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I’m losing it guys

I haven’t done anything for so long I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do anything again. I mean, all my life people say crap like, “find what you love, and do that,” and “everyone has a talent for something.” I’m pretty freaking talented at doing nothing. Always have been. And I like it. Maybe it is my destiny.

In totally unrelated news, the new Call of Duty game comes out on the 9th and I’m thinking I might get it and then play it for like a week straight or something.

I understand intellectually how I should be ashamed of such admissions, but any part of me that pretended to care about such stuff is either dead, or near dead. I think I need to develop some ridiculous habit, one that requires large steady income. That should motivate me into “work” like everyone else.

I found out you actually have to look for work in order to get welfare benefits. How is that fair? That means just because I’m qualified for some job I have to do it? Sounds like one of those dystopian futures where the government gives me a blood test at birth and chooses my career for me. It’s exactly the same… except instead of choosing my career they’re choosing that I must have a career. Damn fascists.

Man… typing like 8 sentences of self deprecating semi-humor has exhausted me. I probably won’t be able to gather the will power to feed or bathe myself for a week or two now. So… if any of you pass my couch, would you be so kind as to roll me over. And if I don’t make any breathing noises when you do it, uh… well, you might just wanna leave. Wouldn’t want you to have to deal with that mess.

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Story

Some stories are 1 part mystery 1 part romance or 1 part danger 1 part triumph. This story is 1 part shopping 1 part stochasticity.

On a Monday afternoon a young couple goes into Costco. They shop happily enough, joking and sampling, agonizing about whether to get guacamole, unaware that disaster is so near. They purchase their few selections and enjoy some food court refreshment, still unaware of the DISASTER lurking. They approach the exit, receipt ready. She begins looking in her purse, “Why can I never find my keys?!?!” He looks to his right, past the girl, eyes lazy but something gets through. “Those kinda look like your keys,” he says, also lazily. Ice cream and heat make him lazy. She looks, “OMG!” They step slightly out of line. The customer service woman hangs up. “These are my keys.” “They were found outside.” “Do I have to show…” “No.” They rejoin the line and live happily ever after.

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request

If you guys didn’t see when I posted it everywhere but here, I got a new computer. It has a 25 inch monitor, and Windows 7, which means I can have cycling desktop images. I’m looking for awesome images, your submission are appreciated.

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Revised for Rhyming

one is none.
two is poo.
three is pee.

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All the things you can learn

Look. That’s what happens when I bash my leg with a pen in a specific way. hehehehe.

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Mario

I bought the New Super Mario Bros. Wii last week. I was planning to get it eventually. I was sorta waiting for summer so I’d have Lauren to play with, but I found a deal and got it a bit early.

We played some last weekend. Mother played with us, as well, and I played a bit solo after Lauren left. I haven’t played enough to give a detailed analysis, but I enjoyed all the play experiences very much.

I get a great deal of nostalgia joy out of the game, since Mario for the NES and SNES were ever favorites of my youth. Plus, the game is just well made. It has enough new stuff to not feel dated, at least to me, but it has so much good oldie feeling to it.

I think the multiplayer along with features they implemented will give the game a long life and good replay value. It is a bit tough, I think, for the people I generally associate with, which is a bit of bummer. I hope other people like it enough to want to play it with me some. Even if they don’t, though, I’ll have enough fun playing it by myself to make the purchase worth it.

I’m trying very hard not to over play it when nobody is around to join me. I have only played maybe 1.5 hours alone, and most of that was trying crazy things on the first few levels trying to find secrets and such. So… I’m not practicing a lot. When you come over and see me, I’m just that good naturally. Don’t feel bad, I’m sure you have a talent, too.

I think I have a copy of Mario Galaxy 2 headed my way soon (thanks Pat), so I’ll use that to distract me if necessary. I hope to have fun with that Mario game as well.

I know I’m a bit late to the party, but just in case anyone was waiting for my stamp of approval for New Super Mario Bros. Wii, you have it.

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Dark Tower

I just finished the last of the Dark Tower series. I read them cause Pat seems to love them, primarily. And they were available, that’s a big thing. I have some problems with the work. In the following discussion there will be some spoiling, but I don’t think there will be anything too grievous. Still, if you are worried, u can just skip this post. 😀

I understand this series is well liked, but I can’t figure out why exactly. Although, generally, it seems those works that hold wide public acclaim get none from me. I site Harry Potter and Twlight as the most obvious examples, but also nearly every “classic” ever forced upon me and Anne Frank’s Diary. Don’t make me remember.

