The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

It’s times like these when you have to look at the good things in life. Like links on the internet.

Today was pretty shit. I had to take action about a lot of things and stand up for myself. I don’t like that. I like being positive. But when people are being assholes to me, what are you supposed to do? Sometimes you just have to call a restaurant you were at and tell the manager about the awful experience you had of people making fun of you within earshot just so you can not let it ruin your whole fucking day, you know?

Anyway, links, motherfucker, do you have them? I have them. Well, some.

Been grading to the Napple Tale soundtrack recently. Damn, that’s just so good! Here’s a new favorite track from it. Just so excellent.

Great cosplay picture? Or the greatest cosplay picture? You decide.

Someone is really serious about the writing in Oblivion. I found this pretty impressive.

Here’s a nice interview about Poison. I personally would like it if they just embraced Poison as transsexual, of course, but at least it looks like they’re making sure they treat her with respect, even if they’re keeping her in a vague space. Also, she looks fun to play.

I should probably write more, something fun, but I’m not going to. I’m sorry. Today is all out of whack… sorry. I just don’t know how to deal with this. How did these completely assholes decide to come out of the woodwork all in the span of two days? It makes me feel a bit paranoid. I mean, people can think what they want about me. That’s fine. I think many things about many people. But I don’t understand why you shove that in someone’s face. Why do you make a big deal out of it? Why is it a problem, especially when you’re working and it’s a simple transaction.
I don’t even know what I’m saying. Sorry.

I know you all were scared, but you didn’t have to worry. I remembered what I wanted to talk about. The Roku!

I bought my parents a Roku a long time ago because I thought it would be a simple thing they could use to stream Netflix, and that my mom might like that. She used it a bit, certainly, and watched some TV shows. It was nice. Fast forward to the Netflix price hike, though, and my parents just totally killed their Netflix all together. Thus, the Roku was unused. So I basically stole it. Then I hooked it up in my room just because.

Roku is awesome.

It took me like 2 minutes to download the Giant Bomb channel and start streaming Whiskey Media stuff onto my TV. Somehow this damn thing streams better than my iPad does when I hook up a direct feed. It’s awesome. It’s magical. It’s exactly what I’d rather be watching in bed anyway!

In a few more minutes of fiddling, I had Tested on there, and Crunchyroll if I am desperate for an anime, and what’s best, Amazon Prime Video Streaming. I knew I had Prime Video Streaming, since I have and love Prime, but I never used it. However, damn, Roku makes it easy and a fun idea. I watched some Next Gen with little effort. Huzzah!

The only thing that’s been a complete disappointment so far is blip.tv. They say they have a Roku channel, and frankly, that would be great. How awesome would it be to be able to easily stream, I dunno, the latest Chip and Ironicus Let’s Play? Super awesome. That’s how awesome. But instead all you can watch is their “official” shows. I watch a TON of shit on Blip.tv, but nothing I watch is one of their “official” titles, so I can’t stream it. Obscenely stupid.

Really, the entire experience is just polished. It could be better with a keyboard, or a search in the channel store, or a slightly faster processor and/or RAM to get in and out of menus quickly. It also could really use a way for me to stream stuff from my PC: if I can get a 3 dollar app that does that to my iPad flawlessly, there has to be a way for me to do it on a Roku that isn’t a pain. That’s just about it, though. It’s just a damn good little device. It was totally worth what I paid for it. I now wonder if I’m going to have to buy a SECOND one for my house, so I can have one in the living room and one in the bedroom. I suppose we’ll see how much I use it. But I am enjoying it for now! Buy a fucking Roku and stream some shit too, hm?

I swear I had something to write about today, but fuck if I can remember what it was! So, you know, let’s just talk about Star Dunk Gold.

This was another game I downloaded for free after Tiny Tower asked me too, but unlike Hospital Story, which was pretty shitty if inoffensive due to the lack of cost, Star Dunk is actually kind of cool, if simple.

