The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I watched this movie with Aesa last night. It was some famous Korean film. I do not know the title. It will probably show up in the next sentence well after I have written this review thing. Something like Mr. Vengeance? (Aesa says the correct title is Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. So.) Anyway, it was a really fucked up movie, and not in the “oh, that is a fucked up movie” kind of way. Like… I just really didn’t understand what it was trying to do.

This film set up literally every single character in it for failure. Every single one. Nobody who was a character was in any way alive by the end of the film. It was all just sort of “last person is dead, so roll credits, we’re done.” It was almost like a snuff film or something. “How miserable can we make these people before they die? You’ll want to see that, right?” That’s supposed to be the point? Watching all this stuff is supposed to have a point, right? There’s got to be some sort of artistic vision going on here, right? But I just have a hard time figuring out what it could possibly be.

One of the first things I would try to teach somebody about writing a story is that you have to have somebody who you can root for: somebody that you want to succeed. You can want them to succeed in spite of what that actually means: you can associate with terrible people, and often that creates some pretty compelling narratives. But in general, to get someone engaged, you have to let them relate to somebody in the story.

I could not relate to basically anyone in this story.

The “main character” with the green hair seemed like a guy I should relate to, but if I’m being completely honest, his disabilities made that tough. His character was not much deeper than just those flaws, to me. I could never really see what made him tick. The movie sort of went out of its way to make him seem dragged along by circumstance, instead of his own decisions. Even the big decision he makes, kidnapping the girl, was really more him just agreeing with his girlfriend more than anything. The girlfriend was a plot-forwarding device for most of the movie, as was the sister. Neither of them felt really developed. The little girl felt like more of a character in a lot of ways, but she didn’t really seem to desire anything. She was just kind of there. The father figure is probably the one that’s easiest to potentially connect with, but I still had trouble because it just felt like he jumped to murder so quickly. There was never a doubt in his mind that he was going to throw his company, everything he worked for, away and do some killing the moment he found his daughter dead. It makes it hard to sympathize with him. It’s not like he didn’t potentially have other venues to deal with this. He found all this info. He could have went to his police contacts with it. But then everyone wouldn’t have died, I guess.

Even in a story where everything is terrible and nobody gets what they want, though, normally SOMEBODY gets what they want, just not anyone who we as an audience gives a shit about. A corporation, the guy who’s kind of an asshole… someone triumphs. Literally nobody triumphs in this story. Nobody in it comes out better than they were before. Everything in this film is downhill.

I just don’t understand what I as a viewer was supposed to take away from this movie. I mean, make depressing stuff, sure. And maybe if I had a knowledge of Korean film-making this would fit into a mold that would make more sense. But it just seemed like someone set up dominoes to fall down perfectly until they were all gone. It didn’t feel like real life. I didn’t feel like I could learn a lesson from it. I was just flummoxed.

That was a thing I watched! Uh, yeah. So. Next time we’re watching a comedy. Heh.

When I was completely sick and barely able to sleep, I kept having variants of the exact same dream over and over again. Fuck if I know why. But here’s what was going on.

I had discovered some sort of special sentence. Basically, I had said this sentence, and something insane had happened. Things were destroyed. It was the most dangerous of sentences. Sort of magic, sort of not. In any case, it was extremely powerful.

I had turned myself in so that my sentence-saying power could be harnessed and controlled safely. I had been tied up, bound somewhere, and I was being studied. The sentence itself seemed to keep changing, or I kept trying different sentences. I’m not sure. But I was being invasively researched, and I could not get up.

I seriously had this dream again and again. I’d wake up, and it would have been at the same point where I tried a sentence and it worked, before I saw what it did. Then I’d force myself back to sleep and have the same dream again, pretty well exactly. It was kind of strange. Certainly not something I can remember happening before.

Anyway, there’s a short blog post. I am mostly un-sick now, so I hope to be back at normal blogging strength tomorrow. Later.

I’ve been sick as fuck yesterday and today. That’s why there wasn’t a post.

After spending all of both days basically sleeping (and being taken care of by a very nice Aesa), I feel almost alive again. I haven’t been so completely ill in quite some time. My fever never got TOO high, but I couldn’t get out of bed, and so on.

Anyway, hopefully I will be close to 100% tomorrow. Then I can write some sort of bullshit for you.

Until then, though, have a good day.

No spoilers.

