First up: it’s Sex AND the City? I swore it was Sex IN the City. News to me. @_@
I notice I rant a bit as you pointed out, Seph, but… sorry, here’s another. XD Sex In The City is… well, it’s one of those many, many TV shows in the media today that enrapture people for all the wrong reasons. What happened to the days of dignified acting, responsible and respectable actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, or Judy Garland who still managed to be outrageously attractive and not complete sarcastic sluts sorry, “four intelligent women in control of their own lives” - wherein “control” somehow means being ridden like a racehorse in the bedroom at every opportunity.
And yet Sex and the City stars are today’s Hepburn, idolized and inspiring all the wrong ideals. “It’s okay to be a high-priced whore with expensive shoes, wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other!” Shows like this (and “My Super Sweet 16 - don’t EVEN get me started) emphasize and underline a syndrome in today’s youth I like to call PPS - “Pampered Princess Syndrome” - an overwhelming sense of “can’t do wrong” inspired by feminism and shallow media like this.
Finally, Sarah Jessica Parker: you look like a horse. Stop it.
Robot Chicken nailed this:
ANYWAY. I should be sleeping soon. I need to go make my lunch for the morning, though, and retrieve my work pants from the dryer downstairs first. But… I had to rant a bit. XD My camera battery died today. :( It was the free disposable that came with it - I’d say it lasted rather long. Good run - I hope the camera continues some good battery functionality like this. Speaking of cameras, my brother and I had a good time in Wal*Mart today going and getting a camera SD card for him along with a USB memory stick - each at 1GB. Our plan had been to get him a nice LCD HDTV at around 19″, but the only good one we liked was sold out… so we abandoned that, put down the nice $44 upconverting (!!) DVD player we found, set aside the HDMI cable for it, and gathered the other goodies. I like electronics shopping. XD And I’m liking how often I can hang out with Cody lately - I guess we’ve bother matured past the “we hate each other” stages of our lives. :) Funny, eh? We’ve been playing GTA 4 almost every night, laughing and having fun. ^^
I also got a nice pair of cheap sunglasses (cue ZZ Top). I look so cool. :D I’ve always liked the cheapos - who can afford or actively require the hundred dollar sunglasses (unless they’re prescription)? And I don’t feel nearly as bad as those spendy people would when I’ll inevitably break mine. XD
18 days and 16 hours til Tricia arrives. :3 It’s getting so close! I washed the car today and everything (trust me, it needed it). I’m so anxious to see her and drive to DisneyWorld. I feel like a kid again. XD
OH! So Andrew graduated, and we attended that ceremony as well. Very different from my brother’s. I liked the speeches given, particularly the one from the Salutatorian, who was both entertaining AND intelligent (as well as humble). The Valedictorian was a bit preachy, but damn… he was offered full-ride scholarships to Harvard, Princeton, AND Yale. @_@ Anyway, Saturday was spent in the morning at TKD for the testing, where I got to have some fun, but my brother and Andrew put on a demo that, while very cool, resulting in my brother breaking some minor bones in his foot. =/ So he’s been limping around. Hope he feels better soon…
I feel rotten for not having posted here in a while. I feel like I’m failing whoever might still read this.
Ugh. I feel rotten overall, too. I had Waffle House tonight - we (Stan, JJ, Cody, and I) went there and got a midnight snack. I guess it didn’t agree with me… Overall today was pretty long, but rather cool - Cody graduated and all.
……Fast Forward.
I wrote that last night. Got tired of trying to write and instead spent the night online with Tricia. :)
Whenever I sleep at Stan’s I get very, very strange dreams. Unfortunately I can never remember them. Sometimes I do for some time of the morning… but never long enough to write them down. As was the case this morning, too - I was in a daze as Cody drove home, I went upstairs and flopped onto my bed and I was out for the next several hours of dreamless sleep.
