I haven’t written in a while. Stuff has happened. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I’m going to go eat ramen at this place a little more than an hour away with some friends. I hope I make it back on time. Nervous, nervous.
I’m in the middle of finishing up my packing, backing up everything onto a portable drive, uploading stuff to my DS… And that’s about it.
All nighter friday. We played Brawl, for some reason Mass Effect, some Four Swords and Halo 3. Four Swords didn’t last long because someone(coughmattcough) forgot to bring their Game Boy, so we only had 3. Also we have bad attention spans.
I tried (see: Forced) to get people to watch the Super Mario Bros movie, but it proved too painful to sit through, so after much bitching we watched some of Matt’s movies, which were actually decent. Onion Movie and Anchorman. Onion Movie, according to Matt, never made it to theatres, which surprises me considering how shit like Epic Movie did.
I got like, no sleep… I tried around 5:00 AM, but I was woken up by my friends playing Halo 3 and playing “Sunshine Lolipops and Rainbows…” and pausing every few seconds, having a very violent affect on my eardrums. As it turns out, they were trolling people in Halo 3 online by yelling “WHOOPSIES” and “TOASTY” in a really high pitched voice into the mike. Calvin and Matt are really good at it… It’s annoying to listen to.
Since Matt’s Zune died, I decided to get a bunch of trolling material myself and upload it to my R4. I uploaded some farting noises (which caused us to giggle uncontrollably), WHERE DA HOOD AT, Chad Warden, and the Death Note fandub. People probably muted us right away, but we found it endlessly amusing.
I got like 7 hours of sleep afterwards, and now I’m pretty zoned out…
Right now I’m not supposed to be downstairs. My parents are in the attic, and I’m supposed to be in my room sleeping.
What happened was that I was on the laptop and my dad was walking into the kitchen, obviously doing some shit before going to bed. He pretends to be surprised that I’m on the computer, despite seeing me there before that night. He says that I must be extremely lucky to use it. I say that I’m not.
“what?”
Oh shit, I said something wrong. I explain that I am unlucky to be using the laptop in contrast with the possibility of going downstairs, but its no good. He’s pissed off for no reason and says I have to go upstairs to bed. I reach for my DS, and he asks if I’d be lucky to use that. I say no, since my ability to play my DS was never called into question. All of a sudden, I can’t take that upstairs. After physically forcing me to go upstairs, he says that I can’t say anything unless its positive, in which case he’ll consider restoring some of my rights. As he said that in his irritatingly rightous tone, he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t touch me.” Was all that I said. He turned around as if to say something, but ignored it and went upstairs.
This has been a great week. Really, I’ll write all about it once I FUCKING GET TO USE THE GOD DAMNED COMPUTER.
Now I’m heading back upstairs so I don’t get in even more trouble.
This is not what I fucking need right before the finals.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had these 2 little brown dots on my face, one under each of my eyes. They’re perfectly symmetrical, and what sucks is that the one on my right side is disappearing. It’s like, fading away over time. And that sucks. 
I got a haircut. I asked for it to be cut down to 2 inches… Fuck, thats shorter than I thought.
I really need to figure out the ideal length of my hair… Right now its way too short, but before it was way too long and I practically had an afro.
Funny how I go from one extreme to the other…
(I typed this up last night and ment to post it then, but WordPress was down and I needed sleep. So here it is now.)
Incredibly, I played D&D and went to a dance in the same day.
It was awesome. I feel alive, even though I’m tired as hell.
Hard to describe it. Basically went with Ray and some people I don’t really know, followed what everyone else was doing, and hopefully by now I have some idea of how to dance. It was really crowded, so its not like anyone was gonna judge me. It was pretty fucking awesome, and now I don’t feel like a complete loser anymore!
Goddamn, now I need to a girlfriend…
It’s over already.
…
…
This morning, 7:10 AM. I got up and went downstairs to check on Bluie. As I took the bag down from where it was, it was too dark to see Bluie very well. I could only see a silhouette of him. I pulled the shoe box out of the bag, and held it to the light leaking in through the blinds.
