The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I just survived a retail Black Friday, and you expect me to write a blog? No no no no no, here, have some links instead. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Okay, let’s get the pony links out of the way. I find this funny. I’ve also been using this because Power has been stuck in my head. Thanks Saints Row! Finally, here’s an animated gif. There. Survived that.

Oh, speaking of Saints Row, someone made Chie in their character creator, which is awesome.

Deptford often creates pieces of sheer genius.

This is one of the best combo videos I’ve seen. Pretty neat!

PARTY DOG.

TNG Season 8 is a great twitter account. Here’s one of their recent ones that made he grin.

Important work is being done in Battlefield 3.

Shepard. Wrex.

And finally, here’s something to fuel your nightmares.

Wow. I don’t know what to say! Such an honor. Um, goodness, thank you all. There are just a few people and nonspecific entities I’d like to thank… let me get my notes out here…

I’d like to thank my parents for their part in helping me to move into this fantastic house. They’ve done a ton, and while we, as per usual, still fight about so many things, I couldn’t have done it without them.

I’d like to thank Brer, for working so hard for such shitty hours in order to move down here with me. Like a month to go! It’s crazy! You can do it, love!

I’d like to thank video games for continuing to be entertaining. Lately life has been so crazy I haven’t gotten to play you, but you’ve always been there for me, and when I do get the time? Damn. I’ve had fun.

I’d like to thank my own perseverance and self-motivation. There was a time where I thought you guys were, like… gone. I didn’t think you existed. But over this year, you all have knocked it out of the fucking park, and my life is astronomically better for it.

I’d like to thank popsicles for just being generally delicious, even in the middle of winter.

I’d like to thank all my coworkers at Kohl’s, for being just generally awesome, but also being pretty damn awesome about my transition in particular. I expected at least some resistance, but have basically felt absolutely none. That means a lot to me.

I’d like to thank my brother and sister-in-law, for always being insanely supportive of me. No way I could ever thank you two enough for that.

I’d like to thank Aesa for randomly starting to talk to me more while she was on her trip, which has turned into a fantastic friendship I can’t believe I was missing out on before.

I’d like to thank Q for being such a good dog right out of the gate.

I’d like to thank the internet for being my lifeline.

I’d like to thank the phrase “I’d like to thank” for starting each one of these sentences.

Oh, wait, there’s the music. Well, I’m sure I missed a lot of people, objects, and general concepts, but I will do my best to be thankful for all for all of them! Thank you! It’s been great!

At some point, I started buying popsicles as a cost-effective but probably still bad for me alternative to buying a ton of candy. They were cheaper! I couldn’t just buy them and eat them immediately to keep me from going too overboard! They were tasty! Something like that! My go-to were Lemonade Bomb Pops, which were kind of expensive, but fuck, were they good. Sour and citrus and just… mm. Perfect.

However, recently, I spotted a new box at the grocery store. They were Warheads Freezer Pops. You know, the kind in the little tube where you cut off the end with a pair of scissors? Those sorts of things. They were really cheap, too, like a dollar for a box, so I bought some. I had no idea what to expect, though. The idea of what the box advertised as an “extreme sour” popsicle sounded like a dangerous proposition. Surely it wouldn’t actually be extreme sour? I mean, Warheads the candy are quite sour, but only for a few moments, and then they mellow out quite nicely. I’ve certainly had things more sour than a Warhead, but in popsicle form? Hm.

I’m happy to report, though, that they are completely tasty. They have a constant sour to them, but not overwhelming like the first moment of a Warhead the candy. It’s not subtle, constantly there, accenting the flavor of the popsicle in question. The flavors in the pack are pretty good, too. I’m not a huge fan of the Watermelon, which is probably my least favorite. Even that, though, I totally enjoy. The Blue Raspberry, especially is fantastic, but this is not surprising as I tend to enjoy anything flavored Blue Raspberry. It’s a good mix, and good stuff!

I’m thinking of attempting a switch over to them, if they keep being stocked. They are much cheaper than those Bomb Pops, especially if I eat them at the same too-fast rate as the Bomb Pops, which so far as proven true. It’d be a nice money-save! And having to freeze them might help keep me from eating too many of them.

