What'd I miss?





OH GOD NO I HAVE OVER 1,500 NEW MESSAGES.

Bye.

The demo for Spore's creature creator is out now.

It's neat.

The first thing I did after getting the hang of it was make a hyperherm.

It's a little unsettling when you spawn a baby creature, and find that it has the same massive penis, hanging balls and voluptuous breasts as its parent.

I wonder how EA'll react once stuff like that starts getting passed around. The decency police are on the case!

We've been putting down gravel in the front yard, since it's not blessed with a direct line of sight with the sun, and grass won't grow upon its accursed ground. So, like, ten tons of gravel. Literally. Delivered on Thursday. It's Sunday night. I've been shoveling that crap every day. My shoulders are solid blocks of felsite, and I can't feel my legs. But it's FINISHED.

I'm planning on building a computer. I'm terrified. What if I buy the WRONG THING? Also, I need to back up all my crap. Figured I could buy a DVD+RW drive before I get anything else, hook it up to my current computer and use it to back everything up, but no! My PC is so hilariously out of date that it doesn't support SATA connections. I'll have to transfer everything to my mom's computer and burn it from there, I dunno. Everybody in the house has a DVD burner except me. Hmm.

I haven't drawn anything in a week. It's getting absurd. The faces of those I owe art to haunt me in my sleep! Nooo!

Spore's coming out in a few months. I KNOW it is! Will Wright told me so! Spore spore spore spore.

They say that, in Dwarf Fortress, "Losing is fun!". I'm still on my first fortress after nine years. By all accounts, my dwarves should have starved to death by the first winter, yet still they thrive. LolokErar is a bustling metropolis. Sure, there was that thing with the moat exploding, and the whole "my-woefully-underequipped-military-getting-massacred-by-goblins" incident, but STILL. Why isn't my fort a smoking hole in the ground? Where did I go right? *shame*

Or, conversely, how much you been charged for commissioning someone? For sketches? Inks? Colors? Extra characters? Backgrounds?

I'm puttering around the idea of opening up commissions again (after I finish the ones I already have, aheh ...) and I'm trying to get a baseline average.

Ride The Towering Detour! 60% wackier than your average commute!

New this season: Historical Inaccuracy Land! Ride Emperor Nero's Nightmare! The Ides of March! And Return of the Ziggurat! Rome never looked so good!

Ride The Mad Miner! The Mad Miner's Son! The Mad Miner's Daughter! And The Mad Miner's Estranged Nephew! Twice is never enough!

Son of the Plague! Two miles of track in under a minute! Open-casket funerals not an option!

The Tower of Rational Fear! 8 Gs of acceleration, or your money back!

New for the kids: Uncle Buck's Mystery Coaster! The Slow Train to Nowhere! Martian Mind Slide! And Old Man McLeery's Place! Listen to their screams of delight!

And be sure to visit Unsettling Furry Land! Ride The Voluptuous Skunk! The Swarthy Kangaroo Rat! The Bottomless Yiff! Hyperfur! And MANGE! No explanation necessary!

BE THERE!

I've been saying that for the past ten years. Early on, I was upset because I wasn't filling three pages a day with sketches. Later, I was angry with myself for not drawing for several days at a time. Now, I look on my userpage at my uploads, and I see "16 days ago", "a month ago", "two months ago", etc. It's not that I don't upload very often, it's that I don't actually have anything to upload. I'm lucky if I can make a couple sketches a week. Almost everything I've done lately gets uploaded here.

My first impulse is to blame FurAffinity itself, like it's somehow been eating into my productivity. But like I said, it's been an almost straight downward slope for the past decade. In fact, FA actually stimulated my productivity at first, at a time when I was pumping out several requests a day.

Maybe I'm afraid to take risks, to do something different. When I was less skilled than I am now, I wasn't as well aware of my intrinsic artistic weaknesses. My sketches were more varied then ... sure, they sucked in deeply fundamental ways, but they were CREATIVE. I've been in a slump of herms and (ugh) scat lately ... which immediately makes me want to blame FA again, since the community rewards that kind of thing with comments, but that still doesn't explain it. There are a lot of OTHER strange things I could be drawing that would get even more attention.

