July 2007 Archives

Team "Harry & Draco Are Gay" (seen last week as Team "Apply Directly To The Forehead") rocked trivia night at the local bar AGAIN! There were 17 teams this week (as opposed to the 10 or so that showed up last week) and despite starting off the first two rounds in 8th place, jumped to first place with the final bonus question of:

Which country won both the gold and bronze medals in the men's marathon in the 2000 Sydney Olympic games? (A: Ethiopia)

Thanks again to Marcus, who got last week's bonus question right and put us over the top and who seems to know Olympic Sports really, really well. Thanks also to Harry and Draco and their gayness, which apparently lent us a lot of mojo to aid us in our victory.

For the next month we're going to lose one half of our two person "I was born in the 70's" representation, but I'm sure Andy will fill his place quite nicely.

Wired.com's The Best Dangerous Science Jobs.

Am I the only one who thinks it's hilarious that "grad student" is a job? D: Also, does fulfilling #6 and #8 make me a danger level 7, or am I boosted up to something like #5?

I had this terrible dream where I missed my poster session for the Society for Neuroscience conference, and my professor was really pissed off at me. D:

In reality, the probability of this happening is roughly zero, but I guess that just goes to show how much work is stressing me out and going to be stressing me out for the next couple of weeks until I get to go to Europe.

Fox News 11 does an investigative report on an "underground hacker gang" called ANONYMOUS which "messes with online children's games like Habbo Hotel."

D: I LOL'D

Man, they're really running out of things to report on in LA if they're reporting about /b-tards and their shenanigans. D:

Missed this on Monday night, but that is quite possibly the best Colbert Report intro segment I've ever seen.

Apparently the local bar has trivia night on Tuesdays at 8pm, and allows teams of up to 5 people to compete. We were just hanging out there last night, but decided to play for the heck of it under the team name "Apply Directly To The Forehead."

D: Well, Team Head-On ended up winning last night, much to the amazement of all, including ourselves. X3 That's mostly thanks to Stefan knowing some Russ Meyer films and Marcus knowing US Presidents better than us Americans.

Now I have a $5 gift certificate to BrewCo. So uh...who wants to make this Tuesday night trivia thing a regular event? :D

What's totally awesome?

Making a midnight run to the Kwik-E-Mart for a donut.

I HAS A LOCKER.

at the gym.

Win!

From The Onion:
Earthquake Sets Japan Back to 2147

So I hear that some members of Dattebayo were arrested at Otakon.

DISCUSS

From a friend of a friend: Lord Voldemort and the Evil Overlord List

It seems the guy also failed to mention #13, #34, #36, and #38. But on the whole considering that there are 100 rules and Voldemort has violated less than 10 of them, he's doing pretty well.

As for my opinions of HP7? Meh. Could've had a better ending. Could've wrapped up ongoing plotlines left over from HBP better. Could've actually developed some supporting characters. Could've added more HPDM in there, but maybe that's just my wishful thinking.

Sadly, no mad compuction to actually write, which I guess tells you how unimpressed I was. :/ I am underwhelmed. I think I'm going to go and read some of the fics from the post-HBP Big Bang, Baby challenge, because god knows the people there can write better than Rowling.

STEPHEN COLBERT WAS RIGHT.

sort of.

So while everybody else is reading HP:DH (like my next door neighbors), I'm here in bed, sleeping.

Spinal cord camp was long and exhausting, and I am glad I made the midnight drive home instead of staying over there. :3

Wait...what?

Guilty Gear 2 Overture and Dynasty Warriors 6.

One for the 360 and one for the PS3. WHICH ONE DO I GET???

Just got back from my first ever bonfire on the beach. I can't believe it took me this long to actually have one! It was awesome, I haven't roasted marshmallows in years.

The cool thing about being in this part of Orange County at this time in the summer is definitely the proximity to the beaches. I love the ocean and I love napping in the sun, and there is nothing better in the world than laying out in your swimsuit and napping in the sun with the sound of the ocean hitting the shore. Bliss, pure bliss. Though I guess giant fires in a pit and roasted marshmallows is a close second place. :3

I caved in the other day after seeing Ratatouille, and bought this. D: It was so cute and cheap. Cuter even, than the Remy plush, and it's about the size of my stuffed hachiroku, which means it's just as cuddly. :3

At the bar, what my surgery partner, Chris, said of Gaping Asshole (the Size of a Hallway):

"I'd love to just put him in a Master Shake costume, and just kick him. It would be a release on so many levels. I'd just never stop kicking."