Stay tuned for more popsicle-related rants and ramblings! (Okay, probably not really. Unless I really do keep trying new popsicles. But even then! Probably not.)

A friend of mine has started up an Ironclaw campaign that he wants me in on. I’d love to, though my schedule is shitty! He’s working things out to have me there, though, so I am ALL IN. Or something like that.

The system seems fine enough, as far as RPGs go. The rolling doesn’t seem too stupid, which is always a plus. What really caught my imagination, though, was some of the potential careers for player characters. I could make a Functionary, who is basically a bureaucrat in charge of running a household or business. So my special powers would be involved in being literate and knowing math. This appealed to me. Like, for serious. How ridiculous for someone like that to be in an adventuring party! How completely awesome for that to be the case! Of course I made one immediately, drawing up an interesting deer lady good at math and business and talking.

Tonight, my friend asked me to help him with some more background for my character. My character has the noble blood perk, and he just kind of asked me a simple question: what noble house did I belong to?
I, of course, had no answer, because the way I build characters is just… well, it’s very me.

In general, I create a character, by which I mean I start fitting together a list of rules and feelings this character has in order to be able to make decisions. This is “character building” to me, and even as I was filling out stats in this game, that’s what I was doing. Coming up with this person’s values and ideals. I would then, normally, just let this character loose, let them bump up against stereotypes and eventually non-stereotypes to build up how they react and who they are. They tell me by making decisions. This also ends up building the world, because they tell me what’s going on in the world and why things are important to them. They bring the world into reality.

This is why I rarely work in established universes like the one in Ironclaw. Because I don’t have simple answers to simple things when the character is made. Those are created as I go along, organically. Sure, in editing I make it all work out better, but I just feel like this makes more… real people, you know? I get the person to the state where I can talk to them and have a conversation with them before I do things like decide who their mother is and so on and so forth.

I know this isn’t the only way to do it. Armadox (the previously-mentioned friend) walked me through some stuff in the universe and we came up with some in-world answers to these simple questions that set up more potential interesting character interactions, which I’m all for. He also put up with me as I made sure these in-world things didn’t interfere with the voice I had built in my head for the character, which must have been frustrating, but we got it done. Certainly, sometimes I wish I could make characters like that, where everything just fits in like a glove. As handy as it would be, though, it really isn’t me. I can fake it, but I don’t put enough heart into it.

This, though, we worked out in an awesome way, and I am excited to run the character on Sunday. I am going to math the shit out of things.

I went on and on about how I wanted to write a normal blog and then the next day I wrote a LINKBLOG! SICK BURN! I am just burning you up ALL OVER! Linking go!

Let’s start with Pony Corner!
Have I mentioned I am still excited for Fighting is Magic? So, so excited.
The explanation for this pony picture just makes me laugh. Also the picture itself.
I stumbled upon a pony Vriska so, you know, look at it.
Pony Animated Gif One!
Pony Animated Gif Two!
And finally, this picture is just badass. It’s a shame it’s orientation makes it unsuitable as a desktop background.

Now, on to another corner! This corner has videos! Well, non-pony videos, anyway.
They finally revealed how Skyrim Co-op works.
A twist on a classic scene that makes me giggle.
An impressive display of pointless skill. Ocelot would be proud.

Finally, let’s go over to random image corner, and look at some random images.
This is actually a twitter post. Sorry to mislead you.
Warning: this animated gif may be smile-inducing.
I still find this one so stupid it’s funny.
In case you were wondering, Three Word Phrase is still amazing.

And finally, the last corner. It’s the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Official Movie Website corner. Because that website is here. The trailer is amazing. I cannot wait. Seriously.

Wow, I really had a ton of open tabs! My browsers can breathe easier now, without all those links around. See you tomorrow!

Well, hey, looks like I totally fell asleep before I posted this. Well, blog a day! It’s still today! No worries, right? Right? *sighs* Anyway…

Well, it’s the month of NaNoWriMo, and while I’m not participating this year, it feels like I should still use this occasion to kick my creative writing up a notch, since I always seem to be too busy to do it. Therefore, I’m going to write some poems this week, and you can read them! Won’t that be fun? To various degrees of fun?

