August 2006 Archives

A couple of days ago Andy and I were watching TV and there was a commercial for the season opener of Wife Swap, some dumb reality show where a couple exchanges wives and see how the new family functions. Supposedly the season opener was really dramatic, as it involved a freaky, nerdy family of pirates (who liked to dress as pirates and wear pirate hats) exchanging with a normal California valley-family stereotype. And of course, laughs and freakiness is supposed to ensue.

I told Andy, ":( I'm a pirate inside, but at least I don't do freaky shit like that." And Andy looked at me and said, "I don't even know what that's supposed to mean."

I sort of looked at him oddly and realized that he doesn't really get what being a pirate means.

So I told Andy to watch the first two One Piece openings, listen to the lyrics and the Gold Roger narration. I think I forgot to show him, and he's not gonna look it up on his own.

Therefore, THE MEANING OF PIRATE, as presented by One Piece. :3

One Piece Opening #2 - Believe as subbed by Kaizoku-Fansubs

One Piece Opening #3 - Hikari e as subbed by Kaizoku-Fansubs. This one's actually a whole subbed episode, since I couldn't find a subbed rip of just the opening.

One Piece Opening #6 - Brand New World as subbed by ADC-Elites. (I'm sad they got rid of the Gold Roger narration after the 3rd opening. The Gold Roger narrations WERE THE BEST!)

Man, I wish I was subbing OP with K-F again.

In all honesty, I don't think one can really understand the spirit of being a pirate until you watch/read ALL of One Piece. :3

:(

I blame Andy (and Omi) for sucking me back into Magic: The Gathering. GODDAMMIT. Not only is it one of the nerdiest games out there, it is also one of the most money-consuming games out there. *bangs head against wall* BOO.

That said, Jeremy and I pretty much spent all night with Magic shit. He bought about 1000 cards wholesale from Star City Games for only $19 (including shipping), so I paid him $5 to raid his collection for cards anytime. I may try to put together other shit from in there too. *gets ready to raid*

He built a nice deck built on the Test of Endurance win condition (at the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 50 or more life, you win the game), and MAN. THAT GAME WAS FUCKING ENDURANCE. =___= He had a whole shitload of walls and blocky creatures out, and I was really, really slow in getting in my Graft/Saproling combination creatures out. Mostly because my high-powered Graft creatures didn't come out until really late, and my Pollenbright Wings to put on my Graft creatures didn't come out really late either. =___= I think that game went on for an hour so, and at some point in time Jeremy had 52 life at the end of his turn, and I was just throwing all I could at him while he countered with things that prevented all damage. *bangs head against wall* Finally shit came out and I won, but MAN. I was totally tuckered out by then, and I had about 20-something creatures out at the end. :(

Anyways, I am now burning shitloads of money on a saproling deck, a discard deck, and a graft deck. There may possibly be a rat deck also on its way. I need to look through more of Jeremy's cards to see if I can pilfer anything and make a decent red deck, cause I almost never play red.

BLAH, spending money. :( So much for upgrading my computer this fall...

I was looking in the wasabi tube last night in my fridge, and it's opaque, so I was staring through the little hole you squeeze the stuff out of trying to assess exactly how much there was left in there.

Bad idea.

I got wasabi-air in my eye and GOD FUCKING DAMMIT that stung. I was doubled over in the kitchen clutching my eye, but thankfully I had the good sense to laugh about it so Andy didn't freak out. I can't really imagine what would've happened if I had actually gotten wasabi in my eye, but I probably would've made a run for the sink while screaming.

That's probably the most amusing thing that's happened this weekend, aside from watching something around a total of 22 episodes of One Piece. :(

Riidi will always be my One Piece buddy. Cause not only does he not believe in free will, he's just damn fucking awesome.

I spent the day watching One Piece. I'd forgotten how good it was. I totally teared up at the beginning of the Skypeia arc when they rode the Knock Up Stream to the white sea. >____> Yeah, I teared up when "We Are" started playing. XD

Oh One Piece. :D You move me so *big hearts* And I'm just a giant sucker for the Straw Hat Pirates.

Also, finally got around to seeing Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle. It is fucking awesome! XD

I like to challenge myself with tongue-twisters sometimes, but I never really anticipated this kind of punishment if you fail.

:( There's something to be said about Japan and their masochistic love of the batsu-game.

THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.
THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.
THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.
THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.

At this point, we're not sure whether it's a another rehash/revision of XX, or whether this may be something slightly more new. I hear new moves, new voice recordings. This may mean new music and eventually a new story mode when it gets released onto console.

OMG, could this be XXX?

