The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Talking to Cara over a Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich, I realized I don’t give a shit.

Okay, wait, no, let me try that again.

Talking to Cara over a Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich, I realized that I don’t much give a shit about what other people think.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I am very based upon my own little world, my own little sphere of influence. If you’re in that sphere, man, I really care about you! You’re awesome. Ask me for favors, and hugs, and so on and so forth. I’ll do what I can. If you’re outside that sphere, though, I’m going to be polite because I am a polite person, but if you disagree with what I’m doing and it isn’t actively fucking you over, well, you can go die in a fire.

As real, actual changed based upon my gender shit nears actually occurring in my life, I find myself worrying like crazy about things like clothes. How am I going to look feminine? How am I going to project to every person I pass on campus that I am, in fact a woman? Thinking about this makes me sick, really. I have no idea how to dress like a woman. I don’t even particularly want to.

See, that last sentence is important. I don’t really particularly want to. I’m only doing it because other people expect it of me. And who are these other people? I don’t know. They certainly aren’t in my circle. Those in my circle don’t give a shit, because they know who I am. I don’t have to dress up for them. I mean, you know, as long as I’m not embarrassing, it’s not a big deal. They get it. I can be casual and comfortable.

Here’s the thing: now that my identity is not in jeopardy, I’m much less down on “masculine” styles and shit. The idea of being a woman who wears more “male” sorts of dress clothes and things has an appeal, whereas before, when I was more in a state of panic, the idea of doing that would have made me cry. Plus, I mean, fuck, what do other girls who play video games, blog on the internet, and play board games wear? Exactly what I wear on a daily basis, although maybe the t-shirts are, sometimes, of a different cut.

There are still some clothing-related things I need to get in order, but seriously, it’s not worth freaking out about something I don’t actually want to do. A huge part of the reason why I am doing all this stuff is because I want to have control over my life. Why I am letting my bid for freedom be caught up in having to adhere to completely different rules is beyond me. So let’s not do it, yeah? I like you, I don’t like wearing super-girly clothing, let’s go play You Don’t Know Jack. (Did I do that right, Advice Hot Dog?)

I am someone who enjoys a twitter or two. I mean, I look at my twitter all the time. I have a monitor partially dedicated to just displaying tweetdeck at all times.

Flipboard is quickly becoming my favorite way to look at twitter.

Okay, so the webpage and the demo video seem pretentious as fuck, and I’m sure anyone who has had an iPad before me already knows about Flipboard, but seriously, it’s kind of amazing. Twitter is, in many ways, the way I get the news that I give a shit about. I follow cool people who link cool things, and Flipboard will magically lay out a whole day’s worth of tweets and all the articles and pictures within it and make it easy to browse and see what I missed. I can tap on the blurbs to pull up the articles in the app, tap on pictures to make them full screen, and tap on videos to play them. It even, somehow, knows which tweets that don’t include content are the cooler ones, and will just put little statements in big boxes alongside the articles to make me chuckle. I have no idea how it does this. It rarely highlights tweets that aren’t amazing. Everything is laid out in a nice-looking way. It is really kind of magic. You just don’t often see a lot of thought being put into the design of things that aggregate content like this.

I don’t know if I would have paid for it before I tried it, but now that I have, I really would drop a few bucks on this. I don’t have to, of course, but I would. It is a fantastic way to read web content, to the point that I find myself opening it to look at what’s going on on twitter when I’m sitting in front of the computer here. I kind of wish I could plug in straight RSS feeds into it to create a separate little Flipboard magazine of all the blogs and stuff I read when I remember to. That would also be awesome. I’m not sure how to do that unless those blogs have twitter posts, though. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe it’s just a different app for that sort of thing. Maybe I just need to follow the twitters of more blogs I like. But I wouldn’t enjoy just a straight stream of links… hm.

In any case, Flipboard is made for the platform, works flawlessly every time I use it, and is totally free. If that’s not a reason to grab it, I don’t know what is. I’m sure I’ll keep using it at least once a day. I mean, we’ll see of course, but yeah. Solid.

I think I’m still pretty sick of the Zelda formula.

I was playing Okamiden, which I got from Gamefly, and I was having a pretty good time. The game struggles to do all the things in 3D that the developers wanted it to. The combat is not all that fluid, for instance. But it was going pretty good so far and, of course, the brush skills worked so, so much better with a stylus. I beat the first boss, and I’m like, “This is going great! What a nice little game.”

Then I put it down and had no need to continue playing it. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to pick it up again, I sent it back.

