Visual Stimulants

This was my day.



Do you know how long it takes to put away a stack of CDs that thick? Huh? Do you? I'll tell you. It takes a long ass time. And yes, the section is significant. I expect this shit from the Rap and Metal sections, but come on guys. Shame on you.



During my lunch break I began to believe that I or someone around me literally smelled like human excrement. It took awhile but I soon realized that this young man was the culprit. Hum.



Wireless networks are taking over. Taking over everything. And as you can see, MOST people have Internets, but FEW people share them. No, those weren't saved. Those were detected while standing in a single location.



And then on the way home, Begasp! Gas below three dollars?! No, this isn't from two years ago, this was TODAY. I guess the stock market crashes and... cheap gas? What? Okay. I thought it was the opposite. MY NAME IS SARAH PALIN AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND ECONOMINOCS.

Now get out of my way Paul, before I push you to the floor and go to the bathroom on you.

So I made the grievous mistake of allowing myself to confuse the SHIPPING date with the RELEASE date for Too Human. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really care what day you're mailing the game on. I want to know when I can play it. So now it looks like I'll have to wait at least one more day.

I WAS going to spend the day playing it and post a review, but since that fell through, ima' review this garbage instead,




Secret Life of the American Teenager is a new series on ABC Family(formerly known as Fox Family, and a network notorious for rerunning Mary Kate and Ashley movies and other similar media). It's about nothing in particular or anything worth watching. The plot basically consists of some chick getting knocked up and all her friends going "OMG!".

There's a conservative chick who doesn't want her to get an abortion who is basically your stereotypical TV Christian. Then there's some other girl who doesn't seem to have a purpose. The main character's younger sister is an emo kid and a slut. Then there's a guy who's really nice and wants to marry her and then the dumbass who got her pregnant. Also her dad, and he's pissed off. Her mom doesn't seem to care about anything. I think there may be some other characters too.

A lot of the show seems to have been shot on a greenscreen. I don't know why. How hard can it be to simulate "outside" using conventional methods? If they were going to use a greenscreen they could have at least used a good one. I'm just saying.

The title doesn't make any sense because everybody knows the main character is pregnant. Also I don't know if you remember but there was this movie called Juno and it was um sort of popular um you know and it was kinda you know um THE SAME THING. Why they felt the need to turn it into a series is beyond me.

They also all speak in pretty much the same monotone the entire time and are really incapable of expressing true emotion. The dialogue is laughable. Here's an example.

"Ami! When did you learn to stand up for yourself!"

"When I got pregnant!"

All in all "Secret Life of the American Teenager" should be called, "The Not So Secret Show About Stupid Kids Making Poor Decisions Being Portrayed By Actors Who Really Can't Act Even Though Some Of Them Are Kind Of Attractive."



Don't watch this show ever. Don't even talk about it.

The Goblin Man of Norway

(NOTE: This entry pasted from my Myspace blog)

The Goblin Man of Norway

I've mentioned Too Human a few times over the past couple weeks, and as the release date looms like a coming storm, I find myself increasingly more enthusiastic about what looks to be an ambitious and fruitful undertaking by Dennis Dyack and the rest of the Silicon Knights clan. This latest string of Viral Marketing has done nothing to deplete my interest, and I'm more excited than ever.

When I first saw the developer diary on Gamespot where Dennis mentions the Goblin Man in passing and then shows the clip, I honestly thought it was the real deal. A Google search gave rise to several discussion pages debating whether or not it is in fact a hoax, and the evidence is pretty strong that it is.

Like the fact that the sketches and "photographs" in part 2 pretty well resemble the mechanical monsters which serve as the bulk of your adversaries in the Too Human demo. The sound effect is played at the end of part 2 is quite a stretch as well(Paper Recordings? What?) and the mention of Too Human all over the Norwegian Film Committee website, as well as a daunting lack of anything else pretty much assures that this is in fact a marketing scheme. And a damn good one at that.

It did exactly what viral marketing is supposed to do - caught my interest and made me scratch my head, which then prompted me go looking for answers. And now I'm more excited about the game than ever.

That sounds more like a memory.

I'd really like to get into the habit of updating this thing regularly. Really. But the Myspace blog is like, right there. You know how it is when things are right there. It just doesn't seem sensible to maintain two blogs at once. Ah well. Maybe I'll start double posting and eventually just switch over here entirely.

So I'm not involved in the youth ministry anymore(at Advent), which if you're reading this, you probably already know. A year ago I'd have been devastated at such a development, but my reaction now is more a sigh of relief. It was becoming increasingly unhealthy, the environment that place perpetuates, and I wasn't doing much good besides(other than providing some rhythm.) I'm still angry about a lot of things that went on there, and being there was just making it worse. We can point blame all we want and talk about so and so's back about what they said whenever, but that shit doesn't do anybody a damn bit of good. Some people would read this and take offense. Some people.

