that Sequel that you all seem to want. Hopefully I'll be done before I leave.

3) If any of you want to change your minds and lend me an iPod for my trip, I'd really appreciate that. None of you will though. Fuckers.

4) Order of the Stick really is a fantastic webcomic.

5) Prince of Persia was out of Blockbuster. I wanted to rent that. Curses upon this world.

Anyhow, I will wrap up there. Hope you all are doing well.

"So says the slave to the free man."

2007-04-23T21:14:00.000-04:00

So where to begin this week?

I'm in the middle of my exam period and haven't been able to get up to much else. Today I had one exam and it actually went okay, contrary to my expectations. People that say you can't do well on an exam by cramming the night before while arguing with a stupid jackass about 40k balance are... well, apparently, they're wrong. In any case, my next exam is this Wednesday, then I have a week before my last two on May 3rd. Then there is that painful spectre lurking shortly after ward, which I will confront.

Before we do that, let's touch on a few Harry Potter-related issues.

Firstly, remember this essay that I wrote? The one about Voldemort and the Second World War? That is one awesome essay, if I do say so. The reason I bring it up is because while looking around on Google last week I noticed that some chick from Australia who was doing an English Ph.D used my essay as a resource and cited me.

Key quotes:

According to a popularly accepted timeline, Tom Riddle may well have formed his desire to destroy 'impurities' in the wizarding world at roughly the same time as Hitler was maturing his plan for the 'great and proper task' of the annihilation of the Slavic people through the Eastern Front (Ahmad, 2004).

And from her Bibliography:

Ahmad, F. M. (2004). The early life of Tom Riddle and the Second World, Harry Potter lexicon Retrieved August 7, 2005, from http://hplexicon.org/essays/essay-voldemort-childhood.html.

That is badass. And it's not like she was just some lazy academic whoring out Lexicon essays to do her thesis... no, my essay was the only fan-written resource she used. Everything else was strictly academic or journalistic. That is badass, if you ask me... not every day that some thing you pieced together while bored in first year University gets included into someone's Ph.D thesis.

The next Harry Potter to touch upon is the Order of the Phoenix trailer. I am a movie-sceptic. Ever since I had the travesty of Movie 3 inflicted upon me, it has been so. Movie 4 was partially-acceptable, but it did not reach my expectations. I am willing to express cautious optimism about Order of the Phoenix, however. I mean... that's a pretty damn good trailer. And plus that Luna actress is amazing.

Also: 88 days.

Other matters...

Robin was in Amsterdam last week. Odd place. I had heard of the term 'Window Prostitution' before, but I'd never known quite what it meant... the answer, according to Robin's account, is apparently that some Dutch hookers sit (or gyrate) behind a window in the redlight district waiting for someone to tap the glass. Then they invite the guy in and draw back the curtains. That's err... interesting. She mentioned that some creep grabbed her bike and was like 'come with me'. That shit is sketchy.

Running that 40k campaign is reminding of just how much bile and hate will be spawned if one does anything with Franco. Nothing can be agreed upon. Every single little thing has to be debated and contested. I'm thinking the campaign may end in him dead on the ground and me with blood on my hands. But we shall see. I lost the first game, but that was because I was running a crippled stupid list. I don't really think I can win much with the Guard... at a basic level, I just don't like playing with them. But who knows? At least I get to play Orks soon.

Edit: Actually, it seems that I can't get a game going without being confronted with brash assholery. Therefore there is no longer a campaign. That other blog deleted. That is all you'll hear of that.

I've been asked why I don't talk more about Pakistan on here. The answer is that... well... I don't want to. Not yet at least. After my exams sure, but there are other things to worry over before then. Just because I may die soon doesn't mean I shouldn't attempt these exams, after all.

Finally, if you aren't reading the Order of the Stick, then you really ought to. Best non-Penny Arcade webcomic on the net right now, in my opinion. Scary Go Round is on a good arch too. I still haven't gotten all the way through that massive archive. One of these days I will though.

Any, with that I shall conclude for the moment. Hope you all are doing okay.

A New Beginning

2007-04-14T01:16:00.000-04:00

A quick update to make up for last fiasco.

I've started another blog. It's not really a blog in the traditional sense though... rather, this blog is going to be tracking a Warhammer 40k campaign I'm going to be running with Franco over the next little while. Most of you probably know Warhammer 40k... for those that don't... err... well... just stop reading here. It's for the best.

Anyhow, I have issues with 40k's storyline ('and then the bold and brave Marines boldly and bravely...'), but I've read some fluff here and there for a few months now and have ended
up with fairly decent knowledge of what's what. So now that me and Franco are going to be running a fluffy campaign, I figure why not go to town with the rp?

So yeah, the campaign is called the Arcadian Incident and I've written up (with some help from Franco) the info for most of the factions/characters that are involved. I still need to do the Elysians, but Franco hasn't come up with them yet. So yeah... if you're interested in 40k stuff, maybe you'll like this. First game will be this Sunday.

"Redeem them with sword and fire!"

2007-04-13T00:04:00.000-04:00

I guess I should probably update this stupid thing.

Not very much has been happening for the past two weeks, I am afraid. I've written essays and I still have to write one more. The last one might actually be interesting... it's on Bubonic Plague in Late Antiquity. Hm, you know, I guess most of you won't find that to be particularly interesting. It's really amazing how my academic habits changes when I have a Professor that I actually respect. My usual process for writing an essay is: "Pick a topic that I like, take out a crapload of books, read and then throw something together'.

My Late Antiquity Prof though is a really intelligent man. I've talked about him before... he's called Barnes and he's really just a giant in his field. It's really amazing to be taught by someone who was an active participant in a fair chunk of the scholarship that you're looking at. So yeah, a good mark from him actually feels like it means something. and so thus I go beyond just cobbling together something that sounds nice but is ultimately without any value. Funny how that works out.

Anyhow, so those were two really boring paragraphs. Let's move on to something marginally better...

My trip is in a month. I really cannot overstate how much anxiety this causes me. I've gathered though that no one likes hearing about that, so I won't bother talking about it here.

Uhh... umm... yeah. Um... exams? Yeah, okay, no.

Oh right, there's the story idea. It involves Europa and a destroyed ship floating around in space. The trick has been to think of a suitable antagonist, but I finally thought of someone that might just fit the bill. So it'll be good. Or well, no it won't. But yeah, I might start writing that soon.

Okay, I'll be honest and conclude that I've nothing of actual value to say. So let's just conclude here and end this fiasco of an entry.

"All sinners fear the Emperor's wrath!"

2007-04-02T06:39:00.000-04:00

This isn't a bad night I don't think.

Or well, I guess if you were to look at things objectively. Have an essay due this Thursday that I haven't started and all that. Also an in-class essay, but that'll be cake. But yeah, I think things are okay right about now. I think we can all assume that things will work out somehow. Maybe that's a rash assumption, but what's anyone going to do about it?

Anyhow... very little to report right about now. I assume you've all seen the Harry Potter 7 covers. I don't really like the UK children cover, which is a first. I've liked all the other UK Children covers. The US cover is actually nice this time, which is also a first. Oh well. I'll be getting the UK children version so as to complete my set, assuming I'm still around at that point. I am pleased to see Ron holding a sword in the UK Cover, by the way, although I hate the expression on his face. I'm thinking that that's Godric's Sword.

My sleep is really messed these days. I've been sleeping from like afternoon to early evening.
Blame essay season's excessive all-nighters I suppose. What sucks is that it means that I'm awake in the morning. Mornings are terrible times. I live to avoid them at all cost. If I had my way, mornings would just be outlawed. All those caught awake in the morning would be put to death via firing squad.

I've been trying to get an idea for my next story down. I'm not sure if I should do the sequel thing. On one hand, you guys seem to want it, but on the other I don't want to ruin a decent initial story with sequels. That's what I did with Traitor after all. Maybe I'll write a story in the same vein but with new characters. Something like that. Or maybe something completely different. We'll see what idea strikes me.

My sister is off to Kenya today to film some documentary on... uhh... something. She'll be avoiding going to Somalia, as Somalia is kind of a war zone right now. But yeah, that's her deal right now. So yeah, my sister = cool. Thought you guys would like to know.

Franco lent me Dawn of War Dark Crusade and I've been playing it multiplayer. Dawn of War is really a tragedy of gaming. On one hand, if it were balanced properly, I honestly think it could be one of the best games ever. On the other... it's... well... not. Seriously. Fucking Relic. Buffing Necrons is not a bloody good idea. Fuck.

Still, I at least get to cut Eldar down. Puny Eldar think they're so high and mighty. I think the Eldar look a lot better when you pump full of bolter shells and then chop them up into little bits. That's just me though. You guys may have alternative perspectives though. Setting them on fire, for instance.

Don't have all that much else to say right about now, and I actually have class in an hour. Cheers however. Perhaps we will all speak again soon. Until then...

UPDATE: Much to my surprise, a kind Dutch lady that Rol introduced me to a few weeks called Dom read Les Filles Du Roi this morning. Here's what she had to say:

dominique says (2:10 PM):
I liked the main character a lot and it's an engaging universe
dominique says (2:10 PM):
you did really great on providing details about the world without using large chunks of boring exposition
Naelok - "Perhaps we'll mount your corpse on a golden chair and make an idol out of you as well." (July 21st HP7: DH) says (2:11 PM):
Thanks I put a lot of thought into that aspect. Making a world that doesn't need to be explained, but just sorta clicks
dominique says (2:12 PM):
yes . it worked
Naelok - "Perhaps we'll mount your corpse on a golden chair and make an idol out of you as well." (July 21st HP7: DH) says (2:12 PM):
So you want a sequel huh? This is the one where everyone asked for one
dominique says (2:13 PM):
yeah, I'd be interested in seeing more
dominique says (2:13 PM):
sion
Naelok - "Perhaps we'll mount your corpse on a golden chair and make an idol out of you as well." (July 21st HP7: DH) says (2:13 PM):
did you like Kedi too?
dominique says (2:14 PM):
yes. I liked his friendship/partnership with sion
dominique says (2:14 PM):
and allison intrigued me
Naelok - "Perhaps we'll mount your corpse on a golden chair and make an idol out of you as well." (July 21st HP7: DH) says (2:14 PM):
hehe what I liked about writing her
Naelok - "Perhaps we'll mount your corpse on a golden chair and make an idol out of you as well." (July 21st HP7: DH) says (2:14 PM):
is she didn't have a spoken line in the entire story
dominique says (2:14 PM):
...oh wow. yeah, she doesn't
dominique says (2:15 PM):
yet she still comes across as a strong character
dominique says (2:15 PM):
cool

So there you have it. Another positive review for me. Well, I guess I sort of have to write that sequel now. Now if only I could get a solid idea. That would be nice.

