VN

Ending the semester with a post about something only I care about: visual novels.


Visual novels are, essentially, choose your own adventure books with pictures and music. And most of the time they're at least partially pornographic, but with the best of them, you pretty much skip over the porn. For some reason they're categorized as games.

A lot of VNs get turned into anime, especially nowadays, with studios more desperate than ever for source materials to adapt. Fate/stay Night, Amagami SS, MajiKoi, Clannad, etc. Even though the numbers aren't quite up there with the manga and light novel adaptations, they're still pretty high. (No, the porn does not get animated.)

"Gameplay."

Most visual novels are about choosing a girl you like and trying to court them with cheesy preselected dialogue. The aforementioned Clannad, most VNs by Key, Yume Miru Kusuri... er, it's actually not worth listing them now that I think about it, as exceptions are very hard to find (Ever17, for example). But even when they take this decidedly otaku-pandering route, they can fit in themes to make it interesting, or put the romancing bullshit on the backburner. YMK, for example, explores the issues of Japanese school bullying, teen pregnancy, and drug abuse in its three routes. Kana: Little Sister is supposed to be really depressing, though I haven't gotten to it yet. And FSN is basically an action series, so much so that it has spawned two fighting games, an RPG, a totally badass prequel, and a movie that is basically fight scene to fight scene. Over the course of the 60 hours it takes to read its three routes, maybe 5 is not spent on plot progression.

But I won't try to convince you to try them. 90% of the medium is trash like this:

Wanko to Kurasou, where dogs are people and you have to fuck them when they're in heat.

There's good stuff here, though, and I'm not ashamed to like those ones. No better way to close out the semester.

Some of the, uh, stellar writing typical of VNs.

Book Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

When I was a child, I never questioned the Amish. I just thought they were those backwards people who were afraid of electricity. In recent years, though, I’ve been thinking about it more, about breaking down the stereotype – they are actually real people, who make decisions beyond butter churning and Bible quoting and the occasional hoedown. It seems obvious, but for me, I have mysteriously become more and more alienated from people not in a vaguely defined “traditional” American white male demographic.

So Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress piqued my interest. Mennonites, of course, are quite different from the Amish, despite the common association. They practice a more laissez-faire approach to simple living, and parting from tradition isn’t quite as frowned upon as it is in Amish societies. Janzen’s memoir makes this very clear – though a lot of her tales have some sort of Mennonite flavor to them, the goings-on in her life are often nothing special, like toilet training or playing Scrabble. The Mennonite theme that runs throughout keeps the book interesting and separable from your average memoir, while the author’s everyday approach grounds it firmly in the reality of a normal person, which makes the Mennonite bits all the more interesting to behold.

That’s the great thing here: the memoir is only halfway about being a Mennonite – the other very, very large focus in this book is on her love life, specifically her ex-husband Nick. There’s a list of the five worst Mennonite foods, sure, but there’s also Nick being an over-competitive ass in a casual tennis match. In fact, there’s a lot of Nick being an ass, everywhere, at all times. You have to wonder if maybe Janzen’s perspective isn’t skewed at first, considering his ex- status, but then you read about how he broke furniture, or very deliberately told her he didn’t care what happened to her anymore, and all potential sympathy for Nick is lost, despite Janzen’s best attempts to gloss over the severity of it all.

Levity is really the key to this book. Rhoda Janzen has clearly been through some shit, mostly with the verbal abuse and some childhood mockery, yet she maintains a lighthearted tone throughout, with an occasional reflective note. Mennonite doesn’t fall into the common trap of taking serious problems too seriously. If the book were her whining and despairing about her troubles, I would feel much less inclined to empathize with her. But I was actually wincing at points when she made a joke of, say, getting into a car accident that nearly crippled her a week after Nick left her for a man. It’s more heartbreaking when you’re left to feel sad on your own, rather than being told to feel sad.

While the levity was appreciated, you could tell it was also trying to be genuinely funny, not quite getting there. There is a lot of dialogue here, and the conversations she has with her sister or her mother might have been funny when they were happening, but as is often the case with such humor, it doesn’t quite translate to a stranger’s perspective. A lot of it is cutesy humor from my perspective, even with the darker circumstances. When it’s not being cutesy, jokes involve some sarcasm, or some point-and-laugh, or just some girl-talk gossip, none of which are particularly witty as a rule.

Another problem is that, while the truck ton of details the memoir contains is appreciated, it manages not to be very memorable. Blame it on my piss-poor memory, but I can barely recall anything. There was the musclebound Mennonite she dated, and the high school stage dance she didn’t want to do, and Nick being a cunt, but the fact is that there is just too much here, I think, unless you read it multiple times, which is quite a caveat. The structure only adds to the problem – chapters usually start off with some anecdote about her post-car wreck recovery time with her family, then segue into an opinion of hers or a link to her past or something about Mennonite culture, and then follows that by another topic, and another, before coming back to the anecdote and creating a web of connections to it from the chapter’s contents. Sure, it’s impressive, but it also manages to make all the details bleed together, especially doing this chapter after chapter.