He wasn’t breathing.
…
I cried. I thought that I wouldn’t the day before, but I did. We were pretty sure he wouldn’t last long, but I had only known him for 12 hours. Probably less, considering he died during the night. 7:30 AM. I eat breakfast, and we get a phone call. I answer the phone after my dad did, and without speaking catch a part of the conversation… It was a returned call from one of the clinics, after I had left a message yesterday.
Dad came downstairs to ask me how the bird was doing. I told him. He told her. She wanted to speak to me. She said I did all that I could, and that the bird was already mortally wounded, somehow. He probably hit a window and fell, or something like that. She asked if I wanted a pamphlet sent to my house on what to do in such a situation… I said yes. I don’t know why.
I got back from burying Bluie half an hour ago. By then, his little eyes were all dried up, not shiny like they were the day before. His legs were stiff, and stuck out from his body, unlike when he was alive. Dad dug the hole, about a foot and a half deep. I put Bluie in, propped him up like he was standing… And we covered the hole.
I took off two of his tail feathers before we buried him. I’m gonna hold onto them. They’re very important to me. I don’t know why.
…
Bluie the Blue Jay
- April 14th, 2008
R.I.P.
My dad found a baby blue jay near the garage this afternoon. He had set it aside, since it was apparently unable to move. We then went driving off to get my new glasses and also to go grocery shopping.
When we got back, the bird was still alive, fortunately. I immediately locked the cats up inside the house, prepared a shoe box with torn up newspaper, and brought the bird inside. It wasn’t moving much, aside from turning its head. It had its beak open, as if it wanted us to feed it. We tried giving it bread and then meat, neither really worked.
Later, I tried giving it water, which is actually really wanted. Twice, after giving it water, it would suddenly move around. The first time it got it’s wing caught outside the box. The second time it flipped itself onto its back and then back upright.
Also, after giving it water it would suddenly shake its head, as if to flick the water off of its face. It kept knocking its beak into the box, which probably wasn’t good for it. In addition, I’ve decided to name it Bluey.
I really don’t want this thing to die. Right now its in its box, which is in a large dark bag, which is in a dark room isolated from the cats.
I’ll try to update this blog with what happens. Lets see where this goes…
But regardless… Anime Boston 2008. Just want to talk about it a bit.
I went for only one day, it was pretty kickass. I was tired as hell from all the walking, but it was still amazing. The only downside was all the Naruto cosplayers. Plus there was one incident that I can’t ever forget…
Me and my friends were walking down this huge hall filled with people, and there was this Jiraiya cosplayer standing around. Then this little kid cosplaying as Naruto walked up to him and screamed, I repeat screamed the following abomination:
“Jiraiya-sama! When are you going to train me? Dattebyo!”
Me and Matt were so appalled that we took 10 steps, then fell down facepalming in shame. It was that bad.
Also noteworthy is the incredible overuse of “you just lost the game”. People said it nearly every 5 minutes. It’s not funny. Stop doing that. Sam, my weaboo friend, who was in his natural habitat and acting particularly obnoixoius, hated it when we reminded him that he lost the game… And when we were sitting around in the concert, a girl passed him a note that was apparently ment for “Ash” (since he was cosplaying as him). It said “you just lost the game”, and Matt burst out in laughter. It was epic. I never saw it coming.
Finally, there were scientology protesters there handing out pamplets… The anonymous ones.
Keep that shit out of my animu con, you fucking faggots. Save it for the raids, damnit.
Speaking of which, we have a raid to go to tomorrow. Fun, fun.
Oh hey. Forgot to update for a while. Not that anyone actually reads my blog, but still.
Let’s see… Not much has happened. Or at least, not much that I can remember (this is why I’m supposed to update my blog) . I beat Halo 3 and Naruto: Rise of a Ninja on the 360.
I’d like to talk less about Halo 3, since I have nothing interesting to say about it. Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, on the other hand, I have some things to discuss.