D: Spinal cord camp is burning me out. I've never been this tired and eager to sleep in my entire life. *dead* =_____=

I think I'm going to make a blog tag for this gaping asshole guy, because what he says is just too classic. My roommate invited him over tonight (ugh), so of course I'm sort of obligated to socialize. (If only I was slightly more hermitish.)

Tonight's classic Gaping Asshole quote is this, which came after I turned off adult swim's Inu Yasha showing:

"Inu Yasha is a good show. You know, I bet I've watched more anime than you have in your entire fucking life. You ever watched fansubs?

XD, LOLZ

What a pretentious ass.

D: Whaaaaaat? Otakon is getting SekiTomo this year as a guest? NO FAIR. NO FUCKING FAIR. And here I'll be, stuck at spinal cord camp. If I'd known earlier, I totally wouldn't have gone to AX. D:

(And they have Sakimoto Hitoshi! D: GYAAAAAAAAH.)

Somewhere in the middle of college, I think I developed a cackle. I have no idea how this cackle came to be, I think one day I listened to Destra cackle and decided to try it out on myself.

So, you know the total asshole guy here at spinal cord camp that I mentioned in this previous entry? Well, because he's actually a student at Irvine, it seems that camp has separated itself into a clique. And guess what it is. It's the Popular/Cool People Clique. And then there's the rest. Guess which group Skuld falls into! (This is the group I've pretty much fallen into for my entire life.)

So the total jackass, let's start calling him "Gaping Asshole (the size of a hallway)" is sitting across from me at the bar tonight. We're just sitting around chillin', and he's just being a complete dick. There's something about the way he talks--how he's got to put everybody down, how he is final authority on all things right and wrong--his attitude, that just rubs me the wrong way. He said some pretty classically ignorant lines tonight (remember, this is an Asian guy who's been in NorCal his whole life) like, "All gay men want is more love from their mothers." D: And few other things like sneering at all the Queer Theory and Psych I've read up on ("What? Does this Queer Theory teach you about Freud? You've had one psych class and now you think you know enough to judge whether Freud was right or wrong?"), that just make me want to reach out with my foot and plant it in his face.

Anyways, Gaping Asshole totally sucks. He's one of the type of guys who doesn't even want to talk to you if you're not a Hot Blonde Girl and only insults you (he obviously tries to pass them off as 'jokes') if you're a guy. He's like, the self-declared alpha male of the clique and totally macking on my roommate, the Hot Blonde Girl From Finland. Eventually, at the end of the bar experience, another girl and I decide that we've had enough of their clique bullshit, and decide to head over to the other side of the stripmall to catch Sicko. The movie doesn't start for another 45 minutes, so we walk over to the parking lot where we hear some kids practicing their Taiko routine. Very cool.

On the way back, my friend and I are discussing Gaping Asshole, how he's macking on my roommate (who he should've been driving back to our dorm), and how upset we are that grad students (surprise, surprise) are no better than middle school students for STILL FORMING CLIQUES. We're standing on the corner, waiting for the light to change, talking loudly about how we think Gaping Assole is exactly that, a gaping asshole. The light turns, we start to walk, and I hear a voice behind me go, "Hey, did you guys end up finding that movie?"

I turn around, it's Gaping Asshole in his car, the window open, leaning out yelling at us. Probably been just sitting there whole time during the red light listening to us talk shit about him.

I reply, "Yes!" and then immediately begin my evil cackle as I keep walking back to the theatre because I realize how terribly, terribly funny it was that I was discussing bad things about him with another friend in the program loudly on a street corner where he happened to pull up. THAT MOMENT WAS MADE OF WIN AND MORE WIN.

Keep in mind, this is guy who yesterday, had the gall to stand in front of my dorm after I'd made a long and expensive beer run, to say, "Dude, what took you guys so long? I've been waiting here at least 45 minutes!" And of course, Gaping Asshole never even bothered once to help out on the beer run (we needed a bigger car than mine) or pay for all our booze that he drank.

What a dick. I can't believe I have two and a half more weeks with him in this class. I'm going to explode.

D: I rarely get art commissioned for me, mostly because I'm a cheapass, and hey, my imagination is pretty much as good anything that I'll ever be able to physically touch.

But this was worth every single penny I paid for it. :3 ~<3 SQUEE~! Aimo, you totally rock.

Urrrghhh...
Today's spinal cord camp hours? 8am-8pm. GAWD. I am so going to be burnt out by the end this week. Especially since it seems I don't get along well with a lot of people (there's something to be said about the life sciences being less geeky than the hard sciences/engineering), and there's some asian guy who is total asshole.