But I think that doesn’t matter that much. The best books are memorable, but why does this have to be the best? Why can’t it be good enough for a casual read for a few hours? I may not remember much of my time with Rhoda Janzen, but I know I enjoyed it. Disposable does not mean trash.

Exorcism

With so few people last class, it's difficult to gauge exactly how successful this exercise was. I can say for sure that it didn't turn out how I was hoping, but how I was expecting. Most people had trouble concentrating during the whole thing, though one person was not affected. What I wanted to happen was for the different moods to cause completely different styles. Two problems arose. One, it was a heavily simulated environment; how people reacted to our classroom skit was not necessarily how they would react to a normal class. Two, all of the parts focused on a more high energy setting. Loud music, comedic teacher & student, two bros shooting the shit. It would have been much more effective to tone it down for one of them, like playing smooth jazz, or doing a more serious classroom setting (which I meant to do; apologies to John for taking it in the wrong direction).

A couple of changes I did notice: almost everyone, despite being told they could do otherwise, wrote in complete sentences. English majors ahoy! And the third bit, the classeroom one, caused the most distraction ("SHUT UP!" "Focus, keep writing").

All in all I'm glad I tried it, though I wish I had been more prepared.

Neh Nah Eee

As previously mentioned in the pizza episode, I have sleep troubles. A lot of people do, sure. But how many do you know that, once a regular work-school schedule is lost, will immediately go from being up until 2 am to being up until 7 am? This is essentially every summer and winter -- whether I will it or not, I will be messed up for the remainder of the vacation. And the times get later and later, to the point that eventually I am going to sleep early again. I slept during each hour of the day at least once this past summer -- ever slept from 11 am to 7 pm before, and multiple "nights" in a row at that?

It just happened to me this Thanksgiving break. That very Tuesday night after we departed, I was up until 6 am. Granted, Zelda: Skyward Sword just came out and commanded my attention like a tank juggler, but I wasn't doing that the entire time. Some of it was watching The Familiar of Zero. Some was playing/reading Tsukihime. And during none of it was I tired. Thus, I did not go to sleep.

When hearing of my sleep troubles, most people say that I need to get help. But honestly, I feel like I don't need help. (First step of denial, right?) It's not that I don't get enough sleep, because when not in school, I do -- eight hours every, er, day. The problem is that, I think, internally, I can't justify going to sleep any earlier than 1 am. There's so much to do, like play video games, watch anime, and browse the internet.

Not only that, but I just can't will myself asleep; I have to actually be tired before I can conk out. Some people I know can just lay down and in five minutes they're gone. Me, it takes two hours or so. So I usually just don't bother, and do random shit until I'm tired, and then I can fall asleep in a half hour, because of another problem: I just can't stop thinking. Events of the day, story development, discussing my favorite stories with myself, fantasizing about being fabulous... there's always something going on in my head.

Even if I do manage to get on a regular 9 pm to 5 am schedule (it has happened, really), socializing inevitably happens, and it happens until fairly late at night, so I can't keep it up for more than a week, usually less.

I don't know if the solution is to get a 9-5 job and do that for the rest of my life. Rather than fixing my problem, I think I'd just be tired and miserable. The solution I'm most keen on is finding a job that suits my sleep schedule. So either graveyard shift at some creepy warehouse (awesome), or a writing job (also awesome). At least with the latter I could be putting my major to use, and getting plenty of rest while I'm at it.

tiffanyreviewseverything: Goats

Have you ever started your morning, all groggy and hungry and not quite ready for the day?


Goats. That is what your morning needs.

No matter what kinds of goats they are, goats are a great way to start your day! Mountain goats, pygmy goats, alpine goats -- even the Angora goat, which you may mistake for a sheep, can brighten the brightest morning sun.


Nothing matches a cup of joe quite like a bunch of goats in trees!


And it doesn't have to be just your morning. Boer goats are a great companion to your dinner conversations, especially if you are eating copper. They can just take the leftovers while you and your buddies make jokes about its funny nose and beard.


Mountain goats. The kings of all goats. Look. At. This. SHIT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFt7VeKRfj0&feature=related

They are amazing. That goat is about a year old and has already learned the long-lost art of anti-gravity. You don't see giraffes doing amazing things like this. Want to know why? Because they aren't goats.

(Edit: Just saw this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XafAdkZIYKA, mountain goats getting dropped off cliffs by eagles, never mind, mountain goats are not all that great)

All in all I'd say goats are great, especially for mornings. Wow!!!

9.5/10 (lost half a point due to those shitty mountain goats)
Be sure to check out my arch-nemesis' blog, lucasreviewseverything.blogspot.com. He reviews many things -- everything, you could say! Ha ha ha.

Fuck you!

Woll Smoth; Or, The Library

Woll Smoth, circa Now AD.