;_____; *tears of joy?*

XD ...and I had a dream about cosplaying Sol Badguy again last night. *bouncy* Unfortunately before I do that in real life, I"m gonna have to hit up the gym. ¬_¬ Sitting on my ass in lab has not been the best thing that's ever happened to me.

THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.
THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.
THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.
THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GUILTY GEAR.

FUKKEN SIGNED!

I was running on the treadmill yesterday, and now both of my knees are fucked up. Granted, one of my knees has sort of been fucked up since Memorial Day weekend when I mysteriously did something to it while watching X-Men 3 (I have no idea how I managed to fuck up my knee while sitting down and watching a frickin' movie, but there you have it), but it was grinding this morning and my knees have never ground before. :(
I blame Andy, who got ACL surgery on his right knee and now the Doom on Knees! is spreading throughout the apartment. CURSES!

That said, the Facebook 4chan group is pretty scary. Mostly because we're no longer anonymous. It's nice to see some Ivys well-represented there, cause as we all know, smart people just love being stupid and silly sometimes. I've also noticed that Claudia hangs out in /cgl (the cosplay and goth-loli and board) quite often. As do I, but I don't want to admit it because there's more drama in /cgl on a daily basis than /b when it's Furry Friday. And not the good kind of drama either. :( The nasty, stupid, retarded drama that pisses me off instead of making me want to join in. There're more retards in /cgl than all the legions of the good old glory days of /z and the camwhores on wtfux combined. I'd rather venture back into Soviet Russia than back to /cgl. But for some reason, I can't help it. I've got to break myself of that nasty habit. :(

If you guys ever see me browse /cgl again, please punch me in the face.

I've spent the better part of an hour playing around with Google Calendar.

It is far superior other calendars. Hooray for organization! *joy* Now I can look up when all the cons are and plan accordingly. :3

To whoever participated in the late-night Kingdom Hearts raid on /y,

GOD BLESS YOU.

Oh, and the person who started the Initial D yaoi thread...

GOD BLESS YOU TOO.

So there's been somebody stealing lunches from the communal fridge on my floor these past few days. :( At least 3 or 4 people have had their lunches stolen. So far I've been lucky and my food has managed to escape unscathed, but MAN. Stealing other peoples' food is just low. That's one of those total, "I'm a jerk and I don't give a shit" attitudes that I despise.

So in order to punish the lunch poacher, I'm going to make a soup or a nice Chinese dish and leave it in the fridge to be taken. Of course, this is going to be laced with a fun substance so they'll learn not to steal shit anymore.

Anybody have ideas for nice substances that induce vomiting and/or diarrhea but don't kill anybody? ¬_¬ First thing that comes to mind is ex lax.

Go read the latest two (August 11 and 20, 2006) Weekend Webs at Something Awful.

GO NOW.

They are hilarious.

ONE PIECE 423:

Okay, who saw that coming? Cause I totally didn't.

If you were gay
that'd be okay
I mean, cause hey!
I like you anyway
Because you see
if it were me
I would feel free to say
That I was gay!

Ugh, pool was atrocious last night. I think I lost every single game I played, mostly through idiocy and either getting the 8-ball in before I was supposed to, or scratching when I was supposed to get the 8-ball in. I'm convinced that this is because the cue ball they're using is lighter than conventional cue balls, thus making my shots a little wild when I hit them hard. :( BOO. They have a regular cue ball too, and they won't let me use it. Bastards. ;___; *sniffle*

Finally got around to seeing "40 Year Old Virgin" at the party last night. It was hilarious and even more so cause pretty much the entire group at Evan and Dave's was just GONE. Evan was freaking out as usual, and I even freaked out at the end cause it was just so weird. XD Course, I slept way in today cause somebody had the bright idea to watch it at 2am, but...oh well. I guess I'll just stay extra late here in lab tonight or something. :p Or not, cause I'm a slacker.

But dude, it was nuts last night cause after we finished the movie and were moving to go home, there were these huge fire trucks in front of the apartment. O_O Turns out there was a fire in the building next door to Dave and Evan's complex. How surreal is that? And we were just sitting around the house, totally baked and didn't even notice that there was this giant fire right next to us. O_O DAMN.

Oh, and for the record, Dave is jealous of my 1337 Guitar Hero skillz. :p

I've actually spent the first part of my day reading the news. Maybe I've actually started to care. ¬_¬ Or maybe I'm just punting sitting in front of the cryostat for an hour.

China's growth worries the West. Luckily, we have sharp Chinese ambassadors to proclaim, "If you read China's 5,000-year-long history, it's not difficult to discover that China basically is a peace-loving nation".

