Category: IRL

War has been declared

For many, many years, I was quite apathetic towards driving. You might even say I didn’t really like it at all. That might help explain why it took me just over four years to get my full driver’s license. Even after I got my license, I wasn’t totally up on the idea. All that changed when I got my car. The day that I bought that car was the day I learned to enjoy driving. In fact, I’d say that buying a car was the best thing that’s happened to me all year.

And that is exactly why I’m kinda broken up that the little guy is probably going to be leaving me.

A little over a week ago, the back end of my ride was cruelly taken away from me by some dumb hick from Saskatchewan. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. Only the bumper is really gone. The trunk is busted but good, but the car is still perfectly drivable, patched together tailight and all. Also, it may have been ever so slightly my fault, but we’re going to let the insurance adjuster have the final say on that one. Anyhow, I’ve got an appointment to assess the damages on Wednesday, and the general consensus is that it’s going to be written off.

I’m going to miss my car, and I may get enough scratch to help me buy another old car, but only now do I understand why some guys really love their cars. It did a lot for me, and in the short few months we were together, we’d gone through a lot of stuff. It wasn’t just a vehicle, it was a companion in its own right. No matter how many other cars I buy in my lifetime, none will ever be the same as my Spirit.

Fuck. That’s at least two eulogies this year. I hate 2007.

Even to the end of his life

Hello. My name is Ryan. and I’m a Facebookaholic. I haven’t been on Facebook for almost six days now. I think I’m making some real progress.

Seriously, I was having trouble there for a while. I’d poke around Facebook for hours on end, never really accomplishing anything. At least when I spend my Friday nights surfing Wikipedia I’m learning something. My infatuation with just being on the site was becoming a problem, because days would melt away as I poked through random groups and people’s profiles. It made me late for work on one occasion. But times are going to change. I don’t even know why I was on there in the first place. I’m a loner. I don’t want to make friends. Fuck that noise.

In a completely unrealted story, Sam & Max kicks ass. It’s nice to see that people can still make quality adventure games. The fact that I laughed more during the first half of the first episode than I have at anything on TV lately means something too. But I won’t say what, because I think you should be able to draw your own conclusions. In any case, if your PC is up to it, it’s $30 very well spent. If you don’t enjoy it on some level, you’re pretty much a waste of your parents’ reproductive cells.

You can join in too

Well, the tall one is now officially a high-school graduate. My parents feel very old, despite the fact that they are decidedly not.

My wisdom teeth came out last Wednesday, which I may have mentioned before, and things did not go nearly as well as I’d hoped. I mean, the surgery and everything went off without a hitch, but it took many days to heal! I had to call in sick on Sunday! I’ve never called in sick to work before… On the upside, for the most of my downtime, I had Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition by my side to ease the pain. Well, my pain anyway. I can’t say the same for all those ganados. More on that tomorrow though.

So anyone else really like Zelda’s redesign for Brawl? I love it. Though to be anal about it, it’s Link who was originally a brunette! God damn.

In any case, I’m sure I must have mentioned this before, because I’ve told like everyone I know about it, but the official Smash Bros site is updating every weekday. It’s usually nothing big, but on the odd days when they reveal a new item or remixed song, I’m a very happy me. The soundtrack, as it currently stands, is probably going to be a two-discer at least, and will totally be worth buying. The current handful of samples that are up on the site are fantastic. Motoi Sakuraba’s take on the menu screen theme is wonderful, and it’s just the menu theme. I really hope he gets to work on at least one more track, and I’m looking forward to Akihiro Honda’s and Yoko Shimomura’s contributions in particular.

But yes, the daily updates have pretty much been my reason to wake up in the morning for the past couple weeks. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m quite excited about this game. I know I’m getting my hopes up, but is it too much to ask for any Capcom character to show up? Doesn’t have to be MegaMan you know. Arthur? Dan Hibiki? Nemesis? If Solid Snake can make the roster, I’m sure any of those are valid nominees.