I’m going to lay out some ground rules though. One, these are going to be super rough drafts. I’m just going to sit here and bang something out and then post. They will likely end up being highly edited and modified before they’re done! (And if I write something that I feel doesn’t need editing, well, uh, you probably won’t see it.) Did you hear that potential publishers? Very. Rough. Drafts. Not A Published Poem. Making the claim now. For whatever that’s worth. (Probably very little.)
Two, these are all going to be personal poems. I’ve been writing about characters for a long time now in my poetry. I love doing that, and it really gets me going. But there’s some charm to being able to write about life as I see it, instead of something imaginary. I’m going to use this week to stretch my legs in that direction. At least for now.

In any case, I hope you enjoy. Or if not, you can just skip to next week. Whatever. Poems incoming!

As the title says, I’m sick! I’m not totally sure with what yet, but the general dizziness and shortness of breath I have been experiencing would lead me to believe that I have bronchitis again, as I had similar symptoms last time. I am going to take another day of rest (and seeing John Hodgman) to make sure before I go to the doctor though. Don’t worry, I will take care of myself.

Anyway, the point is, I didn’t really have time to write a serious blog, and I need to get more sleep, so here’s some links. I know I’ve been lame here lately… I’m going to try to kick it up a notch soon.

Speaking of lame (that’s called a segue!), how about that Mike Dawson? Is he not the best video game hero you’ve ever seen? I’ve been enjoying Retsupurae dealing with his adventures, and other people have too, creating amazing fan works. For example, did you know that Mike Dawson has been seen in Champions Online? Or that he knows how to deal with just about any situation? He also has his own game, and suspicious links to Ring Man! Yep, everyone loves Mike Dawson!

I still really like Penguindrum. The new theme song is pretty great!

I really didn’t want to be, but I am kind of super hyped for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Phoenix Wright! Rocket Raccoon! How can someone pass this up? I am weak.

Someone linked me this on twitter. It’s pretty funny! Quite a restaurant review.

There are always more pony ask blogs, and always more funny responses on them.

I’m going to sleep! Later!

It’s late, I’m exhausted, so you get to hear me bitch. Sorry about that.

Today sucked.

I don’t currently have the best job in the world or anything. Far from it. But I hardly ever hate it. I like most of the people I work with, and I enjoy being useful and doing my thing. I’m respected. It works really well. But some days, like yesterday, I really just fucking hate my job.
Let me just go over what happened.

I got up really early to go to work. I was tired, but work called! I got there, and apparently my shift had been moved. A note had been left in my mailbox, which I never check because it’s less a mailbox and more “where I keep the ad set supplies,” and there hadn’t been an ad set in awhile. So there was a big fuss about me showing up at the time I was scheduled instead of the time they moved me to without telling me. This wouldn’t be a huge deal, but it just bothers me that, if I had been anyone else, they would have called me, and there wouldn’t have been this stupid issue they were making such a big deal about.

Because I was there early, they moved me onto the truck, which I was not dressed for. I had dressed up kind of nice, wearing a new top I had bought the night before. I felt like this was hindering me, as I was trying damn hard not to get black from the boxes all over myself. Still, I didn’t slack off or anything. Things were happening. The shift was long, though, and I ended up unpacking freight in an area I had less experience with than most, away from all my friends to help the time pass.

After this, I ran straight home, took care of the puppy dog, and did work for class. I basically had time to figure that out before running to class and teaching. Class went okay, I guess, but shockingly, nobody in my class was familiar with Harry Potter. I had brought in an essay about Harry Potter, and they just did not get it at all. Phrases like “Cedric Diggory’s death in book four” completely confounded them. I didn’t expect them to be encyclopedias, but when you have plenty of context clues, shouldn’t your memory be jogged enough to at least go “Oh yeah, someone died in Goblet of Fire, right? Must be that guy.” Heh, I don’t know, I just figured everyone younger than me would be familiar with it. It was a shock.

I went home and ate then. This caused me to keep dozing off on the couch. I was pretty exhausted by that point already, but I had work to go to. I got up and went.