Working as a page at a library is pretty chill. I'm doing this work here right now, not even on break -- cleaning DVDs and doing blog posts while I wait. The job consists primarily of putting books away and straightening them on the shelves, which would be boring if we didn't get to listen to music while we do it. But me, being the boss that I am, became something great through hard work and guts. Senior Page is a position to be envious of. I get first dibs on all the relaxing jobs, and whatever jobs I don't like (breaking down cardboard boxes, sharpening pencils for the computer cups) I get to force on my lessers. All's right with the world.

It wasn't always this way. I started out working in the children's area. The books were thin, so not only were the spine labels tiny and harder to read, I also had effectively 2-3 times the amount of work to put away one row that the adult pages (not adults, pages who worked in the adult section) had to do. Plus I had to deal with screaming kids and a cramped work space. By no means the worst job, but after a year I was starting to get a little fed up with it, and was actually talked to twice about my poor work habits. Only reason they didn't let me go was because I've known them since before I could talk. But after my first year, three of the four adult pages left for college, and I got bumped up to the adult section. Work has been running smoothly ever since.

My first year in the adult section was spent under Declan, the tall, long-haired (so was I at the time), soft-spoken yet charismatic U of R student on a full scholarship. He always intimidated me a little, especially given how short I was/am, but we had some similar tastes in music, so we could always talk about how new Testament was strangely better than old Testament, and giggle at the religious references. Pages hired alongside me included Chris, the energetic homeschooled hipster goofball, Patrick (who even had the same last initial as me; shit got confusing), the straight-A valedictorian who was chill to talk to even though we didn't have much in common, and Hannah, the super religious girl you wouldn't know was super religious from the way she acted. I had a year on these guys, so there was a slight feeling of authority, which made it easier for me to talk to them than the last group.

Two years pass, and Chris, Pat, and Hannah had to go, and were replaced by Ben, Claire, and S-----e. Ben is still here, and thank god for that, because he's a great guy with a good sense of humor and, most importantly, is the only person I know who keeps up with the current anime season -- if only our tastes were more in line (no, Ben, I do not think Deadman Wonderland was very good, try some of this Tiger & Bunny). Claire was my friend's sister who I helped get in. She was a bit of an elitist, but she was still pleasant to people she liked, and fun to talk to besides. S-----e, who is also still here, is mild-mannered, so much so that it was a shock when she had a child at 17. (There's the reason for the dashes.) At some point we also got Sarah, the daughter of a staff member, who was a gossip but pretty smart in spite of that.

It was shortly after these guys were hired that I became Senior Page. Declan left, and I became the second one, changing the position's title to Señor Page, and totally rocking it out. I've done a lot as a part of my duties, not all of it fun -- removing numbers from the system entries for all ~20,000 non-fiction books individually, then turning those into labels in Word and pressing Enter on all of them to put each part of the label on its own proper line was not the most stimulating work. But I'm in a position of authority now, the only time I'm truly comfortable being myself. And it comes with jobs like this, too, cleaning DVDs in the back room where nobody is, thus giving me time to give up on writing a reader-friendly blog entry and fall back on writing about my work life. Such is life in Moscow.

Bookending. Hohoho.

R-B-Flot-ILLA: A Translation

Now lemme listen here, you like drink? You like drink those drink? Those drinks you drink, they good? Well I got some news up the Empire State Building: ain't got NOTHIN on a bottomless R-B-Flot-ILLA [root beer float].

Ya go to that baby bird nest with the hot flamingos [Red Robin], order some meatmanmaker above the strings of a spicy god [A1 Peppercorn Burger], and then what? Huh? You know? You know what? Yeah, that's right -- R-B-Flot-ILLA.

Cost of doghair backjob in Cincinatti [$3.50], ya get you a endless supply of mudluffin moon laser [delicious beverage]. One, you like, "mmmmmmmm," two, you like, "mmmmmmmm," three and you turn into the nuclear suplex of decades past [get a stomach ache]. But it don't matta. That R-B-Flot-ILLA make yo night all right with a kiss of scissors on a razor blade sandwich [??? unintelligible].

But then the burger come, and is like, "awwwwww sheeeeeeeee." That waitress be hittin you up for another R-B-Flot-ILLA, and ya jus gotta say, "I found the forces in a Florentine carshop [no thank you]." 'Cause that burger, and damn is it a burger, is gonna make you find the meaning of life in The Hunchback of Notre Dame [be delicious].

Cross your forties [fingers] that you get some fifty [pretty] babe waitin you dry and dopemouth [serving you well]. Look in the back seat and whinny [leave a nice tip], for it took much gusto [spirit] to serve you all them R-B-Flot-ILLAs, though it only be two prolly unless you got a stomach made a glass tanks [that can hold a lot of food]. Your ancestors be proud.

Save your daughters [money] like a little girl who prefer a Ken doll to a Kenneth doll [mischievous slut]. Go get your bottomless R-B-Flot-ILLA today. Else suffer the consequences of a Greater Lobster Demon on holiday in Samoa [not having a root beer float].