I also sat around and rearranged my iTunes songs for my iPhone and ended up downloading some trailers via iTunes: Tropic Thunder, which looks terribly entertaining, and the new The Incredible Hulk trailer:
The Motherfucking Hulk SMASH. I think they nailed this one. Looking forward to it. :P Let it buffer for a while - someone managed to get an HD video on youtube, but it takes a bit. Speaking of movies, my brother and I just finished watching Fight Club. :D
Anyway, back to what I’d written last night. As we were watching the graduation ceremony for my brother, I found myself in conversation with his girlfriend about the… exaggerated appeal of it all. It’s just high school, we remarked. Yet the excitement and the seriousness, the “sanctity” of the event - all laughable. No air horns, no beach balls, yet people still yelled and cheered for their kids like lunatics - as if that diploma was the sole culminating achievement of their children’s lives. Speeches by students saying “We did it!” Well… yeah, so did about 95% of everyone else sitting out in the audience did too - let’s face it, the district we live in has a ton of money and wealthy families. Given the resources and help, anything less than graduation would be pathetic. If this were the county next door, or inner city kids, then that’s a different story. And the little Valedictorian girl was pretty pompous; full of hot air and an overwhelming sense of self-pride. Go on and tell everyone at college you were Valedictorian of your class and see how long it takes and how many “so whats” you’ll get before you realize it’s a one-time title, and after that it’s essentially useless. Get over yourself.
*coughs* That being said, I beat GTA 4. Probably the best story for a video game I’ve ever seen, period. Especially the ending. SPOILERS AHOY!
To sum things up:
11:47:54 PM Chik and Lemming: so? GTA?
11:49:14 PM Fish: so the game begins with Niko stepping off the boat, ready to start his life anew in Liberty City. He is met by his cousin Roman, and Niko soon discovers that the “American Dream” Roman told Niko about is a lie - Roman is a struggling owner of a small cab business
11:49:46 PM Fish: Niko is frustrated, but also learns that Roman has a bit of a gambling problem and owes money to the Russian mob.
11:50:43 PM Fish: Niko begins taking oddjobs from them to pay it off, eventually earning some clout with them. Finally, one of the bosses goes kinda nuts, so his best friend and right hand man, Dimitri, has Niko kill the boss.
11:51:29 PM Fish: Turns out Dimitri was using Niko, and wanted Niko and Roman dead, but you and your cousin eventually escape. Dimitri torches both the cab business HQ AND their apartment in the slums.
11:51:52 PM Chik and Lemming: o.o hmmmmmm
11:52:17 PM Fish: Roman’s girlfriend takes them in for a while, and you do oddjobs for other mobs around town. You also find out why Niko came to the states aside from a new beginning… he fought in the Bosnian War.
11:53:11 PM Fish: his squad was betrayed for money, and they and their entire village was slaughtered… he and only 2 others of the squad survived, so one of the other two must’ve betrayed them, and they both live in Liberty City.
11:53:24 PM Fish: Niko wants to know why - they were practically brothers.
11:54:06 PM Fish: that’s why he’s taking these jobs… so the mob can find these men for him.
11:55:40 PM Fish: so… the plot continues… Roman eventually gets engaged to his girlfriend…
11:56:11 PM Fish: Niko takes more jobs, meets more new interesting people… the McReary’s are an Irish bunch of mobsters, but they have a sister, Kate, who Niko begins to care for.
11:56:31 PM Fish: Niko finds one of his old squad guys, Florian.
11:56:52 PM Fish: Florian changed his name to Bernie and is now a gay aerobics instructor - not the betrayer.
11:57:17 PM Fish: Florian’s obviously moved on.
11:57:28 PM Fish: which brings me to me finishing the game tonight.
11:57:43 PM Fish: They got the other guy, Darko.
11:58:13 PM Fish: you’re given a choice - execute him for his deeds or leave him.
11:58:17 PM Chik and Lemming: mhmm?
11:58:42 PM Fish: I left him. he was obviously ill in the head - tortured himself with drug addictions…
11:59:12 PM Fish: it was powerful, but just after that was the final mission.
12:00:22 AM Fish: Jimmy Pegorino, an Italian mobster you’ve been working for, has finally got buyers for a HUGE shipment of heroin you’ve been helping to hide and stash for a while: The Russian Mob. Their contact and business parter? Dimitri.
12:01:27 AM Fish: Niko refuses, but Pegorino threatens him and Roman and says once this is done, they get a huge payload, he’s no longer indebted to any mafias, and he can start his new life having settled his troubles from the Bosnian War past.
12:02:28 AM Fish: Well, after the “assignment”, Niko calls Roman for advice, and Roman slips that he found out where Dimitri is.
12:02:45 AM Fish: Niko now has the choice of killing Dimitri or doing the deal.
12:03:19 AM Fish: Roman begs him to do the deal. Niko calls Kate for advice, she begs him not to trust Dimitri, he’s betrayed him before and will again.
12:03:35 AM Fish: I was given the choice.