Basically, the idea is that you are shooting some mad hoops in space. You don’t actually dunk at all. The ball is placed at various places on the screen, and you move your finger to aim the little arc coming from the ball. Then you release, and if you aimed right, you make it in the basket. There is also a backboard, broken in the four sections. You can bounce the ball off of it to sink shots, of course, but each time you hit a section, it lights up, and when you’ve lit all four, you get a powerup. Some of them are useless (I have literally no idea what the fireball powerup does besides make you look cool.) and some of them are really useful, like the one that throws three balls for every one you throw, letting you sink three times the baskets if you’re good. You shoot for two minutes, and you try for a high score.

It’s simple, but the game has a really strong online feature. By switching the game to “online mode,” you will randomly be pulled into high score contests with other players playing the game. The game is constantly updating your position on the leaderboard as you’re desperately trying to sink dunks, and there always seems to be a fairly good number of people playing any time I’ve been on the game. It’s fun and simple competition with little overhead, because after two minutes, you’re done, and can just quit. I like that.

I guess Star Dunk Gold is some paid version that was free temporarily, and there’s a free version with ads? I dunno. I don’t know if I would pay money for this game. But it’s good, quick fun, which seems like the perfect sort of game to carry around on your phone while waiting in line. I approve of this game. I’m not going to spend any money on it’s microtransactions or anything, but I’ve had fun distracting myself with it.

We bought my mother a Blu-Ray player for her birthday, so she could play a Blu-ray or two. We thought we’d give it a test drive! So a movie was rented. It was called Limitless.

It was pretty alright.

The whole movie is based on what seems to be a plot hole. Mr. Main Character, Eddie, ends up with all these pills. They are magic brain-improving pills. They come from a shady drug dealer man.
But really, though, there were a lot of those pills. Part of the plot seems to revolve around many successful people taking these pills. There had to be some huge something behind the making of these things: hell, at the end of the movie, it basically says as such. I just have trouble believing that nobody from that organization would step in the moment Eddie starts becoming a crazy overnight success. They would have tried to get him under their control, and they don’t. They apparently don’t give a shit what happens to their very precious resource after it falls out of their hands. That just seems weird to me, especially since they could be taking it, and thus have intense plans and whatnot.

If you let that sort of thing out of your mind and just enjoy it, though, it’s a pretty fun film! Seeing the kind of power the pill gives makes you want that sort of power, and seeing what kind of trouble it can get you into makes you not want that kind of power. Eddie is not unlikable, but he’s not really a complete hero either. It’s interesting in that regard. He doesn’t deserve to die, perse, but you don’t necessarily want him to succeed in what he’s doing because in a way, he hasn’t earned it. He’s abusing it to manipulate sex out of women, and so many other things that seem not okay. Yet, somehow, the movie works. I’m not sure how the writing pulled that off. Maybe it’s because the movie sets up, from the beginning, that he is going to get his comeuppance for what he’s doing. The ending removes that, though, so I dunno.

I really feel like the trailer misrepresented this film, though. It made it seem like it would be little guy vs Robert DeNiro, from what I recall. That was really not the case at all, though DeNiro did a fine job. I also expected a bit more action. There were a few chase and fight sequences, but it was mostly a lot of talking and inner monologue. It’s mostly a talking movie, with a few action-y bits. But not in the way that, I dunno, Inglourious Basterds is a talky movie?

It’s a strange film. If the premise is interesting to you, you will probably enjoy it. I did enjoy it, but looking back, it’s just such a weird mish-mash of stuff that I’m not sure how it worked as a full movie film. I’d probably have to watch it again to figure it out, and it wasn’t THAT good. But eh, it was an interesting distraction. The parents didn’t seem to hate it. That’s about all I asked from the movie.

Molly has been really attached to me lately. People, including myself, have been trying to come up with theories as to why she’s sticking to me like glue and sleeping with me, when she’s never slept in my bed before, really, unless the parents were gone.

My mother’s theory is perhaps a bit too personified to be real. She believes that Molly is sleeping with me now because her and my father snore too much. While Dad, especially, is quite the snorer, I don’t really understand how this would be the case. Surely Molly would never have slept there if that’s something she actually minded.

My theory is self-centered. It’s also based on hormones, because that’s my reason for everything nowadays. (Only sometimes is it a joke.) My theory is that I must be smelling female to Molly now. I am really the only one who punishes her, and she listens to me more than other people. Because I’m now female, then, my theory is that in Molly’s mind, I have ousted my mother as the alpha female of our little pack, so she has to be all nice to me to earn favor. Again, kind of a self-centered theory.