"It is time. Leave him."

2007-03-25T20:30:00.000-04:00

This is not a happy week. Two essays due, both of which I've made next to no progress in. Last week wasn't much better neither. What can one do though? I find that every time I look at my word document, my eyes glaze over and my headache feels up, as though I'd rolled a double 6 on my psychic test. So here I am writing a bloody blog entry, hoping that my mind will come into focus somewhere along the way.

To make matters worst, my sleep's been pretty messed lately. Last week I slept 1 hour on Wednesday night and then 14 hours the next night. That might be a reason why I'm feeling so diminished lately. Alas.

I've been giving some thought to the idea of a sequel to les Filles du Roi, which I think some of you actually want. I have some preliminary ideas, but won't be able to do any actual work until I get these bloody essays done. I think my vague ideas are okay though. It might end up being a good story. Probably not though, knowing me. I'm going to be trying to keep things light-hearted, although guilt and revenge might creep in there at some point. I like guilt and revenge.

Less than two months now before I go off to my trip. Then another two months after that before I get back. Or well, supposedly. Strange things are going to be happening there. For one thing, Musharaff sounds like he may be overthrown. That'd be good. For another I'll apparently be going to Peshawar gun markets to help my sister out with some documentary business. Oh and I may end up in China too. My father apparently is rather well-liked by the local Chinese ambassador and may visit at his request. Whether I would get to go on such an excursion though is somewhat doubtful. Still, it

This video Andres posted over on his blog is pretty striking. Moon was scared out of his mind, but Maliki barely even flinched. The latter is obviously used to it.

Anyhow... I ought to try to do some work. Have a good evening all of you.

Edit: I have great respect for George Galloway.

"I am stronger than you ever imagined! I can feel the universe tremble at my approach! Even the Gods know my name!"

2007-03-17T03:53:00.000-04:00

Few matters to touch on this evening.

My sleep is completely messed. That's not unusual, but this time it's messed for a specific reason. I had an essay and a test last Thursday... I stayed up late preparing and only slept three hours the night before. So then, three hours before my test, I went into Laila for Chicken Shawarma... I was feeling a bit tired so I ordered a coffee... the lady at the cash said 'we only have Lebanese coffee' and I said 'yeah, I'll have that then' without thinking.

It kept me up until 6am the next day. This is after sleeping only three hours the previous day. I don't regularly take caffeine... it's a drug of necessity, in my opinion. But... yeah... all I can say about that Lebanese coffee is wow. That is some strong stuff.

Anyway... so now all of you and then some have read my story. The opinions are down below in the last two posts. So let's see who's left...

Franco summed up what he thought of the story with the word 'fun'. He would have preferred to have seen more of William, but other than that he didn't have any specific comments or complaints. He didn't say very much else about it, but did indicate that he would like to see a sequel.

Robin was the last of you to read it. She... fuck. We talked about it on GAIM and GAIM doesn't record conversations, so now I have no written record of her comments. From memory, she said that she liked that I established a society with its own problems and issues. She enjoyed the children very much and thought that the two main characters were likeable. She also said that she thought it was interesting that Kedi was as religious as he was while the main character wasn't. She was quite enthusiastic about the prospect of a sequel, moreso than anyone else has been.

Any sequel would have to be a lot different... as in completely different. We'd have Sion and Kedi, but it wouldn't be about transporting girls. I don't want to cover the same ground at all... I imagine I'd go to a different planet even with a completely unique situation. The little girls would only be mentioned in passing (which is a bit of a shame, as I really liked Yuka, the youngest one). The idea would be to make it something completely different, so that the characters can expand in a new direction.

I was thinking of writing something more mystical though. Maybe I still can with this? Who knows.

So two of you have said you want sequels... How about the others? Jacob, Fradener, Sidrah and Rol? What do you think?

I feel compelled to relate a tale of one of my colleagues who I will not name openly (though many of you can guess the individual's name). Let's just call him McDrunk for now. So McDrunk got drunk the other night and got together with a girl. He woke up the next day, sober and really regretted what he had done... we spent some time talking about how he could most easily brush her off. One idea was:

"I can tell her I think we should just be friends! I've *always* wanted to do that"

But the thing is, McDrunk didn't have the guts to do that. He seemed to go forward hoping that it would just sort of go away. Here's a successive conversation:

McDrunk:
was going to tell the girl something but ended up asking her to coffee
Naelok:
I swear, if you end up dating her just because you're too scared to tell her you only started this up because you were fucking plastered...
McDrunk:
I have an exit strategy
Naelok:
Which is?
McDrunk:
Peru

So yeah, too frightened of admitting that he only made out with her because he was drunk, he continued on this dark path... The path to the undoing of us all. Sure enough, yesterday there appeared in his facebook the words 'McDrunk is now in a relationship'. I questioned him and he confessed the dark truth. He was now dating her. And the universe is thus lost.

I'd just like to say though... I called it.

He'll probably ask me to take this down when he sees it, so be glad to have read it when you do.

Rol asked me to add this to the blog entry:

Rob says (4:38 AM):
thats something fucking frank would do
or sput
frank wouldnt be smart enough to do that

Those in the know will probably be able to piece together what he refers to.

Anyhow, I ought to get some sleep so I can get some work done tomorrow. Be sure to send me a word on the sequel if you're interested in it.

"He has fallen... and he will find me at his doorstep."

2007-03-11T15:28:00.000-04:00

I loathe Daylight Savings Time. It is by far the worst time of the year. It feels as though an hour of my life has been stolen from me. Whoever implemented this system should burn for his crimes. Actually wait, wasn't it FDR? I think it was. If it was, then he can go free, as defeating Nazi Germany cancels it out.

Anyhow... where to start today? Oh right, the story. Aside from the two mentioned last week, only Fradener has gotten to it. Here's what he said:

Good stuff. I wish I had that kind of talent. Makes me wish it worked like that old.. something skit I saw, where some cavemen were doing... stuff. One of them was big/strong and one of them acted all modern and intelligent, and when they went to sleep, the big caveman took a rock and threw it at his head and said "Now me strong.. AND SMART!" I don't think I could lift a rock that big though.. damn. I did spot a few grammatical/wording errors here and there (Or at least thought I did; I have a history of thinking I've found a mistake only to learn I was the one that goofed) but nothing that detracted from the story. I will be adding the phrase "incomprehensible demon language" into my vocabulary.

I think that compliment speaks for itself. Again, it's a fairly good story and I encourage you all to take a look at it. Don't feel obliged though. Just know that I wrote it for your entertainment. Too often, I think, I've written for an internal audience. That's not the way to go, I think. There are two parties in writing... the writer, yes, but also the reader. When I read things, I often think of the writer, so why not think of the reader while writing? I'm going to try to expand on that philosophy more in the future and see where it takes me.

I'm not sure what my next story should be, partially because I likely won't have time to write for a while. I'd like to write something else before I meet my death in Pakistan though. Maybe something more Fantasy-ish, but maybe not. I like writing Science Fiction more than I like Fantasy, but Fantasy is easier to write, cause I don't have to worry about this 'science' stuff that I keep hearing about. Maybe I'll write a modern fantasy. That could be good. If you guys have any ideas, let me know.

Let me take a moment here to reaffirm my condemnation of the man called Frank Miller.

Some of you may recall my controversial stance on the movie Sin City of last year. Well, that movie 300 just came out... when I first heard about it, I thought we were talking about a movie about the Battle of Thermopylae. What it really is though is the Battle of Thermopylae as digested and shited out by Frank Miller.

The Battle of Thermopylae is an awesome battle in and of itself. Why does it need Ninjas and Mutants thrown in? Why does the oracle girl have to be a topless dancer? Fuck, I even question the use of elephants, as I don't think the Persians had any of those (I'm not sure about that point though and I'm not going to crack open Herodotus to check). It's typical Frank Miller "LET'S TAKE THINGS ONE STEP FURTHER" bullshit. I thus call for a boycott of this movie. Take a stand against stupid jackasses! Don't see 300!

Anyhow, that's about all I have to say for this week. Again, it wasn't terribly eventful. Plus there's not so much else a new DotA map just came out and I want to get to that. So anyhow, I will conclude here. Be sure to get to my story, if you can.

A rare update! Here's Rol's review of the story:

Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:07 AM):
what'd you think?
Rob says (4:08 AM):
good writing
Rob says (4:08 AM):
the subject matter isnt my cup of tea
Rob says (4:08 AM):
:P
Rob says (4:08 AM):
space travel O NOES
Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:08 AM):
you mean like Mars?
Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:08 AM):
oh... really?
Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:09 AM):
what do you usually prefer?
Rob says (4:09 AM):
no reading > reading
Naelok - July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:09 AM):
oh
Rob says (4:09 AM):
me proving i am better that someone else > reading
Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:10 AM):
well, did you like the characters?
Rob says (4:10 AM):
yeah
Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:10 AM):
nice. Which did you like most?
Rob says (4:11 AM):
sions helper guy
Rob says (4:11 AM):
kedi
Rob says (4:11 AM):
i take that back
Rob says (4:11 AM):
eric and eugene were awesome
Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:11 AM):
lol why?
Rob says (4:11 AM):
“Either you have the money,” Eric said slowly, “Or you get the hell out. I’m not sure who told you about us, but I’d like to get their number. Someone needs to learn to obey the rules.”
Rob says (4:12 AM):
that is lollercaust funny
Naelok - (July 21st HP7: DH) says (4:12 AM):
oh... it is? I mean... it is!

So there you have it. Another glowing review for my story. Let's hear it for Rol! Man, look at the time stamp on those things. I'm going to bed.

"You... you entrust this artifact to me?"

2007-03-04T02:25:00.000-05:00

Things are going good this week. I will even post this song to commemorate this.