I'm way behind on trades and commissions. I've got a couple commission requests from Foxcutter and Phrase that I've done nothing to work on. They're unpaid, fortunately ... I wouldn't ever think of asking for payment before finishing a picture, not in my current state. I've got a trade half that I've owed TayMonkey for the better part of a year, at LEAST ... he's been super nice about it, but it BUGS me that I've owed him for so long.

I feel like my memory's going. I get dreams confused with reality, and vice-versa. Days flow into each other, and I can't tell where the time goes. What do I DO all day? I'm not always sure.

I just saw American Splendor on IFC. Harvey Pekar detailed the events of his life with stick figures and dialogue balloons, and had artists illustrate them into comics. I've wanted to do that for years. Just, y'know, make stupid comics of my life and what I was thinking at the time. Not to show anyone, or to make money off of, but just for myself. But I never do.



I needed to write.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0390384/
Look! LOOK!! I just saw this on IFC! It ... I ... I don't even know how to describe it! It's a time travel movie! It has no budget! It has no special effects! It's mostly people talking! But I was ENTHRALLED BY IT. I'm not even entirely sure what the plot was! I'd have to watch it again to make sense of it all! It was SO GOOD.





Just thought I'd mention that.

OBLIGATORY SPOILERS WARNING

Here's a detailed, illustrated timeline of the events in Primer: http://neuwanstein.fw.hu/primer_timeline.html Look at that! NINE TIMELIMES. That is INSANE. I need to watch this movie again.

So PurpleCat got me into Dwarf Fortress again. I mentioned in an earlier submission that I'd played it before and wasn't terribly impressed, but ... my god. It's improved SO MUCH since then. It's not just a pointless excursion into a flat cliff anymore. It's not just "The underground river is always X tiles away, and you need to reach it before winter so you can plant crops" ... no, world generation actually MATTERS now. The terrain varies wildly depending on where you site your fort! My first fortress was built amidst some short, rolling hills, with no steady water source. I had to build channels between them to get drinking water indoors. PurpleCat's fortress, which we're both working on, is sited on the side of a massive cliff. A steady river of water flows nearby, but it's far below our main building site, and we'll eventually need to use pumps to make it useful.

The point is, the game is VARIED now. I'm actually ENJOYING it. I think what I disliked about other base-building games like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius was that the maps were always the same. You could experiment for a bit, but eventually it became a tedious process of finding the MOST efficient base layout. In Dwarf Fortress, there are THOUSANDS of areas you could potentially build on, in a randomly generated world. It's impossible to devolve into building the "perfect" fortress, because there IS no perfect fortress. You work with what you have, given the circumstances. Maybe your site doesn't have a magma vein, and you need to burn trees to make charcoal to forge metal. Or maybe it won't have any trees, and you'll have to import logs from traders, and make as many things out of stone or metal as possible.

The "graphics" are an eyesore at first, but you get used to it quickly, and they actually add to the atmosphere. Recently, a band of goblins invaded my fortress. I only had a couple of recruits, armed with crossbows they didn't know how to use. They bravely defended the entrance, only to be cut down in a hail of bolts. I sealed the front entrance and tried to route them to the top level via an external stairwell, to where a band of traders were doing business with me. They had a few soldiers with them, and I figured it was my only hope. It worked, and the goblins swarmed onto the plateau, firing bolts almost at random. My only chef happened to be outside at the time, and he ran from the invaders as they fired at him. He caught a bolt in his lower right arm and fell to the ground, stunned. The goblins were eventually defeated, and my chef was able to make it back inside, where he's recuperating from his wounds.

That in itself doesn't seem like much, but keep in mind this is all being displayed with g's, -'s, smiley faces and text descriptions. My chef could have had the misfortune to catch a bolt with his head, killing him instantly, or it could have grazed a vital organ, causing internal bleeding. If he had sustained enough minor injuries, he might have passed out from shock and bled to death. The game is ASTOUNDINGLY deep, and yet the fact that it accomplishes it all with ASCII graphics somehow makes it much more visceral. You can more easily envision everything in your mind, and it makes the game that much more engrossing.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ <- Check it out if you feel the inclination. The learning curve is steep, but it's free, updated often, and definitely worth it.
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/......php/Main_Page <- Be sure to check out the wiki too, you'll need it.
http://fromearth.net/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/ <- And finally, an old archived SA thread involving the trials and tribulations of the fortress of Boatmurdered. It uses an old, archaic version of Dwarf Fortress, but it gives a good idea of all the game is capable of. Plus, it's funny as hell.

