The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Hey, guess what! It’s time for a blowoff post where I point you at someone else’s content you should watch!

Okay, it’s only kind of shirking my duties that only I think I have, I suppose. But hey, people make better stuff than me, You should go enjoy it.

Like, say, this Dead to Rights video LP. It is completely excellent and entertaining. Jack Slate is one amazing individual who knows how to shoot a guy with a gun.

I think it’s ironic that watching this LP made me put the new relaunch of the series, Dead to Rights: Retribution, really high on my Gamefly queue. Just saying. Nobody was saying that game was great or anything, but now I really want to try it! Plus, it has ninja dog stealth sections, apparently.

Anyway, watch that. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. Come back tomorrow, where I will probably have written some stupid bullshit for you to read. Huzzah!

Applebee’s removed their burger from their 2 for 20 menu. I honestly don’t understand why. One would think the burger would be one of the cheapest things they could serve on that menu, which would mean they’d jump for joy when I ordered it. But no, it was gone, so I had to think fast on what I was going to order. I really wanted fries, so I stayed away from the good-looking pastas. I wanted to be adventurous.

So I ordered the Riblets.

I love ribs. I love ribs a lot. I figured, how bad could they be? But they were so bad. So bad.

One of the reasons ribs are awesome is because they’re sort of… self-contained. They have grips on the sides, and you clean the bone off, and then you grab another. All the meat is easily accessible without any issues or any silverware. Riblets are apparently the exact opposite of this. They’re completely coated in BBQ sauce so that you get completely and utterly messy no matter what you do. Inside the riblet, the bones are hiding, so you can’t see them half the time, and they’re so tiny that it’s incredibly hard to get the meat out from around them to eat. It is basically the anti-rib. Not to mention it soaked the fries I wanted so badly with BBQ sauce that I couldn’t enjoy them either. I felt messy constantly, and it felt like more work than it takes to eat Crab, and I love crab. It was just an overall bad experience.

Does this mean I’m back out of love with Applebee’s? Maybe. Probably not, but maybe. At the very least, I’m not making that horrible mistake again. Ugh. What was the person who put that dish together thinking?

I have heard people, mostly Brickroad, go on and on about how awesome Pepsi Throwback is. It’s made with real sugar, and is apparently something to stockpile! However, even though I am quite the Pepsi-drinker, I’ve never really gone and gotten a Pepsi Throwback. However, during my last trip to St. Louis, I stopped to purchase a beverage on the way home, and was shocked to find a bottle of Pepsi Throwback on offer. It wasn’t any more expensive or anything, so I figured I had to jump at this opportunity.

It was alright?

Having heard so much about it, I admit I was expecting some sort of miraculous difference. However, the only real taste difference was in the aftertaste. It was different, slightly better, but not significantly so. I was kind of shocked.

Granted, I’m sure pure sugar is SLIGHTLY better for me than Corn Syrup, and it was a slight improvement. However, I’m certainly not going to go to the ridiculous lengths required to stockpile this stuff. It’s not just everywhere, you know? It does take some effort. I just can’t see that effort being worth it. Good on the people who do, though, I suppose.

I also have to wonder why Pepsi is doing this. Are they really bringing in more customers this way? Are there people who say “No way am I buying a Pepsi unless it has sugar instead of Corn Syrup!”? I guess there must be, or they wouldn’t have kept making it. Good for them, I guess, but I’ll probably stick with normal Pepsi. Neither of them are really good for me anyway. Heh.

I am super busy, as I can get. Things are happening and happening. So hey, here’s a linkdump post.

Through the Talking Time IRC and various talkings about it. I discovered this youtube channel. Retsupurae is pretty funny stuff. I mostly enjoyed the LPs of various horrible flash games that are up there. However, Val informed me, and watching them proved, that they are also well-known for doing riffs on horrible video LPs. I have been watching and doing much laughing. Plus, several of the videos have General Ironicus of Chip and Ironicus in them, so that’s an extra benefit.

And hey, making that link had me learn that there’s a new LP started up on that site, too, so I’m excited to check that out.

Here, also, is a Persona 3 comic I’ve been holding onto for awhile that I find quite funny. Captured things really well. I’m surprisingly far into P3P at this point, but I haven’t played in awhile. Hopefully I’ll keep plodding away and finishing it. I keep playing in like 2 hour chunks at random times, which is working pretty well for me.

Anyway, I hope those links give you some entertainment today. Come back tomorrow for something vaguely more interesting. Or actually probably less interesting. Who knows.

On Monday, my students came to class having read the wrong chapter. I wrote the wrong one on the board, and they did the wrong assignment. This kind of caused me to have to ad lib for the class that day. I feel like I did alright with having planned to talk about a completely different thing. It certainly wasn’t a huge deal, and we got over it. My schedule for the semester is not thrown off really badly. It’s just a thing that happens. A small oops.

