A Valentine's Letter of Sorts

Note: Today's post is actually ripped and generally unedited from an old blog of mine. I had posted this a year or two ago for Valentine's Day, as I had been playing Final Fantasy 8 for the first time around then. Those who have played it may find this humorous, those who haven't... Well, let's just say I'm honestly not exaggerating the game much at all. Anyways:


Dear Final Fantasy 8,

I know we may not have gotten along the best in the past, but I hope this day is treating you well. Needless to say, I know that you're a very demanding individual, and I hope you find someone that can do things the way you like them. Someone who won't try to fight their battles. Someone who won't try to get more experience. I know you want to keep us down, FF8. You don't want us to play the way we're used to playing, you want us to work with you, the way you want, because you think that would be funny.

A look back at more pleasant times together,
before I opened your case.

It would be fine if those we're the only issues, but baby, you know they're not. I know you have a thing for artists, but you can't just force someone to be one if they aren't already. I've been drawing and drawing and drawing for you, FF8, and what do I have to show for it? Am I really any better than I was before? I don't feel like it. You tell me that I'll be better if I stock up 100 of each drawing, but do you know how long that even takes to do? And then every once in a while, you'll make me use the drawings so that you can show your friends or whatever it is you even do with them, and then I have to start drawing back up to 100 drawings again. Oh, and not to mention the times you find something totally new you like, and then I have to start drawing all over again.

I'm sorry, baby. I know this is a special day, and I didn't mean to just bad talk you, but you make me so emotional. I know that you have your positive qualities sometimes too. Like, um, do you remember when we used to play cards together? We always had so much with that. I got into cards back when I used to play with my ex, FF9, but then I realized that playing with her wasn't any fun. She had all these crazy rules, and she expected me to remember all of them. She would draw all these weird numbers and letters on the cards, and once I thought that I finally understood her little game, she told me that she actually couldn't even fit on all the numbers she needed to on the card itself. 

Oh... Oh god. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, FF9?
WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

That's why I liked our card games, baby, at least at first. You kept it simple. I could see what was going on. Unfortunately, even that was not perfect. At some point you got it in your head that it would be fun to start changing up the rules every once in a while. You thought it would be more interesting. Then, when I was confused by all these new rules, you would beat me and take the one card I treasured most. The one I never knew if I would find another copy of. Somehow, FF8, you managed to break my spirit and take away all the fun I once had over our card game that I held so close to my heart.

I haven't even touched upon your crazy demands. Do you remember that time you told me that you thought I should wear fire instead of a coat? I laughed it off, thinking you were just cracking a joke, but then you just stared at me expectantly. You tried to tell me it would help protect me, and I honestly didn't even know what to tell you.

In retrospect, I guess I really haven't touched upon a good quality. You can sing pretty well, I guess? I don't know, FF9 used to be better at that too. Well, anyways, I wish you the best.

Best Regards,
Azuma

The Ultimate Fear

Over the last week, Lola became more scared than usual. Sure, Lola was always a complete chicken, but now she was scared to even sit in the family room any longer and I would constantly find her either in the kitchen all alone or in the cat's small room, sitting with him.

You know somethings wrong when this
creep seems like a suitable roommate.

We weren't sure what was bugging Lola so much. We realized there had to be something in the family room that was getting to her, but we had no idea what it could possibly be. Her world was crumbling around her and we were merely insensitive jerks, clueless to the cause of her endless pain. 

This is what it looks like when a giant dog fearfully
 tries to cram herself into a room meant for a cat

We pondered and pondered what could have possibly had this effect on her, but couldn't seem to figure it out. All the while, her growing fear spread over a week, showing no signs of going away. By the end of the week we finally learned what the problem was, and she's now slowly been re-adapting to her old habitat in our family room... but before merely explaining what scared her so greatly, I'd like to take a step back and consider things from her point of view.

Last week was my brother's birthday, and over the weekend we had a surprise dinner party out for him one night. Obviously, as any individual could tell you, this meant to Lola that we had ditched yet again for the night to go out, but the true problems were so much larger than that. 