Despite issues involving random card packs of upgrades, I have been really enjoying the multiplayer of Mass Effect 3. I like shooting dudes and casting spells and so on and so forth. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s exciting fun. Plus, you’re earning this Readiness rating, which could potentially be a nice bonus for the single player.

So I played a bunch, and then I dug into the single player. Then Aesa showed up and I kind of took a break.

Then I came back, and my Readiness had fallen about 8 percent.

Why the fuck does it fall so fast? I’m okay with the idea of playing multiplayer to up that rating, but why does it fall at all? Mass Effect 3 is a game people are going to replay. To ask them to put like 4 hours into the multiplayer every time they want to play through the game again to get that rating is FUCKING INSANE. What’s more, it doesn’t decrease if you don’t connect to the online server: Chris at work maxed it out, and then disconnected because he doesn’t have internet at his house, and he’s still at 100%. As long as he doesn’t play ME3 online, he’ll always be at 100% readiness. The game is encouraging him not to play the multiplayer or use any online feature of the game, basically, so he can do his multiple playthroughs, which seems like a bad move on EA’s part, and that means it’s impossible for him to waste money on their stupid microtransactions. What the fuck.

Anyway, I decided this is a thing that I have to deal with either way, so I get this ME3 Datapad app to play this minigame as an alternate route to upping that number. I try to log into what is apparently now my Origin account in order to hook the minigame up to my main game. I have no idea what the password is, though: EA always just logs me in to that stuff automatically. So I try to do a simple password reset.
It keeps throwing “server errors” at me, and telling me to try again later.
After about 15 minutes of this and being frustrated, I decided to try typing in a different password.
It changed.
My password wasn’t meeting their password requirements. But it was never going to tell me that.

Fuck EA and Fuck Origin, is basically what I am saying here.

Okay, so remember when I complained about work awhile back? That shit has continued. Every night since there has been some other completely ridiculous and stupid issue going on. Either we’ve got too few people, or too many people, or only half of the store has signs to put up, or all the information is filled with typos and is incorrect… it’s been ridiculous. What the fuck is going on at corporate? I assume someone, who was competent and about to lose their job because of the same reason I am, left for a job that wasn’t going away, and now we have the C team trying to do all this work and having no fucking idea what they’re doing. Anyway, it’s frustrating to have to deal with. Luckily, I’ve kind of sort of stopped giving a shit all together about work there, so that does help a bit. But goodness.

So here’s a text conversation I had with my mother yesterday. We were figuring out when everyone could go out to eat for my birthday, and then we have this conversation.
“CJ is more than welcome to come to this, you know.”
“I’m glad, I was planning on bringing him.”
“He’s part of the family now.”
“It makes me incredibly happy to hear that, Mom.”
Did she figure out that we’re, uh, a thing? Or is she just awesome? I dunno nor care. I just know it’s fucking awesome and I’m glad she “gets it” on some level. That really reduces a lot of stupid worry on my part.

I feel like I’m slowly but surely starting to get used to this whole “I am not the only person in a bed” thing. It’s strange, but nice. I’ve had a decently big bed to myself my whole life, and I’m used to sprawling. Having someone else there requires different strategies. However, I’ve kind of found that I tend to fall asleep faster employing those strategies. I don’t know why. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Still, what happens is I wake up in the middle of the night, and toss and or turn, and then realize I’m not alone and I’m going to wake someone up, and then freak out, and then smack my hand on the bedside table, and freak out about that, and then I’m wide awake. Which is really stupid and not conducive to a complete night’s sleep. Heh, I’ll get over myself at some point.
At least Q seems to have adapted well. He’s gotten used to having to curl up between us at the foot of the bed instead of getting to sprawl out all over like me. He’s stopped being all kind of half growl-y at Aesa getting in bed and invading me and his space. That’s nice.

Wow, why was this blog so hard to write? I am a failure at writing today. It must be the MAXIMUM IDES we are right in the middle of.

I’m just going to talk about some more stuff about Aesa moving in. Sorry. It’s what is on my mind.

It’s strange to be treated like a woman in a relationship constantly.

I don’t mean that people don’t respect me and shit in my life otherwise. For the most part, people are awesome. But I also have a history with them, of course, which does play into our interactions. Frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way: I didn’t leave here for a reason. I don’t want to burn those bridges to the past. There was a lot of depression in my past, but a lot of awesome shit too. No reason for it to go away.