It’s a great concept, really. It’s an anime fighting game and a platformer all in one… But the way it’s presented, it’s almost like an RPG. When you encounter an enemy, the game switches to the fighting game engine where you beat the crap out of your opponent. The platformer aspect of the game is sort of like the exploring portion of an RPG, except a lot more fun.
I have to admit, controlling Naruto in single player can lead to some problems. The biggest example of this is the double jump. Unlike some platformers, you can’t use the double jump at any point during your fall, you have to activate it right after your first jump for it to work. This means that you can’t use it to break your fall, or use it if you fall off an edge. Minor nitpicking. What is cool, though, is that you can hold down to R trigger to run really, really fast. This in itself is worth testing out for 10 minutes or so. In exchange for incredible speed and a really useful long jump, its quite difficult to turn or slow down.
When I saw this game for the first time, one thing came to my mind; “This is what next-gen Sonic should have played like.” Everything works so well. You run through forests at breakneak speeds, dodging explosive tags and mysterious spiked logs while trying to collect items or meet up with other characters. The enviroments look amazing, as well. The waterfall area in particular. It’s too bad, really. I downloaded the Sonic 360 demo just to see what it was like. It was awful… The control was so bad, you can’t do anything but run in a straight line. Considering that the speed aspect is a minor part of Rise of a Ninja, it’s amazing how much better it’s handled compared to any Sonic game.
Here’s where my praise stops. I’d like to describe the fighting part of the game… Where every battle takes place and where the replay value lies through online play.
I don’t like it. My friends do, though. A lot more than Gekitou 4 for the Gamecube. It certainly is fast paced, there’s no denying that. It’s also fairly accessible, since even idiots like Noah and Max and mash buttons and win some of the time. Still, it’s hard to take the game seriously enough to play online. It basically comes down to getting one hit in, stringing two of the game’s preset combo’s together (one ground and one aerial), then pulling off a jutsu while your opponent is down.
Unlike Gekitou 4, if you pull off a jutsu in this game, it hits automatically. The jutsus all play out as a simple minigame, usually involving timing or (shudder) button mashing. Which I’m bad at. The jutsus look pretty good, but they really should be faster. Compared to Gekitou 4, you’ll be looking at the jutsu animations a lot more.
Anyway, like I said, this 2 combo + jutsu combo will do more than half of your opponent’s health. There is some complexity, and you can use a replacement jutsu, but it doesn’t work half of the time. Also, having the replacement logged to the same button as blocking seems a bit weird.
I do, however, like how to pull off a jutsu in the first place you need to do the hand signs. This means you’ll have to do some memorization, but on the plus side, it’s kinda cool for Narutards like myself. Each hand sign is a combination of the left and right analogue stick in certain directions. Pulling them of in quick succession can be tricky.
Back to single player, the jutsus you learn all have use outside of battle. Shadow Clones destroy giant boulders, the Sexy Jutsu will make heartbroken villagers like you, and Chakra Concentration lets you climb up walls and walk on water. Chakra Concentration is easily the coolest of the bunch, but it’s such a drag to have to pull it off every time you want to walk on water. Really, if they make a sequel, you should be able to use Chakra Concentration without pulling off the hand signs first. It’d just save so much time.
I’m also happy that they used the soundtrack from the show, though they could have used some more of the show’s action themes. Most of the characters are voiced by the show’s VAs, and I say most because there are few that really stand out as bad. These include Anko, Jiraiya, and Moegi (female member of Konohamaru’s team). They’re not that important to the story, really, but the lines they have aren’t done particularly well.
Did I mention that the story is pretty butchered? Because it is. A lot of details are skipped, and if you don’t watch the show, you’ll miss out on a lot. Since the game is told from Naruto’s perspective, the Forest of Death part is especially confusing… Plus, although Rock Lee is a playable character, he doesn’t appear anywhere in the story. What’s up with that?
Despite all of my tiny problems I’ve found with the game, I love it, and if you’re a fan of the show you should definitely try it out. Even you whiny Japanophiles, since theres an option for Japanese voiceovers if you really can’t tolerate “believe it”.