¬_¬ LAFFO, wut?

The demon barber of Fleet Street. Tim Burton, bless his badass soul (we'll overlook the failure with the Planet of the Apes remake. I'll pretend I never saw it.) is making a movie based off the musical Sweeny Todd. I have to say, Sweeny Todd is my favorite Broadway musical. Great music, awesome plot, delicious cannibalism. What more could you want in a musical? ¬_¬ (I guess you could ask for Satan being gay and Brian Boitano. South Park is actually greatest movie musical ever done, so Sweeny Todd lucks out cause Bigger, Longer, and Uncut was never performed on Broadway.) And the best part of this piece of news is that Johnny Depp is playing Sweeny Todd. WIN. SO MUCH WIN.

Time Magazine has also released a list of the 50 Coolest Websites. We know that Time is full of shit because MySpace made it, but SomethingAwful and 4chan didn't. Ugh. What does MySpace have that 4chan doesn't? NOTHING. 4chan is superior to MySpace in every way. Not only is it full of more herpes, it even has moar loli, moar AIDS, moar Bridget, moar kittens, moar guro, moar drama, and moar wapanese than any other place on the earth with the possible exception of Japan itself. Yea, 4chan is like a cesspool of everything that is oh so wrong and yet oh so right about Japan, so much so that I'm surprised it hasn't imploded with pure awesome. Something is very, very wrong with Time. :( Time to go blockade their pool.

This just in: Harry Potter loves Draco Malfoy. See? I fucking told you so.

And last but not least, Oh lawd, is dat sum loli?

Andy asked me last night, during a dinner conversation about vomiting, when it was that I turned from extremely sensitive and easily offended to incredibly insensitive and difficult to offend.

I told him it was sometime in college, when I was exposed to the glorious Something Awful and 4chan. Also, Maddox helped a lot.

That is all.

spamming your friends list, whee. Unlike the previous happy!entry, this one is a mad!entry. :(

I express my condolences for Dr. Dario Ringach here at UCLA who was forced by animal activists to stop vision research on monkeys. They're these people who call themselves the Primate Freedom Project, and they hold hippie protests going, "Wah, animal research is wrong, save the poor monkeys, they're killed in horrible experiments." Fine, if you're a dumbass hippie and want to whine about poor animals in scientific experiments, that's cool.

What's not cool is that these people are actively terrorizing UCLA professors by harassing their neighbors, releasing their addresses to the public, stalking their families, and planting bombs at their houses. I kid you not. That's how far they go. Maybe there's something wrong with a organization that's willing to go so far as to kill people to save the lives of laboratory animals. ¬_¬

Oh humanity. One step forward, two steps back. :(

Anyways, I won't rant on how much I hate the people from PETA and other animal rights groups, because that will just degenerate into a rant about how much I hate hippies. I have work to do. You know, torturing rats and mutating them to see if I can get them to grow two heads and venomous teeth...all the better to kill hippies with, my dear.

My little imouto is going off to Cornell soon! I hope she likes it there, the campus is supposed to be beautiful even if it's in bumblebutt nowhere and there's a giant ravine in the middle of campus. I hope she doesn't turn out to be another Lis, cause Lis was a mess. Christ, I don't even know where Lis is anymore, as all of my friends have lost contact with her. :( Remember kids, don't let Cornell fuck you up.

After much intensive labor and a lot of thought, the beta for the third chapter of the massive Guilty Gear alternate universe fic I'm doing with the clone has gone out to the proofreader. Urgh, grinding out a novel is kind of like wading through a bog. It's a long process, and I've really had to adapt my writing style to something more novel-like, instead of using the overflowing prose I like to write short stories with. Ah, the differences in medium.

Speaking of Guilty Gear, those of you in the midwest who miss me dearly will probably see me appear at Anime Central 2007. Roni is bringing out her Ky again, and apparently Anna is making a Ky, so lucky me, I get to be a Sol with two Ky's. This is probably one of the few cases where having two isn't going to double the fun. :p I've ordered a commission on a Sol wig from Orange Octopus Wigs so hopefully the nice stylist there will keep me updated on how the wig is going. :D I'm chou-super excited. :D Even though ACen is in May. (As is Star Wars Celebration IV! I am so pumped for that con! I'm so going to make a Sith costume for myself. *maniacal cackling*)

Anyhoos. I have some more immunohistochemistry experiments to run. o_o Back to work. :3

Everybody's talking about Tsubasa chapter 125. Gawd, I am so lazy otherwise I would be caught up already. =___= *grumbles* I blame my local bookstore and their lack of volume 12, cause I have 13 and 14, but no 12. :( *displeasure*

I'd just like to state for the moment that the more I see Kurogane and Fai interact, the more I think they're totally gay gay gay gay gay gay for each other. *luff* In fact, in light of recent events, I'm pretty much absolutely convinced of it unless their plan to have hot symbolic sex doesn't pull through.