Seriously, Okamiden is cute as fuck and seems like it would be a really enjoyable game, but I also felt like I was, in many ways, going through the motions. Here’s the puzzle dungeon. Here’s the puzzles one can do with this power. Here’s a bunch of really, really slow cutscenes with dubious entertainment value. I knew most of what was going to happen before it happened. The boss I fought was really the highlight: he was pretty fresh. Everything else was pretty standard stuff.

I feel this way every time I try to pick up a Zelda-like game. Darksiders did the same thing to me, though admittedly I stuck with it for longer than this. I just can’t keep going with it. I guess I just don’t feel that the time investment I have with those games are worth the enjoyment I get out of them anymore. Fair enough, I suppose. I should really just stop trying them. Maybe I’ve just moved on from them, much like I have the RTS genre. Is that really so bad?

Spamalot is a strange show.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The show was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed going. The little touches, like the fake program before the program and the audience participation elements were hilarious, and really smart. Most of the jokes were pure Python. The fourth wall was constantly broken, much like in the movie it was based on. If you have a chance to see it and don’t hate Musical Theater on principal, you will probably enjoy yourself if you go.

However, I just had to wonder who the show was targeted towards.

Spamalot was, by far, at its best when it was deviating from the original movie. My favorite song remains You Can’t Succeed On Broadway because it is completely unexpected, completely hilarious, and involves such ridiculously wonderful wordplay as the line “there’s a very small percentile who enjoys a dancing gentile.” It’s fresh, it’s awesome, and all the added parts were a joy to see.
However, between them, you had all the classic bits from Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. You had the swallow conversation. You had the French taunting scene exactly as it was before. You had the conversation telling the guards how to guard the prince. These were repeated at the audience by actors who were doing a great job but, let’s face it, aren’t the Pythons and never will be.

These bits are still hilarious, of course, because they were brilliant when they were written. However, the reason you would make a musical based on The Quest for the Holy Grail is that you would get fans of the movie in there. These fans know these bits by heart, and can quote them verbatim at a moment’s notice. I enjoyed hearing them again, but when I am then presented with something new and hilarious, I wondered why they didn’t just go all out and make the whole show something new with that Python sense of humor. Would some people feel insulted by this? I guess so. I guess it makes sense that someone would have went to see this musical instead of popping their DVD into the player at home. But man, it’s obviously it’s own thing. It has to be to even work as a musical. I would have rather had a complete overall with the same general plot and some occasional refbacks.

Then again, I suppose when you do something like that you end up with something like Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark. But I guess I have a bit more faith in someone nailing something like Monty Python, because there’d be way more respect out there for what they do and you’d have someone writing it who gave a shit.

That’s really what struck me about the show. It almost seemed strange. But it was a fun evening, I must admit. Totally worth my time. I enjoyed myself.

As part of my taking command of shit, I got a game of A Penny For My Thoughts together. I bought this game because it sounded cool, and I read it and it did sound cool. But it was just on that stack of games I really didn’t think I’d ever get to play with my friends. However, as part of my take-charge attitude, I realized that they would enjoy it, but would never decide to play on their own. I was being asked to do something with people for my birthday, so I hatched a plan and forced the game to be played. People wanted to do something with me, so I twisted it, searched through a million frustrating boxes, and bam, there we were.

The back of the book has several optional different versions of the game. The basic game is about real-world drama and problems. I knew none of my group would take that seriously, so I decided to use the Cthulhu-based version that was included, thinking there was a slim chance that that might be taken with a bit more seriousness. I mean, it wasn’t, but there was a better chance! Still, that was kind of the setup.

Of course, Penny is a game for a small group, and we ended up having a big group. Thus, we only really got past the first round of the three round therapy session. Still, tons of fun was had. Watching Spants dig himself farther and farther into a hole with the sort of details he was setting up his story with was fantastic. Watching Shauna really work it with the ad-libbing and Jonathan fight desperately to attempt to make his story separate from everyone else’s even as everyone tried to draw him into an overall narrative was also enjoyable.

Early in the game, I read a list of example memory triggers from the book. One of these was “your family’s ski lodge.” Essner blamed me for this, but it was all his doing: from that point forward, everything seemed to involve a ski lodge in some way. This ski lodge was somehow adjacent to a farm as well as a Molasses Factory with a trap door which lead down into a constantly burning funeral pyre to burn werewolves who have converted to Judaism and joined the all-Jewish Mafia and trapeze artist circus act. Also, at some point beeswax was being used as a contraceptive.

That’s the kind of game we were playing.

Still, my gut instinct was right. Having actually tried it, everyone seemed to walk away from the session with a very high opinion of the game, though all agreed that a small group for it would probably be best. I got to have the role-play game I wanted on my birthday, and everyone got to have fun. We even got to eat some of Cara’s cake she made! Seems like a success to me. I have all the gear to finish the game still. I’m unsure if we’ll ever actually finish it, or play another, but I kind of hope so. It is good fun.