12:03:51 AM Fish: I chose to do the deal for the betterment of Niko and Roman’s new lives.
12:04:14 AM Fish: of COURSE the deal goes sour, but you get the money and Niko is still alive.
12:04:34 AM Fish: this sealed the fate for the final mission - Roman’s wedding.
12:04:49 AM Chik and Lemming: mhmm?
12:05:15 AM Fish: you go to the church, watch the wedding…. when one of Dimitri’s hitmen shows up to silence Niko.
12:05:29 AM Fish: they scuffle over the gun, and it goes off, killing Roman in the arms of his new wife.
12:05:46 AM Chik and Lemming: o.o
12:06:33 AM Fish: Niko looses it - unloads the gun into the corpse of the assassin, and vows revenge on Dimitri (who you witness murdering Pegorino so he can keep all the heroin money)
12:07:26 AM Fish: after a lengthy chase involving cars, speedboats, helicopters.. you finally kill him at the base of the Statue of Happiness (Statue of Liberty, basically)
12:07:39 AM Fish: just…. incredible cinematography.
12:07:42 AM Fish: and the dialogue.
12:07:43 AM Chik and Lemming: yeah? o.o
12:08:07 AM Fish: I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could be the best game ever.
12:08:24 AM Fish: I was choked up by the end of it. Niko is a powerful character.
12:09:16 AM Fish: after the credits, the game saves and Niko calls Roman’s widow to say he’s avenged his cousin… you find out she was pregnant, and they were planning to announce it at the reception.
The other ending, less powerful, was that you chose to kill Dimitri, then at the wedding Pegorino and his men perform a driveby, killing Kate by accident. Then the chase is after Pegorino. An FAQ summed up my feelings on the ending perfectly:
“In my personal opinion, however, after having played through the entire game twice, I believe that the “Deal” option is actually the better ending, for several reasons. First, the loss of Roman is quite a bit more substantial of a blow to Niko than Kate. Roman is literally the first character we as the players meet in the game, and the tendentious bond between the cousins is substantial and even poignant at times. Kate is merely a single love interest in a series of potential love interests in the game, and the player can quite easily progress through the game while ignoring Kate almost entirely, save for her appearances in a few pre-mission cutscenes.
The “Mr. and Mrs. Bellic” cutscene respective to the different endings underscore this distinction quite nicely, in my opinion. The cutscene with Kate’s death seemed rather abrupt and poorly acted by comparison to the one in which Roman was killed. Niko, who rarely loses composure, firing the gun repeatedly into the lifeless corpse of the assailant was an extremely powerful scene and one that brought to life the powerful drive for revenge that would culminate in the final showdown with Dimitri. The event also solidified the folly of trusting Dimitri, both with respect to honestly carrying out the drug transaction and the likelihood of him leaving Roman and Niko alone.
The finale sequence is laden with irony in this respect. Those who had grown to have an affinity for Roman, and were thus inclined to accede to his wishes for Niko to forget his thirst for vengeance and do the deal with Dimitri, were punished with Roman’s death. By listening to Roman, you seal his fate, which is actually quite appropriate given Roman’s tendency to get himself into bad situations. By listening to Kate, you end up losing her. It is an appropriate twist for the rather grim and dark tale told in Grand Theft Auto IV.”
I can’t think of much more to say, other than you should play this game. You need to, if you love a good story. Even my telling of it all cannot do the real thing justice.
I feel rather guilty that I’ve not written in a few days. I started my job at SRS Monday, and since then I’ve had my free time severely cut down. I wake up at 6AM, get to work at about 7AM, and work until about 4:30-5PM. Then I drive an hour home, and have about 4-6 hours do to what I want before I sleep….not a lot, sadly. Since I’m waiting for an opportunity to get the computer at work fixed up for me (and a computer account in general), I’m more or less Marcie’s workdog, doing oddjobs (mostly pulling staples out of papers older than I am to be scanned and digitized). Today I did sit in a meeting for 4 hours though. @_@ At least the company of my coworkers is the same great group.
As you can see, though, in the meantime Tricia’s been writing quite a bit. Please keep up with and read and comment on her blogs! <3
Tonight I spent hanging out at Border's and Wal*Mart with Charlotte, Aaron's girlfriend. We had fun talking this and that about movies - good times. I fueled my media whoring a bit and I purchased T2, The Emperor’s New Groove, and The Mask.