Cara’s theory is one I didn’t consider. Cara thinks that Molly can somehow tell that I am about to move out and move somewhere else. I guess it’s one of the things that dogs can sense? Molly is trying to keep me around, so she’s trying to play nice so I will stay. I suppose that’s possible? But goodness, that’s some good intuition if Molly can figure that out. I don’t know what has really changed about my habits to have clued her in on that if it is true.

What is the real reason? I have no idea. But having Molly curled up with me is awesome. So no complaints here!

When your boss tells you “You know what? You shouldn’t take that shift and should go home and sleep instead,” I guess it means you are working too much, huh? I type this as I sit at the computer before going back to work and nearly falling asleep at the keyboard. Yay.

Recent dumb shit made me feel all whatever. Brer said “Do what you need to do to feel good!” So I took action and wore a skirt to work. I had originally played to wear this skirt while seeing Into the Woods, but my mother freaked out at the idea. But screw it, I said. The only thing that got them used to me having breasts was just by stopping the babying of them and just doing it. I just went for it. My mother got really upset, but whatever! I went to work.
It was weird. Not having pockets was really weird, as well as just moving around. This is the first time I had worn a skirt for any length of time, being previously confined to nervousness locked in my room. What really got me, though, was how not a big deal it was to me. There would have been a time in my life when doing something like that would have scared the shit out of me. This didn’t. I just decided to. It felt very natural. I looked good. (Mom even admitted as such, though she didn’t want to say it because she didn’t want me wearing it or whatever.) Aleda at work even asked me what took me so long to try stuff like that. It was nice. It’s something I will do again. Though maybe not too soon, if it starts getting cold like it should be.

Steve Jobs is dead, I hear. While I didn’t have some sort of magical affinity towards him, and I would never think of switching to a Mac full-time, there’s no doubt he had a hand in some amazing products I enjoy and carry with me every day which begin with the letter i. There’s also no doubt he was just a genius. So, you know. I’m sure he’ll be missed.

Finally, my mother got a new printer. It is better than the older printer in basically every way. It works, for one. It looks really badass, for two. It has a scanner built in that actually works, for three. We’ll see if it suddenly breaks in a week or something, but I was very happy with it’s first day of heavy use as I prepped for class, sent off paperwork for the house, and so on. Maybe I won’t spend my days screaming at a printer now. I kind of want one for my house, too. I’ll need a printer to make shit for class and whatnot.

Anyway, that’s it. I’m exhausted. Have a lovely day. I’m sure I will, as I finally got in my Pony shirts. PONY SHIRTS. Bye!

Okay, let’s… well, let’s write about something less stupid than yesterday, hm?

Those hip cats over at the Video Games Hot Dog were talking about Trainyard. As you know, if anyone talks about any iPhone game and it is a dollar or less, than I will purchase it. This occurred, and I played it. Well, some of it. There’s a lot of it! And user created levels! But it is certainly a game.

Trainyard is a very abstract puzzle game that really has very little to do with trains. The idea is that there are train depots, who want certain trains of certain colors in a certain order and quantity. There are train stations that release trains of a certain color and number. You basically just draw tracks between them to make the trains go where they are needed.

However, the game is really weird. Trains can be smooshed together if two tracks combine at the point where two trains would meet. If two trains drive through each color, their colors mix, letting you make different colored trains. (So if you drive a red train and a yellow train past each other, you get an orange train.) What the game does is it will often give you way, way more trains than you need to deliver. You can’t deliver extra trains, so you have to figure out how to combine them. That’s the difficult part. You have to figure out timing and how to draw track so the trains meet at the right time. The main tool you have in doing this is switching tracks. This happens automatically, when a train drives over a track, so you have to set it up to cascade in a bit of a machine to get trains going where you need them to go.

There’s no timer, and no real motivation to push on via, I don’t know, a story or a scoring system or whatever. You can share your solutions with the world, if you want, and finishing puzzles unlocks more puzzles, but that’s really it. It’s just pure puzzles, and if that is your thing, there are a ton of them to work on here. I got a decent way in before I kind of burned out, and wanted to take a break. Then I wrote this. But it’s clear why the VGHD people liked it, and they are crazy “pure” puzzle people. If you are too, it’s totally worth a dollar.