First off, the story... two people have read it thus far and they seem to have liked it a bit. Most of the complaints have been nitpicks... like for instance, if you fire a gun in low gravity, the reaction force should knock you back. Or should it? I didn't have an answer to that. I think I should have changed the ending so that the [spoiler] didn't [spoiler]. But oh well. Sidrah said that I should expand the storyline and write more things about the two characters, but I don't think I ever will unless more people ask me to. I certainly have no plans to.

Other people are going to read it soon, supposedly. Fradener for one... I don't think he's ever read any of my stories with an actual 'plot' before. All he's really read are the crummy emotional bits that I've known to post here. So hopefully he'll like this one. Robin's going to read it too, at some point. She has weird taste, so maybe she'll like it, maybe she won't. I imagine she'll be last to get to it. Finally, there's Franco, who I'll probably give a hard copy to tomorrow since he's taking his sweet time getting to it.

This week was sort of crazy... not in an interesting way though, unfortunately. I wrote an essay the night before it was due and I think came out with a decent product. Again, not interesting. Sorry for even mentioning it.

Robin though did something interesting with said essay though. The essay question was: "If you were ruler of a state, would you use philosophy X or philosophy Y?" ... she took this question quite literally and ended up writing a series of journal entries, written from the perspective of said Chinese ruler. So we're talking things like: "Today I sent for the dancing girls and then thought a bit about philosophy". That takes some courage, I think... going to town against a poorly worded question like that isn't something just anyone would do so readily. Hell, I didn't do that. So let's take a moment to offer applause for Robin.

(pause for applause/cheering)

Anyhow, so yeah, the results she garners for that should be intriguing. I'll ask her if she'll let me post her essay on my blog next time I talk to her. She'll probably say no though. Alas.

Tomorrow I face Franco in 40k. This is the first time in months too. I am employing the Alpha Legion this time. I wish I had more people to face in 40k than just Andres... fighting the Imperial Guard over and over gets a bit tiresome. But considering that I only have one model and don't know how to paint, that is unlikely. It's a shame though. I think my army lists are pretty pro these days, as Franco is soon to find out tomorrow. Someone needs to make some online program where you use virtual models and dice to fuck people up with your killer lists. I mean, fuck, you can play Pokemon and Advanced Wars online... You should be able to play 40k online.

As it stands, you can't even legitimately find the rules online. Fuck you Games Workshop. If anyone ever wandering into this blog from a Google search, looking for free Warhammer 40k Codexes, leave me a comment or send me a message. I have quite a few scanned Codexes on my hard drive and I'll happily hook you up. Yeah that's right. Fuck you, GWS!

Speaking of GWS, have you all heard of this? Done right, a 40k MMO may very well be the coolest thing ever. I ask you to imagine a scene like this, where every one of the Marines and Orks is a player controlled character. It'd be simply amazing. The 'done right' requirement is a big one though... I hope it's not like a normal RPG ('Sweet, the Ork Warboss dropped rare Terminator Armour!!!!') but I also hope that they don't do something stupid and make it into an FPS. Cause that would be a complete disaster.

I personally would either play as either a Space Marine or Chaos. If you can be a Librarian with a Jump Pack, then it's Space Marine all the way. If not though, it's got to be Chaos. Tau is actually my favourite race fluff-wise, but I hate their army SO MUCH. Or well, Codex army at least. They were okay in DoW. So maybe I'll end up as a Tau Firewarrior. "None can stand before the Greater Good." What would you guys play? Answer, regardless of whether you know anything about 40k or not.

Anyhow, enough about 40k. I'm playing a game called Dragon Quest IV on the side right now. It's a NES game with atrocious graphics that Frad pointed me too. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, but it's surprisingly good... there's a part where you get to own a store and fuck with your customers. "Is this a weapon store?" "No. That sign over there says 'Weapons Store', but our owner's became a pacifist, so we sell fish here now. Would you like to buy fish?" "Nah, I'm good." etc. Good stuff.

Another thing that happens is things like this. And this. Fuck, if you aren't giving me a choice, why are you even asking? Fucking game.

Anyhow, I believe that I shall conclude here. I shall speak with you all soon, no doubt.

"You weak sorry fool! How does it feel to have slain millions? To have betrayed your own family?!"

2007-02-24T19:25:00.000-05:00

It was Reading Week this week.

I didn't do any reading in it of course. Instead I wrote a story... it's pretty good, I think. Not great, but it's all right. It was inspired by this article. Sort of. It was inspired by a bunch of different little things, I guess. One thing I tried to do was take things less seriously and have a bit of fun. There's no deep or underlying meaning behind this... it's just me having a bit of fun.

So anyway, it is entitled Les Filles Du Roi. It's about 30 pages. I know that some of you hate the French, but don't be discouraged by the name. There are no actual French people, French customs or French anythings in the story. So yeah, enjoy it.

Before I go, I want to link to all these awesome videos Franco made. He basically took DoW cutscenes and added soundtracks... it's amazing how much better a scene can be with a good ST added.

But yeah, that is neither here nor there. I look forward to hearing what you all think of the story.

UPDATE: The story is now 34.7% better, thanks to Jacob's constructive feedback. Many thanks to Jacob for his sound and excellent advice.

"I don't have four eyes"

2007-02-15T16:10:00.000-05:00

So right now I'm at Robarts library, killing time.

My Thursday schedule is fucking pissy. It starts with a 10am class... there's nothing worst than being awake at any time before noon, in my opinion. That class goes from 10am to noon. After that, I have a two hour gap, followed by class at 2-4. Have I mentioned this before? I think I might have. If I have, then skip the rest of this paragraph. Anyhow, after that I have yet another two hour gap, followed by class from 6-9pm. So that's 11 hours trapped in this stupid hellhole, 4 of which are spent just waiting for the next waste of time to begin. Fuck.

So yeah. Thought you could do with that bit of context. It's reading week next week though, which is sort of nice. I'll spend a portion of that writing up an essay on some Chinese crap. Most of it though is probably going to be writing some of my own fiction. Plus there's DotA. Always DotA.

For those of you that don't know, DotA is a Warcraft 3 map where you only have a hero (not a normal hero, but a custom one) and you level up, get items and fight heroes on the other team. I started playing it at first with Rol, though Franco soon joined our ranks. For a time, things were pleasant in our little DotA family. We formed a loose coalition called Team Lazytown, with Rol as Sportacus, myself as Robbie Rotten and Franco as Stephanie (lol). We did well and, while there were occasional fallouts, usually cause of Rol acting like a stupid asshole. But overall, things were pleasant. I'm defacto leader of this group, of course, as I host the games and am also the best player.

But then more and more people at the Franco end of the equation started to join in... first Franco's brother, who seems to boast magnified versions of the worst aspects of Franco's personality. Albert (that's his name) is a real loudmouth... there's always more racial slurs and stupid spam in games where he's present. That, in itself, was tolerable though, and while there were still a lot of personality clashes, Team Lazytown continued to flourish.

For a very brief period of time, we were even blessed by the presence of a man called Adam. Adam was a horrible player who would quit at the drop of a hat. He was so bad that it was just hilarious. That time would probably be the Golden Age.

Soon afterward though the dark times came. A creature called Frank suddenly started playing. Now it wasn't just that Frank was bad at the game. Our little family had dealt with horrendous players that ruin games for everyone else before, after all (see Adam above). Rather, what Frank brought to the table was a fucking horrible attitude. When he messed up, who would he blame? Everyone else. It was never his fault that something went wrong... it was always because of the team. Imagine a guy running into four guys and promptly dying, then turning around and yelling at the guy next to him who made a judicious retreat.

He slowly accumulated nicknames. I called him ''The Lord of War", which is a shortening of the "Lord of the War Cry", which is a title of Menellaus in the Illiad. Why did I call him that? Because let's face it, Menellaus fucking sucks. That guy sucks shit and is only there to make everyone else look good. Franco, on the other hand, calls him things like 'the Sleep of Reason'. The word Rol uses to describe him though is ''ugh''

I personally nonetheless tried to be the reasonable man. I complimented Frank whenever he managed to do something right... I didn't join pile quite as many abuses on top of him... and I even was willing to forgive him for arbitrarily going afk on countless occasions. But his fucking rotten attitude persisted beyond the limits of my patience. The bad blood he brought in ruined the team. Rol and Franco used to have a tenuous acknowledgement of one another's existance, but now Franco refuses to even play with Rol, and vice versa (though Rol can at least be persuaded). I personally have now banned Frank from any further participation. Albert, I have heard, is about ready to do the same.

So yeah, that's the history of DotA in a nutshell. Just goes to show you how one bad addition can ruin a good team. I should probably mention that the way I exiled Frank was by teamkilling him. I need to make a video of me doing that. It was classic.

Anyhow, so now you know a whole lot about something you probably don't care about. Yay.

I was going to write some stuff about the Iraq War, but frankly I don't want to have that stuff share an entry with this crap. So we'll do that next time.

"Those of the Von Karma bloodline have only one fate: Perfection."

2007-02-10T01:21:00.000-05:00

Not much occurred this last week.

That isn't unusual, of course. As you all know, I live a dry and dull life. If I'm still alive after my trip, I imagine that the 'me' aspect of this blog will become a bit more interesting. Until then though, you're stuck with the guy whose life is just eat, sleep, school, DotA.

That isn't to imply that there isn't anything to speak of, however. Just because there is nothing particularly interesting about me, as a person, doesn't mean that we can't speak of other matters. Honestly, I could probably dedicate another blog entry (and another after that) to that masterpiece called Phoenix Wright alone.

Instead of that though, I shall touch on a few other matters.

First is my trip. I get a sort of morbid enjoyment out of linking to these sorts of articles. I've been asked if I'm counting on dying over there. I'm afraid to say that no, I'm really not... if only because of Harry Potter 7's release on July 21st. As far as I'm concerned, I can be killed with impunity on the evening of the 22nd (maybe morning of the 23rd... I think I'm going to be reading nice and slow), but before that, I'm damn well going to be trying to stay alive.

Seriously though (though not to imply that the above was not a serious statement), I may be nervous about it (which is why I keep bringing it up in these entries), but I feel that I have to go. I need to see if I'm actually still alive, if that makes any sense. Needless to say, I'm obviously not really thinking of this as a 'vacation', even though that's what this is what it supposedly is going to be. Honestly, I think one reason for my anxiety is I really just have no clue what to expect. I'm going in blind here.

Alas. One effect of my morbidness is a decline in my University performance. Hard to convince yourself to get an early start on an essay when you feel death looming on the horizon. Though then again, when have I really been terribly responsible in that regard anyhow?