My grandfather has malignant melanoma on his face. At first they thought it was carcinoma and removed it, but found out it wasn’t when it came back… and worse yet, it’s an odd strain that travels via nerves as opposed to tissue… So my folks are driving him short-notice to Orlando, FL, tomorrow for radiology treatment. They don’t know how long they’ll be gone. Until then, it’s just my brother and I holding down the fort. Kinda worried…
An interesting video I ran across earlier - so apparently back in the day it was popular if, during a radio interview, if you didn’t want it to be aired you simply laced it with as many profanities as you can muster. This made me laugh so hard - you can hear the baseball coach almost laugh twice near the end:
One last thing since I’m a bit… unable to sleep. Wal*Mart bathrooms are ridiculous. 2 stalls, 2 urinals…. and SIX sinks? Who the fuck thought that up? Why do we need to be able to handle more hand washing than pissing/crapping in a restroom!?! Furthermore, the sinks hardly fuck work. They have automatic sensors that are so out of alignment that by the time you get them on to wash your hands, they cut back off. One sink drained the water straight onto the floor! Nice job there, Lou. Good to see technical school for plumbing paid off in full. Then again, if I could con people THAT well, I’d be a bit more rich, eh? :P
And that’s all I really have to say for now. More survey to come later!
One week until I’m through with exams and I check out of my dorm to head home for the summer. I’m looking forward to starting my job and not doing anything otherwise (aside from TKD, I need to lose weight o.x). And it gets me money! Wooo money! With it I’m gonna get my gorgeous camera, Disneyworld Park tickets (with Park-Hopper passes… I have hotels lined up, just no tickets), and maybe I can fix the stereo in my car so Tricia and I will have something to listen to for the trip to Orlando and back. It’s looking to be a blast - she and I have been planning this forever. I can’t wait. :3
So! Tony Hawks. He’s not a professional skateboarder, but a British author. What a surprise, eh? As such, he gets a LOT of mistake mail from skateboarding fans. His fantastic replies are certainly worth a read - I laughed outloud quite a bit. :P
How long did it take to land the 900?
mr.me
——-
Mr. You
Ages. Air traffic control made me circle Heathrow for forty minutes.
TH
Or:
hey tony!
I like tony hawks underground.I skate myself and i must say i cannot ollie.How is it done?Cheers for reading.
Samuel
——
Samuel,
I like the way you finish your mail. ‘Cheers for Reading’. At last someone else who appreciates this much maligned town. Reading is a wonderful place with an excellent one way system, efficient libraries, and a number of fine grass verges. On top of that, it is well-served by the M4 motorway, so it has easy access to places which are much, much nicer.
Goodbye
TH
Another:
Tony what was your first ever trick you did and what was your favourite trick you ever did?
Liam
——
Liam,
I’ve stopped turning tricks since they cleaned things up around Kings Cross.
You probably wouldn’t want to know what the trick was.
Now… something a bit more serious. Art. Art, it appears, is serious business. I noticed a number of my friends joining a Facebook group - “Prevent the “Artistic” Death of an Innocent Animal-SIGN THE PETITION!” (hope that hyperlink works). Apparently some Latin American artist Guillermo Vargas Habacuc picked up a stray dog off the street and tied it in a corner of an art museum exhibit without feeding it. It’s contested if the dog died or not - some reports say he let it die in the museum, others say he fed it before and after the exhibit and released it later to the streets… Yet I noticed all these Facebook comments on the photos, and I realized most of these people are absolutely retarded.
Michael Weileder of NSULA made a fantastic comment on the nature of the 500+ comments:
Top five most popular things to do on this wall:
5: Assert the absolute lack of morals of those who do not agree with your point of view!
4: Use profanity and overt vulgarity (and even extreme violent language), so everyone knows that YOU MEAN BUSINESS!
3: Assure the world that you, having attained the illustrious title of art major, can DEFINITIVELY state the exhibit is not art! Make sure to put “art” in quotations!
2: Belittle Shiggmasta’s [editor's note: Shiggmasta made arguments in favor of the art] intelligence, cleverly using his name against him in your intellectual debate!
And with an overwhelming lead…
1: Suggest that the artist himself be tied to a wall in place of the dog! Because it’s the same thing! Really!
…Which pretty much sums up everything in a few sentences. Really, though - regardless of whether it is or isn’t art it DID make a point. It made the point against standing and staring at animal neglect and strays dying before your very eyes. It made the point that even when you put the animal in the public eye, still no one takes care of the damn thing. No one fed it, no one let it go. Instead, they argue if it’s art.