But being around someone who has always thought of me as a woman and whom I am so close to is just… interesting. The dynamic is so different. I mean, it’s been different with other people too. It’s not like I didn’t feel like a woman around Brer. It’s just I’ve always, for the most part, been a tomboyish force in that relationship and some of the “stuff” I am seeing now just isn’t his style. He’s not a super-emotional guy on the outside. He doesn’t believe in tradition for tradition’s sake. All that is part of who he is, and why I love him, and I feel super comfortable and happy around him.

Aesa, though, is kind of a classic romantic. He brought me chocolates on Valentine’s. He showed up to the house with flowers. He wants to drive me everywhere (Brer did this too, but that didn’t trigger this because that just made practical sense: he knew the area and I didn’t). He orders for me at restaurants. He insists on paying for everything.
It’s… nice! It’s nice. It’s a blush-inducing change of pace. Not necessarily better. But it’s nice. It just really throws me off. I’ve been used to doing things like paying and taking charge in this stuff all my life. None of that felt like I was doing the wrong thing or something. I never really felt like I was being forced to play a role I didn’t fit into with that stuff (unlike other things in my life). Now I’m in this situation where I feel almost in competition about it. I’m having a polite dating etiquette war. It’s just weird.

It’s not just that stuff either. I don’t know. Here is a moment from the other day. I asked Aesa what he was watching. He said it was a movie that was really violent, and thus probably not my sort of thing. This statement kind of confused me until I realized that he’s saying it’s a guy movie, and that was kind of the first time someone had put up a barrier because “it’s a male thing” in reference to me.

It’s interesting times for me, I guess is what I’m saying. It’s taken more time to get my head around than I thought it would. But if worrying about how I’m interpreting this stuff is the biggest thing on my mind right now, I’d say life is going pretty fucking wonderful.

When I got my PS3 from CJ (not the CJ I’m now living with, but another good friend CJ) it had a bunch of random movies left on the hard drive that he told me I could enjoy for whatever reason. I never really have, though. I mean, I watched the one that most interested me (The King of Kong) and The Room is on there for some reason, and I know what that is, but I’ve never really watched any of the rest.

However, when we were just sitting on the couch wasting time, CJ (this one is Aesa, not the CJ I got the PS3 from) went “what are these?” and looked through the movies. And then we ended up watching Rad.

It was pretty rad!

Words cannot truly do this masterpiece of a film justice, so I’m just going to suggest you watch this key scene of how Rad does romance. I’ll wait until you get back.

Now just imagine an entire movie basically exactly like that, and you have the movie Rad.

Seriously, though, as a movie, it’s just kind of crazy. It’s like the writers knew what the tropes and such of a gimmicky movie like this were, but they had no idea about how to use them. They piled in tons of cliches, none of them made sense, and then just made everything around them either ridiculous or unrelated to what was actually going on. It’s kind of fantastic in that way. If someone was paying me to put together a BMX movie as quick as possible to cash in on a craze, I would have never come up with a movie like this. Bits and pieces that were in this movie would have appeared: a big race, local guy who knows he can make it big, mother disapproving because her son should go to college instead of doing BMX, asshole professional coming in to town, and so on. None of them would have been anything like the bizarre configuration this movie put them in. That’s what it’s such a great view.

I certainly recommend Rad if you like really, really bad movies that just flummox and perplex. It is quite an experience, and one I’m glad Aesa and I ended up having.

In the other room, Aesa is asleep. I’m sitting here working on job applications and writing blogs and shit, and in the other room is a not-dog, sleeping in my house, and he’s going to stay there.

What a relief.

I mean, I’m sure there will be all sorts of unimagined issues and whatever the fuck, you know? These sorts of things happen when people live in the same space. I’m sure there will be even more issues and things to work through when Brer gets here. But goddamn, I am so glad to be having those issues in the future instead of ones of loneliness and whatnot. Being lonely fucking sucks.

I feel like what we’re going to have to work on first is the whole not being together constantly thing. I still need to play my dumb vidjeo gamez and I assume he does too. I need to be able to go into my office and get schoolwork done. Hopefully the fact that this is spring break will help us transition to a state where we’re not all desperately attached at the hip. Heh. I’m sure that’ll happen without issue, though. We also need to figure out chores and things and other things… so many things.

So many things. But goddamn, I am ready for tackling these things. I am ready to have normal people problems. I am ready to have family problems. I am ready to have a family.

I’m excited. Very excited. What I’ve been working so hard for is nearly a reality, and that is… amazing. One moved in, one to go. Life is great.