Anyhow, let's move on to lighter matters. A few of you have asked me for my thoughts and predictions for Harry Potter 7. Don't worry, there'll be a blog entry about that in about two weeks. Why not now? Because Fradener is still only 2/3's of the way through Half Blood Prince. Fradener is so damn lucky. Rather than enduring two years of waiting between book 6 and book 7, he's only going to have to wait for about 5 months. Bastard.

So who's in for the Book City midnight release? Jacob's going, of course, but is anyone else coming with us this time? I invited Robin, but I would like to take a moment now to publicly uninvite her. No one who has spoken such foolish words against these books is invited to this shining moment in literary history. Since the majority of you are good and sensible people though, I shall issue a blanket invitation to the rest of you. Last time me and Jacob were 7th/8th in line. This time, I hope to be further up.

Note that this isn't a party. Once I get my hands on my book, I expect you to immediately stop talking. What I am inviting you to is merely a show of fan solidarity.

Lots of political happenings recently, but I'm not up for discussing them now. Perhaps next week.

I got the idea for adding some music links to my blog entries from Fradener, by the way. He seems to have more webspace than he knows what to do with, which leads him to sometimes upload musical scores when he posts over on the forum. I don't have as much webspace, but still, it's a cool idea. I think I shall do it whenever it strikes me to.

"I object... for objection's sake."

2007-02-03T00:18:00.000-05:00

I've just changed my blog in a fundamental way. You'll notice if you look at the right side of the screen that my blog's constant companion, Balfrog, is no more. Balfrog has watched over this blog for many years now and it pains me to see him go. But I believe he had outlived his usefulness and the time had finally come to retire him. In his place will stand Miles Edgeworth, a man who you all should know is without parallel.

It's pretty much a given that if the laws and judicial procedures of this country were more like those found in Phoenix Wright, I'd be applying for law school. That is unfortunately not the case, however. Still, one has to count one's blessings. And a true blessing came to me this week in the form of Phoenix Wright 2: Justice for All.

You will all likely recall my words of the first Phoenix Wright. It was last year's "Game of the Year", even. Phoenix Wright is a really rare thing. The words I've heard used to describe it are 'interactive novel'. If you're new here, you can read about how it works here. The second game isn't all that different, except that it's a lot harder and gives you less room to screw up.

I can't describe how much I love Phoenix Wright. The game mechanics, while excellent, are really immaterial. What makes Phoenix Wright is that its an edge-of-your-seat thriller... it's a set of damn good stories filled with suspense, drama, romance, humour and tragedy. The last case in particular was just a mind-bending roller-coaster... By the end of the whole thing, I was just breathless.

The characters in this game are incredibly likeable. Phoenix himself is probably the least lawyer-like lawyer there is. The fellow's got a real heart of gold... there really isn't an element of personal ambition or greed in Phoenix. He isn't out to establish reasonable doubt or whatnot... he wants to find the truth of what happened and ensure that real justice is served. He's incredibly idealistic, but I challenge anyone to dislike him.

The other characters in the game are equally likeable... Maya, Phoenix's assistant, is a really funny girl. It's hard not to feel affectionate towards her as she covertly steals souvenirs from crime scenes and bothers Nick to buy her food. Then there's Detective Gumshoe, who one can't help but greet as an old friend. You often have to shut down his testimony in court, but the guy will always bury his pride and do you a favour. Of course, there's also the famous Miles Edgeworth, who now stands guard over this blog, with his huge backstory filled with a thousand sorrows. The later cases where you square off against him are really the best cases... I won't say why though, as many of you still need to play this game.

A lot of character are over-the-top types... I mean, I think you more or less know what to expect from a character called Wendy Oldbag... Stupid old crone, I hate you. But even though there is the over-the-top element, all of the crimes, defendants and murders are really quite believable. When I saw the true face of the culprit of the last case, I was just horrified. Even though my hunch was that it was that person, seeing him turn around and show his true colours was just chilling. Good thing I put that monster behind bars, let me tell you.

Anyway... so yeah. Fantastic and well-written game. I really really hope they translate part 3. Phoenix Wright is a bit of an underground deal, it seems. The first one really owes its success to word of mouth. Here's hoping the second one is successful enough to warrant Capcom throwing the third our way.

In other news, Deathly Hallows is coming out on July 21st. Book 7... hard to believe. After that, it's all over... no more Harry Potter. Hopefully I'll still be alive at that date. Let me tell you... I'd hate to die before finding out what happens at the end of Harry Potter. That would just suck.

So besides that, I've little to say, so I will leave it at that. Hope to speak to you all soon.

"Tell her to reflect on what a mistake it is to teach nothing more than mere techniques."

2007-01-28T23:38:00.000-05:00

I should probably start out by linking this. It's a rather shocking video. What's sad is none of that would ever have been placed under investigation if there hadn't been a camera there. You have to wonder why those soldiers were even there. Do they know what they're supposed to be doing? Isn't there a pamphlet or something that they distribute that's entitled: "How to Stop Sectarian Violence"? I mean, it's mind-numbing. Those weren't soldiers, they were high school kids.

What's more interesting is when they switch to the soldiers that are actually attempting to do their job (what a novelty!) and show how impotent they are in carrying it out. "If the Death Squads come for you, just call this number..." Yeah. Wow. In any case, the video is certainly worth a watch.

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I personally am for Bush's proposed troop surge. Don't get me wrong. I hate the occupation and everything it stands for. But the fact is that those calling for American withdrawal from Iraq are foul cowards who will consign the Iraqi people to generations of sectarian bloodshed. America created this mess by invading. It is America's responsibility to clean it up. To go into a country, destroy it utterly and then simply leave afterward... again, that's just the height of cowardice.

Anyway... So I've been sick for the past week. There's nothing interesting about sickness though, so let's not talk about that.

As events continue to unfold, the wisdom of my trip is being questioned. The Taliban are threatening an offensive for the summer, which may well spill over across the border (though hopefully it will not). Frankly though, I'm not going to back out of this. I crave the danger and the risk. I will go the Northwest Frontier Province and face down all my old fears. It's all about seeking the adventure. I've never been out of the dry and dull confines of this city before. Now is my chance. I must seize it.

Anyway, I think I'll wrap this thing up quick... I have a doctor's appointment in the morning... few points:

First, Andres has been putting up all sorts of cool clips of anime and Star Trek up on Youtube. Should give them a look. There are cool things on there. Like this clip from DS9. I love that scene. Or this one from Gundam Wing. "Has this era driven him insane?" Classic. And Zechs' speech applies to the video above!

Second, Frad is reading Half-Blood Prince now. Soon he will join the ranks of those of us who have been waiting for fucking ever for book 7 to come out.

Third, if you guys don't read Order of the Stick, you really ought to. It's probably the best webcomic on the net these days. I've also been reading Scary Go Round, which is a really funny British comic. What's interesting about it is a lot of the funny stems from just the weird British way that the characters phrase things. Like in this strip. "He's going to throw me out the window for some very poorly expressed reasons!" I'd say more about it, but come on, it's British. Things that are British are better than other things.

Anyway, so with that I shall conclude. Hope to speak to you all soon.

"I'll make you my MASTERPIECE!"

2007-01-18T12:39:00.000-05:00

I have an hour between now and my next class without all that much to do. Or well, that's not really accurate. I could do some of my required readings. But 'required' is such an authoritarian word and I detest it. I think a much better use of my time is updating this blog with random crap. I do believe that you will all agree with this decision.

Thanks to you all for your kind words in regards to my upcoming trip. It is clear to me now that my untimely death would at least cause some mild discomfort in a few people, which is somewhat reassuring. I probably made it out to be worst than it actually will be. Or at least I hope so. My sister read the blog entry and said 'yeah, that's pretty much how it is'. I will be doing my best to not die though.

I've been vaguely thinking about the trip and was wondering... any of you Mac types want to lend me an iPod before I go? I mean, I don't think I'm going to be bored there, but the idea of not being able to listen to the Megaman Zero 4 or Cowboy Bebop soundtracks for a long period of time kind of sucks. So yeah, one of you guys hook me up. I will do my best to not let this item be stolen, though if it is looted from my dead and broken corpse, I will accept no responsibility.

I was thinking of bringing my DS Lite, but as that is currently my most precious possession (Or well, it and the Wii), I believe I will leave it here.

I don't know why I'm thinking about this now. It's not till May. Oh well, I guess it's a more interesting subject than my usual crap. Apparently, one person I've known (though never been particularly close to) for years over the forum thought that I was white all this time. Funny thing, the internet.

So yeah... let's move on here.

My courses this semester are... well, there's little that's new. I'm in a Chinese history course with Robin. That course I only really took because I needed another course and thought 'well, all the courses I would be interested in are full and with this course I'll at least have someone to complain to about it'. But yeah, it doesn't look so bad. I'm also continuing with that Roman history one and East European history one, both of which are still pretty good.

Oh, there's also Greek and Roman Epic. That course is gold. First of all, I've already read the Odyssey and the Aeneid, so I really don't have to do an overwhelming amount of actual 'work' to do for it. Second, the real Professor is apparently sick so a really young (and hawt) Grad student is filling in. The only problem with it is it takes place on Thursdays 6pm-9pm. Oh well though, can't have it all.

I've been working on a short story lately, but haven't had much time to really get much done. It's probably going to suck. There are already a lot of problems. I'm trying to make it so that the main character is sort of oblivious to what's going on and caught up in her own world while all this stuff happens around her. But it's not really working. Bah.

I heard the other day that my old friend from High School Liz Duyck is now married. That is fucked up. How can someone get married at the age of 20 or 21 (I can't remember when her birthday was)? That should be fucking illegal. I wonder what other things people I've lost touch with have done. Marriage... crazy.

Franco is watching that new CBC show Little Mosque on the Prarie. That show sounds terrible. I wholeheartedly condemn it.

"A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage."

2007-01-11T10:44:00.000-05:00

Never forgive, never forget.

It's about time I updated this thing. I've had a bit of a busy week, what with school starting again and all that. I don't really want to talk about my academic life right now though. University, for me, is sort of like going to sleep. You do it every day, but you don't really get too excited about it. Instead, I have a bit of an announcement to make... most of you are already aware of this, but I guess it's good to talk about it in some depth. Anyway, yes:

I've decided to go to Pakistan this May.