I didn’t read these books as they were released, and I think that that might be part of my problem. Not a big part, but I can see how the hype would help. Especially waiting for the next book and whatnot. I didn’t do any of that, though. I read the whole series in the last month or two. Also, I’ve never read any other Steven King, so it occurs to me that I might just not like his writing. /shrug Still going to write my critique. Onto the big complaints.

The smuttiness. Mostly this occurs in the first book, but it is still annoying throughout the series. I don’t normally mind smut, but in this case it just seems so wanton and extreme. It also seems purposeful and forced, like King thinks he’ll score a few points every time he strays from strictly “appropriate” subject matter. Each time he did it it took me from the flow of things, and it seemed to paint a world where it was normal to think in such terms, which maybe he was trying for, but I doubt. It seemed to me like he was trying to say to the readers, “See, I’m just like you. I know you all think about farts all the time, and you think the pompous of normal writers not to drop it into their paragraphs at least sometimes.” Which was annoying, cause I don’t think that, and I really don’t think that many other people do either.

I also don’t buy the whole thing about him not being in control of the story. I mean, the meta aspect is kinda cool, but it got old after a while, and seemed more like a crutch, and an excuse for doing such a bad job, rather than an interesting aspect of the story. He kept making the story more and more obviously contrived, using deus ex machina more and more obviously, that it became clear that he had to call himself out, or everyone else would. I mean, at first it’s just a guy who’s really good with guns. Then he has feelings and intuition. Then there are doors to other dimensions. Then there is psychic communication among friends. Then there is just general psychic’s everywhere. And then, finally, at the very end, there’s that new special kind of magic introduced just for Steve to write himself out of his final corner.

I also don’t like the meandering tone of the novels. I just think he didn’t know what he was doing long term, which he professes he didn’t. He started out with a gritty westernish thing, kinda making his own feel. Then he tried to expand it and got lost. Then he tried to make it a deep series commenting on the craft of story telling, and referencing many of the great stories. He fell down there by having to explain every minute reference. Then he hit on calling himself a great story teller, and the meta thing came to him. And he ran with that to the end. Except for not really, cause he hates endings, so he wrote like 3 endings. /shakes head

The characters were all right. I mean, it’s not like it’s the worst book ever written or anything. And the characters we likeable, which is more than most authors can claim. But he used them annoyingly on occasion, too. Like, Eddie, was clearly his clichĂ© crutch. At first he just had Eddie being comic relief and using all the clichĂ© lines, but after a while Eddie’s absence didn’t stop him, he’d just boiler plate in “as Eddie would say” somewhere in the sentence.

I’m not really going anywhere with this. I just was so often struck with this complaints during my reading, now that it’s over I had to voice them.

I guess I’d like to say that the story was pretty ok to read. It was kinda fun. Kinda different as well, if you’ve read tons of sci-fi and fantasy, it had some newness in it. But I think you’d be much better off if you spent your time reading Otherland or Ender or the Frank Herbert Dune books. I just expect more from my books. I’m picky.

Edit: Oh, also, at one point Susanna “leaps to her feet.” I mean real Susanna, not possessed of magic demon feet Susanna or anything. /shakes head

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Me solving all my roommates’ problems