I want to rip my face off. I want to sleep. I want to force everyone far away that I wish was closer into my bed for safekeeping. I want to touch technology and bend it to my will. I want to be feral. I want to be smiling and mean it. I want to sit down and be able to stand back up afterwards without a huge pressure on my chest. I want accomplish. I want to feel pride in my accomplishments. I want to sing. I want to push emotion through people with music. I want to find the solution. I want to be given the solution. I want to disappear. I want to sleep for months. I want to wake up and know the danger has passed. I want to pet my dog without feeling like crying in joy that this little girl cares so much. I want to speak with the girl I love without feeling like a horny freak. I want to fix all my boyfriend’s problems. I want my boyfriend to fix his problems. I want my ideas to be worth something. I want my thoughts to become reality at a pace much faster than the years and years it’s taken for my first big idea about my identity. I want an identity. I want to swim in water and have it feel relaxing again. I want to buy a swimsuit. I want to not have to make the conscious decision to look happy. I want to stop acting. I want to smash my head against this desk, again and again, until I can see what I’m thinking, dripping off of the edge of the wood. I want a wish other than what I’ve been blowing candles out to my whole life. I want a life. I want a place that is mine. I want rooms and rooms of people I love. I want to love people. I want to make love to people. I want to high five a stranger and have it feel legitimate. I want to relax. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. I want to stop having to tell myself to breathe. I want to lock myself in my room. I want to hide under the covers. I want to hide under the covers with people I love. I want to drive something into my eye with such force that I can’t pull it back out again. I want to dwell in the glow of each other’s majestic presence. I want to not feel like any moment now I will trip over a gust of wind that’s slightly out of place and drop everything I am trying to keep together. I want to keep everything together. I want nothing to change. I want to feel like things are changing. I want everything to change. I want to fail. I want things to be better. I want many things removed. I want many more added. I want the mathematics of my life to be logically sound. I want a Pepsi. I want to bleed.

I do. I really do.

I guess I’m older now.

This is the second year in a row where I haven’t actually known what my age is at my birthday. Let me do some math… hmm… okay. 27 is the correct answer. I am 27. I think. Okay, I just double checked, I am definitely 27.

Milestones like this are normally either places for pep talks or pity parties on my part. I do that shit because it’s my blog, and I can do what I want with it. Doesn’t make it less stupid, though. I don’t think I want to do that this time, but who knows what’ll happen by the time I get to the end of this post.

This year, I did and am doing things for myself. I cleared my schedule so I’d get to relax on my birthday. I bought myself the gift I wanted. (Yes, that’s the stupid iPad.) I schemed ways to make sure Grandma was still involved.
Basically, I did what I needed to in order to make the day feel like something special. It wasn’t going to do it by itself. Nothing in life is going to just happen. I made it happen.

Trust is good. Depending on others is not good. There are people I trust more than anything in this world, who I love very much, but I learn that I should not depend on them. I should do things myself. I should make things happen myself. A job done by someone else is rarely completely right. There is always room for disappointment. The important things in life are those you tackle yourself. What you go after. What you create. What you are. Nobody else can figure that out or do that for you.

Is this a pep talk? Oh well.

Today is my day. I am making it as such. This life is my life. It will be as such. I’ll go back to working on that now. Have a great day.

I am totally writing this on an iPad, you all. I am living the dream.
Granted, the iPad is way more typeable than the iPod just because it is bigger. But I will not be making a habit of blogging from it. Especially since I am sitting in front of my computer as I write this blog post. I am awesome. But, you know, first night with it, gotta go with the gimmick.

Basically, I’m not having buyer’s remorse yet. The iPad is doing exactly what I wanted, and even more. It is a fun little time wasting device.

One thing I kind of forgot about was the multitasking. That should maybe be in quotation marks. Since my iPod can’t do it, I forgot about it. It works… Okay? Mostly it just seems to make me have to manually quit apps from the task manager.
There is one benefit, though. I can be on a Skype call and actually use other apps. It works in the background like real multitasking! This is the thing that shocked me when I found it out. I thought it would just work with the iPod and Pandora and have the fake switching for everything else. I was proved wrong.

That thing with the task manager is really my only complaint, though. It has scaled up all the iPhone games I’ve thrown at it so far like a champ, which is something I expected, but wasn’t sure about. The iPad games I have also work really well. I bought the iPad Plants vs Zombies for charity, and goodness, if I didn’t know better I would say the iPad was the lead version of that game. Multitouch makes the game a dream to play, and it was fantastic enough to begin with. I also splurged on the iPad version of Words with Friends. It’s kind of stupid, but is really is easier to play when you don’t have to zoom in on the board. Plus, I have a unified account, so I can play my turns on whatever is handy, which is how it should be.
(An aside: why aren’t more apps as good at multiplayer as Words with Friends? Developers have a model to copy! Make it happen!)