Today I was prepping for my class. I wanted to bring in another article to discuss, you know, to expand the discussion from what the book has. Standard stuff. I was looking for things at places I know that writes entertaining things, and I stumbled upon this column. I couldn’t pull myself away. I had to read. I read two articles before I was nearly in tears and I forced myself away. It was good stuff, but… but I just couldn’t handle it, even though I also couldn’t ignore it.

I want to read stuff like this. I want to know I am not alone, and more importantly, that there are other people out there, making it, and being successful. I want to be able to give people something more well-written than these stupid blog posts and say “Look, it’s like this. This is what’s going on.”

But it hurts me to read this sort of thing. It makes me want to cry almost immediately, even if something happy is being discussed. I almost feel like I’m punishing myself. I can’t handle it.

I’m no stranger to empathy. I try to be that kind of person. I try to understand people. But with this stuff… I know this pain too well. I know the situation too well. I’ve lived it, or am living it. Trying to feel what they feel, my own pain, my past, it mixes with it. It amplifies it. It overwhelms me. If something bad happens, I remember all the times something similar happened to me, and I just want to collapse and give up. When something good happens, I am just so overwhelmingly thankful that there is good in the world that I can’t express it. I can’t keep it inside me. Either way, I cry.

I have probably said this before, but I try to think back a few years ago, or even a few months ago, to how I felt. The person I was, the depression that ruled my life, it already seems like a dream, to be honest. It’s hard to believe I was ever that much of a mess. I don’t know if anyone else sees it in me. I may seem mostly the same. But there’s no mask anymore, and I’m not hiding my emotions. It feels so right, I can’t believe I used to always be hiding. I have already come so far. I am so fucking thankful.
But when I read these things, I do remember. I remember how terrible I felt. I remember how trapped I felt in my own life. I remember how pointless going on living seemed. It all rushes back to me, and it makes my current problems, like trying to get everyone on the same page with pronouns, feel even worse. They’ll never call me the right pronoun. They’ll never accept me. I’ll never be me, and I have been foolish to try. Just like that, I can’t escape these thoughts. These people I’m reading about are successful, but they aren’t like me. I’m too much of a tomboy. I’ll never pass. My parents will always think it’s okay to call me by my old name. Or even worse, these people have problems, and aren’t successful, and I will, of course, be just like them. I can’t win.

One of the articles I read talked about how little she talks anymore, and how she no longer sings because she’s worried her deeper singing voice will give her away. Suddenly, I’m worried. I sing all the time. Like, all the time. Am I giving myself away? Should I stop? I have a higher voice, but not that high. It probably is a problem. But the idea of not being able to get into music like that is extremely depressing. I have another thing to stress about, on top of everything else, now. When I click on another article, what else will I suddenly be worried about?

I read these articles looking for something to bring to class right before class, thinking my lesson plan was a little light. There was a moment there, about an hour before, that I felt so terrible, I didn’t know if I could teach. I didn’t know if I could really do it. Could I have the enthusiasm? The energy I needed? I felt like I couldn’t. I felt like I did when I used to skip every single one of my classes as an undergrad, and just curl up under blankets and hide. I went to class, of course. I taught fine. I am past the point in my life where I give in to thoughts like that. I just didn’t feel like I could. I really considered giving in, staying home, and feeling sorry for myself.

I just can’t do it. I can’t handle reading this stuff. Maybe I’m not strong enough. Maybe I’m still too much in the middle of it, and in a few years it won’t be a problem. Maybe I’ll never be strong enough, and I’ll always be scared. I don’t know. But I can’t do it, as much as I want to. I just can’t do it.

The #souppro hashtag will catch on, I swear!
Anyway, inside jokes you probably don’t get aside, I got to see a performance of Into the Woods on Saturday.

Mom had mentioned that her and Dad and Jonathan and Shauna all had tickets, and I had learned I was off, so I figured, why not? I grabbed a ticket, and we all went to the show. I have always been a big fan of Into the Woods, but this was going to be the first time I was going to see a live performance. I wasn’t sure how professional it would be, being put on by the collage and all, but I was willing to give it a go.