Wikiphilia

Scottish Gaelic? Hey I know an Ashley MacIsaac song that uses that. It's a great song. Sleepy Maggie. Makes me think of my story about a human black hole that doesn't have an article because it doesn't exist yet.

(And it all came from a click on Glasgow.)

Looks like a nice city. Is that a knockoff Sidney Opera House? I like the purple rainbow. Scotland's always been cool. The countryside is better than the city stuff though. More rustic.

(And it all came from a click on Pacifism.)

Not a bad idealogy. Who wants to fight, really? I mean, fighting for recreation is fun, but this isn't that. Like, anti-war and stuff. Fight the government man, get our troops out. Troops sound like boots. Go Mennonites.

(And it all came from a click on H.G. Wells.)

I've never read these books. I saw War of the Worlds, it wasn't very good. I guess Wells was a Zionist? Huh. I guess Wells was into eugenics? Huh.

(And it all came from a click on Raygun.)

RAYGUNS. Pew pew! Best weapon in every game they're in. Melting things, etc. Apparently science is working on making them real. Cool! Awesome. Great.

(And it all came from a click on Science fiction.)

Oh man, I love Sci-fi. Star Wars isn't really sci-fi. I mean it is, but it isn't. Ender's Game was all right, can't remember much about it. Started Hyperion, great setup, what with the several perspectives like Game of Thones. I should start reading Dune again.

(And it all came from a click on Sentience.)

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" That like sentience, right? Ha ha just kidding, I know all about that sentience right up there. I can't think for shit though. I don't think I'm sentient.

(And it all came from a click on Animal Welfare.)

That is an adorable puppy. Not like the dogs at my place. Yapping it up every time I walk in the door. Only part of my place I hate, really. Okay those chickens down there are ugly. Fuck animals.

(And it all came from a click on Cockfight.)

I did not know cockfights involved naked men. I think I'm gonna learn some good stuff today.

(And it all, all of it, everything up to Scottish Gaelic, came from a click on Random Article, because I was just that bored.)

Isabela, Puerto Rico looks like a nasty little place. That picture could not be browner and drearier if it tried. It's almost fake. Flat, like in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Source: Wikipedia, the Free Encycopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/

As if you didn't know.

Who Wants Pizza (workshop essay)

pizza-goat.jpg, google.com

I spend most nights without good sleep. After I have gone to bed, it’ll be at least an hour before I actually fall asleep. Too many thoughts float through my head for me to get any rest. Occasionally, one of those thoughts will be of pizza. Pizza? Who wants pizza? This question has plagued me since the first of my sleepless nights. I decided to work through my sleep issues by doing research on the subject: who, truly, wants pizza?

Directly asking people, I decided, was the best way to get the results I wanted. My potential sample size was the entire Brockport campus, so I basically asked away at anyone I could get to stop for five seconds. (Which, as it turns out, is everyone, because it’d be rude not to stop and answer somebody’s questions.) I did the majority of my research on the main walk, with some in the library and Union. The question was the same every time: “Excuse me. Do you want pizza?” For each different group of people, I mostly stuck to only one rule of asking three girls and three guys, because then I could see how much more girls disfavored me, and my resulting depression would be good for the two tubs of ice cream I had that were starting to get freezer burn. No attention was paid to the races, heights, or prettiness of the questionees, although I must admit that most of the people I asked were pretty, probably because Brockport is known internationally as The Fabulous Campus. Between the neutral question and half-half sex rule, I got the stability I needed, because everything else, from my stance to the specific people I asked, would be variable.

First I asked people in my most neutral tone, with no attention paid to any other variables. These are the results by sex, quotes included.

	Yes	No
Male	1. Pizza? Sure.	1. Nah, not really, I just ate. 2. Oh no, I’m good thanks. You have pizza lying around?
Female		1. No thank you. 2. No… thanks. 3. No, but thanks for offering.*

*This one was REALLY SUPER CUTE. Real professional-like. Black dress shirt, black slacks, yellow tie, the whole shebang, and it went great with her redwood complexion, sculpted jaw, and spiked, jet-black hair. I couldn’t tell whether she was a man or a woman for a second, and that just made me giddier. She was the first one to smile, too! And what a laugh she had. If any Brockport readers notice someone who matches that description, report to me immediately so I can be stalk her and/or kidnap her.

After buying a third tub of ice cream to further drown my sorrows, I lamented more thoughtfully on the results. Why did nobody want pizza? Was it me? Was it the way I carried myself? The experiment had barely started and I was already doubting myself. But I carried on, determined to prove my worth of offering pizza.

I decided next to try a more confident approach. My brows furrowed slightly, my eyes peering into the depths of every soul, my mouth cocked up on one side, and my voice two tones deeper. It was the ultimate in attraction.

	Yes	No
Male	1. Sure. What’s up?	1. No. 2. Nah.
Female	1. Sure. I love pizza. You have a good night.	1. No. 2. No, thank you, sorry.

Still depressingly stacked on the “no” side, but getting better. I was starting to understand why people were rejecting my offer at first. All it took was a little confidence; it wasn’t me that put them off after all.

