The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

It’s the day of St. Valin the Tined, so named because he had spikes all over him. Maybe.

Basically, Valentine’s isn’t a big deal for me this year. I mean, I would never put it up there as a “top” thing, but this year, especially not. Not only am I going to be busy the whole damn day, but the biggest thing I did to celebrate was to have a game bought for me, and buy a game in retaliation. That’ll show him to buy me a thoughtful gift!

But seriously, I may have a ton of shit on my plate. I may be stressed and worried as fuck, certainly. There is a lot of shit going on in my life!

But I still have love.

Brer, fuck, I love you so much. Shit sucks, but we are working it out. I know you’re working hard. I’m working hard. We’ll get in the same physical location, dammit.

Cris, goodness, I do love you, you know. Our relationship is something I know you tell me I worry about too much, which is completely fair. But it’s still awesome, right? Yeah. Still pretty awesome.

Kale, I love you. You’re very silly, but so very nice. I can’t talk to you without feeling the emotion there, you know? Don’t go anywhere.

Ecks, though we don’t get to see each other nearly enough, I love you, you know? You’re so wonderful. Our schedules will sync up again soon, I hope.

And man, those are only the people I have at least partially romantic feelings for. Awesome family. Awesome friends. So much love.

Enjoy your day of love, hm?

I have been playing Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening. In this game, you recruit a party member called Justice. He was a warrior. I had been running a two Warrior, one Mage, and me Rogue setup in the original game, so I was needing another warrior to duplicate that. I was glad to pick him up.

As I do because, I dunno, I feel like having a streamlined experience and I am playing on easy anyway, I used the Auto-Level to level him up. He learned some kind of buff, and the computer automatically set up tactics for him to keep this buff up on himself. So far, so good.

Justice casts this buff. When active, this buff causes a tiny explosion/whoosh of air thing to ripple out around him about every three seconds. This makes a fairly loud and annoying noise. He always has this buff up. The only way I could not have him have this buff up is to control him manually or rejigger his tactics so he does not cast it, but if I did that, then he wouldn’t be buffed, and I don’t want that.

I walked around with this noise for like 3 minutes, and I had to remove him from my party. The noise was driving me crazy.

Great fucking job, Bioware! You succeeded in making a character nobody could ever actually use. All because you attached this ridiculous noise to that buff. Fantastic. I don’t understand how playtesters wouldn’t have realized how annoying that noise was. Was the game not tested with Justice in your party?

I don’t know. Mind-blowing stuff, and now I’m down a warrior. Oh well.

People at work keep pestering me as to why I, as a gamer, do not own a copy of CODBLOPS. It was suggested the other day that I “invest” in a copy. I feel like this is a valid suggestion, of course. I’m sure CODBLOPS is a great game, and I do look forward to playing it at some point.

But man, the couple of hours I just invested into You Don’t Know Jack multiplayer were probably more fun than 3 times the amount of time spent in the CODBLOPS multiplayer, and maybe more.

Enjoy what you enjoy, you know? I’m not saying they’re doing it wrong, and I know they’re not saying I’m doing it wrong either. They just want to include me in their gaming sessions, which I appreciate. But it’s just one of those things, you know? It just reminds me of how out of the mainstream I am. There’s no way I could describe how excited I am about this trivia video game, and how it will get my full attention. They just don’t share that particular joy, and I think they would be a little unable to understand why I enjoyed it so much. This is the case for so many things. We often clash in opinions on what movies, shows, and whatnot are awesome as well. They’re all great people I love working with, but their tastes are so, so far away from mine. So far!

It just really shows me how ridiculously broad a concept like “gamer” is. There are key “gamer” experiences that my friends at work will never know. There’s no way they’d ever play a Persona 3, for instance, and I consider that one of the major gaming experiences of last generation. Most “gamers” I actually discuss things with on a regular basis would understand what Persona 3 is and how it mixed things up in a significant way, even if they didn’t play it much or even enjoy it. The people at work, though, who probably play games somewhere close to as often as I do, have no clue. They probably know nothing about it.

I don’t know, it just fascinates me, because, again, neither of us are wrong. We’re both doing it right. Yet, there’s this big game between us, when we have what ought to be similar interests. It just shows me how different people’s worlds really can be, even on this small level. That’s kind of cool, don’t you think?

Snow cancelled my night class, and in the process, killed any want for me to do anything at all. ANYTHING.

Thus, you get this. Internet images. Aren’t you lucky?

There are no words to describe this picture. I can’t even parse it. I mean, obvious what Garrus is doing is indeed Sick-Nasty, but his expression… and his deck… and… man. No words!

This amazing optical illusion was making the rounds the other day. It was doing so because it is amazing. Although one person suggested it could be improved if the batmen were kissing.

Speaking of, if you need some sexy in your day, I even have an image for that. You are hooked up.

Apparently the WoW support team is pretty awesome. This image proves it. Or, you know, someone photoshopped it to make them look awesome, but either way.

I don’t even know what this is, but I can’t stop watching it. Guess I’ll have to deal with it.

Seriously, if you get bored, just stare at that last one some more. That’ll take care of it. I’ll write some more tomorrow.

We all win at trivia!

Okay, well, we got third. But when first place is the Matt Essner’s Family Power Team, who used to run the trivia night, and second place is the Unstoppable Team of Notre Dame Teachers, well, third place is fucking fantastic.

I didn’t expect to kick such ass. I wasn’t, I dunno, picking strategically or anything. Jonathan, Cara, and Buchhiet were people I knew wanted in. Cara suggested I grab Cole, who brought some sports knowledge and history degree stuff. Jonathan brought in Kenny, who was just a wellspring of random trivia. Essner suggested I grab Mason, and I totally did, who helped us knock the crap out of the movie rounds. Cara had several good obscure saves, and Buchhiet was a powerhouse, working with Kenny on the Sports Maths to make that work, and pulling in all kinds of knowledge like coin collector knowledge I certainly didn’t know he had.