While enjoying our time at the party, my brother got a number of fun gifts, and some family friends even brought some balloons to add to the festive atmosphere of the party. When the night was done, we decided to take some of the balloons home, as our friends had certainly put together a very nice collection of sorts. When we got back home, we put the balloons in the front room, right by the family room, and went to say hello to our dogs, like always. Lola, like always, was happy to see us after having probably scared herself into thinking we had left her forever. She was happy enough, in fact, that we never would have realized that this very moment was when her intense fear began. As Lola cheerfully licked us all hello, her eyes set sight on the balloons which now resided in the next room over. Lola, in her abstract dog mentality, quickly recognized said balloons for exactly what they were. She immediately noticed that her old worst enemy, plastic bags, had somehow now obtained the ability to levitate... and this horrified her. Lola stared at the balloons, unsure what to do about this terrifying new revelation, while the balloons merely floated in place, smugly mocking her fear.

Look at those smug motherfuckers

Lola had known fear before, but she had never known fear like this. No matter how hard she fearfully glared, at the balloons, they stood their ground. They may have wavered some in the natural breeze, but they showed no sympathy or remorse. Lola knew that the house wasn't big enough for the both of them, and was determined that either her or the balloons would have to go, but she couldn't find the determination to stand up to the balloons and their ruthless bullying. She wanted to find that determination, truly she did, but when she stared at the cold, lifeless surface of those balloons, she was instilled with such fear that she would physically shake.

It was only once we realized that, perhaps, there was a connection between the balloons and Lola's fear that we moved said balloons to another room where she wouldn't be able to see them.

And thus, Lola felt she could stand tall in knowing that this was a battle that she had won. She knew she could now rest peacefully.

Still, however, every once in a while Lola shakes walking into the room as she fearfully scans it, considering the possibility that her old nemesis could return.

Goose Part II: All Hell Breaks Loose

I thought the Geese outside my workplace were weird before... I did. Now everything's reached a whole new level though.

Over the past week, goose drama was unfolding left and right. The word around the office was initially that father goose had left mother goose, or rather, as my co-worker so eloquently put it:

"“Like a typical male, Father goose hits up mother goose and leaves.”


Despite the rage of my feminist coworker, before long we realized that father goose had not actually gone anywhere besides perhaps to some other part of the parking lot for the time being. She probably would have referred to it as "that asshole going out on the town while mother goose was suffering through the trials and tribulations of childbirth" but, considering that I'm a member of the male gender that she seems to have such distaste for, I did not actually approach her for a comment.

Anyways, as this one rumor was extinguished, a more awkward one started to arise in its place. Specifically, the new rumor was that the geese were spotted eating their eggs. As everyone had been crowding around one window to look outside at the geese, I decided to take a peek out said window to see if the rumors were true:

I quickly snapped one picture of the goose from the rain splattered window, but couldn't see the eggs anywhere, so I could only imagine that the goose was still sitting on them. As I took my picture, I jumped as I very quickly got confirmation that father goose had certainly not left mother goose:

 Despite the rain splattered glass separating me and father goose, he had jumped into view so quickly that I was convinced he was determined to rip my face, glass or no glass. Needless to say, I went back to my desk and didn't get very much of a confirmation of what was going on as father goose was now standing there, ever waiting, to rip my face off. 


Needless to say, this all occurred days ago, and the geese are still there, showing no signs of moving. The geese have claimed my workplace to be their home, and will not leave until they conquer and consume everything in their sight.


At this point, all I can truly do is hope that they take sassy feminist co-worker before they take me.

An Irrational Love for Rock Band

Although I could be the biggest nerd right now and totally complain about Rock Band and Guitar Hero and all of that truly kicking off the whole casual gamer craze, I can't help but love them, especially Rock Band. I personally don't have an Xbox 360, but I've played Rock Band so many countless times merely at other venues at this point.

This is an avatar my friend made for me on Rock Band on his 360. This is also scarily EXACTLY WHAT I LOOK LIKE.

When I first played Rock Band was actually at college at a school sponsored party in a neighboring environmental college. For just a second, stop and wrap your head around exactly how nerdy that was. At approximately 11 PM on a Saturday, while my peers were getting wasted off their asses, I was at a school sponsored party (hence, no alcohol whatsoever) playing Rock Band with some friends for the first time... and I'd proceed to do this more than once. Weeks later, at the same time and venue, I'd get strikes in Wii bowling  without even looking, but I digress.