Yesterday I made some exasperated comments to my roommates regarding the nature of their entertainment. It wasn’t, and isn’t, a very big deal, but this aspect of their group has been bothering me for some time. I think I’m getting close to an understanding, so I hope writing this will help me push through the conclusions that can be made, and the ambiguities that must be left unknown.
I have difficulty explaining the behavior in question, but I think it boils down to picking on things, and people. I know that sounds really lame, but let me try to explain.
In my interactions with my roommates, and a certain group of people they hang out with, it seems as though their primary activity is making fun of stuff, and the people associated with that stuff. Now, making fun of stuff, in the strictest sense, isn’t really a “good” activity, but I understand it’s appeal, and I obviously am not one who never criticizes for entertainment. So why does this bug me?
Reason #1: the quantity
I totally understand having a pet peeve, or getting into a mood and occasionally ranting about something. I’m kinda doing that right now. But it seems like the only pleasure my roommates can find is in gleeful proclamations of the “gayness” of everything around them. Part of my distaste of this particular situation is the ubiquity of the action.
In my pondering on the subject I’ve come to a few conclusions as to why things are not as bad as they seem. I think each of the individuals involved have lives outside of tearing down everything they see, but I’m not a part of that. Aaron has music, Kelsey has art and school and stuff, and Kim probably has Dancing with the Stars or something. Regardless, their constructive interests rarely overlap with mine, or each others. As a consequence, they unite around their destructive overlaps, which are sizeable. This effect is magnified by Aaron’s confrontational and obstinate assuredness on all things, and the unwillingness of normal people to fight about everything. So, since I am mostly only observing this crowd in groups of 2 or more, and usually Aaron is one of the 2, the odds of the discussion being about something everyone thinks is good, is pretty low.
Reason #2: forced enrollment
This issue is pretty inherent in the system, and there’s not too much my roommates can do about it. Basically, their group usually decides quickly, or has already decided in some previous meeting, that they hate something. Once they’ve decided, it means you are no longer allowed to enjoy, or attempt to enjoy, that thing. Of course, this is only in certain group situations. They don’t control what I do on my own, and don’t try to.
The quintessential example would be the group watching a movie. Often a movie is picked already with hating it in mind, just because it looks stupid, or because someone has already seen it and declared it stupid. In these cases, the ridiculing begins immediately, so someone who hasn’t decided to hate it cannot easily view the content to make a determination of its quality, since there is loud mockery going on over the dialog.
Like I said, there’s not much that can be done in these situations. It’s just a difference of opinion, and really two separate activities being tried in the same place. It would be like trying to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the actual film being shown, you’re just not doing it right. It does lead nicely to reason 3, though.
Reason 3: Seeking it out
I think humor is a good response to horrible things. It can turn something that upsets you into something that brings you joy, which is a great way to make your life suck less. However, this principle only makes sense if you it apply it to horrible things that you can’t avoid. Once you seek out horrible things for this purpose, the system breaks down.
Now, I think my roommates and their friends do seek out horrible things. They might disagree. I know Aaron says his Netflix queue is full of, “things that look interesting,” when I suggest he’s purposely putting stupid %$#@ in it. But I don’t think that’s true. He doesn’t treat them as such. He’s more likely to say, “Hey, come watch this gay documentary,” and then mock everything from opening to closing credits than he is to actually watch the movie and see if it was, in fact, interesting. And he doesn’t come up with very many diamonds in the rough, like I suspect he would, if he was actually sifting through the less popular products in life, looking for things of particular interest to his niche.
So, I could be wrong, and they might not be seeking out horrible things when they read the Craig’s List’s casual encounters or texts from last night, but so what if I’m not? Their life, they can do what they want. Which is true, I agree. If they really find more entertainment in ridiculing horrible things than in partaking in quality products, then that’s what they should do. I just am not in the same situation, and so rarely want to join in, or observe.
Which leads to reason #4: the quality
This whole issue wouldn’t be such a big deal if my roommates were better at making fun of things. I just don’t find the things they say humorous most of the time. I guess it’s hard to keep up originality given Reason #1.
I think some of you out there, when I describe picking a horrible movie, and then making fun of it instead of watching it, are thinking of some Mystery Science Theater 3000 type scenario, but that’s not how I perceive things. I like those scenarios, but they are about as difficult to come by as actually good movies. You can’t just make fun of any ol’ movie. The badness of the movie has to be of a specific type and at a specific level to make making fun of it really entertaining. If it’s not like that, then you end up getting what I was complaining about, which is repeats of what was said in a funny voice, or the replacement of random words with, any combination of dick, butt, poop, tit, etc. or just kinda stale jokes in general.
Now, obviously, much of this is taste and nobody really controls that, and also, of course, they’re not supposed to be doing a performance quality level of mockery for my benefit all the time, but come on. I mean, using “gay” as an insult is sometime humorous when mocking an individual who would do so seriously, but they’ve used it to the extent that they are now the people it would be funny to use it against. And immature “naughty” words like poopy head were kinda ironic at the age when our peers were all swearing like sailors, but they’ve been ironically immature for longer than they were really immature at this point.


Ok, so everything above that line I wrote like 2 weeks ago. I never published the post because I didn’t want to cause unnecessary strife in the home life, and because I wanted to tweak it and make it funnier. But, ya know, screw it.

That stuff up there really has no conclusion, and a good conclusion isn’t really springing instantly to mind here. I guess the conclusion should be that they can do what they want, including doing little but belittle their own choices in entertainment. I just wish they wouldn’t, so I wouldn’t be so bored/annoyed. But I can help the situation too by having books and stuff on hand I can retreat to. I suspect we’ll survive. Especially now that I monopolize the TV w/ Modern Warfare 2.

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GMO continued

Hey look. This guy agrees with me. Just hit the interwebs, as far as I know anyway. Take a gander.

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I wrote this in less than a minute

They’re doing construction somewhere nearish to the building. Every so often the last couple days the whole place vibrates a bit. It’s pretty cool.

Also, the speedometer thing on my bike seems to be dead. Stupid free hand-me-downs. I blame Adam for this.