My approach thus far involved finding people on the main walk very late at night – past 10:00 – who were alone, and not in sight nor earshot of anyone else. I walked up to them directly, asking them if they wanted pizza, then walking away immediately afterwards. I decided to keep this approach for the time being, and change up my mannerisms once again. I hid my right arm under the left side of my jacked, as if concealing something, and grabbed onto that side of my jacked tightly with my left hand, as if ready to unveil it to the world at a moment’s notice. My voice changed to a lower, more snake-like texture, and my words sped up and stuck together, giving the impression of a desperate homeless man, while I, once again, approached lone strangers in the dead of night, offering pizza.

	Yes	No
Male		1. I’m good right now, thanks man. 2. What? Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout? You want pizza? 3. Oh no, thank you. That’s all right, I had a big dinner. Thanks for offering. Thank you. Thank you. That’s so sweet. That’s like… (etc.)
Female		1. No… 2. Uh, no. 3. No thank you.

Clearly the approach matters. I decided to stick with a neutral position, as it was between the two, and would protect the other variables from influence.

For the experiment’s sake, I decided to do a round of daylight offerings, with people around.

	Yes	No	Other
Male	1. What kind of question is that? Absolutely.	1. Nah. 2. No thank you.
Female		1. No. 2. No.	1. Shit.

Results were largely the same. I determined that time of day and amount of surrounding people was not a factor. With that out of the way, I moved on to other, more niche factors.

Glasses-wearers seemed like a nice bunch. Surely they would accept this kind offer.

	Yes	No
Male	1. Sure. Sure.	1. Right now? I’m all good for right now.
Female	1. Yes. 2. Yeahhh.	2. N-no.*

*She stuttered! A girl with glasses stuttering. Adorable.

Success! People with glasses truly must appreciate pizza more. (That said, this one was slightly more difficult than others, as it was halfway impossible to find men with glasses.) Even the girls, who had so adamantly refused in the past, were more receptive when they were of the glasses variety. I believe I will hit on girls with glasses exclusively from now on.

But wait! Could there be even more accepting demographics? I aimed to find out, and continued my experiment by asking this dude I held the door open for.

	Yes	No
Male		1. No thank you. I don’t like pizza that much.

Snippy. He didn’t have to lie to me.

After this failure, I went for a more traditional route: asking people in pairs. (I didn’t go any higher than that because my brain would malfunction from the amount of combinations I’d have to separate.)

	Yes	No
Male/Male	1. Yes. / I am pro-pizza. Do I have to pay for this pizza? 2. Of course. / Yes.
Female/Female	1. Yes. / Yeah. 2. Yes. / Sure.
Male/Female		1. No thanks. / I’m on a diet.

Very positive reception – mostly. Two guys together can’t resist pizza. Two girls together can’t resist pizza. But a guy and a girl together? No, of course not! Guy, you have to show off right? Gotta be the man? “No other guy is gonna offer my girl pizza.” HA. And girl, you’re on a diet? Don’t make me laugh. You just don’t want to look like the glutton you are in front of your tall, handsome, athletic, tall, well-spoken, tall, tall boyfriend. Couples, ha ha, so arrogant.*

*It has been scientifically proven that every time a guy and a girl walk together, they are a couple.*

*This does not apply to two men or two women walking together, as homosexuals, scientifically, do not exist.*

*I am so bitter and sad, please hold me.

Next I asked a guy in a bathroom stall.

	Yes	No
Male		1. I’m good thanks.

One more demographic down.

My next target was members of authority. Included in this are the names of these celebrities.

	Yes	No
Male	1. Sure. – Tyler Brown, BSG Treasurer. 2. Sure. – Lou Spiro, Vice President, the College at Brockport
Female	1. I’d eat it. – Andrea Vella, Assistant to the Vice President	1. Right now? No. – Holly Perry, Department of Recreation

As expected, most were receptive. You have to keep an open mind and be amicable to be an authority figure in this day and age. If it were fifty years ago, I would not get such a positive response, as they had to be cold to keep their reputations, and also it was 1961 and they probably did not have pizza back then.

So many variables, so little time! I was walking around the library basement in the afternoon and noticed people alone in whole computer labs. Hence, my next target was people alone in whole computer labs.

	Yes	No
Male	1. Yeah.
Female	1. Sure.	1. Um… not right now.

Unsurprising. People alone in computer labs tend to be desperate for pizza.

I happened to see an Asian girl in the library. After asking her, I decided to find two more Asian girls.

	Yes	No
Female	1. Sure. 2. Huh? Pizza? Sure. 3. I don’t think it’s Halloween… Yes, I want pizza.

Even higher success rate than girls with glasses. I shall go after Asian glasses girls.

I asked the cashier at Trax.

	Yes	No
Female		1. No thank you, I don’t want pizza.

This inspired me to seek out people who were eating or had already eaten. Included is what they ate.