Don’t let me down, my sweet baby

So yeah. I was poking around the internets last week and came across the Odin Sphere artbook. Needless to say, I was impressed by the art direction, and the magnificent care that obviously went into creating even the minorest of characters (I love the mandragoras!), and the scenery is just fantastic. Of course, the brilliant art is what everyone agrees on about the game.

I happened to be in the mall on the weekend, and while I normally try to avoid the chain, I decided to stop into the EB and peruse their wares. As luck would have it, they actually did have Odin Sphere in, and, well, you know how I am with money. BUT! I have to say that it was $50 well spent, because just as I’d presumed, the game is right up my alley. There’s a fun combat system and what’s looking like a solid story, but the real enjoyment is in the very elaborate item juggling system. At least, that’s where I find the meat of the game, being an obsessive-compulsive packrat. If you watched me play Odin Sphere, you’d probably think it’s just all dull gardening and item mixing, because that’s what I’ve been doing with the bulk of the time I’ve spent with the game. To Hell with progressing the story! I want to make a potion that will fill the entire screen with phozons!

So anyway… Crap. I was totally going to make a completely different post today, but I guess that got derailed kinda quickly. Maybe I’ll get into what I’d intended to be today’s topic during the next couple days. I’ll have nothing better to do, because I’ve taken the next three days off in hopes that that’ll be long enough to recover from having my wisdom teeth torn out of my facehole. Which happens tomorrow morning. Not looking forward to that. I love eating, and unless I heal like a motherfucker (for which history will vouch that I do not), I won’t be able to eat anything but milkshakes for a while. Not that I don’t like milkshakes, but I’m really going to miss meat. And candy. Mostly the candy.

I’m not capable of love

Well, it’s happened. I bought me some car yesterday. A fine-ass deal, too. It’s a very nice little car; a ’92 Dodge Spirit that looks great and runs like a charm, and it only cost me about $1200. I’m still trying to come up with a suitable nickname for the thing though. I’ve got a few in mind, but they’re all so…obvious. I’m sure a good one’ll come to me sooner or later. Until then, picture!

Nice, yes? Well, at least for the price I paid for it, it’s a fantastic car. But you know what’s not so nice? The new Ataris. Jesus Murphy, they’re not the Ataris anymore. I was just looking up some lyrics yesterday when I landed at their website and the song in the background was so not-Ataris that I assumed that maybe there was another band called the Ataris and the band I was looking for was elsewhere. Sadly, I was wrong.

I guess that it all happened because they dropped their old label and created their own, allowing them a little more freedom to do what they want. And that freedom ended up sounding like some horrid cross between HIM and My Chemical Romance. Though I guess “horrid” is very much the wrong word to use in this situation. For one, I like both HIM and MCR, and more importantly, the Ataris’ new sound isn’t all that bad. Also, I do like their new CD, Welcome The Night, even though it in no way sounds like the Ataris. Even Kris Roe doesn’t sound like Kris Roe anymore. In summation, it’s not a change for the worse, but I’m surely going to miss the old Ataris.

‘Till the day I die

Ugh. I wish I was dead. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really really hate being sick. All snotty and zombielike. It’s horrible I tell you! I just want to stay home from work tomorrow, but I’ve yet to miss a day of work in my life and I don’t feel like changing that anytime soon, so I guess I’ll have to go. Then when I get home I’ll explode in a glorious shower of mucus. Huzzah.

One good thing though, is that TRU got Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja in stock today, which I promptly scooped up. It’s a fairly neat game, but man is it hard. It’s a weird little dungeon crawler with a simple turn-based battle system and randomly generated dungons. Most people would probably write it off as tedious or something else like that, but it’s quite up my alley, really. I like most games that center around spelunking for treasure in one way or another, so is all good.

I was also eyeing up Sonic and the Secret Rings. I’ve been reading a lot about it, and I think it sounds pretty great, but I’m still on the fence about it. I think maybe it’s really just a renter though. But even that’s a pain in itself, because I haven’t been able to work up the energy to go out and rent a game in probably close to a year by now (someday, Excite Truck, someday).