Those of you who know a bit about my early years will know that that statement is synonymous with 'I've decided to drive a burning truck into a oil refinery which is also on fire'. For those of you that don't... well, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, I went there and contracted all manner of disease. I was throwing up all the time and all manner of... other... extremely unpleasant symptoms. It felt pretty damn close to dying, let me tell you. In the process, I also contracted a fear of insects that persists to this day. Let me tell you, when you see huge brown cockroaches with hard shells crawling everywhere, you get to not like bugs.

I'm not even going to the safe parts of Pakistan. I'm going to bloody Peshawar in North West Frontier Province, which is really not the safest place in the world. So if the diseases and sickness do not slay me, then I can assume that the moment my inherent foreign quality is discovered I am likely to be gunned down in the street.

So yeah. Of all my three siblings, I am likely the least inclined towards the old country. I nearly died when I was last there... I don't speak a word of Urdu or Pushtu or whatever else they speak there. I find Pakistani music irritating and I don't like Pakistani food (I'll probably barely even eat while I'm there). I have the religion, I suppose, but there is little other cultural commonality that I share with the land of my grandfathers. Honestly, I'm pretty thoroughly naturalized here. I mean, I'm not really big on Canada... it's a place that's very comfortable to live in and I'm lucky to be here, but I'm not much of a nationalist. But still, Pakistan is completely and utterly alien to me.

So yeah... so why am I going to meet what is almost certainly going to be an untimely and extremely painful death? You know what? That's a good question. Why the fuck am I doing this? Well, the short answer is that my father asked me to. My father works there right now and enjoys what sounds to me like a prestigious position there. This, I think, slightly augments my chances of ever returning. Secondly though, it is at least a chance to leave the city. I've been here too long and the stagnation is starting to sort of get to me. Pain can be instructive and maybe I'll learn something. Thirdly, it'll give me content for this blog.

The actual schedule for a trip won't be just waiting to be shot in Peshawar though. My father has to collect plant samples for his research, so I'll be going to like... mountains, I think. I really don't know. The main thing I think of when I hear about mountains though is 'what? No internet connection?!' though. How will I poke people back in Facebook or talk on MSN?! In any case, assuming I survive, I'll be there for around a month. If I die, I'll probably be buried there, which would kind of suck, but oh well.

So yeah... I really don't want to die before the Deathly Hallows come out. That would really suck. But I guess sometimes you've gotta gamble with your life now and again to show that you're really alive to begin with. So anyway, yeah, if you never see me ever again after May, you'll know why.

Anyhow, I think that's more or less enough about my rapidly-approaching death. If I return from Pakistan, I'm going to be buying this castle. I will sit on my throne with a wine glass waiting for Belmont to come in, at which point I will throw said glass down and begin teleporting around chucking fireballs until he spams Holy Cross enough times to kill me. After that, one of you will have to resurrect me so that the process can repeat itself. I'm currently recruiting minions. Fradener has already volunteered to play the part of Death, while Robin has said she will be taking charge of all the groceries. Any other volunteers?

Phoenix Wright 2 in 5 days. Though I probably won't get it for a good week or so afterward, as I am taking Franco's copy.

Anyhow, I have class in two hours. Fucking class. So yeah, see you all later.

"Bat Moon!"

2006-12-30T22:54:00.002-05:00

So it's the end of the year, which means that it's time for me to give out some arbitrary awards that I have no right giving out. Last year you may recall that I made Cave Story the Game of the Year. This year, I think, I will go a step forward, giving out titles for movies, books, people and whatever else I can think of.

Anyhow, on to greater matters...

2006 was a big year for games, mainly because I got not just a Wii but also a DS. My Wiimote is sitting drained of all its batteries, waiting for me to get some blasted chargeables for it. I have to say, Nintendo really dropped the ball by not giving the Wii a fucking DS-style battery pack. In a month of use, my damn Wiimote has gone through a dozen damn batteries. So bloody annoying.

Anyhow, it seems pretty obvious to give the Game of the Year to Zelda. But I've already given Zelda the WwnR Game of the Decade, so it seems like it would be a bit superfluous to give it WwnR Game of the Year on top of it. Still, it wins anyway. Twilight Princess rocks in every way and everyone should play it. But anyway, I've talked about that a lot already, so thus do I hereby announce the advent of the WwnR Second Best Game of the Year. And the winner is...

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

I played a lot of different games this year. This was likely a consequence of giving up Guild Wars. But yeah, Phoenix Wright stood above them all as something that was less like a game and more like a novel. It's a game where you use logic and intellect to win, rather than simple reflex and skill. And it was so damn well done. I've never really been interested in law before, but I do love proving people wrong. I can't wait for the next one to come out. Andres will be letting me borrow it, of course.

Phoenix Wright also wins Soundtrack of the year too. In this case, it's not second best, but rather best. Zelda's Soundtrack was weak due to excessive remixing (1/2 the good songs were from Ocarina) and lack of Orchestra. Phoenix Wright though just has an awesome original soundtrack. It's hard to hear 'Ryuichi Naruhodo ~ Objection! 2001' and not think 'Hah! You didn't think of this, you fucker!' I play it whenever I am right about anything, which is often.

Next up we have movies. There were no good movies this year, so instead I will present the Youtube Movie of the Year:

Link.

Note that this was shown to me by a Republican Patriot Act (wtf) supporter who voted Republican in 2006 even. I have some odd friends. Said friend is like halfway through Order of the Phoenix though, so he's still cool.

Book of the year. Ehhh... Most of the novels I read this year are sort of heavy on the suck. That's what you get when the books you read are all from University. So instead I'll do comic book of the year:

Scott Pilgrim.

These are a set of manga books Robin lent me. They're about a young man who wants to date a girl but who must defeat said girl's 7 Evil Ex-Boyfriends in single combat. They rock. What's really cool is that the setting for the books is Toronto. Not just Toronto, even, but rather the area immediately around my neighbourhood. Wicked sick, I know. Did I mention this the other week? I think I did.

Uhh... let's see, what else... Cat of the year:

Cookie.

No explanation necessary.

What else... uhhh... I don't really watch TV, other than the Colbert Report. Or well, I guess if you include the stuff I download I watch a bit. But the stuff I download is all old and not from this year. I guess Full Metal Alchemist wins though, in spite of its questionable ending and shitty sequel movie.

I'm getting a little tired... uhh... Person of the Year... uhh... YOU. Nah, I'm shitting you. The real winner is:

Me

Competition was stiff this year. I was thinking of giving it to Nasrallah or someone, but that wouldn't have been any fun. Competition was nonetheless stiff. I thought about giving it to one of you people, but I try not to play favourites. So I win. Believe me, you guys put up a good fight, but in the end you just weren't as good as me. Sorry. Maybe next year.

Anyhow, I think Rol wants to DotA now. See you all later.

"This is ART!"

2006-12-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

So I'm posting this on the new blogger beta, which took about twenty minutes for Google to update me with. And err... it seems to be... exactly the same. It has a 'recover post' button, which is nice, as I've had to rewrite entire posts due to accidentally hitting back at bad times.

Let's see what's different... bold? Okay, that's the same. Italic... Hmm I can make my text different colours. Does it still do that annoying thing with links? Hm yes. it does.

There's a blockquote button. Was that there before. I wonder what it does...

Nothing useful, apparently.

I can also label my posts. Who knows what that does.

Anyway... so I've mentioned my friend Robin last time. Robin's been going on about this ball she's going to be going to in January. The theme for said ball is apparently 'Pride and Prejudice'. For those of my readers who've never been subjected to Jane Austen works before (which I assume and hope includes all of you), think of an Anime convention, except instead of people dressed up as Sailor Moon and Dracula (??), it's irritating 19th century Euro-fops. Robin herself has been busily making a dress for said occasion and likes to keep me updated on its progress.

Anyway, hearing about this so much resulted in me throwing together this yesterday. It's a story that sort of represents my thoughts when I hear about high society (i.e. 'this would be cooler if it involved a distant relative of the Belmont family'). So yeah, it's a page. Give it a read if you wish.

"A painting... of the soul!"

2006-12-23T01:17:00.000-05:00

I'm glad it's the holidays. It being the holidays means I don't have to write essays or exams. That's really nice.

I presume you've all heard about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I'm not one of those people that'll speculate on a title. Or well... not in any depth. And now that I think of it, I was right about what the Order of the Phoenix was and who the Half Blood Prince was... but the point is that you can't reasonably get a plot out of a title. It's just not plausible. In any case, I think it refers to a spell or perhaps a dark ritual. I could be wrong... doesn't matter if I am or not. It's just a title. What the hell can you do with a title? That's almost as bad as the people that were speculating on Harry Potter cover art.

Oh, by the way, this blog is now a Harry Potter spoiler-free zone. That's irrelevant, I know, as only Franco ever reads this bloody thing. But yeah, no posting anything from Book 5 onwards, as I think Fradener might occasionally wander in here.

I think most of you (when I say that, I'm really thinking of everyone in the world who has ever read this blog at any point) use Facebook. Facebook is cool, it has got me in touch with all sorts of people that I haven't talked to in years or even technically hated. My friend Robin fits into both categories and now she's my good, if somewhat unusual, friend. So yeah... Facebook is cool that way.

This blog is two years old now. Yay for me wasting a lot of time! We've had good times. Or well, no we haven't. But still, two years is indeed a period of time.

Christmas, or Saturnalia as it was formerly known as, is more or less completely irrelevant to me. I really mean that. I'm not even one of those scourges that gets pissed off about it as I observe. I mean that it's just completely irrelevant. I haven't even heard Jingle Bells or whatever this year. I wouldn't even remember that it was Christmas this Monday if not for Jacob sending me this song, which is possibly the only good Christmas song ever made.

The Wii is quite popular here. I've never seen a video game system that non-gamers are so genuinely interested in. Wii Sports is something that I've been cracking out for guests. I pretty much never play it myself, but it really gets those non-gamers going. I think I myself prefer trekking through Hyrule fields to any amount of bowling or boxing, but yeah, it's an interesting thing, the Wii. I think the next game I'm going to get for it is Metroid Prime 3. When's that come out anyhow? I'm too lazy to look it up.

There needs to be a Castlevania game on the Wii, where you whip/stab Dracula by flicking the Wiimote. That would fucking rock.

