Tossing and Turning

For some reason, I could not get comfortable last night. My pillows were lumpy, my blankets were too heavy, the fan was too loud and my brain would not shut up. Everyone has an edge of sanity, and last night, I was firmly pushed up to that edge to stare into the abyss.

I don't like worrying. I don't enjoy making contingency plans, budgets, or even shopping lists. It all reminds me that I'm a starving artist in college and that my entire future is resting on my ability to exploit my imagination.

Surely I can take the easy way out. I can get a steady job in an office somewhere, put on the docile and submissive face, and keep my griping mouth shut. After all, my inability to sit still is the only reason I ever leave a job.

Boredom sets in and I find myself staging epic Kurosawa-style samurai battles in whatever building I happen to be working in. A wall explodes, mounted cavalry pour through the opening, and my coworkers, like helpless peasants, are cut down like so much dead grass. My boss is brought to task by the samurai like any abusive fuedal lord, and like the great Toshiro Mifune, I possess the ability to save his wretched soul, or stand aside and the tide of justice wash away the perversions of honor that have gripped these lands.

I made the mistake of telling my roommates about a commission I had made on a side project. Since I pay my rent in two chunks, one of them always falls after rent is due. Why rent is due on the fifteenth and not on the first is beyond me, but suffice it to say, my roommates leapt on the prospect of money as soon as my stupid mouth had mentioned I would have some.

The very idea of spending this commission on rent is appalling. It's bad enough that I'll be spending it on mundane things like fixing my truck, paying off old bills, and buying myself shoes, but to think that I need to spend any of it as if it were a "regular" paycheck is a slap in the face. I know it's just a matter of time before I'm completely caught up and all my side projects are nothing but profit, but the hungry look in my roommate's eyes was unsettling enough to wake up The Accountant.

The Accountant is the part of my personality that is always fighting with The Muse. Most of the time we can put The Accountant in a sleeper-hold and choke him back to sleep, but last night, his teeth, filed sharp as daggers, chewed through the arms of my Muse and spat fat meaty chunks of arm in my face.

Now I have to summon the Kraken and Cthulu to take care of the accountant, and that's going to take all day. Moreover, it doesn't help that Cthulu and The Accountant are related by marriage. This means I have to find a way to get Cthulu's wife, who is The Accountant's sister, off Cthulu's back for helping me out. Maybe some dead frogs or fish... I dunno. It's such a headache. I just wanted to get some sleep.

Zelda Forever

Okay. I'm tired. ^__^ I was up until three am playing Twilight Princess with Nicholarse. It started off very innocuous- "Hey, mate, you wanna come up for a pint?" (We had just watched Shawn of the Dead the week before, so every place we go to is still the Winchester.)

"Awright," I said. We opened up some brews and sat down in front of the Wii.

"Here's the plan," Nick suggested. "We play a single quest, then we watch an episode of Robot Chicken, Season Two."

Ten hours and no beers later, we crawled out of the Arbiter's Ruins in the desert with the souls of twenty Poes en tow. In that time, we had rocked up a giant fish, a crafty mage that shifted shadows, sixteen normal and four super Poes, a giant skully fiend with a bit of sword in his dome; gained four heart containers, three pieces of heart; and we even learned all but two of the missing sword arts from a golden wolf.

I'm still playing Wind Waker, so I was a little apprehensive about starting Twilight Princess. I know the stories aren't contiguous but I really wanted to start Twilight from the beginning. From what I played last night, however, I'm glad I didn't commit to such foolishness.

The nunchuk controls were a bit unwieldy at first- I was swinging my sword around in ridiculous arcs that were completely unnecessary. Once I got "into the swing of things," (lol pun lol) I was in it to win it. Although bombs, swords arts, and the Clawshot are all sorts of wicked fun, I spent as much time as possible as the wolf, in sense mode. I hunted me some Poes for the win.

Zelda games are deep and immersing, and although you don't have the staggering array of swords and accessories you find in Final Fantasy and Elder Scrolls, it's still a blast. Who needs anything more than the silver shhhhiiiing! of a fully powered Master Sword anyway?

Since Twilight is the only Zelda that Nicholarse has played, it was fun clue-ing him into the little secrets here and there. "Jump down there, you'll be safe." "Hit the boss twice and switch tactics." "BLUE POTION!!!" Stuff. Anyway, I'm going to go home to night, put a huge dent in Wind Waker, and I'll start saving my pennies for a Wii.

Blog In The Afternoon

So I've decided that I shouldn't use the fact that it is no longer morning to not post. At least not all the time. My goal was to blog in the mornings, of course, but what about these wonderful weekends I've been getting lately?

It's been my first chance in forever to sleep in, and the last thing I want to do when I wake up at noon is make the trip into the living room where my scornful roommates are waiting to remind me how lazy I am while I log into Blogger and try to be literate.

Luckily for me, they're out of town this weekend, so I've been left here to reflect on the week in general and lament the great opportunities I've had for Morning Blogs this week but didn't act on.

Today, for example, I woke from a particularly interesting dream and instead of writing it down, I went to a barbecue. The barbecue was supposed to happen yesterday, but I guess too many people were watching football and getting drunk to want to cook.