Work took forever. It was a huge ad, and we were being audited, so it took even longer than it should have. What’s worse, the store started playing Christmas music the moment we closed. This is even before Halloween was technically over at midnight. It was insane, and it didn’t add much to everyone’s demeanor. We eventually finished, very late. I was tired and cranky, but on the way out the door, it was pointed out that my new top has a hole in it. Fantastic! Fantastic. I tried to get some food from the drive-thru to eat my woes away, but I got trapped there for like 20 minutes waiting, so that was time well spent.

And now I’m here. Complaining. I didn’t much care for yesterday. Boo to you, Halloween. At least I have off today.

I was asked the other day what I was writing. Of course, I haven’t written anything in awhile: work and moving and all that kind of sapped up all my time! I haven’t had time to do much of anything fun or constructive recently (though today’s day off helped that a bit, I suppose). I mean, I should be writing though, right? I’m someone who does that. Who makes poetry and whatnot. I should be producing creative material, right?

Anyway, after I explained this, I was told that “maybe you should cut back on the blog so I have more time to write serious-type stuff.” (That’s not actually a direct quote, but I put it in quotation marks anyway. That’s how I roll tonight.) It made me think.

The problem with giving up the blog is that the blog is a major source of “everything is okay” in my life right now. The fact that, no matter how stupid, I put a blog up there every single day means something to me, personally. This several years long at this point experiment with daily blogging has yet to fail. It says I can create a project, and actually stick with it for a meaningful length of time. The days I nearly go to bed without writing a blog are days where I remember, and am struck with fear that I might miss a day. I actually went to bed without writing earlier this year, and woke up at 4 am, raced to the PC, and wrote something so I could get back to sleep.
There’s also just this general sense of “someone might see this” that really motivates me to keep writing these stupid blogs. I don’t really think many people care about what I write here, but there are a few, and the fact that this is there, and my internet whatever, means I don’t want to fail. It makes that deadline real.

I rarely have deadlines for creative work. When I do, I do awesome things (See: book of poemtry I wrote) and whatnot. If I found a way to get myself writing on a deadline, I could probably do more creative work every week. But I’ll be honest: I don’t know how the fuck I made the deadline on this blog a day thing real. I don’t really understand how it went from something I just kind of wanted to do to a requirement that invokes the responses that occurred up top. Somehow I made that happen. Making that happen with creative work would be nice, certainly. Eventually I’d start cranking out something great, at least from time to time. I need to come up with a plan. I really do. I’d write creative shit and post it on here more often, like a poem every week or something, but I am told you are not supposed to do that, because then it is “published,” and then I can’t actually do anything with it. Which is frustrating, but so it goes. I don’t know. I haven’t decided what to do.

So what am I writing right now? I guess nothing. I have that short story that was supposed to be porn but now I think I can turn into something much better that I have a bad draft of. I have my next book of poetry vaguely outlined in my head, with characters. I’ve done one or two test poems on here from time to time. I really do want to do that. Alternatively, I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe that story is better told in a novel. I also still have my last novel attempt half-written, Every Other Day, I Love You, and I really do still like that story and would like to redo the whole thing and make it better. I want to write a sequel to a porn story I wrote. I need to do a lot of writing for my Festivus gift sometime in the next month. But what am I actively working on? Not a lot.

I should fix that. Is stopping this blog a way to do that? I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m going to, in any case. I love you blog. Never leave me.

I ate a bag of garlic croutons. As a snack. That’s how I roll, motherfucker.
Know how else I roll? Sometimes, I’m like “I really have absolutely no idea what to write about today LINKS MOTHERFUCKER!”
And then there’s links.

Watch this shit. WA-CHAAAAA!
Links!

Looking for cool content to watch on my Roku, I have started watching NSFW, which is actually a pretty silly and funny little show. Maybe you would like to watch it?

Okay, here’s your pony links of the moment. Some animated gifs of complete awesome. And here’s a funny comic. Everyone likes funny comics, right? Now let’s get out of the pony zone.

Important quiz question I had linked to me. WHAT IS THE ANSWER?!

I’m going to see John Hodgman next week! He put out a trailer for his book! I am excite!

Finally, here’s an important PSA that you shouldn’t miss. Public Service. Being announced. Yeah.

Those are links. Be linked. And now be free.