During that first experience with Rock Band, I mostly got stuck with drums. I've never played drums before at all so it was pretty tough. I'd play on medium and still find myself having some trouble keeping up sometimes. After that fun night, some of my friends all chipped together to purchase Rock Band for the group and it was then that I found I started to get to experience things beyond merely drums. As we played more and more, I got to eventually try bass and guitar. Learning the two instruments, I found them around the same difficulty as drums. I would play on medium and would have a hard time at points, but I at least started to have a little less difficulty as we played on. I'd eventually try hard mode a little, but found the jump to be just a bit too much.

Having played a bunch of guitar, bass and drums, the day finally came that my incredibly musically-cultured friend would get bored of always doing vocals himself. Getting my first turn at vocals, I quickly learned something that was nothing short of amazing to me. Rock Band's vocals are much more forgiving than anything else in the game and thus playing on medium would often end with me getting little to nothing short of 100%, thus convincing me that my voice might be less than ear-shatteringly awful. Obviously, I still knew this was the case, but damn it, Rock Band was going to make me feel good about myself. Even if I didn't know half the words to the songs I was singing. Even if I faced a huge physical and mental struggle every time I tried to activate Star Power with the mic. Even if I'd constantly do a weird thing with my voice, multiple times a song, where I would find I was going a little too high in tone and thus would DROP A WHOLE FUCKING OCTAVE IN THE MIDDLE OF A NOTE. And yet, none of this mattered because Rock Band, the mistress which had been so harsh on my drum, bass and guitar skills, kept informing me that I was singing with 100% perfection. To me it was like Humphrey Bogart was throwing me a "Here's looking at you, kid." even though I had just accidentally elbowed him in the face. He knew I didn't mean to elbow him, and he realized that I must have just not had the slightest clue how to actually correctly shake someone's hand, so he just rolled with it and gave me the affirmation I wanted regardless.

As I gotten so used to the level of difficulty to expect from the other instruments, this made the level of forgiving on the vocals that much more surprising. Typically it was to the point where the facial reactions of my friends were a better judge of my vocals than the game itself. None of it mattered though, because at that point I'd be so high off singing Under Pressure and being told by a game that I did it well that nothing else mattered.

My Batshit Crazy Dogs

I've come to terms with the fact that, out of the two dogs I currently own, they are both completely and utterly batshit insane.

As these dogs have only been living with me for a few months, I can't know for sure whether or not they were always crazy, but I certainly know that they are now.

When I return home from work each day, I'm always greeted by the same sight, namely this:

Though I've gotten used to the sight, I do have to say that there's just something about that huge ass dog greeting you, wagging his tail incessantly while looking at you with a comically large bone in his mouth. He's completely made a ritual of the whole thing, and you can't enter the house without this formal greeting of his.

As you can tell obviously, my dog, Otis, is a very lovable dog. Sometimes he can be a bit... special though. Like here for example:

That's not a random shot that just managed to catch him in an awkward pose, he actually was laying like that for quite a while. A LONG CRAZY WHILE. Otis isn't just crazy because of the weird ways he decides to sleep though, no. He's also crazy because he's 200 pounds of pure massive english mastiff and he still doesn't seem to have realized it. Almost every night he likes to follow us into the kitchen while we get his dinner together and he plops down right in the middle of the kitchen. Our old dog used to do this and it was fine, but when Otis does this, it isn't fine. When Otis does this WE NO LONGER HAVE A KITCHEN. Our kitchen is NO LONGER A TRAVERSABLE ROOM. IT IS MERELY FOUR WALLS AND A DOG. But I digress:

It's kind of cute how he doesn't really he's this massive beast of a dog. For the more literary of you out there, I'd seriously compare him to Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Yes, seriously, that is my dog. In fact, here's how  he responded last week when I gave him a pillow pet:

He loved that Pillow Pet. When I first walked in with it, he literally just grabbed it out of my hand in his mouth before I was even done presenting it to him and plopped down with it. He looked like he was having so much fun...... and then less than 10 minutes later that pillow pet was missing an eye. LESS THAN 10 MINUTES, NO EXAGGERATION. By the next morning it had no eyes and all the stuffing from it's head was gone, and yet Otis still loves that thing as if nothing ever happened to it. Otis does not discriminate against this pillow pet that he DECIMATED IN THE MOST CRUEL AND UNUSUAL WAYS POSSIBLE. He doesn't understand what he did to it, but he knows it's his, and he knows he likes it.

In fact, not only does Otis love his pillow pet, but he loves all his toys. He loves them enough to hog them all happily, while leaving none for our other dog.