In any case, it was nice that the meat had an extra day to marinate, and that certain people still had beer and football to keep them occupied. Well, perhaps a little too occupied.


This is what happens when the game is more important than the food. ^__^ I sent a picture to my email and informed Nick that it was going directly into the blog. Which is why I'm here, of course, posting a blog in the middle of a football party.

For now, I think it's best to get back to the fried chicken. Or what's left of it.

Until the morning... or afternoon....

Orion

The constellation of Orion has been my favorite constellation for as long as I can remember. Perhaps it was because it was always with me while I was growing up, or because it was the easiest constellation to recognize, aside from the Big Dipper. When I moved to Idaho, I was disappointed to find that Orion only comes out in the winter time.

Last night, I pulled some blankets and pillows onto the trampoline in the back yard. I watched the full moon, all halos, blotches and smears of light to my astigmatic eyes. I also watched the silhouette of the girl next door as she played with her hair for what seemed an hour. I didn't feel much like a peeping tom since I could only see the shadowy outline of her head and hands, but I didn't push my luck. I focused on the moon and eventually went to sleep.

It's beginning to get colder outside. I woke up in the middle of the night, surprisingly snug and toasty warm, save for my face, which was frozen. The first thing I saw when I woke was a broad, starry field, surprisingly undimmed by the same city lights that had dulled it only hours before. The moon was gone, and in its place was Orion.

I was surprised. I figured I wouldn't see it again until winter, but there it was, shining in a subtle, muted sharpness in the 3 AM-ish sky. Orion has always been a sort of touchstone for me, a reminder that I'm still on Earth, that I'm still me, and that all of my memories really took place. When I look at Orion, I invariably find myself sitting on the grass and staring up at it. Memories of past sittings, conversations, and mythological explanations found in musty old books from my junior high library like to swim around in my head at these times.

In the winter, it's not easy to find a comfy place to recline, so I was grateful to have seen it this morning/night. A good sign that follows a full moon is great news indeed... I wonder what the day will bring.

Are You Superbad?

Let me start off by saying that I am not a fan of raunchy teen films. Or teen films in general. They always seem to be about a bunch of spoiled rich kids dealing with spoiled rich kid problems, and I just can't identify. I've never been a spoiled rich kid, so I don't know what it's like. Moreover, I just don't feel the need to identify with them in any way, shape, or form. I guess I just don't like spoiled rich kids all that much.

Superbad was the first comedy I have ever seen in a theater. No lie. And you know what? For as raunchy and irreverant as it was, I actually had a pretty good time. It was incredibly funny, in a sick and twisted way that I wasn't expecting. The plot was your average dungeon-crawler "get-to-the-party" affair, but that's okay. I imagine that the writers watch Can't Hardly Wait about 90 times and said to themselves, "If I was making this movie, I would..."

You get a lot of that in this movie. "If I was a cop, I would totally..." or, "If I was a nerdy dude I would..." You get the idea. This concept is best seen in the character McLovin. That's not his real name, of course. This kid buys a fake ID and names himself McLovin- one word, and claims to hail from Hawaii. Although the song "White and Nerdy" was written for this kid, his story arc completely makes the movie, and yields some of the funniest comedy I've seen in days.

If you are offended by crude comedy, this movie is not for you. Superbad goes way beyond American Pie. If I had to make an analogy, Superbad would be the teenager with a fake ID buying the cheapest alcohol on the shelf for American Pie, and pocketing the change, going to the party, and drinking all of American Pie's alcohol, and then hitting on its girlfriend. and then scoring.

I guess you have to ask yourself, then- Am I Superbad?

Castle In the Sky

Alas, this is not a reference to Miyazaki's awesome movie, although I am a great fan of his. Last night, I had to give a 45 presentation to my Group Dynamics class with my small and humble group of minions. I mean classmates.

I had been reading Gulliver's Travels for the third time, and I was amused by the notion of the "Flappers" that Lemuel meets in Castle Laputa. The Flappers are basically an 18th century metaphor for red tape- they flap these strange contraptions in front of the mouth and ears of the people talking and allow them to communicate with other people. If a Flapper doesn't distinguish something, the people on the castle don't even know it exists.

I formed an exercise for the class that required them to rely on Flappers to communicate. There were two Designers who designed paper airplanes. They gave their information to the Flapper, who emailed the design to the Builder, and gave a verbal description of the design to the people designated to fly the planes.

My teacher asked, "What book did you pull this exercise out of?"

"Gulliver's Travels," I replied.

She seemed to be a bit surprised that I was able to come up with something so cleverly ingenious, but then again, I've really slacked off this quarter in her class. I could have been more of a team player, but it's a lot more fun to play the devil's advocate. ^__^

The Tinkerer

Not a lot of time here- been having some technical difficulties while getting caught up with school. I just thought I'd put up that picture of The Tinker I had talked about from the Super Mario vs. Wilford Brimley post.

The picture is line art that was scanned into the computer, colored in Photoshop with multiple layers. The background was made using Vue6, which is modeling software used primarily for terrain. The lens flare isn't photoshopped- it's included in the calculations of the Vue6 software.

I'll try to get back to popsting normally as soon as possible finals week is always a lot of fun, ya know. Let me know what you think of The Tinkerer!