Ok, so, I stumbled across this the other day:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh.....p;pagenumber=1

It's a SomethingAwful thread where the resident goons mock Let's Play videos on Youtube. It's giving me delightful MST3K vibes, so I've been watching them with glee for the most part.

But ... oh god. Some of the videos they're mocking are SO BAD, they're actually making me a little angry. And y'know, it's not just the poor production values or lack of gaming skill, it's the player's ATTITUDES. Like, there's this series of videos of this guy playing Doom. And he's bragging about what a pro he is, he's got the difficulty cranked to Ultra-Violence, he talks shit to every enemy he kills, but ... he SUCKS. He wanders aimlessly, he doesn't seem to know how to strafe, and he FREAKS OUT if he encounters more than three imps at a time. And this is just in the first couple of levels.

Now it's like, if he was HONEST about it, I'd cut him some slack. Maybe this is his first time, or he hasn't played it since it was released ... whatever. But he makes such a big deal about how awesome he is, and ... it makes me a little angry, actually.

Same thing with the Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes movie. The guy playing sets it to Extreme difficulty and turns off the radar, because, you know, he hasn't played it in ages, but he's pretty hardcore! And then of course he's completely surprised when the guards notice him fumbling around, and blames it all on Snake, and the guards themselves for having the audacity to shoot him. He never even tries to be stealthy, and during the entire ten minutes never makes it past the first room.

And then there are the save staters! These are especially prevalent on Donkey Kong Country movies, but there's a Super Mario World run in there somewhere that does the same thing ... ah, yeah, the ones by XRayX4417. It's like, if you'd just PLAY THE GAME NORMALLY, you'd probably get pretty good at it eventually! But they don't PLAY THE GAME, they SAVE STATE every 10 seconds, and then load when even the slightest thing goes wrong! Or, better yet, they save in the middle of this chaotic swarm of enemies, and then load FIFTY TIMES IN A ROW because they can't remember that they need to avoid an enemy right in front of them, or they run off a platform, or they do SOMETHING, because they get CARELESS! And it takes then ten minutes to finish one fucking level because they have to save and load 100 times! JESUS! What's the POINT? It's like an exercise in abject frustration! LOAD die LOAD die LOAD die LOAD die LOAD die. If you'd just CONCENTRATE for five fucking seconds you wouldn't NEED to load!!!

Anyway. Sorry. Little pet peeve of mine, I guess.

 starbound convinced me to make a collection of all the hyper art I've done. I've already posted this on the Hyperfurs group, but was somewhat reluctant to post it more publicly here for reasons that are detailed in the included readme, but I decided ... ehh. It's already been released to the ravages of the internet. Might as well put it here, too. Anyway, here's the link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/8982469.....icism.zip.html

This isn't a definitive collection by any means, and I'm already thinking of a few that I missed when putting this together ... but at 111 images, it's still fairly hefty. Have fun, and feel free to share it with anyone else who might enjoy it!

So I've got this weird issue with my thumbs. Specifically, my thumbnails. They're all weird and ridged, and they, uh, peel off in layers sometimes. And I bit my nails a lot, so I've usually got this little FLAP of thumbnail that I simply have to tear off. Sometimes it doesn't tear off at all, but works its way down, stripping off a large swath of the top layer of my thumbnail, until it reaches the nail bed. Then of course I have to tear it off, because going around with a big flap of thin, transparent thumbnail is bad for business. But sometimes it doesn't tear off cleanly, and leaves a slightly raised edge to the side. And I'm apparently a masochist, so I can't just leave it like that, so I pick at it until I can grab it, ripping it out along the nail bed until I reach the edge. Then I just rip the whole chunk out, because I can't really cut it off at this stage, and it tears a little piece flesh off with it, and my thumb gushes dark blood, and then I put antibiotic cream on it and bandage it up and type a journal about it while it throbs with a dull ache.