Anyhow, I think I'm going to do some reading. Later all.

"At last I have eased my regrets..."

2006-12-13T16:23:00.000-05:00

So I'm finished exams. The last one went fine, thank you. I'm just relieved to be done with it, quite honestly.

In more important news, I beat Zelda today.

My end time clocked at about 55 hours. I have I think 14 hearts out of a possible twenty, along with all the bottles (assuming that there are only 4). Of the collection quests (think Golden Skulltula, except a bit more interesting), I think I got about 1/3 of the total. I managed to get the largest quiver and I beat the optional 'wtf lol monsters' dungeon. I have yet to conquer the majority of the minigames. I died a little over two dozen times.

So anyway, yes, my review...

Game of the year... no, scratch that. Game of the decade. Not since Ocarina of Time have I played a masterpiece such as this. This is a game that I've honestly been looking forward to since I was 15 years old. Before they announced it, I dreamed of it. My expectations for this game honestly knew no mortal limit. I am happy to say that the vast majority of my resoundingly unrealistic expectations have been satisfied. Miyamoto's greatest masterpiece has come to fruition and to play it is to be consumed utterly by its virtues.

I'm happy to say that I went through the game without any guide. When any of you come upon this game, I encourage you to do the same. If you apply keen logic and a thorough examination of your surroundings to the game, you will be able to pierce even the most Byzantine of dungeons. There was one puzzle in the seventh dungeon that had me thinking: 'hmmmm' for HOURS before, at long last, I was greeted by a single moment of clarity. The familiar 'you solved the puzzle' jingle that played as I opened that bloody door was SO VERY SATISFYING. Really now, you have no idea.

The fights... you know, I have to admit, some of them were on the easy side. There was one particular subboss that looked incredibly cool. We're talking floating demon in a giant black cloak cool. But I was able to take him down without even taking a hit, so the look didn't exactly match the challenge. Still, the majority of the fights in the game where really quite heartpounding. When two giant guys in armour are bearing down on you and your dodging left and right to try to find an opening... well, yeah, it's pretty thrilling.For the last boss, I was on my feet, swinging the Wiimote like a guy from one of those commercials. It was a really really really good last fight. Really.

The story though is what made the game. I've played almost all the Zelda games and I can say that this one had the best told and well-executed plot of them all. All Zelda games revolve around a few pillars. The veteran Zelda player can normally more or less assume that after you beat three dungeons, there's going to be a plot twist that eventually leads you to claiming the Master Sword. That happens in every single Zelda game of note, so it should come as no surprise to anyone. But what's really amazing about this game is that amid the conventions, a really gripping and totally unique story is told.

For one thing, there are a boatload of new characters. There are four people who you sort of team up with to take the fight to the forces of darkness. I mentally referred to them as 'The Hyrule Four', but they didn't actually have such a name for themselves. They are all hardcore anime-style badasses though. Seriously, one look at them will make that clear. Especially the one with glasses. That guy needs to have his own game.

Then there's Midna. You've undoubtedly seen Midna in the trailers... she's the cat-type creature with a funky hat that rides atop of Wolf Link. Midna is the most amazing and layered characters I've ever encountered in a game before. When I first met her in the game, she made me extremely nervous. She clearly has a plethora of ulterior motives. The way she develops though... amazing. Again, I'd love to say more about her, but I know most of you want to play the game. So let me simply say, Midna = awesome.

Oh, and let's not forget the sensei who teaches you all sorts of killer moves. That guy had some of the coolest dialogue in the game. "Compared to that of the Great Heroes of the past, your skills are as nothing!" That guy is too cool.

I only have two serious complaints about the game:

1) Voice work. Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those idiots that wants to see anyone talking in English. But often characters in the game were complete mutes. For Midna, they had her speak a language of really cool sounding gibberish... they should've done something like that for everyone. It would've added some character.

2) More horseback duels. Considering how hyped up these were in the trailers, I was expecting a lot more. What you get is really cool, but there just isn't enough. Maybe there are some sidequests involving mounted combat that I haven't found yet though. I hope so, at least.

Anyway, yes, those two points are minor, in my opinion. I give the game 10/10. Best game ever. Go get a Wii and play it now. That is all.

"Long live the popular victory!"

2006-12-06T06:02:00.000-05:00

Not too great a day today.

For the past two weeks, I've been engaged in more or less constant essay work. Yesterday (December 5th) I had an essay due and an exam. I worked my fucking ass off to get that essay done on time, much to the detriment of my study process for the exam. Then, I go in to hand it in and the Professor casually announces 'oh and if you want to hand in your paper on Friday, you can do so, with no penalty'.

Fucking. Bullshit. Let us not discuss that, however.

Response to the story I posted the other week has been pretty positive. There were some problems with it grammatically, but generally I think it was a decent exercise. It's not everyday that I have dreams that are that eerie, unfortunately. I'm going to have to undertake some sort of writing project over the holidays. I'm open to suggestions as to what that should be, although none of you ever come up with any, so I don't know why I even bother saying so.

I haven't been able to play much Wii lately, for obvious reasons. I got in a few sessions here and there though and Zelda remains the greatest game ever. Problem is, none of you lamers have one, but all of you intend to get one sooner or later. So as I slowly progress through the epic story of Zelda, I find that I've no one to discuss it with. Other than Jacob, I guess, who's never owned a console in his life. But he never really knows what I'm talking about, so what's the point?

I finally got around to trying Wii sports though. It's pretty easy to explain... basically, you use the Wiimote in exactly the way you would for playing the sport. So for baseball, you swing it like a bat, for golf you swing it like a golf club, for tennis like a tennis racket and for bowling like a bowling ball. Needless to say, all those things are pretty boring. Or well, tennis is cool, but who the fuck would want to play bowling? What is awesome, on the other hand, is boxing. In boxing you punch with the Wiimote/nunchuk, while raising it to your shoulders and tilting leftwards or rightwards to block incoming blows. It's incredibly fun. This video highlights what it's like to play.

Hey, have you guys seen this site? It let's you send postcards to US soldiers offering thanks for their brave service in Iraq. I sent one such hardened warrior the following:

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for raping teenagers, torturing innocents and causing the death of half a million people. Thank you for triggering a civil war and bravely sitting inside the Green Zone while hundreds of innocent people die in front of your eyes. Your continued service is appreciated. It is my hope and prayer that one day, I may be able to thank you for sacrificing your life for your country. God bless America, land of the free.

Even though it's very very unlikely that they're actually going to send my token of appreciation to the US military, I think that this letter rocks. I encourage you all to write similar expressions of gratitude. These men are fighting for freedom, after all, and they deserve our support.

So the new trend among our circle seems to be using FRAPS to make DotA videos. I started the whole thing, when I made a couple of crappy videos of me getting some cool kills. Like this, which shows me butchering everyone with my invincible Siren to a song from Lunar 2. Or this one depicting Franco and I making a crazy comeback. And let's not forget my famous Soma vs. Julius video, which displays my absolute mastery in the art of storming Dracula's castle. Oh and let's not forget this tragic fall of a hero.

Franco decided he wanted to copy me though, but the difference is that he decided to make his have quality. Like, look at this one, which is all dramatic. Now I feel obliged to make my videos not suck too. Fucking Franco.

Anyway, I think that's about all I have to say for the moment. Oh right... that Dion guy is Liberal leader and I uhh... don't care. I wasn't at the convention thanks to school. And umm... yeah. I'll probably vote NDP. There is much bigger news, however, for Brother Hugo Chavez has won a landslide victory in the Venezuelan elections. He's a great man, that Chavez, and I hope that he can bring South Americans together in a united front against American imperialism.

Anyhow, perhaps we shall all speak again soon. Until then...

"When you look for me, I'm gone in front of your eyes... people call me... the Master of Disguise!"

2006-11-23T17:08:00.000-05:00

I threw a story together last night, before going to sleep and subsequentally missing a class.

It's based on a dream I had about walking alongside a foggy frozen river. In said dream, looking down into the ice, I could see corpses frozen into the ice... nasty things, mostly dismembered and such. That's an image that I saw somewhere else, sort of, though I can't say where right about now. In any case, I took that initial image and tried to make it into a story. So what I did is I literally closed my eyes and typed. I'm a touch typist, you see, so I can do that. See? I'm even doing it now.

Anyhow, what results is something that I hope is suitably depressing. It's only two pages, single space, so maybe you guys will enjoy it. Here's a link. Tell me what you think.

"Yar har, fiddle-de-dee, being a pirate is alright to me"

2006-11-21T05:59:00.000-05:00

Most, if not all of you, know that I now have a Wii. In case you don't, know that I do.

I think that, so far, I've been pretty mature about it. I mean, I've been keeping up with my work and I haven't been playing it all night because I don't want to wake everyone. But... yeah... I can't even describe how good Zelda is. No spoilers here, but... Well, when one is riding your faithful horse and chasing down an enemy warlord as his minions ride against you, firing a hail of flaming arrows... yeah that stuff is amazing. And when you unhorse the Warlord by jousting with him on a narrow stone bridge and raise your sword in triumph... Fuck. It's too good.

The story is also a lot darker. I know that many of you are going to play it on your own, either sooner or later, so I won't give any specifics. But... yeah. This ain't no Wind Waker. There's still a sense of humour, but the evil that you're fighting feels... well, just that, really... evil. And I'm really not very far into the game... I've beaten the opening dungeon and am trying to get inside the second one. Ocarina was not nearly so intense in the opening sequences.

Anyway... yes. I won't speak of that anymore. It makes me want to play it, and I've still got some reading to do before my next class.

Here's a special request from MSN:

Rob says:
blog about me

Okay. I have a friend called Rob Davis, more commonly known as Rol. Rol is from Tennessee and I met him back when I was still playing Guild Wars. From the moment I met Rol, I knew that he was hilarious. He's got this really deep and serious voice, but thing is he is neither deep nor serious. Anyway, uhhh... what to say about Rol. Well, he's an expert on pissing people off, including me. He pays particular attention to my other friend Cass though, whom he subjects to a constant campaign of sexual harassment. Like one joke sticks out:

"Cass, i think i finally got it, i have spent the longest time wondering how you were able to play guild wars... then i realized that your computer must be IN your kitchen... so you dont actually ever leave it to play"

He also loves to waste people's time. Like, he'll write twenty page posts about nothing and include graphs just so he can turn around and say 'lol people are actually going to read that'. Oh, and he likes cocking up his allies in team games. Like in DotA he'll destroy his own items and back in Guild Wars he would bring a fucking spaz bar just to get everyone killed. Fucking Rol.

