"The Congo is just a small area in South America."
"If anyone thinks they're receiving an objective view of news in this country, it's really... not."
"I would think that every [black] person would at least be a little proud to be African-American instead of just wanting to be White-American."
Well, I actually did get around to starting my E3 writing, but it turns out I have a huge amount to say and so I probably won't be done for at least a day or so. Ugh.
In the meantime, you can look at my Iori.
I celebrated being done with my evil evil paper by doing a fun thing. I'll probably write about E3 (which was a week ago) tomorrow. Now I'm going to bed.
So I'm about to drink this thing I bought at the store earlier. It's actually an energy drink that Huan sort of introduced me to, although I haven't had it until now. Here's a partial list of its contents:
Should be interesting.
I updated the writing section [section removed] with several items from the old page.
INSTEAD OF WRITING A PAPER.
Happy Lauraday!
I was pretty excited to get working on my E3 section and things seemed to be moving along pretty well, until Ken messages me out of nowhere to tell me he is playing the Linux port of That Game. Huh, I think to myself. If the Linux port is done, then surely so must the OS X version be. And surely enough, it was, and I immediately found myself downloading and installing That Game. That Game being the game that transcends a title of legendary, the game that, when I attempt to single out the number one videogame of all time (a task which I find myself confronted with quite often), somehow always manages to stick out as the only obvious candidate. While all the Final Fantasies are too busy fighting it out with each other, where Tetris falls short because of its lack of personality... That Game prevails. I am, of course, speaking of the one and only Star Control II. The game that, despite being coded over ten years ago for a dead operating system, has managed to reemerge back onto every modern OS via its ferociously dedicated fanbase and, of course, its extraordinary creators. The epic quest across an impossibly large universe, the rock-solid gameplay, the outlandish music, and, of course, some of the best writing and characters ever to grace the medium are all preserved in Star Control II's multiplatform incarnation, The Ur-Quan Masters. The OS X version is actually violently unstable, but I can deal with the crashes. This is Star Control.
So, I guess my point is that for the last 24 hours, instead of doing anything productive, I've been playing Star Control II. This is going to turn into a problem very quickly seeing as I have three weeks and as many papers due before finals, but I'll deal with them when the time comes. Right now I need more exotic minerals, because my flagship is sorely lacking in good old hellbore cannons. And we can't have that, can we?
So I hear the Matrix Reloaded videogame is actually going to be a baseball simulator. Agent Smith will be playing the part of the ball.
There will also be a car-surfing minigame.
Additionally, it will have two settings for plot: none, and too much.
All right, I'm done.
So I was in Kerr Hall's bathroom upstairs and I noticed that someone had written on the wall, on the grout between the tiles:
the grout gatsby
Ha ha, I thought. That's great. Then I started to look around and noticed that all of the grout was covered with similar little writings. I am not making this up. These were all written on the wall:
Yeah.
Professor Monahan on a transferred texture in a Picasso still life, as Picasso: "I didn't even paint it! Is it really art? Let's think about that... FOR THE REST OF THE CENTURY!"
Then I went to lunch and there was a bonus Nexus inside my Nexus.
Black studies was just fantastic, as usual. The lecture is held in one of the chem building's smaller lecture halls, so it's sort of a small space and there are chemistry charts on the walls. A fair amount into the class I glanced over to my left and noticed the guy sitting next to me, instead of taking notes, was copying down the periodic table. After he finished, he paired atomic numbers to spell words (e.g. 31 + 49 = GAIN). After writing down a couple of these, he made sure the professor wasn't watching and left. I know he was being careful because he got up as the professor turned his back to write something at the board, but then quickly sat down again when he turned around again. It was very amusing.
Then, on the bus downtown, we drove alongside a car where the entire back seat was filled with loaves of bread. Seriously, filled. It came all the way to the top of the back seats. It was so much bread. What could anyone possibly be doing with all that bread? I am not making this up.
So much bread.