I've been playing a lot of Sims 2 lately. My sims' insipid little lives tend to be far more interesting than my own. My main sim at the moment, Felicia, was robbed one night by some fool with fishlips named Gordon. She eventually got over her hate that burned with the intensity of a thousand suns and befriended him. Then she murdered him in cold blood. Then she raised him from the dead as a zombie and fell in love with him all over again. A few nights ago ZombieGordon caught her flirting with the neighborhood robot, and is now pondering the injustice of sleeping downstairs in their little shop of horrors while she gets the good bed. He's also writing a tawdry novel based on his experiences, which probably has some choice passages, like:
"NNNYAARGH!," she said turgidly.
"BRAAAAINS!," he replied, in his usual sardonic way. It was their anniversary. He remembered.

I haven't drawn at all since my last upload. This is because I am SUPREMELY LAZY. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. To the two people I owe commissions to: THIS is why I insisted on not taking payments until I had at least finished a concept sketch! I blame genetics. On that note, there are also a few trades pending that I need to work on. I haven't forgotten. I just ... I suck, is all!

It's been a long week of chauffeuring. I'm glad it's over. Driving gets old really quick, especially when you're battling little old blind ladies in the parking lot.

Sam is meandering around my bedroom. He'll wander over to this small space between my bed and my nightstand, then meow at me like he's lost or something. Then he'll jump onto my bed and look all proud at himself for surviving such a perilous situation. Now he's in my closet, climbing into the unknown blackness. Such a brave explorer.

While rescuing Sam from my closet, I found a Star Trek/X-Men crossover comic book from '96. Why did I buy a Star Trek/X-Men crossover comic book in '96?

Oh god I'm so sorry.

So, I guess there was a new Duke Nukem Forever trailer put up a couple hours ago. I saw it. It kinda sucks. It's just a shot of Duke lifting weights interspaced with a few clips of aliens going "BWARGH." Why no clips of actual gameplay? Did they just figure they might as well not even bother getting our hopes up? Frankly, I'd like to play the game they showed back in '01. That looked interesting. Makes me wonder if there's an incomplete version of it floating around somewhere in 3D Realms' offices.

Also, damnit, I keep getting sucked into Gmod. Damn thing's gonna be the death of me. I'm sick, I've got THINGS growing in my sinuses, and what do I do instead of sleep? I BUILD THINGS. I spent most of yesterday with Ailure and Blastgoggles in GM_Construct goofing around. I saw a video of a "perfect headshot" turret awhile back made using Wiremod, and I think I managed to reverse-engineer it. http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e.....struct0114.jpg I turned it into a kind of ghetto forcefield. It's operated entirely by thrusters. The plate on top is connected to the pole with a ballsocket joint. The yaw movement is controlled by a modified version of the delta turret gate setup, where the thruster power is controlled partly by the bearing from the target; the farther away the beacon sensor is from the target, the more power the thrusters get. This alone would cause it to be very wobbly though, so it's mostly controlled by a delta chip, so that the faster the bearing changes, the more powerful the thrusters become. In the original design shown on Tricky's Tutorials, the bearing is given a multiplier of 2, while the delta gets a multiplier of 10. I changed the delta multiplier to 25, kept the bearing multiplier at 2, and set the thruster multiplier to 1. This makes it EERILY stable, but it doesn't quite track as fast as I'd like, so I may increase the bearing multiplier later.
The pitch is controlled by same method, only using the elevation of the beacon sensor instead of the bearing. The problem with that, though, is that the target finder always locks onto a player's FEET. So I followed a tutorial on Tricky's involving trig functions. The perfect headshot turret works the same way, by assuming a player is around 60 units tall, and dividing that by the distance from the player to the beacon sensor, and inputing that into an ATan(deg) gate, then adding that to the elevation reading from the beacon sensor. I did the same thing, except using a value of about 30, so that it always aims at a player's midsection. This actually makes it a little more accurate, since a headshot turret can be avoided just by ducking. (I assume ...)
The roll (or lack thereof) is controlled by a gyroscope. Basically just another delta chip with a high multiplier added to the roll angle data itself and applied to thrusters to keep it level.
And finally, a forcer on the front which fires if any player comes within 400 units, keeping them at a distance. Could also work on props, I suppose, but you'd have to make sure the target finder doesn't target the owner's props, or it would target itself and all hell would break loose.
So yeah. Ghetto forcefield. It's an ungodly mess because I haven't learned to use the expression gate yet, and I didn't feel like making the wiring all nice and neat. It's also still quite buggy. The range on the target finder needs to be really high, and it needs to always have a target, because otherwise the trig function will divide by zero and bad things will happen. I'd need, like ... an If-Then gate to keep the distance output at a low, non-zero number ... or maybe a value range gate ... but it already has 17 gates. That's bordering on the absurd.