This Kurogane/Fai joy is currently at war with my opinions that vampires are dumb and retarded. This is why I enjoy playing Castlevania so that I may carry out the Intramural Zombie Hunter League's manifesto of "KILL AS MANY ZOMBIES AND VAMPIRES AS YOU CAN." (Why yes, we are big fans of the Belmont clan. How did you guess? I would also like to take this time out to pimp Seibei who makes these fucking awesome shirts which I will get around to buying once he re-opens shop. I love you, Debu.) Hmmm...CLAMP gayness at war with manifesto. What should I do?

As soon as I'm done with qualifying exams, my motley-but-awesome crew of zombie hunting, vampire slaying, village pillaging, ass kicking, anime-and-caffeine addicted pirates are going to set sail for the Grandline, where we will find fame, fortune, a Ph.D, and the One Piece. (And hopefully some badguys and treasure.)

SIGN UP HERE!

I think I've finally developed a dependence on coffee.
Oh crap. :(

EDIT: Have you guys seen those commercials for the "Buzz Ballads" CD on TV lately? You know, all the fun songs I listened to in high school, Third Eye Blind, Fuel, Bush, Marcy Playground, Eve 6, Gin Blossoms, Vertical Horizon, etc.

I suddenly feel old cause they're releasing compilations as seen on TV. =____= SO OLD. What're all the cool kids listening to these days? :( Besides Tally Hall, I think the newest rock album I have is The Killers. Somebody recommend me something so I don't turn into an old fogey.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST LET ME PLAY WITH SOME RATS! :(

At the moment, this is my sole gripe with my lab. I'm not on their experimental protocol right now, so if I get caught handling one of the rats here at lab, the whole lab gets in trouble. But it's kind of retarded because dude...who enforces these rules? The only way they'd find out is if I got bitten by one, which won't happen because rats like me and I like playing with them and know how to hold them so they don't bite me. >_<

So there's about 8 rats sitting around in the lab right now, about to be perfused, and they're not letting me do anything but watch despite the fact that I already have rat training. :( I also handled them back in my previous lab before being on the protocol, but the people here are more straight-edge and paranoid it's driving me insane.

Dude. I KNOW HOW TO HANDLE RATS. THEY WON'T BITE ME. For the love of God let me play with them. They are cute and cuddly and I want to hold them and put them on my shoulder and be nice to them.

LET ME HOLD THEM, DAMMIT! >_____<

Being forced to just watch all the perfusions and surgeries is boring and stupid. LET ME DO SOMETHING! *bangs head against wall* I know how to do perfusions, telling me to watch is just...annoying. :( It's like telling a biologist to watch while somebody else does the biology for him.

>( I am displeased.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETE DIFFERENT/EDIT: I wonder if One Piece is slowly convincing me that I don't need romance in my life, I just need a pirate crew.

It's been a while since I had a kickass dream entry. Almost 5 months, as the last awesome dream I blogged about was the Mugen/Jin sandwich the morning of my neuroanatomy final. :p

Anyways, this dream actually may top my other dreams in pure awesomeness, though it's not as on crack. So I only remember the important bits of the dream, and when I think about it, it doesn't have much coherency, but obviously when I was asleep it did.

The dream is like one giant crossover, and way more awesome than crossovers CLAMP could think up. :3 I remember distinctly Riku from Kingdom Hearts II, the main character from Final Fantasy Versus XIII, the crew from One Piece, Benicio Del Toro (don't ask me why he was there, I have no clue), Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm, not the cartoon version), and other random people I don't remember, and we all go to this giant school academy, kind of like Professor X's school in X-Men. I think I've been playing too much X-Men Legends II, cause in my dream I have all of Jean Grey's powers.

So the dream starts off, it's night and its pouring rain, and we're being attacked by bad guys. I don't know who the bad guys are (haha, should I call them the Brotherhood?) but they've taken Bilbo who is our teacher, so we have to find him again. I remember being on top of the highest building on the campus and looking through the rain to possibly find where they've hidden Bilbo, and I also remember Riku jumping off the roof and landing on another lower one after successfully taking out an enemy. Go Riku. :p Basically everybody is holding off the enemy, and my sole job is to find Bilbo and get him out of the evil clutches of the bad guys. Levitating everything and everyone on half the school campus was pretty badass.