Besides one thing, it was a really good performance.

First off, I was just really impressed with the set. I mean, I know we’re talking about skilled people here who want to do this kind of thing for a living, and I shouldn’t underestimate them, but goodness, I did, and I was blown away. It was a complicated and really nice looking forest. Trees moved around on set. The mossy steps of the background looked really nice. The limbs in the trees shook and shed leaves when the giant was walking around. A top quality act.

Similarly, I thought the actors all did a great job. Some of them seemed to be doing their best to replicate the style of the original actors from that original version I watched on DVD all those years ago, such as the Witch, but she did a good job at it. Others had their own takes, like the Narrator, and did a really solid job at that, too. They even had a slight technical hitch, where Milky White’s legs went out a bit before the cue for that, and they ad libbed to cover for it extremely well, to the point where I’m sure anyone in the audience who didn’t know the show probably didn’t know their was a problem. Quality stuff.

Now the sound…
The sound crew was just not doing a good job at all. Granted, anyone who knows the show knows it wouldn’t be an easy one to mike and run: people are moving in and out of song all the time. There’s lots going on. But goodness, it really takes you out of the show when, say, the final “I Wish!” in the finale isn’t miked and so you can’t hear it because someone forgot to turn it on. Or where you can’t hear parts of lines because their mike is only one for the end bit. Or when someone forgets to turn down someone’s mike a bit before a scream or screech. It really hurt what was otherwise a really great performance, and that’s really a bummer.

Still, it was a really great night. We went out and ate a bunch of appetizers at Applebee’s after and had a very nice time. I’d do it again, most definitely. Then again, who knows when they’ll put on a show like Into the Woods I actually care about again. Heh.

Let me just explain how the last couple of days went for me, frustration-wise. A little venting never hurt anyone, yes?

So, like, a month ago, I ordered some Pony shirts because I am that kind of person apparently. I got this one and this one. There was no notice that these were preorders or anything. I was hoping to have them before the new season started. That didn’t happen. It took about a month, and when the box got here, it had shirts in it that I did not order and would certainly never wear. I called the company, and was told that I should leave a message and would be called back “in a few minutes.” That didn’t happen, and I had to go to work.

This story has a happy ending, or at least the start of one. The customer service person DID get back to me, gave me a free shipping label for the wrong shirts, and said she is sending out my real order today by a quicker shipping method. She was very polite and nice when doing it, so I can’t fault her for that. Still, I’m certainly going to rethink ordering shirts from them again, as that as kind of crazy.

The other story is more up in the air.

For the past month, I have been trying to get this home loan thing finished. I’m closing on the house on the 7th, and everything needs to be good to go then. Throughout this month, I have had many panic moments, mostly having to do with a mutual fund I have. See, I gave them a statement for it, but it didn’t have page 3 and 4, which my mother destroyed because they had no information on it. I have, during various points this month, given them at least 3 OTHER documents with the information about the mutual fund on it that they would need. However, they are holding up my loan because I don’t have pages 3 and 4 of the original document.

Today, I found out, via a statement for an unrelated mutual fund, what is on pages 3 and 4 that my mother threw away. It’s ads. Pages 3 and 4 are nothing but ads for other services the mutual fund wants you to sign up for. My loan is being held up because they don’t have two pages of ADS. Makes me want to crack my skull against my desk.

I think we’ve finally got solutions in place (although this is about the third time I’ve thought that about this bullshit) and everything should be fine now. But gods, what a pain in the ass. I mean, yes, I am borrowing a bunch of money, but goddamn. They do this everyday. Something so stupid shouldn’t be an issue.

Hi! This paragraph is from me many hours after I wrote the previous one! Guess what? I’m totally screwed because I went to school! Isn’t that great?
Basically, we dealt with that bullshit, but then they decided that they have to use the amount of money I was making when I was a full-time student to determine the loan, as opposed to what I am making now. Because that fucking makes sense, right? So because I wasn’t working 40 hours a week while also teaching 20 hours a week and going to school full time, I now can’t get a loan. Which I was basically promised would not be any sort of issue for me to get. HOW FANTASTIC. *bangs head against desk*

Anyway, those are some of the anger-inducing things I’ve been dealing with! Hopefully your time is going a lot better.