TL;DR

Ok, I guess a few people have (justifiably) wanted to know what I waste my time in GMod/Wiremod on, so here's a little travelogue of the IMAGINATION.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e.....struct0066.jpg This was my first major project, a laser-guided teleporter. This is actually its fourth iteration, but I forgot to take snapshots earlier, so whatever. Anyway, it works by taking the GPS coordinates from the laser pointer and feeding into the hoverdrive controller, which then teleports to the locations specified, taking with it anything that's welded to it, and anyone sitting in an attached vehicle. That's the basics, but this also adds a delay timer, so that you can use it yourself by hopping into the invisible pod embedded in the chair after aiming the laser. It also has warning lights, a startup sound and a warning klaxon that all activate while it's warming up.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e.....tgrass0004.jpg This was my first prototype of the DOOMSDAY DEVICE. Kleiner paid the ultimate price to test its effectiveness. Basically it just checks if the button is on and if the target finder has a target. If it does, it takes the coordinates of said target from the beacon sensor and teleports above it, firing a turret. Fairly simple, but the turret pod gets stranded over its last target, limiting its effectiveness as a weapon of infinite destruction.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e....._beta10002.jpg This is my second prototype. The idea was to use three if-then-else gates to control whether the pod got its data from the beacon sensor, or if it got its data from the GPS located next to the base. My implementation was flawed, though, since it used the power button as the variable.  ailure, shown in this picture, tooled with it a bit and managed to eventually work out a much better automated system by using the target finder itself as the variable.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e....._beta10011.jpg Here's the wiring of the final version, using  ailure's design. The power button, not shown here, is wired to a pulser, which sends out a signal every 0.75 seconds. That goes to an And gate, which combines with the acquisition signal from the target finder to continually teleport to (and fire at) the target. This is controlled by the if-then-else gates. If there ISN'T a target, the if-then-else gates reroute the radio's inputs to the GPS on the front of the unit, and a Not gate takes the 0 from the target finder and turns it into a 1, sending a final jump signal to the turret pod, sending it back home.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e....._beta10010.jpg ... And finally, here's the front of the finished device. I call it a doomsday device, because if the target finder is set to target players, and the base unit is hidden well enough, it could decimate a server within seconds. It's possible to outrun the turret pod's teleportation jumps, but you would need to be moving constantly. Anything that got close to the base unit would be killed instantly. The only way to stop it would be to have an admin clean up everything in the level.

Trillian was giving me problems last night, so  millerjsullivan suggested I give Meebo a spin instead. So I log on, and I'm ACCOSTED with almost a dozen buddy requests on MSN and AIM. What the hell? Has Trillian been HIDING these from me all this time? I had no idea!

And then  ailure,  skidd and I messed around in Gmod/Wiremod for untold hours. The doomsday device is coming along quite nicely! Soon it shall destroy all in its path, leaving behind nothing but dust and silence.

And then I realized I was becoming a mad scientist and was therefore neglecting my duties as a purveyor of furry buttfuckery. What has science done?!

I got really into Garry's Mod/Wiremod a few weeks ago. I'd spend hours every day perfecting a laser-guided teleporter, or building an automatic NPC mangler, or stressing over the little hula girl beacon sensor, making sure she was perfectly calibrated on my robowasher. Anyway, I eventually got burned out on it.