Sometimes I helped out in battles, cause I distinctly remember rescuing Sanji from certain death, and depositing him back where the rest of the Straw Hat crew were fighting.

Anyways, turns out they've hidden Bilbo in the school church, and I run there, up a bunch of rain-slippery stairs, soaked to the bone. I break a whole lot of shit with my mind, and finally bring him out, and as soon as he steps past the doorway and back onto campus suddenly its daylight and the sky is clear. And I go, "Wow," and look at my clothes which are miraculously dry because I guess Bilbo is just that awesome.

At this point I basically wake up and now I'm here in lab. :p

It's dreams like this that make me LOVE to sleep.

I spent way too much time on Wikipedia.

Anyways, I was bored and looking up whether nectarines were actually peaches or the result of mutant breeding like pluots, when I got it in my head to just randomly look up "sakura."

Well, if you look at the Wikipedia entry for "Sakura" you'll see that it mentions Seishirou.

I shit you not. The Wikipedia entry for Sakura mentions Seishirou from X. I find that absolutely hilarious.

anyways, back to work. :3

This is Skuld's blog, and this has been...your moment of LOL.

New layout!

Usually takes me about 3 months to get off my ass and do something new, but I got sick of the weird color scheme of my NANA layout, so I've done and created something more simple and minimalistic. :3

Nicholas D. Wolfwood, a healthy dose of Cowboy Bebop songs, and it didn't even take that long in Photoshop. I like my colors here, and I like my simplicity. In other words, I like my new layout. More than I've liked previous layouts. Time to go back to the simple things, I think.

Wow, Tally Hall did so well tonight. They played at Spaceland all the way in some random club in Silverlake, but wow. There was a huge gathering of people, and after seeing Tally Hall really play a live gig for the first time...

Wow. There are good bands, and then there are great bands who really know how to do live shows. :3 Almost as exciting and energetic as seeing The Pillows play, but man, they were really, really good. For a band fresh out of college that hasn't been together that long, Tally Hall knows how to play for a crowd. It was super intense for them, and the music label executives (supposedly the president of Atlantic Records was there) seemed to be really impressed as well. I saw them talking with all the band members as I hugged Andrew and wished him a safe trip back to Michigan.

They played almost all their songs off of MMMM, with the exception of Hidden in the Sand, Haiku, and Be Born. They played some new songs and a couple of covers, and overall they had a really good sound to them. The crowd really enjoyed them, and even Eric McCormack (he's Will in 'Will & Grace') was supposedly bopping his head to the music with a big smile on his face. I really hope Tally Hall gets out there as a band, what with being on the Craig Ferguson show and having big, big people show up for their show. I had a smashing good time, and overall I was just impressed.

Of course, now I'm totally exhausted and I'm going to crash, but once again. Wow. :3 The next time they come out here, I'm definitely seeing them again. Hopefully Andrew will give Andy a call, and we can hang out and shoot the shit.

whoo! Just got back from the whole Tally Hall outing. It was hours. I spent about 2 hours waiting around until the show started, and man, the show itself was a real chore. I personally don't think Craig Ferguson is very funny, but they make us laugh and cheer as hard as we can anyway. =____= I didn't enjoy the rest of the show, I just told myself I did it for Tally Hall.

And actually, it was really worth it. :3 Tally Hall played "Good Day" and "Spring and a Storm" and they were both amazing. I screamed my head off for them.

And then when it was done, Andy and I drove around for a bit, and then we went to out with them to an Middle Eastern place called Maroush. There Andy caught up with Andrew and Rob, and I got to meet the crew. Had a nice talk with Ross and Joe too. :3 I felt kind of bad their manager didn't let us contribute to dinner, but now technically I can say that Tally Hall bought us dinner.

THey're playing at Spaceland in Silverlake tomorrow night, and you can totally bet that we'll be there. For the record, the Tally Hall guys are total sweethearts.

Check 'em out. Cause they might be big soon. I really hope so.

I am such a horrible slacker. I haven't really done much paper reading for quals (one month! *gulp*) but tomorrow's not gonna work out because my favorite band in the whole wide world is going to be taped for the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson tomorrow, and Andy and I are going.

Yup, you guessed it. :3 Tally Hall is going to be on the Late Late Show. :3 And they're also playing at Spaceland on Thursday night, so I'm going there as well. Supposedly after the show is done taping, Andy and I will go chill out with the Tally Hall guys (since Andrew Horowitz is Andy's friend) and go grab a bite to eat. How awesome is that? Super cool.

I'm chou-supa excited.