He'll actually go to the length of napping on two toys stacked together so that our other dog, Lola, can't play with them. I'm not totally sure why Lola lets him get away with it, because I know that type of shit never flew with the toys back when I was in kindergarten. If little Timmy tried to hog all the toys during nap time, you PUNCHED LITTLE TIMMY IN THE FUCKING FACE. You might have had to sit in the corner for it, but dammit, it was worth it.

Anyways, I'd hate to give the incorrect view that our other dog, Lola, is any less batshit insane. Lola and Otis are very different, but are just as insane in their own unique ways. Where as Otis is outgoing, innocent and naive, Lola is depressed and scared of anything that moves.

She's literally scared of EVERYTHING. If you approach Lola too quickly, she'll flee into the kitchen. If you sit in the recliner in the same room as the dogs, and it squeaks, she'll also flee. In fact, when approached for her opinion on this blog entry, Lola in sheer horror.

Now, none of these things are what Lola truly fears though. What she truly fears will leave her not only fleeing, but shaking. What she truly fears is......... plastic bags. Yes, plastic bags. There is nothing that can bring Lola into a more pants-shittingly state of horror than one of us returning from a completely normal trip at the grocery store. I'm not sure why this is, and I've learned to not question it. For some reason, however, plastic bags are the devil.

Though I'm rambling, I just want to end on one final note to show just how purely massive these dogs are.

That's Otis preforming what I call Otis and Lola's trademarked "Mastiff Sit". It's when Otis, due to his massive size, stands and sits on the couch at the same time. THE SAME TIME. I think I used to think sitting and standing were mutually exclusive, but Otis has come around and proved me wrong. And for that, my life will possibly never be the same.

Adventures with a 3DS

Considering how big of a gaming nerd I am, I'm aiming for one gaming related post per week. Anyways, on that note:

I recently picked myself up a 3DS. It's a pretty cool piece of hardware, between the 3D, augmented reality, dual cameras, street pass, etc. I honestly can't even joke about it, it's a nice piece of hardware that can be a pretty awesome conversation piece to show off.

Now, as incredible as the hardware is, there's certainly some... issues with the system. Namely, the fact that there's pretty much NO GAMES OUT ON IT.

In fact, the best way I can describe the 3DS so far is this:

Imagine you picked up a prostitute. This prostitute is possibly the hottest girl you've ever seen, and she's hilarious to boot. So, you throw down your 250 dollars and take her up to your room. You climb into bed together, only to find out that this expensive sexy prostitute is A MOTHERFUCKING VIRGIN. 

Now mind you, there's nothing wrong with virgins. Some of my best friends are virgins. However, when you throw down 250 dollars, you kind of hope this sexy chick will actually know a couple tricks in the bedroom to back up her flashy looks. But no, she doesn't. SHE DOESN'T KNOW A SINGLE FUCKING KINKY THING. I mean, sure, she tries her best. She has a certain determination that you have to respect, and you can't help but smile at her while she puts her all into giving you a halfway decent handjob like Pilotwings Resort, but you can't truly be happy because you just can't stop thinking about what could have been.

The Geese from Hell

For my first post, I'm about to tell you what most of the blogging community already knows:

Geese are a vile hellspawn that cannot be controlled through any natural means. When a goose has claimed your property as it's own, you surrender your property to it, move elsewhere, and strike any evidence of your existence from all local records.

That being said, one of these vile creatures has decided to make my workplace its home. In fact, over the past two weeks, said goose has built a nest in front of the main entrance of our building, and has proceeded to lay eggs and incubate them, hoping to create a whole new generation of tiny hellspawn to follow in its personal legacy.

 

Though the goose may look innocent enough, it tends to hiss at anyone who walks by, which tends to happen pretty often considering it has set itself up RIGHT AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE BUILDING. Granted, I'll admit the various shouts I've heard over the last week from my coworkers who smoke outside that entrance  make it all worth it. Some coworkers frantically suggested we call animal control, while others seemed to create a sort of rivalry with the goose. Still, no one dared get overly close to the goose, as we're haunted by not only this goose, but it's loyal husband who forever stands guard.

As I'm sure you notice, upon my snapping this shot, the goose had just started pacing in the opposite direction. This reason, and this reason alone, is why I still have both of my eyes.

Hopefully, over the next week, these two hellspawn will finally leave, but I don't truly know what to expect. No one truly knows what to expect when geese are involved.