Sorry to take a day to celebrate, but I feel like it’s worth celebrating. A more standard blog tomorrow, promise.

What is there to say about Earthbound? Earthbound is a basically perfect creation. When I was younger, I might have disagreed. I’d have thought Earthbound was way, way too hard. That’s because as a young person, I was an idiot and never actually used spells and items. The game is pretty damn balanced, a lot of fun, and super creative.

The setting itself is just unique. So few jRPGs would even pretend to set themselves in modern day. While the world of Earthbound clearly isn’t modern day as we know it, being really quite crazy in a lot of respects, it’s this weird idealized modern day through the lens of like the 50s that just works perfectly. It’s a world that seems perfectly normal, yet it also seems perfectly normal for kids to be fighting sentient taxi cabs with psychic powers and frying pans. It’s pretty wonderful that it can pull off that odd sort of tone in setting. The wackiness is just how the world is. Nobody takes it as anything but normal. If anything, the general “innocent seriousness” of all the main characters just kind of supports that. It’s awesome.

The writing, too, is just… so rarely do you have a game with such creative and solid writing. You can tell that someone who actually knows how to write a thing was involved in the creation of this game. It’s hilarious in a very subtle and surreal way most of the time, and even the littlest things, like using a Protractor in combat, have funny messages for no reason other than to be funny. Being able to subtly capture strong scenes, like the first time Jeff meets Dr. Adonuts, which are funny, but also kind of have actual emotion involved is just… yeah. Great. Part of that has to be credit given to the translation team, who clearly put a lot of love into the game to make sure the jokes and style made it across to the English version, but it’s just top notch all around.

Even the combat system’s subtle changes on the Dragon Quest formula really make it interesting to play. Little things, like the fact that one of your characters probably has the Franklin Badge and is immune to lightning, but which one should it be, and bringing Teddy Bears along to distract the enemy really add depth that isn’t immediately apparent. The breaking of standard genre conventions in the game is weird. Paula has no defensive spells, and Jeff, the character without spells, is only stronger in physical attack power than Paula, and really relies on what are basically spells in the form of gadgets to be effective in combat. (Slime Generator always and forever!) The rolling HP meter adds so much drama to the game, it’s not even funny. Killing easy enemies without actually going into combat is something so wonderful, you wonder why games today don’t do it. Even the condiment system, which honestly is not something you should really deal with in a playthrough, is creative and fresh, at the very least.

It’s just fantastic. Just fantastic. I will offer the general advice that if you want to roll through the game with little to no combat issues, it is a good idea to grind up to level 10 before facing Frank at the beginning of the game. Someone taught me this trick, and in my replays (yes, a game I have actually replayed! That’s how you know it’s good) this, and actually making use of Jeff’s gadgets and spells, makes the game way, way easier than I remember it being in my youth. But seriously, I would not touch anything about this game. There are little flaws, sure, as the aforementioned condiment system that is too cumbersome to actually use. But all the flaws add character to the game, and don’t detract, at least in my opinion. Earthbound is a game I would ask anyone serious about video games to play, if I had to force one really long gaming experience on them. It’s great. Great. Great.

I have a link or two for you. Are you interested? Too bad, you’re getting them anyway.

Let’s get the ponies out of the way first.
Here’s a funny pony video. Whee! Funny pony videos! Amirite?
The wait for the next episode of Friendship is Witchcraft continues, but at least I got to listen to this outtake reel from the other episodes. (I could listen to Griffin riffing as Silver Spoon for a lot longer than they do in the video. Heh.)
This is how you put a nice easter egg in an episode for the fans.

ENOUGH PONIES!
Ever wonder what pets had college degrees? This list on Wikipedia has you covered.
Well hey, Street Fighter x Tekken seems to be doing some things right! Too bad the online is apparently complete ass.
You deserve more pigeon dating, so why not read the sequel to the Hatoful Boyfriend LP that I loved so much awhile back? It’s just as good, if not BETTER.
This pretty well sums up the Mass Effect Situation.
It’s your birthday.
Did you ever wonder how to make the cutest dogs ever? Apparently the solution is to crossbreed any dog with a corgi.
I found this interesting, and then shared it with my class. Maybe you won’t! I dunno.
Word on the street is that this chart is old, but maybe it’s still new to you, like it was to me, and will make you laugh.
Sometimes people on twitter have humorous tweets. Like this one. Or this one.

Bye for now! I’m heading back to the Citadel. I hear I have a lot of favorite stores there.