I will admit, as I write more on this keyboard, I am getting into a groove. It’s not going to replace a keyboard or anything like that. Not going to write a short story on it. But this is pretty solid when in landscape, really. I’m doing something similar to touch typing with not too many typos.

Anyway, there are some day 1 impressions. I am sure I will be writing more about the thing in the future. Sorry if you don’t care for that. It will probably be game reviews, though, so that’s a thing, yes?

I remember a time when I used to review Items of the Month! That was a time when I had less of a problem playing my turns every day, so that I could actually get around to trying out the items at a decent time. This isn’t happening anymore! Thus, especially with KoL, I have no idea what some of the IoTMs I bought do until months and months after, mostly because I am still insistent on doing 100% familiar runs. Thus, these reviews have fallen a bit to the side.

But I kind of wanted to talk about the Mini-Hipster. I’ve been using mine during this current KoL run that I’ve been working on, off and on, and he just really surprises me. At first glance, he’s kind of one of those “jack of all trades” familiars, which do all kinds of random shit all the time and I generally enjoy. He has the free combats tacked on to make him interesting to people who don’t just like cool shit, but he’s mostly just a familiar that does cool shit.

But when the Mini-Hipster single-handedly one-shots the Bonerdagon, well, I have to wonder what is up.

Seriously, the attack damage of the Hipster’s attacks is insane. I’m at a point in my run where I am doing maybe 50 damage with a regular attack, if I’m lucky, and the Hipster is doing 200-300 damage every time it decides to do an attack action. Of course, one of it’s attacks is Hot-Based, which is how it managed to take out the Bonerdagon with ease. I will admit that a dedicated attack familiar would probably do that much damage, if not more, over the course of a battle, but a dedicated attack familiar would not also be healing me and giving me lots of stats like the Hipster does. It just seems crazy.

I’m sure it’s not as crazy as I’m making it out to be, of course. It is a fairly rare action, so you can’t depend on it, and the first action the Hipster takes is always a stat-up action, I believe, so you have to be able to survive at least one hit, if not two, if you’re going to get lucky with it. No serious speed-runner would ever actually care about it. They’d just want the free combats against scaling monsters for free stats. Still, it feels like something is broken each time the hipster lazily shakes greasy hair sweat towards an enemy and it does 5 times the damage of my normal attack in sleaziness. I suppose that’s kind of the benefit of using Mr. Store stuff, though. It’s supposed to make you feel powerful, or like you’re getting away with something cool. I can’t say that isn’t why I pick them up. But normally there’s a sense of balance around them, or a sense of what it’s doing that’s powerful being very tied-in to the general theme or whatnot of the item. I don’t see that with these attacks. They strike me as odd.

I’m still going to enjoy the free kills but, yeah. Odd.

Yeah, depressed bitching today, move along, nothing interesting to see.

There’s a saying along the lines of “work expands to fill the available space.” I kind of feel that way about my depression. If I have more time, it expands outward to fill all available time. It’s more diluted that way, of course, and not hitting me as a strong wave of panic or other issue, but it can still totally wreck my shit. I’ve had free time this week, and that’s nice, but I’m mostly spent it feeling awful, getting nothing done, and generally wanting to give up on life.

I’m just not sure what I can do. I tell people I don’t feel in control, and they tell me I am in control. I tell people I feel like I’m going to collapse in on myself, and I’m not on solid ground, and they tell me I am. I tell them I can’t do anything right and they tell me I do all kinds of things right. Do I really feel like shit? Surely not. I’m sure they’d tell me otherwise.

You can’t get anything done without smashing things. There’s no nice way to get anything done. Everyone will see you the way they want to see you unless you punch them in the fucking face, shatter their reality bubble, and force your way of thinking onto them. Maybe that’s justified sometimes when the reason you’re doing it is good. When you’re trying to make things better. When, in the short term you make people bleed so that in the long run they can be safer and happier.
But when what you want to change is people recognizing your weakness, and that you need help, well, what do you do? You can smash, but what’s the point in that? You’re weakening those who can help you for selfish purposes. It’s stupid. It serves no purpose. So you sit, isolated, and rot, unable to do anything.

I don’t know why I was using the second person there. I’m obviously talking about me.

Nobody can pull me out of my funk and fix my life but me. That’s obvious. I’m not wanting a magic wand, because a magic wand simply does not exist. However, how can I confront something everyone thinks doesn’t exist? How can I get advice and support in fixing things nobody else can see? How can I face up to what I need to do when everyone denies I need to do anything?

I have no idea. It would be nice to know.