However, it kind of destroyed me. It threw me into a huge depressive state, and I went home and hid, even though I still had things to do that day. I haven’t done that in a long time. It was really upsetting. I tried to explain this to Brer, but unfortunately for him he chose the wrong time to use humor to try to cheer me up, and it didn’t really get across. I couldn’t really explain why this was such a serious event. I guess I’m about to try here.

There were those two years of school where I got nothing done because I was so depressed. I stayed at home, hid, and played video games locked in my room. I didn’t get anything done, because I couldn’t muster any energy to. Then, I turned myself around, and focused. I haven’t fucked up since. I’ve kept a 4.0, kept up with my job and such with no issues. Even as I’ve gotten depressed, more depressed than I can ever remember being, I stuck with it. I didn’t make mistakes.

This was a mistake. It’s a mistake I could have made, even if I wasn’t depressed, and it isn’t a big deal. But it’s a mistake.

Work is kind of the last safe haven for me at this point. While I’m working on things. I don’t have time to be depressed. I don’t have time to worry. I have to complete the tasks at hand, and I do complete them. I do them well. No matter how shitty things got, my work wasn’t going to slip. I was still going to be a hard worker. I was still going to be someone you can depend on to get things done. These things are important to me. They help keep me going.

Writing the wrong number in class makes me feel like I am truly falling apart. It makes me feel like I am, slowly but surely, being defeated by all this bullshit, and that just makes me even more depressed. I can’t lose this fight. But I wrote the wrong number on the board! It’s the first glimpse at how I’m going to slip. Or so the evil part of my brain tells me. It’s frustrating and makes me want to cry.

I know I’m going to do just fine. As I said, I’ve already fixed the problem. Not a big deal. Nothing got thrown out of wack, and I’m still a good teacher. Plus, while I was so obscenely depressed, Jonathan, Spaeth, and Kevin came over to game and cheer me up, and that was a huge help. (It also taught me that, man, I have lost all skill I once had at Smash Bastards.) I’ve got great friends, and I’m a good worker. I’ve got this covered.

But that stupid 14 instead of an 11 was an omen. I wrote a poem about how it all comes down to 14. Fourteen times I fucked up and fourteen times I didn’t, and I’ll do it again fourteen times.
Bleh.

I guess I’ll write an update on how the whole “fighting with my parents over me transitioning” thing is going.

I feel like it’s going better. I certainly feel less like complete garbage. I’m not great, but it’s not bad. This has a lot to do with how awesome my friends are. Cole and Cara, Essner, Jonathan, Spaeth, Ecks, even the wolfie, and of course Brer… everyone has gone above and beyond the call of duty. I am so, so fucking lucky to have such good friends. I can’t express how lucky I am. They’ve helped me to survive all of this so far.

In addition, I think things are turning around with the parents. My mom said the other day that she is “trying” to be mad at me, but she can’t because I’m still her “child.” Maybe I’m reading too much into that… but “child” was a weird word to pick… and I feel like that means it was chosen on purpose. Instead of “son”. Which made me feel a lot better, certainly. She’s also just talking to me again in general, which is a good sign. She’s also at least slightly backing off on the kicking me out thing, which is also nice.

I’ve screamed at my parents, I’ve called their bluffs, I’ve done all sorts of things I really don’t want to do to make it clear this is something serious, and I suppose it is working. It’ll all work out. I wish I didn’t have to force my way through, though. I wish they could just get it. But this stuff is so hard, nobody really could immediately. I understand that. But I understand I can’t let that stop me from making my way forward. Things are going to work out.

It just takes a long time, you know? A long while.
It’s certainly a closer while than it used to be, though. I tell myself that all the time. Affirmations. Etc.
Yeah.

You know what sucks?

Getting up early sucks.

It really does! Getting up at 6:15 this week to get to school, after my whole summer, has been a huge, huge pain. Really, really frustrating. Especially on top of everything else depressing that’s going on.

But you know what? I get up so early because it helps me get things done, and I have gotten shit done. Lesson plans, grading, homework, shit gets done when I get my ass out of bed. I keep it up because of that, doing it again and again. It was really hard to get out of bed this morning, but in this time I’ve filled out paperwork, answered e-mail questions from my students, took an online quiz, and wrote this blog. It’s still two hours before I really have to be up to do anything, and I have plenty more I’m going to get done in that time.

I don’t know why mornings work so well for me, but they do. They feel like time I wouldn’t have otherwise, so it doesn’t feel like I’m burning any free time. It’s partially that, and partially the fact that, since I did this to myself, I might as well get some reward from it. I’m already out of bed. I might as well do something.

But yeah, mornings. Hi. Been awhile. Let’s work together this semester, shall we?

How’ve you been doing?