Besides being sick, there’s another something that’s really bugged me recently. I was unloading a truck on Wednesday, and I noticed a strangely labeled box. As it turns out, there’s some sort of horrible Bratz/Shrek cross-promotion going on. Though proper use of the term “cross-promotion” is still debatable, as I’ve yet to see any Shrek crap that claims he’s “the only troll with a passion 4 fashion”. Why does this bug me? Frankly, I’ve grown to hate Bratz with all my earthly being, and Shrek continues to be the biggest animated sell-out ever. Seriously. Even Dora’s face hasn’t been plastered on as much junk as Shrek’s, and that is really saying something.

Wish you were here

Bear with me for a couple paragraphs here, I really need to vent a bit. What about? Everything basically. I don’t know how it’s been for you, but 2007 is shaping up to be one really shitty year for me. The first week or so was looking pretty positive, but after that, things just started going wrong and it’s only gotten worse. Imagine a world where I, a man who can barely stand doing household chores, finds the only place where he’s even close to happy is at work. And lately, I’m not even there all that often anymore. I wouldn’t complain, but financial responsibility just crept up and hit me like a Thwomp, so it’s looking like I’m going to need a second job. Fantastic. I’ve tried a myriad of different sentences here, but I’m just not sure where to go from that… so let’s jump ahead a little and skip on a few choice details.

I guess having two jobs and working everyday, possibly even twice a day sometimes, would augment my income significantly, and that would be great. I’ve been entertaining thoughts of moving out a lot lately, and even if I had to struggle (and I know I would), it’s something I really feel I need to do. It’s part of this thing I’m going thorugh where I’m really focused on not needing anyone, and that comes from what might be my biggest issue: my growing anti-socialism. Lately it’s getting so bad that I don’t even want to be around my family anymore. There were a lot of people (percentage-wise anyway, I know like seven people) who I’d normally get along well with, even to the point where sometimes I’d wish they were around more often, but lately I’m just angry at everyone and try to be alone as much as possibe. I mean, I know that I’m the kind of person that’s going to have a lot of alone time (to put it nicely), and that doesn’t bother me, but it’s getting bad to the point where my civil nature is wearing thin. I’m not much for making friends, but the last thing I want is to make enemies, and this isn’t going to be helping that cause.

Of course, there’s always one exception to the rule, and mine is quite the horrid one. I know everyone has to sort this kind of thing out at some point, but I really feel like I should be above the “crush”. Seriously. It just feels so goddamned juvenile and ridiculous that I cannot stand suffering from it. I’m not fucking fourteen, I shouldn’t have to put up with this crap. Of course, I haven’t got anywhere near the proper people skills required to deal with something like this, and so like everything else, I just try to ignore it and make it go away. And we’re not even going to get into how well that’s working out. Hopefully ranting out a little like this will slow the burn a bit. It’s not much, but I know it’s out there where potentially anyone in the world can read it, so that’s somewhat comforting. Also, there’s no way in Hell I could ever directly talk to someone about it. That would make me feel like even more of a jackass.

Shit, I’ve gone on a little longer than I expected. Well, I guess I’ll wrap it up then. We haven’t even scratched the surface of my issues, but at least it feels a little better to get it out there. Some of it. There are a lot of things swimming around in my gigantic head that I don’t want to touch on even here. I mean, I know what all my problems are. I know exactly where they come from, and why they don’t go away or whatever. It’s not like I need a shrink to tell me why I’m so fucked up. I’ve heard that you’re only insane if you’ve got issues and you think you’re sane, so I guess I’m not crazy. Let’s give it some time though. A nuthouse might not be the best way to live, but damn, it would sure be a lot easier than having to deal with life.

I’d trade all the others away

I’ve had a lot of pets in my twenty years. At least six hamsters, a ridiculous amount of fish, a frog, and even a bird. But I never really cared about them. They came and went with little to no impact on my life, except maybe that I learned that I disliked responsibility. A couple years ago, we finally got a dog. He was a great dog, and I spent a lot of time with him. Sadly, only months after we get him, the vet discovered that the animal shelter had classified him as a basenji when really he was a pit bull, and seeing as pit bulls aren’t allowed in the city, we had to give him up. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever faced, but it was okay, because I knew he was just going to live somewhere outside the city. Soon after, we were lucky enough to get two more dogs, and life was good.