You know those types of guys who are insecure about their masculinity and therefore have to make up for it by being a total ass to everyone? Even their friends? Yeah, that guy totally rubs me the wrong way. :/

Also, apparently even 60 year old professors giggle when talking about poop and sex. Good to know, good to know.

Managed to make to Irvine in One Piece. The radiator overhaul job was awesome, Captain Usopp made it all 50-something miles with no sign of overheating. Wouldn't have happened at all with his old radiator. :3 Awesome. I guess that was $800 well spent. Well, almost. It's quite camp-ish here at Irvine. Even though I'm living in a dorm, the Irvine campus is so green and woody that we've got a lot of bugs on the balcony here at night, so much so that I might as well just call it Spinal Cord Camp here.

Anyways, had a great weekend with Jack, Kevin, Pedro, and KP. They're awesome, great guys, and I owe them loads for them giving me rides to and from Anime Expo. Thanks, guys. :3

Without further ado: ANIME EXPO 2007 FRI/SAT RECAP

I think Anime Expo's always been too commercialized and too large for me. All of the showings are sponsored by one of the companies, and it's just never had the draw of a smaller con like Anime Boston or Anime Central back in the good old days. One of the coolest aspects of small/medium cons is that the events feel like they're more intimate. Hey, I was sitting up in the front row for both Mr. Nabeshin and Yasuhiro Nightow at ACen, and it was great. I was 2nd row for the Anna Tsuchiya panel this year at AX but somehow it just didn't feel the same. :/ *sigh* Maybe I'm growing out of the anime con (every year the other con goers start looking more and more like vermin).

Highlights for Friday were skipping the giant pre-registration line and the Anna Tsuchiya focus panel. She is really pretty and very articulate. Her personality is completely opposite of the stereotypical shy, quiet Japanese woman, but I think we can attribute that to her status of "rock star." When asked about her two biggest influences, she cited Queen and Nirvana. X3 AWESOME. Since I was right next to the microphone, I managed to get in the first questions which were, "Before you decided to do music for NANA did you read the manga and did you like it?" to which her answers were (verbatim), "hai" and "hai." Guess that answers that. :3

Hanging around the dealer's room found me a really cool Franky cosplayer who was a nice guy but unfortunately made me realize why I'm absolutely terrified of men in speedos. There was also a cool Toei setup with models that I'm sure were ripped right off the Going Merry ride in Odaiba. Nice to see those again. My plans for finding a new One Piece cell phone strap failed tremendously again. :( There is no love for One Piece out there, I swear.

We trekked out that night on a 5 mile drive to the In-N-Out burger after Mura decided to hang out with us. We all meshed really well and had a great time. After dinner, we went back to the hotel room to play Guilty Gear: Accent Core, and I got a taste for how different the mechanics and some of the moves are. o_o The EX moves are pretty much what I remember them being from the NA version of XX, which was a welcome relief after I realized that Ky played a little differently from what I was used to. Also, the punishment after Sol's new grand viper? Yeah, never using that move EVER AGAIN.

Saturday saw me and Jack up bright and early for the Anna Tsuchiya concert. It was supposed to start at noon, but ended up starting about 12:40. She sang all the good NANA songs, as well as a few of her own favorites. Having seen her Paris live, I wasn't expecting too much, but from what I've seen of her concert there, she must've been really on here at AX. Her voice was clear and she was perfectly in-tune. Wow. Now I'm sort of glad I didn't do ACen Idol, because there is no way I can ever do an Anna Tsuchiya song any justice. ^^;; *laughs*

Saturday night had me and the core group of kids hanging out in Rowland Heights, where there was much ramen and Arcade Infinity to be had. I realized just rusty I am at Wangan Midnight Max Tune 2, and just how awesome Battle Gear 3 is. D: Boy do I wish we had a machine near us. Jack and especially Kevin are really at WMMT2, and rhythm games like Pop'n Music and IIDX. Da~mn. Great way to close up the weekend.

Shoutouts to all my buddies that I hung out with or ran into (Jack, Kevin, Pedro, KP, Yan, Mikhail, Phi, Chris & Carrie, Mura, Zeineh & Naomi, Audrey & Geordan, Colin, Randolph & Fiona, Eli, Garfield, and company), people I just met (Danny), and people who I didn't get to meet up with or hang out with (Mike, Galahad, Mandichan, and Jesse. I guess there's always next year! D:). It was a great weekend, I hope I'll be seeing all of you again not to long from now. X3

Small collection of pictures located here.