	Yes	No
Male	1. Yeah, sure. – sandwich and chips	1. No. – tomato salad, wild caught salmon, banana 2. Nah, I actually clean the Union Grille. – UG shit probably
Female		1. No thank you. – vegetable sandwich 2. No. – chicken breast spinach wrap 3. I just ate. – potatoes, french fries, chicken

At one point I saw a guy holding a slice of pizza.

	Yes	No
Male		1. No I have pizza.

After so many variables, after so many offerings of pizza to strangers, I could come to no strong conclusions about who, truly, wants pizza, except maybe Asian girls because they seemed especially excited. But maybe my success rate would have been higher had I asked people I knew. Maybe it’s weird to ask a stranger if he or she wants pizza. Maybe this whole thing was really creepy.

The sacrifices we make in the name of science.

Dead-Apple Picking

I just ate the last third of an M&M cookie that was on a table at work today. Just a couple hours ago, it was a half a cookie. I'm sure at some point before that, it was a whole cookie, and that there were more before it. My shift started at 9:30, when I walked in and noticed the half-cookie. Everyone else started at 8:00. So that means that for an hour and a half, several cookies were eaten (I am told there were only three and a half more, but this could be deception), while between 9:30 and noon, less than a third of one cookie was eaten. This happens at my other job, too. Sometimes there will be a box full of donuts in the break room when we open at 9:00, and by 11:00 only one will remain, which, without my intervention, would stay there the rest of the day. I'm usually not in the mood for donuts, but I always end up scarfing that last one down hurriedly, to soonest clear the table of unnecessary clutter.

Why does this happen? Is it because nobody wants to clean up? Are they afraid just one more donut will make them gain 20 pounds? Is it astrology -- some cosmic coincidence that causes death eating donuts past a certain time and under a certain sign? Could my coworkers be playing at some cruel subterfuge, to make the last third of a cookie feel like it could die at any moment, torturing it with the menace of waiting for several hours? Truthfully, none of that matters, because the fact is, I just thought far too much about why there was only a third of a cookie left on a table.

It's not just cookies and donuts; it's data, and papers, and people. Even if I have 500 GB left on my hard drive, I will go delete 300 MB shows after I watch them, or go through and delete games I don't play, at maybe 8 GB large, if I determine that they're "taking up too much space." Music isn't safe either -- if I download or rip an album, I can't stand to have it on my HD for more than a week before deleting all the songs I don't like after only a couple listens. My kitty-covered school folder, too, is subject to The Purge. I regularly empty my folder of graded homework, days-old assignments, things I can find on Angel, and things I can't find on Angel or anywhere and might end up being necessary for class but hey maybe not, right? And friends, oh dear friends. Even though my Facebook friends list is small, and my cell phone contacts list smaller, I still feel the overwhelming urge to destroy destroy DESTROY when I see names that are not being utilized to their full potential. (Or just people I don't talk to or see much, only exceptions being my few super-hot acquaintances.) It's like picking the dead apples off a tree when you know they're going to fall off anyway.

I don't know if this is a problem or what, but the feeling of purging, of removing everything that is not absolutely necessary, is too cleansing and too relieving for me to stop. My room is neat, my PC organized, and my life in order. I feel like I am missing some chaos in my life because of this, but then again, some chaos has been added, too. After all, under what other conditions would I so obsess about a third of a cookie?

FALL 2011 ANIME GUIDE: TRY TO LOVE

I know what you're thinking. "Anime? Ha ha, oh man, is this guy serious? Loser!" "Nice one, Chett, let's go pick up chicks and be successful at life." "Rock on." And minus everything except "anime" and "loser," I am thinking the exact same thing. But we're supposed to write about things we care about, right? Nothing is exciting me so much right now as the new anime season -- potentially the best I've ever seen -- so damn am I going to write about it. I apologize if you chose this week to comment on my post, but I'll try to make it entertaining. And educational. But I don't want to torture you that much, so I'll keep things semi-brief. Without further ado, welcome to Patrick "Hulk Hogan II: The Sequel" Cassidy's Fall 2011 Anime Guide!

Shinryaku!? Ika Musume



This is the second season to a comedy about a squid girl who has come to invade humanity because of its polluting of the ocean, but ends up putting a hole in the wall of a beach shack and has to work there to pay it off. It's a goofy premise, and definitely a fun-for-all-ages show. The humor comes from mocking Squid Girl (that's all they call her) for her ineptitude at everything, not the least of which is invading. Characters are introduced who love her, fear her, and are fascinated by her, but no matter what, it keeps the same light tone at a followable pace. This season starts off with no recap, so we're dunked right into another sketch. It feels like we never left.

Rating: 8/10

Working'!!