Tonight I got to chapter 4 of Ikaruga for the first time, largely due to having finally earned several extra credits through accumulating play time. (The first few hours I played I didn't know the autosave was disabled by default. Grr.) Ikaruga is one of those games you don't play for fun. You play it because it taunts you in the back of your mind until you go mad. I don't know why I bought the thing in the first place. But anyway, things begin to get impossible right away. If you're not familiar with Ikaruga's premise, I will explain: The game is basically a vertical shooter. Your ship has a black side and a white side, and you are able to switch between them at will. Your laser changes color depending on which side is up, and you can absorb bullets of the same color without taking damage. Most of the time there will be black and white enemies onscreen simultaneously, each firing their own respective color bullets, so much of the game is an exercise in screening out all the bullets of one color while you dodge the rest of them. Anyway. Here is my GIFtastic depiction of the chapter 3 boss. Despite the low quality of the rendering, the basic idea is actually frighteningly accurate. Just imagine you are a tiny ship trapped somewhere within the ring. It is FUN. The first time I reached this boss, my brain overloaded and shut down and I had to leave the room.
I CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE HOW CHAPTER 4 CAN BE BEATEN. THE ENTIRE LEVEL IS LIKE THE CHAPTER 3 BOSS. HAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Matrix tomorrow!
Wow, what a fun night!
I've been getting back into a productive zone lately. Artwise, that is, since I still predict I'll be up late into the night next Wednesday developing a thesis for my second blackblackblack paper. But anyway, I made a wallpaper based on the Japanese site for P.N.03, which I rather like and am using right now. I also finished the second project for my print class, which is sort of a synaesthetic abstraction of a song by I am Robot and Proud. It turned out nicely. The process was a bit more expensive than I planned, though, and since I ended up making so many copies of them I'm considering offering some for sale. They're very nice, clean prints, although they're not as sharp as the original you'll see here, of course. They're about 8x8" and are on light blue or cream colored paper. Let me know if you'd be interested. I'm not really expecting any response to this, but if I can manage to make even a little of the money back, I'd be happy.
Anyway. I'm hoping to stay on this productive track. There are a couple of pieces I've been meaning to do since the beginning of the year, which is kind of sad. The same thing happened last year, and I'd rather not have this turn into an annual tradition.
Blablabla. Matrix Reloaded on Wednesday! I think we're going to watch the original Matrix that afternoon, just to make sure we're meeting our nerdity quota for the day.
Here it is, your moment of Zen.
Today Jason and I had to lead some discussion in our black studies section, so Jason found this website, www.iabolish.org (register now to become an eAbolitionist!) and printed up a set of two-page handouts on slavery in Mauritania for everyone. There ended up being quite a few leftovers, so we hatched the ingenius plan of going out to the Arbor and distributing them to random passersby. They were snatched up in less than a minute, and one girl even thanked me for it. We decided it was the best way to get rid of unwanted papers, and probably also the greatest thing to come out of black studies 5 so far.
Black studies 5 is such a great class.</sarcasm> *closes book dramatically*
On this fifth anniversary of that great day in our nation's history, we should all take a moment to remember those two brave individuals, the founding fathers of obliteration, Ray and Marcus. Without their stalwart efforts, it is unlikely that anyone today would understand the true meaning of total obliteration.
"About the time you think the enemy just has some lame attack, it changes shape and comes blasting at you with a big laser."
"That makes for more vogue, more flash."
"Command from client: 'Defeat boss!'"
"We tried to create totally awesome designs for the machines of P.N.03, not just 'run-of-the-mill' cool stuff."
"Before you shoot them down, take just a second to admire the enemy machines."
"Its body flies toward Vanessa and self-explodes."
Q: Is it possible for God to create a tomato sauce with so much pepper in it that even I cannot eat it? (A: Yes, it is.)
I've been half-following this P.N.03 game for a while, despite the incredibly stupid tagline on the Website. What initially appealed to me, besides the pretty, cleanly-designed graphics, was that every site previewing the game described the premise with something along the lines of, "Vanessa Schneider [the protagonist] battles robots with the help of her laser gun." No epic storyline, no promise of a cinematic feel or immersive environments that "make it seem like you're inside the game," just some woman and her laser gun. It sounded delightfully simple.