Good. Fucking. Job.
“Why didn’t he just take a picture?” It wouldn’t have made the same point - it wouldn’t have elicited the same response. If you’re so enraged, if this group changed you, go out and adopt a pet instead of purebreeding them. Go out and spay or neuter your pet. Instead, you children are thinking you’re making a statement by joining a group and doing nothing else, aside from clicking on your newsfeed to see pictures of John getting drunk, or Becky hooking up with Charles. Instead, you children are opting “an eye for an eye”, which as Gandhi put it, “makes the whole world blind”. It’s you violent sick fucks who are destroying this world, those of you who think it’s okay to kill because someone did something you don’t like. Get off your ass, log off Facebook, and DO SOMETHING GOOD for once. Instead, you’re sitting safely in your middle-class suburban home, parading your half-naked Facebook profile pictures, rattling your jewelry and wishing for death upon others, when you could be changing the world.
I agree that an animal shouldn’t have to die to prove a simple point. I don’t disagree with joining a group to show your opinions. I do disagree with not doing all that you can. I beg of you, if you joined this group and you’re my friend, do something more than simply joining the group. As for the rest of these maligned violent children, I can only pray they come to their senses soon.
I think I had more to say, but if I did I can’t remember it.
Honestly, at this rate this class can DIAF. I’ve learned NOTHING aside from total unpurified hatred for how idiotic people can be in this class, specifically those who are [supposedly, though I've seen no proof of this] teaching the class.
The class is CS2261 - Media Device Architecture. It’s supposed to be about making GameBoy Advance games via a program called Visual HAM. The first day of class, I was informed that Macs cannot run this program, nor are there any equivalents of Visual HAM for the Mac atmosphere. The TA’s (Teaching assistants) flat out told me to pirate Windows for use in Bootcamp or Parallels. That should’ve been the first red flag.
But I kept on. I soon discovered that not only were the TA’s inattentive in lecture (if they showed up at all), but they were incapable of teaching or even basic communication with the class. Labs (which is claimed to be mandatory but the syllabus has no allocation for it to be incorporated to our grade) were and still are a joke, where nothing is taught, the class is too busy (and too loud) trying to teach themselves, and the TA’s have both an inability to convey information (try projecting your voice past a sensual whisper to your laptop, Peter - for that matter, learn the C language at all, really) and no reign of control over the class. Lectures were comprised of two professors - Bill Leahy and Aaron Bobick (I assume that’s his name, but he came to class and taught maybe a total of 3 times this semester - must be nice not having a care in the world about the class you’re co-”teaching”). Bill does a good job teaching, but without communicating with the TA’s, the class is essentially divided. Aaron wastes his time trying to be hip and funny, failing miserable and placing emphasis on “fitting in” with us rather than teaching us.
Not to mention that coding for the GameBoy in C is so proprietary it’s ridiculous. There’s no relaible resources, TONC sucks, but best of all was the “mandatory” C book we HAD to purchase which I haven’t found a use for at all - as it truly is useless. $45 right down the toilet, essentially.
Ah, and the grading scheme. 75% projects, 25% tests. That’s ALL we were told. Final project? Does it have a different weight? No clue! Does attendance in lab (despite claims) count at all? Who knows! As of Drop Day, we had about 6 grades turned in - maybe half were graded for the progress report. It’s now 2 weeks until finals and nothing in the past 6 weeks has been graded. I have no idea what my grades are. GO DO YOUR JOB AND GET OFF FACEBOOK, TAs. CHRIST, YOU’RE BEING PAID FOR THIS SHIT. IF YOU CAN’T COMMIT TO IT, DON’T SIGN UP FOR IT.
Which brings me to the point of the Final Project - make a game. Last semester got 5 weeks and 4 milestones to prepare the final copy. We get 2 milestones and 8 DAYS. 4 for a beta, and now we were JUST told it’s due Thursday. THURSDAY. FUCK YOU. LEARN TO MANAGE TIME. GRADE MY OTHER SHIT FIRST, ASSHOLES.
I would be writing all of this on a class evaluation form, but it looks likely that we won’t even get one of those.
Fuck this class. This is for you:
“Hi CS2261, I’m a Gigantic Idiot.” - Peter Watanabe [Never has a truer statement been made.]