This second season, on the other hand, has began with pretty much just recap, with little new to offer to veterans of the series. It still follows cuteness-obsessed Souta Takanashi and his unusual coworkers at the restaurant Wagnaria, including androphobe Inami, perpetually short Popura, and lazy manager Kyouko. In the series proper we get to see fun interactions and relationship developments (though Inami is still, as ever, punching the daylights out of Takanashi), but that wasn't present this episode. The episode 2 preview looks like it will be interesting, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Rating: 8/10

Special note: The opening, having to live up to the embarrassingly addicting "Someone Else" from season 1, did a reasonable job of catching the spirit of the original while not being completely derivative. I'll be mouthing "fun fun fun" while no one is looking for the next few months. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKxaeSVj2IE

Hunter x Hunter



A remake of an adaptation of a somewhat generic teen boys' comic, HxH doesn't start off with the same excitement as the author's previous work, Yu Yu Hakusho. But an idealistic, naive young boy who wants to be a "hunter" in a world where such an occupation is lauded but dangerous is just the kind of protagonist that attracted many to Dragon Ball all those years ago. It's a fast-paced episode -- the hero Gon has already set out on his journey and befriended childish, money-hungry Leorio and sole survivor/cool kid Kurapika -- and though it's not all that special yet, for the comic to still be running for over 10 years it must get great at some point. I'll keep my eye on it.

Rating: 6/10

Phi-Brain



Sunrise's show this season that isn't Horizon (and thank god for that) is improbable, has terrible character designs, and everyday characters to go along with it, yet it still manages to be fun. In a world that is otherwise exactly like ours (this is key in its unbelievability), puzzle-solving is an invaluable skill, and teenager Kaito Daimon is one of the best. He gets an invitation from the mysterious "Minotaur" to solve a puzzle even Einstein couldn't. When Daimon finishes it with the help of plucky girl/accessory Nonoha, he gets the Phi-Brain, a bracelet that accelerates his puzzle-solving abilities tenfold. It's completely ridiculous, and despite some forced "make the main character look cool" moments (apparently the next best puzzle solver took a whole day to beat a sudoku puzzle), this works in its favor.

Rating: 7/10

Fate/Zero



If you aren't utterly familiar with the trappings of Fate/Stay Night, the visual novel of which this is a prequel, then you might not have as good a time as I did, but thanks to smart pacing you should still get a kick out of it. It does a pretty good job of explaining the universe: every 10 years, seven mages across the world are selected by the Holy Grail to vie for its contents, and they travel to Fuyuki City to summon heroic spirits of the past and of fiction (for example, King Arthur or Medusa) to fight each other in the Holy Grail War. Production values are startling, and there's a lot of dense dialogue peppered throughout with more actiony scenes in such a way that it's still easy to follow. If you take one thing away from this post, it's that you should at least give this show a try, especially if you are open to shows like Game of Thrones. Just try not to laugh at the scene where two characters pace around another for lack of things to do.

Rating: 9/10

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere (aka amalgamation of every anime cliche ever)



That's all that needs to be said, really.

Rating: /10

Tamayura



Fu Sawatari's father recently passed away, and she's taken up his hobby of photography. After moving to a new town, she tries her best to make new friends and come to terms with her loss. If that sounds sparse to you, that's because almost nothing happens this episode. Slow to the point of boredom, the one thing that kept me watching the show was the captivating, somehow nostalgic scenery and background art. Even a good setting isn't enough to sustain a show, however, and while its theme of coping with loss give it a uniquely bitter taste, the pacing simply isn't up to snuff.

Rating: 6/10

Chihayafuru



A delicately paced drama/romance built around a Japanese card game that's obscure even in Japan -- what better way to spend a midweek afternoon? Chihaya is the gorgeous daughter of a gorgeous model, but her only interest is in karuta, a game that involves slapping cards with the second verses of poems on them when you hear the first verses on a tape recording. She's in high school now, but the bulk of the episode is about her in elementary school, where she met Arata, a quiet kid with no friends. Though Chihaya's blunt personality causes him some problems, it also brings the two closer, and he introduces her to karuta. She is amazed by his passion for something when no one else has any, and takes up an interest in the game herself. It may sound like a quaint premise, but it's wonderfully done, with a sweet atmosphere, revealing dialogue and likeable characters. The other show of the season so far.

Rating: 9/10




Still to come are the adaptation of the video game Persona 4, a Last Exile sequel years after the fact, a full Future Diary season from the same studio that brought us the awful straight-to-video oneshot, the Code Geass clone (and therefore exciting) Guilty Crown, hilariously named I Don't Have Many Friends, and detective show Un-Go. If I'm lucky, Lupin III Part 4 will show up too, but it seems MIA at the moment.

But I won't write about those. Can't be redundant with these blog posts, and I don't want to be that cruel to you guys. I've already written several times the limit. For those who made it through, ask me and I'll make you a medal.

William the Retard

Back in Boy Scouts, we had a kid named William. Nobody ever called him Will; it was always William, like we were his parents constantly having to shout his full name to let him know he was doing wrong. He was a year below us, but that was no excuse for his behavior, such as chasing a squirrel with a makeshift club. No, his maladjustment could be blamed squarely on his parents' poor luck: William was a retard.