If anything, I was probably the weakest link, and I still caught a couple of them. (And destroyed the category about grammar, because come fucking on. Grammar category.)

We cracked jokes, we had fun, and we dominated most of the teams there. I managed not to get into any awkward conversations with former teachers and such. It was an awesome night, and I am so glad I decided to get everyone together to go and do it. I hope everyone else was glad too.

I’ve had a line in my head all day. It’s a good line. I’m not sure what I’d use it for, and I keep trying different variations. Basically, it’s, “When I’m cold like this, I can’t tell if that’s why I’m shivering.”

I’m shaky.

Have I not been sleeping enough? I’ve been trying to sleep in and rest. I’ve been trying to give myself time to relax while also doing a lot of work. I’ve been trying to get a lot done.

That’s just it, though. I’m always trying, aren’t I?

At some point I will get this shit figured out. I will be solid in what I need to do. I will make it work. Sometime.

Until then I’ll just have songs stuck in my head and be overly emotional with kittens and hide and stuff. I’ll keep that going. I’m good at that. I’ll watch cat videos and not watch the television shows I should and I’ll curl up under covers and that’ll be that.

Also the covers might be warm, so I’ll know why I’m shivering.

I fucking swear, there’s a mind-blowing line in a poem in that somewhere. I’ll figure it out.

I swear, for someone who feels lost so often, I certainly do tend to get a lot done.

I mean, I feel like I’m getting nothing done, but already, this week, I managed to come up with a passable plan that I like for after graduation and talk to people at school and at work to warn them about my impending transition, making it that much more real. I also read some short stories and commented on some poems. I wrote a sestina. I read like thousands of mafia posts. I played through a lot of Little Big Planet PSP. I spent some quality time with the boyfriend. I started setting up a trivia night team. I wrote some blog posts.

I’ve done stuff.

I made this database of everything I’ve written that’s at least quasi-respectable. I ended up with a number of entries in the triple digits. Dr. Watson was like, “Doesn’t it feel nice to see how much you’ve accomplished?”
It does. It really does.

I always feel like I’m so behind. I’m not moving ahead. Nothing is happening. But fuck, when I actually try to list what I’ve done? It’s a lot. I do things. I do them well. Are they always the right things? Debatable. But I’m not always just nothing. I am accomplishing something.

And you know what? That will continue. I will be fine. I will keep accomplishing things.
I can do this.

so i joined the homestuck mafia game.o. on the talking time forums.o. which was a total mindfuck.o. and caused me to come up with this.o. stupid voice.o. for roleplaying.o.

But I can’t talk about that until it’s over. But shit, I will say that game can just DEVOUR you. Devour.

Man, I want to, but you understand, don’t you blog? I can’t. It’s not you. I just made these promises, is all.

But seriously, it’s been on my mind all day. I was checking in on my phone. I even sat down to do my homework, part of which required me to write a sestina, and I ended up writing a sestina about searching out and killing trolls. Seriously.

I am so far down this rabbit hole, and I am totally not going back. There is no way I am not jumping into the next one of these games. It was a pain in the ass catching up to be prepared, but hot damn.

Everyone plays with such passion. There is so much fucking energy and excitement in every single bullshit post in the game thread. I love it. I mean, I love how my friends and I roleplay, but it’s never so serious. Basically everyone has their fucking GAME FACE ON. And what’s better is that the forum keeps going as per usual outside of it. This is, what, the ninth game of Mafia, and I haven’t seen Mafia cause any fights that I’ve noticed. Everything I love about Talking Time still goes, while everyone battles it out.

It’s fantastic, and I love being a part of it, and I’ll tell you all about it when I can, blog. But fuck yes. Mafia. I am so there.

It’s right here, officer.

Val linked me to this little flash game. It’s fairly clever and a fun way to waste a few minutes. It’s not long. It’s also got AT LEAST TWO SECRETS! Or so I hear. I didn’t find them.

You could also, I dunno, play this incredible take on the game that changed everything.

This one is for all the fans of boy-touching out there. Hilarious LP, really well done.

I never knew this episode of Garfield and Friends existed, but it’s fairly amazingly meta.

This is probably my favorite stupid video of the past few weeks.

Everyone loves linkdumps! Linkdumpin’ 4 lyfe!

I think it’s silly that one of my auto-responses to being depressed and stressed is to buy things, especially when a factor of said stress is potentially monetary. I could make more smart decisions, like relying more on Gamefly or finishing games I really wanted to finish but never did, like P3P. Instead, I buy limited edition copies of Marvel Vs Capcom 3. I am simply excellent like that.

I mean, I know why I do things like this. It’s because most of the time, my depression stems from a perceived lack of control. I lack the control necessary to correct people’s views of who I am. I lack the control necessary to make everything not pile on me at once. I lack the control necessary to make people not break from how I perceive things to go. Of course, things like that last one are not powers I’d particularly actually use, but being unable to affect a situation, or convincing myself as such, is a core issue that makes me depressed.

Purchasing things, and bringing more things into my life, well, that I have control of. What I eat I also have control of. It’s proving I can affect the world around me in a silly attempt to feel better. So I buy an extra game I don’t need, or I buy a book I may never read. It’s a stupid coping mechanism, though, thankfully, cheap downloadable games have honestly given me a better outlet for these urges, most of the time.

Then again, my overall goal is to get more stable so this stuff doesn’t crop up, oh, every week.
Sure have amassed a nice collection of toys, though.