I'm reconsidering my desire to enter youth ministry full time. It's not even a viable option right now, being as I have more immediate concerns(movingschooljob), but the more I think about all the shit that's gone down since, what, last year, the more I ask myself if this is really something I want to spend my professional life doing. And I know, I shouldn't let anyone's stupidity(that includes my own) ruin my future, but I'll hardly think it so if my profession doesn't involve a constant stream of immaturity and bickering. Not all churches or programs function that way, but it seems impossible sometimes to find one that doesn't. Especially when we're dealing with an establishment where none of them should.

My sister told me a story just the other day that made me want to howl. They were on a mission trip last week, which was unfortunately cut short due to a hurricane(it was a tropical storm at the time of their evacuation, but it got worse prior to making landfall) I don't know all the details and I'm not really all that concerned about them, but something went on to the effect of my sister's group making more noise than the other group thought prudent during the night, and apparently somebody lost sleep, or something. Last I checked you don't go away for a week with a bunch of teenagers if you're planning on sleeping a lot.

Anyway,

So one of the adults from this other youth group gets all pissy, and somehow a bunch of food crumbs end up all over the floor in the room my sister's group is sleeping in. No, really. Food crumbs. And apparently the remark was made by the aforementioned chaperon, "That's getting even."

So let me get this straight - You got made that some fifteen year old girls made some noise, and you're getting back at them by spreading, or at least allowing someone else to spread, crumbs on the floor of the room where they're sleeping? And even if you WEREN'T responsible for it and had no prior knowledge of it happening, you actually associated such a childish, bullshit act with some sort of assbackwards concept justice? Not ONLY did you do that, but you thought it acceptable - appropriate, even - to vocalize such a ridiculous notion?

My questions are as follows,
1)Who are you
2)Why are you working with teenagers
3) What in shit do you think you're doing?

People like you, madam, are ruining Christianity. People like you take the words of Christ with a glass of water before bed, and then forget what they mean. You treat the church like a social outlet with no regard for what the f*** we're supposed to be doing.

Love your neighbor. Do unto others. Turn the other cheek. Were you not paying attention, or do you just not give a f***? Did you think these were mere suggestions? Ideas? Things that Jesus was all like, "Hey, if you guys FEEL like it, and you have the TIME, MAYBE you'd like to do some of this stuff!" about?

No. They were not suggestions. They were not ideas. They were methods by which we, stupid animals who live in a universe too beautiful for our minds to even BEGIN to comprehend in full, could live a quality of life never before dreamed of.

Imagine this - All of us, every day, go out of our way to help someone. Anyone, just once, every day. You loan someone a dollar or pay for the groceries of the person standing in front of you in line. You help change a flat tire.

Or it's simpler, easier, like, say, you brush of an insensitive remark instead of getting all pissy about it and ruining everyone else's good time. Or you pay someone a compliment instead of thinking about how mad you are that you can't afford to dress like that. And then you make it a HABIT to be a generally nice person.

What if we ALL did that, all the time? What if every. single. day we made it a point to just be nice people? Instead of sitting around after church at our damn potlucks talking about your husbands promotion, and how much you disapprove of the kid who wore a hat in service this morning?

Shame on you, youth chaperon. Shame on you for being immature and unacceptable. Shame on you for thinking it's okay for you to even CONSIDER working with teenagers, when you clearly don't have half the maturity required to even CALL yourself a teenager. Shame on you, and shame on all of us.

Because you know what? This is the best part, the BEST part of the whole, screwed up mess. I'M NO BETTER THAN YOU ARE.

I know! It's amazing! I hung out with the guys yesterday, and I said "fuck", like, I don't know, twenty, thirty times, over the course of the day? And you know why? Because I'm imperfect, and sometimes when I hang out with my friends, I don't care what comes out of my mouth. Am I any better than you?

No.

Damn, I love Grace. I love it.

Timeline?

This is harder than it looks. I've already found one chronological error, and fixing it, however easy, is going to be a pain. Ah well. All part of the process.

You're the hand.

Still no news on the job front. On the cash front, the lines are wearing thin. Gas conservation is a tricky game.

Conan for the 360 is a mother of a game. I tossed a review up on my Myspace blog, which I may post here. I've toyed with the idea of starting a separate blog for reviews of, you know, stuff Amazon would sell, but I've never gotten around to it. Haven't been finishing a lot of stuff lately besides.

I guess that's it. ATF this weekend. Mah.

Enjoy Monorail Cat.

Of mathmatics and schemantics.

It should be noted that the content of this post has little or nothing to do with the subject header.


I know I haven't updated since December and there's little to be said about the time that's passed there since. Lost my job, but I'm not complaining. I shouldn't say lost, I guess, since I resigned. Since then I've survived on the After School Karate program and odd jobs, another of which I'll be undertaking this coming friday. I've not wanted for anything nor been in any danger of going broke, so really, it all equates to having more spare time. Lord knows I needed that.

I've taken up writing again, but how long that will last, no one can say. I've also been watching a lot of movies, via torrent download. By dumping them onto an external drive(in this case, my PSP) and then jacking it into the USB port of my 360, I've watched several new releases, for free, on the big screen without having to make DVDs or undergo some elaborate streaming process involving cables and the like. S'fantastic.

-AJ