Then I somehow got hooked on roguelikes again, playing T.o.M.E. until my eyes melted from staring at ASCII graphics for hours. My little hobbit thaumaturgist was doing so well, until I foolishly decided to traipse across Middle-Earth with only a handful of rations.

ANYWAY. The point being, I haven't drawn anything in quite awhile. I've been inundated with ideas, but I can't seem to put anything down on paper. More importantly, I haven't been working on the trades or commissions I owe. This is because I'm a loser, and I sincerely apologize for my inept behavior.

Got tagged by  yugowolf. Fate is a cruel mistress. HAHA. Didn't I already do one of these, like, a year ago?

rules:
1 - Post these rules
2 - Each person tagged must post 8 random facts about themselves
3 - Tags should write a journal of these facts
4 - At the end of the post 8 morthsabl ireqzc iowoaphv
5 - Ngork chumble spuzz tallywhacker

1. I left this open for a day because I didn't feel like working on it at the time.

2. Actually, I still don't. Oh well.

3. I'm a lazy procrastinating son of a bitch, but I think that's pretty self-evident by now.

4. I have a bad habit of forgetting what I'm doing. Like I'll be having a conversation with someone online, and they'll something VERY IMPORTANT that requires my immediate response, and then I go and get distracted by something shiny and an hour later they're like "Are you still there? =("

5. I also have a bad habit of leaving out important words while I'm typing. Note the lack of the word "say" between "they'll" and "something" in that last paragraph.

6. I'm terrified of worms.

7. I'd rather be sleeping right now.

8. Nuugh warg tliskin foorb.


I think I had something else to say here, but I've long since forgotten what it was.

What is the name of your fursona?
ZombieCat, I guess. Fuck, I don't know. "ZC", if it makes you feel any better.

Where did the name of your Fursona come from?
 skidd called me a zombie cat on an IRC years ago after I inexplicably survived a nuclear explosion. Like all stupid nicknames, it stuck, and I didn't have any better ideas. Needless to say, I'm not a zombie, so put the fucking shotgun away before I snap and kill you all.

What species is your fursona and why did you choose that species?
I learned to draw by copying cartoons. In particular, I had a fetish for Sylvester the cat. I'd draw pages upon pages of the damn fool. Eventually I tried my hand at an "original" creation, which was basically Sylvester, only orange and with brown stripes. All the KOOL KIDS had furry persona's, so I followed the trend like a good little sheep.

What color is your fursona and why? Hair/fur/eyes/etc
Orange with darker orange stripes, green eyes, etc etc.

What is your fursona's personality and how does this compare to your irl personality?
He's me, if I was a furry little mad scientist with an orbiting laboratory that I keep forgetting I own.

What is one item your fursona owns that is significant to you irl?
Flannel and/or denim shirts. I like flannel and/or denim shirts, to the point of absurdity.

What is one thing you thing you would say to your fursona if you could meet?
Silence and mutual disdain, followed by buttsex.

What is one thing your fursona would say to you if you could meet?
Hfrgl

How has your fursona changed over the years?
He doesn't look like Sylvester anymore. I hope.

How long have you had this fursona?
About 9 years, give or take a few minutes.

Would you like to be more like your fursona?
Sure, why not.

Ok now tag three other people you would like to learn about!
No.

Damnit, I am fucking SICK of Christmas. And what is it, November 6th? Christmas is more than a month and a half away. Every store in town had Christmas decorations for sale a month ago, in the middle of October. Pre-decorated trees and snowmen right next to the inflatable jack-o-lanterns and ghosts. How did this happen? Wasn't there some kind of unwritten rule that corporate America wouldn't start assaulting our sensibilities until after Thanksgiving? As soon as November 1st rolled around, the blitzkrieg started in full. Commercials went from a subdued fall theme to WHITE AND HAPPY! The advertising women with the fake smiles went from wearing orange sweaters and tossing dead leaves in the air to wearing red coats and playing in the snow.