Oh, and he's also a pedophile. Like he knows everything there is to know about this girl from a kid's show called Lazytown. Lazytown rocks though, by the way. This song here is my very favourite song ever. "Do what you want because a pirate is free!" I'm serious, I've had that song stuck in my head for like a day. "Wind at your back, lads, wherever you go!" This song is also kind of catchy, though it lacks pirates. Someone needs to make a Star Trek video with Picard for that song. It would rock.

Feel free to ask me to blog about things, by the way. Always happy to oblige, it makes it quicker to write these things. In fact, here's a short biography of Andres, even:

He's an asshole.

See? Nothing to it.

Anyway, not much else happening these days aside from school work, and no one's interested in that. Especially me. So I'll just go ahead and conclude right here, thus according with my new doctrine of saying what I want to say with no filler. Hope to speak with you all soon.

"Cam it."

2006-11-15T01:32:00.000-05:00

And now we go with another of these blog update things.

It's essay season. Or well, it's been essay season for a while, really. What I should say is that I'm actually trying to do my essays now, with mixed success. Or, well, I shouldn't really say 'mixed success' there. More like 'utter failure'. If there is one element of my life that I could completely sever and remove, it would be... hm. You know what? It'd actually would be hard to decide. But essays would be up there. But in any case, I will bear the consequences of my lethargy and procrastination in due time.

There really isn't much to talk about this week, I admit. I still have a cough and feel as though I'm losing my voice. That isn't really anything unusual though. I mean, this happens pretty much every year. I think that if I live long enough, I'm going to be killed inevitably by some ailment of the respiratory system. It's only appropriate, I think, that it be so.

I do think there are a few things I should touch on though. And not just because I'm procrastinating either. One thing I've been meaning to do is mention that I have a goatee now. I don't know why I decided to grow one... just to see if I could, really. I have absolutely no intention of keeping it. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable facial hair is? It's like having a bunch of needles driven into your face. The itching and the burning just drives me crazy. I don't know how anyone could stand to live with one of the things. But in any case, for the past few weeks I've had a goatee and I'm rapidly losing patience for the thing.

I want to at least preserve photographic evidence of this feat. So I went and hunted up my digicam and a comb. The fact that it took me a minute to find the digicam and ten minutes to find the comb probably says a little something about my personal demeanor. Let me mention that I also hate, as a matter of principle, taking my picture. But oh well, I guess I ought to get over that.

Man do I hate how I look. Not because of the goatee, mind you, but because of everything. But anyway, done. Nothing like self-taken pictures in my messy room. So let's upload these...

Pic 1. I tried to strike a pose for this one. If there's one thing that's cool about glasses, it's being able to make gestures with them.
Pic 2. I think I must have been trying to look like Che Guevera there. Didn't really work out.
Pic 3. Here I try to look thoughtful. Instead I end up looking tired and possibly drunk.

In any case, that's me with a goatee. My father is coming back to Canada in about two weeks, so I'm going to keep this thing until then. I'm presently the only male in my immediate family who hasn't (up until this moment) sported a beard, so I think he'll like to see it when he gets back. But yeah... yay for goatees.

Now that that horror is dealt with, let us move on to greater matters. I've been listening to George Galloway speeches and broadcasts lately. Have you guys heard of that fellow? He's a British MP who is an outspoken critic of Israel and George Bush. If you haven't heard of this gentleman, then scope him out here as he mangles some ditzy anchorlady with the cold hard steel of truth. This guy knows his stuff and he doesn't take bullshit. Respect him.

I should also put out a reminder to read Fradener's Harry Potter 4 thread. That's honestly the best Harry Potter reading I've seen in a long time. I don't bother going to Harry Potter websites or forums anymore. I can just go to those threads and read truly original thought on the subject. I need to read Book 7 slower when I get to it, because I'm really envying him. It seems like such a thrill to try to unravel the mystery of these books piece by piece.

Know who pisses me off? That 'Borat' guy. Sacha Cohen is his real name, I think. I haven't seen the movie, but I saw him on the Daily Show (in-character) the other week and I just wanted to strangle him. "I'm not from here! I have my own customs!! Look at my crazy passport!!!" Fuck. I swear, that kind of humour makes me sick.

Anyway, I shall conclude there. But perhaps I shall speak to you all again sometime soon.

"Look, the point is, it's a net gain for Team Us."

2006-11-09T01:40:00.000-05:00

What a week.

I had a fever last week. Fairly bad one too, I am afraid, and to make matters worst I had to take a test while saddled with it. That test had a fairly predictable outcome, let me tell you. But oh well. I'm on the recovery curve now and will now hopefully start to make up for it. Though the key word there is 'hopefully'. I have a pair of essays to do over the next little while and by God do I not want to do them. Essays are such a waste of life.

In any case, some interesting things to touch on this week...

For one, the foul creatures that live to the south of this country had elections this week. As I said in a previous entry, the whole thing seems overhyped to me. Democrats aren't far from Republicans in terms of foreign policy, after all. The main difference is in how extreme the two parties are (and I could care less about domestics). Still, I think one can be cautiously optimistic about these results. One can't really expect genuine change with the US government, regardless of regime. But one can at least hope for some degree of improvement.

One thing I can't stand is Americans that don't vote. Or, well, one thing I can't stand is Americans period. But the non-voting variety is a lot more disgusting. I mean, not voting in any country is weak for obvious reasons. Two of my American swine friends that I spoke with didn't bother to do so, which disappointed me greatly. It is an unfortunate fact that what happens in America affects the entire world. The volumous amount of simple corruption and sheer villiany that has occurred over the passed few years needs to be owned up to. The people that have been robbed, raped and murdered by American occupation cannot vote. It therefore puzzles me that self-respecting Americans who claim disagreement with the present government would simply shrug that off.

Though again, we can see that enough Americans did vote to cause a shift. Now let's see if it makes a difference.

In other news, I'm friends with Jessica again. Remember her? Let's not talk about what happened way back when, but know that she's back and that we seem to even be good friends again. I will soon be coercing her into coming back to the blog and commenting again. Hopefully that'll liven things up around here. It may just be me, but I think things have been pretty dry in these parts for the past few months. I've just been going through the motions.

One other thing I'm going to try to do is shorten up the entries. I often just add in filler when I run out of things to say, honestly. Like I'll talk about something that I've told you all about already, just for the sake of making things longer. From now on though, no filler. Just going to say whatever's there to be said and then conclude. Perhaps this will help the blog along a bit.

I think I'll delete that irate birthday post, as it serves little to no purpose other than to express my anger at Blogger. Anyhow, see you all later.

"Morbo congratulates our Gargantuan Cyborg President. May death come swiftly to his enemies."

2006-10-29T01:33:00.002-05:00

So it's my birthday today.

I'll be honest with you. I hate birthdays, most especially mine. Don't get me wrong... I'm as big a fan of cake as the next guy. But I've always found the whole thing awkward. I mean, its a bit of an arbitrary date, if you think about it. I prefer to be alone on my birthdays, though then again I prefer to be alone more or less every day.

So yeah, I'm now 21. One entire year closer to death than I was at this time last year. We're counting it down.

Anyhow, on to more interesting matters.

First, Fradener is now on book 4 of Harry Potter. I know a bunch of you like reading his speculation as he goes, so here's that thread. Have you guys heard the speculation of Book 7 being released on July 7th of next year? That would make it come out on 07/07/07. I know the book isn't complete yet, but that sounds plausible to me. If it does indeed come out next summer, then I'm sure that's going to be the date.

Man, can you imagine what it's going to be like on the other side of book 7? I've been a fan of these books for the past five years. To think that the story is going to really and finally end is just... strange. I hope it ends well. Fradener already has his own ideas as to how it should conclude (In case you don't speak DnD-ese, that spell does massive damage, but casting it will kill the caster). I know I can't wait...

The Wii thing seems like a sure thing now, from what I've gathered. I honestly think that once I start playing Twilight Princess, I won't be talking about anything else. It is my intention to take it slow and thoroughly explore Miyamoto's rich world. I'll probably play Twilight Princess a good twenty times over, but the first time is always the best time.

It's daylight savings time today. The best day of the year, I do think. Nothing like gaining another hour of darkness. It simply enlivens me.

So there's an election in the US in a little over a week. I have to say that, on a fundamental level, I really don't care. By the sheer volume of scandals that I keep hearing about on the news, I would imagine that the Democrats will probably win. But that news does not really mean much to me. American domestic policy is completely irrelevant to me. I don't live in America, so I could care less if they legalize gay marriage or not. Yes, the Democrats do have a generally milder foreign policy than Republicans do. But did Clinton not bomb Baghdad to distract attention from a sex scandal? It'll be cool when these midterms start up the end of the American role in the Iraq War (the civil war will continue for some time after), but it still doesn't strike me as something that I should be personally concerned about.

I think in 2008, America should elect the head of Richard Nixon mounted in a Gargantuan Cyborg Battle Robot. Once that is done, death will undoubtedly come swiftly to his enemies.

"Ain't got no cash. Ain't got no style. Ladies vomit when I smile."

2006-10-22T00:28:00.000-04:00

I'm going to turn off comment moderation. I do believe that Franco has learned his lesson, so there is no harm in doing so.

The first matter of business is to announce that Franco cheats at 40k. I know this has been announced before, but it needs reaffirming. He fixes dice, makes up rules and uses rigged armies. Stupid fucker. May he die a thousand deaths.

So next week it's my birthday. The 29th, that is. I'll probably spend it the way I usually do... i.e. holed up in my room not caring that it's my birthday. People in my family have been talking about getting me something though and today they proded me about that. Right now, there's only one thing that I can really contemplate wanting in this world... the Nintendo Wii. That's a device that will herald a new age in gaming. To my surprise, there seems to be some resolve to get one. I'd already decided to delay my getting to some distant later date, but I wasn't fool enough to voice an objection to this.