The last few days have been Hell for me and my family. It’s been all uncertainty and pain. Finally, today I had to say goodbye to one of those dogs. On Wednesday afternoon, I came home to find him far less chipper than usual. Slowly it became more evident to us that something was wrong, as he could barely walk, and couldn’t even get up or down the stairs. By the next night, the poor thing couldn’t move his hind legs, and he coudldn’t even wag his tail. My dad took him to the vet Friday morning and they told us that a couple of the discs in his spine had ruptured, and things weren’t looking good. We gave it a couple days to see if there would be any improvement, but my horible luck was working overtime this weekend, and it just got worse.

We all went down the the animal clinic this evening, and I can say without a doubt that this was the worst day of my life. Just seeing my little puppy there, quivering and helpless, I felt more pain and sadness than I’ve ever known. The worst part about it is that there was absolutely nothing anyone could do. Treatment had clearly failed, and surgery would only delay the inevitable for a short while. The little guy had no chance. All anyone could do for him is put him to sleep so that he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

I think that it goes without saying that I’m not taking this well. I’ve never had to deal with real loss my whole life, though you might say that an animal isn’t a real loss. But Harley wasn’t just an animal. He was one of my best friends. He was my confidant. He was family. I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act. My emotions are all so conflicted that I just want to go to sleep and not wake up so that I don’t have to deal with it any more. I don’t care about many things, but I cared about my dog. I loved him, and I’m gonna miss him for a long time to come.






I am a bike thief

Never noticed it before (mostly because I’ve been on the internet very little over the past couple months), but Mike’s got a great story about an English debate we had to suffer through back in high school. It’s a little inaccurate on the Gameboy bit (I’m not the sneakiest slacker, but I have more common sense than to play Gameboy when all eyes are on, or at least around, me), but the Pokémon line absolutely slayed me and makes the overall story just a little better. No blood no foul, as they say. Ah, it’s memories like these that really make me miss high school.

In other news, work has begun to both be more awesome and suck at the same time. The bad part is that there’s this “new” guy (I finger quote ‘new’ because he must have been transferred or worked here before) who’s pretty much nullifying my use to the company. Not only does he know Goddamn everything, he also works twice as fast as me. It sucks because now I feel completely useless, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave me the boot after Christmas and claimed I was only hired as seasonal help, because I’m pretty much just dead weight now. Turns out I absolutely hate feeling useless. I never knew that about myself. So what could possibly be countering this bad situation and making me still cherish my job? Well… I don’t feel like blogging down that road again. Use your imagination. I can’t imagine you’ll have too tough a time coming up with an answer.

And because I can’t really procrastinate on this one much longer, here’s the obligatory Band of the Month spiel. BotM is quitte clearly Freezepop. Or maybe it’s not so clear. That font is a bit small to read. Anyway, I don’t much like either synth or pop, but I really do like Freezepop. Freezepop makes me happy with their charming lyrics and solid beats. Like so amny other people, I was first introduced to Freezepop by Guitar Hero. Their contribution to the first game “Get Ready 2 Rokk” is awesome, and their return for GH2 “Less Talk More Rokk” is jsut as good, if not better. The only thing to note is that their Guitar Hero songs are very different from their regular offerings, which have much more of that pop flair to them.

It took some doing, but I finally was able to acquire the album shown above (Fancy Ultra*Fresh), and I do quite enjoy it. Though I have to say, it’s kind of a downhill ride the whole way. It’s not that the songs get bad, but it’s just that all the best stuff is clumped up in the first half. Easily recommendable though, but definitely not for everyone. I know a lot of people who would probably dismiss Freezepop long before even listening to one song, but listening to them always puts a smile on my face and warms my heart just a little.