I’ve been doing pretty shitty, so… that’s good. I suppose.

Standing up for yourself sucks. It really, truly does. There is rarely any time when standing up for yourself makes things easier, or makes you feel good. It’s a constant battle. A constant struggle. Especially when something this huge, this big is on the line, it’s really tough.

I’ve tried to tell my parents this. I’ve tried to tell them how every dream I have for the future, everything I want requires this. I’ve tried to tell them how long this has been going on, and how much it means to me. I tried doing it by being soft, by being gentle. But they wouldn’t get it.

So I put my foot down on Monday.

There were a lot of tears, and a lot of “you didn’t warn me” talk, which is silly because they’ve known this stuff for years. I only exploded once, and that was because Mom’s talking about me as if I was going to be dead after this really made me angry because it really hurt. I did my best to not waffle. I remade my points again and again. I didn’t let them tell me things that weren’t the truth, because I know the truth about me. I’m me. I know why I’m doing these things, and I know how I feel. How do I feel? Shitty. Really shitty. What’s the solution? To deal with my problems, not to hide from them. Especially not to hide from them for my parents’ sake.

I love them both so much. This is really, really fucking hard. To listen to my Mom beg for “just one more year, just one more thing to be proud of” like she will never have anything to be proud of ever again… it hurts. A lot.

The good things that have come out of this is that they will be talking to my psychiatrist soon, like they should have months ago. In addition, my dad said he was trying. Nearly in tears, he told me he was trying to understand. Trying to figure out how to help me. That made me sob. That meant so, so much to me. I don’t expect them to just get it instantly… but that he’s trying… that’s important. That’s meaningful.

Anyway, I have a class to teach, somehow… I’m going to try not to be super-depressed. I’m going to try to keep functioning. Have so far, even if it’s been a bit robotic. I’m going to get things done…

Dammit…

On Saturday, I played like 6 hours of Dokapon Kingdom.

Dokapon has always been a game I was excited to really get into. However, it’s not a game for everyone. It takes awhile to really get running, and it’s really a commitment. Many of the friends I’ve attempted to play it with really didn’t enjoy the slow beginning game, and we gave up on it after an hour.

However, on Saturday, Cole and Cara came over, and wanted to play a game. I didn’t really have anything new (I was hoping that Modnation Racers would show up before then, but it didn’t) and I knew that Cara had enjoyed Dokapon in the past, so I suggested we play it.

Cole loved it, and we ended up playing all day.

As we did that, I got a glimpse of how this game really works. It is a game all about the trash-talking. The majority of the fun came from me doing things like sniping people, giving them stupid names, and then constantly reminding them that they have a stupid name. That is what elevated the game from the basic thing on the screen to a competition that was serious and fun.

On top of that, the combat in the game really switched up as it progressed. As you level up, you can really specialize, and do much more in combat than just pick “Attack” or “Strike.” Cole, for example, was doing crazy things by restricting enemy’s actions, while I was just brute-forcing it as a Warrior and Cara was attempting to steal from every monster. I was surprised how it actually managed to keep itself fairly fresh, and also give you more and more control over what you were doing as the game went on.

We stopped for the night after Cara had a rampage of evil. She wasn’t doing very good, so she got a bat over her head, which the game called a “Spirit of Revenge.” I looked up what this was, and apparently this enabled Cara to sell her soul and become a “Darkling” for two game weeks and utterly destroy everything. So I told her this. And she did.

And she destroyed everything.

Seriously, the Darkling is obscenely powerful. It was pretty hard to get going, and she only got the spirit of revenge when she was really behind, so it didn’t feel that broken to me. She was certainly having fun with it. It was pretty neat.

After that rampage, though, we decided we’d have enough. We’ve saved the game, though. Who knows, we may come back to it. I kind of hope we do. There’s still two continents left to explore, and so many more classes to max out with so many abilities!

Basically, I’m glad Dokapon ended up being what I thought it was when I bought it. Good, good times.

Today is the first day of school.

Fuck.

In Brer’s words, I have been “seriously depressed” all summer, and I’d mostly agree with that. As a result I don’t feel completely prepared for the semester to come. I feel like I’m stumbling forward into it.

Then again, I always feel that way when I haven’t done anything for a long while. I always feel lost until I’m in the thick of it, because it’s then that it’s not longer an unknown.

This semester should be less stressful in some ways. School should be less of a problem than it was last time. Much easier classes, and hopefully a much easier time. It should be way more stressful in others, though. Things are going to change. They’re really going to change.

They’re really going to change.

Looking at it, as always… scary as fuck. How many times have I written these words?

But I can do this. It begins. Life moves forward, and for the first fucking time, I am going to move forward. And at the end is my brother’s wedding, and all that jazz, and a visit from Brer.

I can do this. Just watch me.