It's not just the whole new age aspect that makes the Wii so very compelling. That part is neat, but it's not something I'd usually chase. Rather, there's a new Zelda game on it. As many of you know, Ocarina of Time was the pinnacle of gaming. I remember when I first left Kokiri Forest and beheld Hyrule Castle, illuminated by the rising sun. Walking towards it, knowing that there were grand tasks that were soon to be performed was just... breathtaking. So now, over half a decade later, we finally will have the true successor to that legacy. Quite frankly, that's something difficult to resist.

If I get my hands on that, then that's quite something. If not though, I'll try to live on.

In other news, I grabbed a bunch of Futurama episodes off a torrent last week. That was such a good show. What's really impressive about it is that, while on the most part its funny, it can occasionally be really dramatic and heart-wrenching. Though of course, you mainly watch it for the funny. Like the episode where Cyborg Nixon becomes president. "I'm meeting you halfway you damned hippies!" Good times. I can't wait for them to bring it back.

That reminds me... You know Jacob's been lusting over this chick for the past three years? I can't remember what her name is, but he refers to her as 'Hot Science Fiction Girl' (HSFG) and always comes online MSN drunk and cries about her. He makes all these bullshit excuses for not asking her out, but in reality he's just a tool. I wish he'd just ask her already, so that I get to stop hearing about it.

So it seems that the Iraq war is about ready to end. When you have official statements from top diplmats condemning the entire exercise as 'arrogant and stupid', you know you've lost a war. Ever since this blog began two years ago, I've been saying as much. Now, two years and half a million deaths later, I get to be right. So let's all hear it for me.

I know the country's been devestated beyond belief. The failure of US policy will be felt for decades to come. But I think the important thing is that it's failed. The limits of US policy have now been firmly established. They can knock over tinpot dictators without fail, but they aren't willing to put the manpower out that it takes to halt a determined insurgency. Little solace, I know, but it's something.

In any case, at least all those stupid fucks that supported the war are eating it now. You know who you are. Fuckers.

Anyhow, I should wrap this up. Jacob linked me to this. Watch that whole video. Or, well, you can more or less ignore the anime bits... I looked that anime up and it doesn't sound particularly good. All girly like, it sounded. But in any case, the song sums up my opinion of all of you. Yeah that's right. You, you and you. And especially you.

Oh, I'm also officially a delegate for Bob Rae. This means that I can go to a convention in Montreal and vote for Bob Rae. I don't have the money to pay the fee, so I'm going to have to call them some time and tell them to pay for me or die. From what I understand, delegates are often bribed in one way or another by other candidates. So let me announce to that I am officially for sale. Place your bids in the comment section.

"None can stand before the Greater Good."

2006-10-15T01:18:00.001-04:00

Few things to touch upon this week.

First, we must announce the defeat of nefarious Jacob K in the recent WOMBAT-II. This picture describes my victory, in full. You know it isn't doctored because it's in psd format, which I can't seem to convert to the much more sensible JPEG (plus the Mac background). It was a worthy attempt, but in the end, he simply lacked the charisma and sheer force of will that once requires to acheive the honour and distinction of the 'Outstanding' rank. Sorry Jacob, but unto my experience, all your Harry Potter experience is but a fleeting dream.

I'm glad I could convince at least one of you to take it. Franco refused to take it, on the grounds that he knew I'd do better and then gloat. I personally think he secretly took it and refuses to show me his result. For this, I call him a coward and a traitor. Hopefully, by the time WOMBAT-V or even VI rolls around, the creature called Fradener will be finished with the first six books. Though knowing him, he'd probably somehow manage to get an O. Bastard.

In any case, what I've been mainly doing lately is studying. I'm taking a Soviet history course that I've a midterm for next week and then the week after that there's a Roman history midterm. That Soviet history course isn't bad, by the way. I've never been anything remotely similar to a Communist, but I've always been a fan of Communist rhetoric. The image of a bunch of oppressed industrial worker-slaves rising up against their malefactors is an appealing one, even though it really doesn't work that way. Also Soviet propaganda art. I have a picture of Lenin, hand reaching upward as if to grasp the coming new age, up on my wall, right adjacent to where Picard is. I love that picture.

Anyhow, that was a bit of a digression. In any case, I've been busy and have done little writing. I've hit a bit of a snag in my Toronto-Demon story... I've come to the part where they're actually in an area of the city I'm actually familiar with. It's hard to write a post-apocalyptic description of your campus without feeling kinda stupid. I want to finish the damn story, but it's just awkward to now. I'll give it another try when I finish this blog entry, but still. Bah! Bah, I say! Why didn't any of you object to Toronto as an idea? I must say, I'm disappointed in you all.

I feel that it's worth mentioning that last week, Fradener persuaded me to try this old Dos anime freeware game called 'Princess Maker'. Before you raise your eyebrows at that title, let me explain that this game is a game where you have the option of making a Princess. Indeed, what she is made into is entirely up to you. I think my young Irene's (name picked randomly) youth may be described as such:

12-13 - wandering the wilderness, killing innocents.

I used cheats to make her into a fighting machine and she thus wandered around, looking for whatever travelers she could find and killing them for sport/profit. I could see no better pasttime for a young girl of tender age.

13-15 - getting sent to random and often contradictory jobs.

Wandering the wilderness quickly got boring and so I just sent her to random places for the next two years of her life. She even worked off some of the killing sin in church. Then, just when I was getting bored of the game, she turned 15 and new possibilities opened up.

15-18 - working as a sleazy bar whore

God bless you, Japan. Naturally, Irene's new preoccupation made her all jaded and irreligious. Soon she was mistress to some middle aged guy for 78 gold a month, which filled me with fatherly pride.

The result of her rather colourful upbringing was her telling me she hated me when she turned 18 and taking up a life of infamous countryside brigandry. I guess she liked the murdering aspect of her childhood more than the bar whoring aspect. In any case, I received a score of '-398' and was told that I was the worst person on earth for raising my child in such a way. Good times.

Anyway, I'm kind of hungry, so I will conclude on that note. See you all around.

Oh yeah, I should note that blog comments are moderated now. This is in response to attempted vandalism by Franco. If you leave a comment, it'll be up in no time, assuming you aren't an asshole.

"Then let our actions speak for us..."

2006-10-06T15:16:00.000-04:00

Perhaps some of you remember the WOMBAT test from a few months ago? The Official Harry Potter test written by JKR herself. Naturally, I got top marks in it. Well, a couple of days ago, a new WOMBAT was released... one more challenging than the last. It was difficult, but there was only one possible result. Behold:

That's right, motherfuckers. Behold my true form and despair, for I am now the undisputed champion of champions.

That is all.

"Objection!"

2006-10-05T03:11:00.000-04:00

Ever read a book you literally just can't put down?

You know the type. The ones with compelling characters, a gripping plot and all sorts of bells and whistles that make it just enthralling? Harry Potter is a great example of this. Everything about the book is just so enrapturing that all other concerns become secondary to it. It simply must be read. No two ways about it. Well, I recently borrowed something from Franco that was just like that... except that it wasn't a book. It was a game called Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

It seems like a court of law wouldn't usually be a compelling subject for either a game or a book. I mean, I've certainly never been much for courtroom drama. I mean, I read a few John Grisham books a long time ago, but they never really left a lasting impression on me. And I've never cared much for things like Law and Order either. What's really catching about this game is that, you see, the court is crazy. All trials are required to end within three days (to reduce the stress on the judicial system), obstruction of justice seems to just be sort of routine and the prosecution gets to select (almost) all of the witnesses. There's no Jury either... just a (rather gullible) judge. Your two weapons as the defense attorney are evidence (which you collect yourself) and cross-examination (you can point out contradictions in a witness testimony). This makes for a courtroom that's a lot more intense and action-packed than what you'd normally expect from... you know... the law. The real law, that is.

So, again, why's it so compelling? Because each trial is a mystery and every twist and turn just left me breathless. I would like to describe the story in detail, but a few of the people here need to play this one day. Not just Jacob, but Fradener (who seems to come here often enough) too. So let me be general. Let's say there's a murder at a certain time involving two gunshots. Your defendent was in the area at the time and that it seems, for all intents and purposes, that he was the only one around that might have done it. But then, while questioning a witness, you discover that he heard another bullet fire, a good half an hour earlier. You are able to then substantiate his claim with evidence that you had previously thought to be useless. Suddenly the whole case and the whole picture of what happened that night changes. Your discovery turns everything on its head.

The cases are all immensely complex and well woven. Hence my novel analogy. Phoenix Wright is mainly a text-based game. A lot of the action occurs through dialogue trees, after all. I would therefore describe this game as being a mystery novel, where you play the role of both detective and lawyer. Your suspicions and critical thinking are what unveils the truth... looking for clues and holes in the text is what opens the way forward. It's a detective novel where the wrongdoings, conspiracies and deceptions are only unveiled when the reader/player realizes what they are and presents concrete evidence attesting to why it is so.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things beyond your control. I mean, there's certainly a fair amount of deus ex machina in the first two cases. But ultimately, you have to do the reasoning for yourself. The last two cases especially are just mind-bendingly hard to piece together. Hell, in one case, you have to prove your client innocent while she's openly trying to plead guilty. And let me tell you how damn satisfying that is. Going through a witness' testimony, thumbing through the evidence dilligently and having a single, pristine, 'aha!' moment. Seeing the witness stammer after you expose them as a clear liar is just beautiful. Especially since you can yell 'Objection!' with your own voice using the microphone.

So yeah, this was a bang-up game. One of the best games I've ever played, I would venture. By the last two cases, I started taking my DS around with me all over the house and neglected a fair few of my readings for this week (yeah, I know, bad idea). It was just an edge-of-your-seat affair, with one question leading to another. I can see why this game has such a cult following.

Anyhow, I thought I'd share that with everyone.

Other news? Bah, nothing worth mentioning on the same entry as Phoenix Wright. I've been told indirectly that I'm a Liberal Delegate, but have yet to receive concrete confirmation. I've been fasting as per usual... I dropped my English course because I felt that the Professor had a strong anti-Islam undercurrent and that there was nothing I could learn from her. There's also the instance of Fradener figuring out the Lupin-Wolf thing in HP3 right after Snape's substitute class, but I think I've told most of you about that.

I've had this feeling lately that I'm not sure how to discuss, really. Nagging feeling that one could attribute to... hm. Well, we'll talk about it next time, perhaps. For now, I'm going to go lie down for a bit and contemplate a few things. Plus my mouse is out of batteries, so I have to stop regardless. In any case, hope you enjoyed my words on PW.