So apparently some changes took place between the initial screenshots and the game's release. An updated, more accurate synopsis would likely read: "Vanessa Schneider shoots laser beams out of her palms while performing crazy dance moves." Go to the Website and look at the trailers for a better idea of just how zany it is. It does begin to look sort of cool after a minute so it's not like it's a bad thing, but wow! What a crazy idea. KEEEEEEEEE-RAZAY!!!!!
Also, I guess the early screens never really showed Vanessa's face since they were typical, behind-the-character shots, so I had no idea she looked like a Revo ad.
You can't do much better than a pumpkin pie made with Nilla wafer crust!
Someone stole half my towels out of the dryer. You have no idea how fury-inducing this is when it's already 2 AM.
On the lighter side of things :D, I finished a new project today. I was introduced to Macromedia Freehand through my print class (finally, some vector software experience), so I thought it might be fun to try to make something with it. Here is the result. I'm pretty happy with it, even if it was a serious pain to do something like this in a vector app after working exclusively in Photoshop. HRUUAHGHG. It was interesting, though. I may try it again in the future. The image is also available in wallpaper form, if you're bored with your current desktop. By the way, I did a horrible, horrible thing in saving the wallpapers and not only saved them in JPEG format, but also edited them several times. I think they're mostly OK, though, unless you look really closely. Also, the 1024 versions are just the larger 1280 versions scaled down and cropped, so they're not quite as sharp. Now I'm going to lose my graphics license for sure.
So I might be going to E3 courtesy of the Huan, who still has the best domain name ever. I didn't really want to mention this until it was a little more guaranteed, (Right now I'd say it's about 60% certain.) but, dude. E. 3.
The only problem with that is THE MATRIX comes out during the same timespan. Currently I think we may do some kind of 12:01 showing thing, if they're doing that around here, but we'll see. THE MATRIX!!!!!!
And now, here it is, your moment of Zen.
Did you know that whales make up nearly 90% of the organic matter on the planet?
It's true.
I think I am going to have to readjust my budget to include more Ritter Sport. If that means dropping out or living on the street next year, so be it.
I forgot to mention that my black mage (and moogle) pin arrived on Thursday, too. Extra hooray!
With graphics like Gran Turismo 4's, why do we still need oxygen?
Whaa-ho. After furiously studying nearly 100 slides for today's art history midterm, I was able to go through the exam feeling very confident. The scariest part was when there was some random Roy Lichtenstein slide before all of the crazy Neoclassical/Romantic etc. images we were supposed to be seeing. It was just a mistake, though, and then it turned out that the only slides I didn't get to look over weren't in the slide ID anyway. HOOOIAJ!
So after class I was walking over to the bus loop because I needed to drop some stuff off at a printing facility downtown, and I noticed Morgan eerily stalking me from the Coral Tree Cafe. She decided to follow along downtown and we made a half lunch out of it. She stopped at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to get chai tea clone #43829. On the way back to the transit center we stopped by the Electronics Boutique again, where I obtained a copy of Skygunner for cheap. It is fun.
We then hurried back to catch the 24X, only to find the 12X in its place. OR SO WE THOUGHT. As the 12X pulled away, it revealed a hidden 24X ahead of it, also pulling away. (This is why my mantra is "buses suck.") It turned out to be for the better, though, since after only a minute or two of waiting, the processing facility called me to say that they were done. We jetted back over, but Morgan turned back halfway to ensure that she would be able to catch the next 24X in order to meet with the Laura. I obtained the film (for nearly twice the price of Skygunner) and headed back to the transit center. I managed to catch up with Morgan, who had stepped into a comic book shop on the way back and purchased, yes, the first issue of the Radiskull comic book, which is great. Although, the cover says it is the March issue, so that may mean there are at least two other issues floating around out there by now. Hmm.
Anyway, we caught the next 24 and arrived back safely. Midterm, lunch, Skygunner, linotronic film prepared in under two hours, and a Radiskull comic to top it all off. A very productive afternoon.
Definitely more productive than my black studies lecture.
Here it is, your moment of Zen.
I went out to the kitchen for late night studying comestibles and I ended up putting away the dishes and cleaning half the kitchen floor. I am the KING of procrastination!
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