He was only borderline retarded -- a few points above the line that determined if you were fit for society. Our school accepted him well enough. And he could carry and follow conversations, and didn't have the worst grades in his class. Really, it was only his looks and speech that gave it away, even before you knew he was inclined to occasionally shit on trees in plain sight of the nearest path. A redneck cherub wasn't someone you could easily mistake for intelligent, buckteeth and blotchy dark skin and slow drawl, and glazed eyes and chubby cheeks and all. William had a presence, which, for me, was the nicest thing you could say about him.

I didn't know quite how to treat him back then. Even being in middle and high school, I had enough of a conscience not to make fun of him just for being born unfortunately, even behind his back. (The same couldn't be said of Max and Andy, two of his classmates, who constantly tormented him and made him pitch their tents or throw out their trash. Perhaps because they had to be around him more than we did.) But the fact of the matter was that I did not like dealing with him. None of us did, not even the leaders, who would awkwardly laugh at his jokes, or just say, "yup." I was never unfortunate enough to have to share a tent with him (like Max and Andy did). Sometimes, though, I would end up next to him at a table, and I would try my best to sit in my seat fully, and not scrunched uncomfortably to the side, away from him and his loud, open-mouthed chewing.

One instance stands out in my wasteland of a memory bank. At Camp Massawepie one year, our grueling one-week summer venture in the Adirondacks (made bearable only by the rifles and the bows), we had sat down for lunch in the mess hall, with myself two seats down from William. It was taco day. A bowl of meat laid in the center of the table. After avoiding the prayer and trudging through the pro-boy guttertalk in the announcements (complete with the slapping of tables and Lord of the Flies-esque chanting), I was ready for my midday break from thought. But William, sweet William, grabbed the bowl first. The spoon was large, almost like a ladle, and William took full advantage of its higher functions -- namely, spooning a shitton of meat onto his plate. After fully a third of the bowl had been depleted, he seemingly remembered that there were eleven other people at the table, and instead of scooping some of the meat back into the bowl, he simply passed it down, making his taco. Cries of "William!," the shaking of heads, the dead stares, and the rubbing of temples prompted him not to apologize, but to eat in silence. Not having to hear his voice was enough for me.

The meat would have been no big deal coming from anyone else (I've always been more of a sharer in group meals), but from him I just got sullen and frustrated. Frustrated because he screwed up, again, and sullen because it was never his fault, and he would never learn. He works as a cart retriever at Wegmans now, 20 years old, and I see him sometimes. I wave and smile, and he says, "hi Patrick" as he waddles to a cart he has forgotten. I helped him grab that cart one time, knowing it to be the largest contribution I could make to his day -- leaving the curing of mental incapacity to gold-hearted intellectuals, while I walked barely ten feet, to and from the cart.

Chain of Memories

I have a web of memories. If I think of one, inevitably I will think of five more. And since this process takes place over the course of a couple seconds, my memories end up jumbled and I can't remember which one took place when. It might explain my terrible memory, but I don't wish this memory-web away -- some of these connections are just too fun, and it's more fun to try to figure them out.

Normally the first memory comes from a time of year, or a big event. Let's start with Halloween. When Halloween comes around, several threads appear. The most prominent begins with Bunnicula, an old cartoon about a vampire rabbit. From there we get to Hellsing, an anime about a vampire. Sound enough, right? Not for long -- from Hellsing, it goes to Mardi Gras. An episode of Hellsing took place in some apartment on an empty Spanish street that looked suspiciously like New Orleans. I got it in my head that everybody in Spain was partying it up a few blocks down the road, and this apartment was on the outskirts, where some unlucky victims were looking to enjoy each other's company.

Now, from Mardi Gras we go to Girls Gone Wild. Not too big of a leap, especially if you remember the Girls Gone Wild Mardi Gras special that aired at 3 am years ago. After Girls Gone Wild, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. All I can think of is that both have scantily clad ladies, GTA typically poking fun at the sex industry. GTA:SA goes to bestiality. A few years ago, at an overnight birthday party, those of us awake at 4 am were taking turns playing San Andreas. Earlier in the night, the friend of mine who gave me my copy of the game was browsing Beast Tube on my Wii. We especially enjoyed the video of a turtle with (what we all saw as) a penis longer than its own body, flopping around on a plastic ball. I still remember the way it repeatedly opened its mouth, as if desperate to explain its horrific growth.

Enough on Beast Tube, time for Spider-Man. Even earlier that night, my friends had gotten me a Spider-Man web shooter that I shot onto my friends' faces. This takes me back to my PS1 days, when I was playing Spider-Man with a friend of mine. With the same friend I often played a demo of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. That obviously takes me to THPS2, then to Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory, to Howard Stern, to Massawepie, etc. etc.

Of course, that was only one thread. There are sometimes branches that the memories go down instead -- for instance, I didn't have to think of Tony Hawk, I could have thought of Spyro the Dragon, gone to Christmas, then started an entirely new chain of memories. And it doesn't always start with Bunnicula -- it could start with more typical Halloween fare, like cider and donuts, or a haunted hay ride. But inevitably it would end up at something completely different, just a few seconds later. And I would have trouble deciding whether or not I watched bestiality when I was 10.