So why so early this year? I'm guessing it has something to do with rock-bottom consumer confidence and the fact that every toy on the planet is MADE OUT OF POISON. Except instead of maybe doing something about it and improving public relations, companies are like "HAHA! Noooo, there's NOTHING WRONG! Hey, LOOK BEHIND YOU! Christmas is coming! BETTER BUY THOSE FUCKING TOYS!"

It's just ... all so depressing. Fake chemical cheer is oozing forth from every crevice in the earth, trying desperately to cover the fact that we're surrounded by endless tragedy.

PORTALPORTALPORTALPORTALPORTAL

Ok ok. Wow. Ok. Uhm. So I was two weeks slow getting The Orange Box! Apparently roughly 89% of the earth's population bought it within five hours, and as a result avoiding hideous, HIDEOUS spoilers was a difficult proposition, but I managed for the most part. That said, if you haven't played it yet, you may want to LOOK AWAY.

**************************

Anyway, (this cake is great! it's so delicious and moist!) am I the only one who didn't empathize with the weighted companion cube? Am I just a CRUEL AND HORRIBLE MONSTER for tossing it without a second thought, before GlaDOS even stopped talking? Really, I empathized more with GlaDOS herself. That sexy, modulated voice ... that innocent, yet sardonic attitude ... mmmm ... and I mean, come on! If you were being slowed down by weak, inefficient flesh sacks, wouldn't you have done the same thing? There was SCIENCE to be done, after all!

I didn't really find it funny the first time around. I was probably tainted by the previously mentioned 89% saying things like "LOL" and "I say! How positively delightful!", but I actually found it more frightening and paranoia-inducing. Especially the first time the facade of the laboratory starts to crack, and you realize you weren't the first person to be forced through this rat maze. The cuteness of the gun turrets only added to the terror. I didn't really truly appreciate the game for what it was until the second time through with director commentary. I suppose watching the credits helped.

But GOD. What a game. Need to play episodes 1 and 2 now ... I hear there are references to Aperture Labs in episode 2 ... I hope GlaDOS is doing ok!

**************************

So goddamn lazy can't bring myself to do anything hell even playing a videogame would be an accomplishment goddamnit.

I was taking a shower today, when for no particular reason, it suddenly occurred to me how weird school was back in 2nd grade. I always considered it normal, but there was some weird mystical new-age teaching bullshit going on. There was like, four classes in this one hypercube-shaped room, and we rotated around for different assignments, like some kind of proto highschool thing. There was a "reading pit" in the center of the room that connected the four areas, and above that was a little are where we sometimes watched EDUTASTIC laserdisc movies.

Anyway! I hated it. In theory, it was awesome. There were art classes, creative writing classes, scavenger hunts, robots, all kinds of weird metaphysical shit. But the two teachers I can recall were extremely anal and oldschool. My primary teacher would tell us to sit down and shut up while she quietly read us a story, while all the other classes in the pod were having shouting parties or something. Most of my memories of 2nd grade involve me sitting quietly at my desk, doing something stupid like measuring a clay snake while the other classes were bouncing off the ceiling.

One event that really sticks out in my mind was the creative writing class. I think we had this once a week, and my class rotated to another teacher for it. He was a tall, lanky dude with a beard, and was surprisingly strict for looking like stereotypical personification of the '60s. Normally, we were encouraged to write whatever we wanted, and the illustrate it with our crude, childish drawings. But during the first class, he decided we couldn't handle that, so instead he told us to write about a unicorn. Now see, I was looking FORWARD to this class, to writing about whatever the hell I wanted, so I was crushed when I discovered I had strict limits. So I said FUCK THIS and instead wrote a story about a whale who got sucked down a drain in the bottom of the ocean and ended up in a municipal pool. I was severely chastised for this grave offense, and had to have an after-school conference with my primary teacher about the importance of following orders from authority figures.

Why do I mention this? I dunno. I needed to write something.

Explosions and gunshots outside my window.

How positively delightful!

I also seriously considered buying a few Lego sets, and maybe some action figures.

I think I'm having a mid-midlife crisis.

Slink, slink, slink ...

http://community.livejournal.com/wt.....fa/186974.html

I don't know what to say! I'm honored!