Sorry, hoping to beat Wild ARMs 2 tonight. Wish me luck.

After watching the situation for weeks, I doubt the Ferguson protests are going to go anywhere. Although the community is helping one another to keep it strong, there is no leadership to launch it to the national stage. Take the Birmingham protests where blacks were attacked by dogs: You've got Martin Luther King, Jr., already famous for the success of the Montgomery bus boycotts, getting arrested for peaceful protests. Here it just feels like a bunch of angry people venting on Twitter or tumblr about their emotions, which although real are scattered and unfocused. At best I think it woke up the nation to the militarization of the police, which disturbed many prominent members of congress, but whether it will address the discrimination of blacks is questionable. To be honest I can't think of anyone who has replaced the old guard of the 1960s. There are of course many younger people out there speaking out for civil rights, but they haven't reached the same legendary levels as Rosa Parks or Al Sharpton. Perhaps this'll just fizzile out like the riots in LA in the 1992 and nothing will be done; there's enough in the world today like ISIS or the Ukraine that the newscycle can easily move on.

Did you try the cheesecake at the party? Because Moham made it but he wasn't certain of its quality:

Rizhall the 5th: 1:47
Rizhall the 5th: I need you to remind me to take out the cake at 1:47.
dundun: Man, I would not trust me with that responsibility. I will try though.
dundun: But you know, porn may happen.
Rizhall the 5th: It's you or Reggie.
dundun: Oh fuck.
dundun: He'll remind you on Thursday.
Rizhall the 5th: The party will be long gone, and so will the cake.
Rizhall the 5th: But his reminder will remain.
dundun: That will be all that is left of that cake.
Rizhall the 5th: A memory. The oven, the house, and the lives within, they will be no more.
dundun: Jesus Christ. You didn't have to take it that far.
dundun: Imagine if your house and lives were gone by Thursday.
Rizhall the 5th: This entire family's lineage ends because of overdone cheesecake.
dundun: Even the destruction you did in Brooklyn [with last year's cheesecake] will not compare.
Rizhall the 5th: Reggie was the missing element last time. But this time, there will be much destruction.

Oftentimes when an issue comes up I'm told to write to congress and complain about it, but it's not that easy. I've already stated each member of the House has 700,000 constituents, and if you're a senator you can have several million. It's difficult to keep track of what the people from your state or district want. Therefore congressmen must pay attention only to their voters and no one else. So for example, they completely ignore emails because they have no fucking idea if they're your representative or not. Think about that: Emailing your congressman is a complete waste of time because the staff is going to get rid of it anyway. That's why I always mock online petitions: No one gives a shit. No one in power is listening. You can say four million people signed it, but the politicians will look at that and say, "Okay, but what percentage of that is going to vote for me?"

Even regular mail can be useless. For example, I'm really interested in astronomy, but the House chairman of the Subcommittee of Science, Space, and Technology is Lamar Smith from the 21st district of Texas. If I send a letter about funding to NASA or whatever I care about, his staff is going to take one look at my address and without even opening the envelope send it to the staff of Charles Rangel, my district's representative, who judging from his tenure in congress doesn't really give a shit about space and astronomy. It would be better for me to either pretend I live somewhere in the 21st district or have a friend from that area contact Smith because he's not going to listen to me.

It's frustrating but understandable. They can only take in so much communication, and actual people the congressmen are representing are lost in the noise of people from other parts of the country. Still, I'd like for politicians to think about our nation as a whole as opposed to their tiny little block. If it seems all over the country people want something but only your tiny area doesn't, you have to make a choice: Do I agree to what my voters want or what the nation wants?

[22:30:23] Dun 4 Hire: You know I was looking at that post I made about my favorite video game music
[22:30:32] Dun 4 Hire: And I realize I never listed my favorite dungeon themes
[22:30:37] Dun 4 Hire: But then again, that would be insane. There's so much.
[22:32:18] kaiserdragonryu6: i didnt know you had so many you liked
[22:32:29] kaiserdragonryu6: i can't really say off the top of my head
[22:32:33] kaiserdragonryu6: just imposing visage
[22:33:06] kaiserdragonryu6: and the temple of the ancients
[22:34:40] Dun 4 Hire: Well, I really liked Crystal Tower, Road to the Summit, Nepto Shrine, and The Forbidden Land Eureka from FFIII
[22:35:18] kaiserdragonryu6: oh yeah
[22:35:28] kaiserdragonryu6: 3 had a lot of good ones
[22:35:35] kaiserdragonryu6: i always forget the names for them
[22:38:45] Dun 4 Hire: FFIX had Ancient Passageway - Gargan Roo, Burmecian Kingdom, Gurugu Volcano, and Ipse's Heritage.
[22:40:30] Dun 4 Hire: There's Cursed Earth, Exdeath's Castle, Intention of the Earth, Musica Machina (really cool), Pirate's Ahoy!, Sealed Away, The Ancient Library from FFV.
[22:40:39] Dun 4 Hire: (You can tell I'm going down my mp3 files right now.)
[22:41:05] Dun 4 Hire: Oh shit, FFVI had Devil's Lab. That's high up there.
[22:41:37] kaiserdragonryu6: you're already writing the post now
[22:41:41] kaiserdragonryu6: might as well go through with it

The problem is it's hard to define "dungeon" with the way RPGs are headed. For example, do I consider Mt. Corel in Final Fantasy VII a dungeon? It's not on the world map but rather seems more like a transitional stage. I've decided a "dungeon" is a clearly-defined separate area with a boss at the end, which basically eliminates Final Fantasy XIII from this list and other areas that may be considered dungeonesque, like the Lost Woods from Ocarina of Time. As I stated above, this list is long that I've extended it to the top 25.

1. Zap! Cabellero Family from SaGa Frontier
2. Guiding Star from Tales of Legendia / The Legendary Sorcerer from Tales of Legendia (same dungeon, different areas)
3. Advancing Toward 12 O'Clock from Tales of Legendia
4. Run in the Middle of the Storm from Tales of Legendia
5. Devil's Lab from Final Fantasy VI
6. March from Tales of Legendia
7. Ancient Tomb of Mu from SaGa Frontier
8. Beware the Forest's Mushrooms from Super Mario RPG
9. Judgment Day from Final Fantasy VII
10. Enemy Attack from Tales of Legendia
11. Crystal Tower from Final Fantasy III
12. The Forbidden Land Eureka from Final Fantasy III
13. Ancient Ship from Tales of Legendia
14. Back Streets of Koorong from SaGa Frontier
15. Ezo Fuji Irwak Shrine from Ōkami
16. Tolos Cave from Rune Factory
17. Sylph from Tales of Phantasia
18. A Submarine Remains from Tales of Destiny
19. Courage from Wild ARMs
20. Death Sea ~ Tower of Ruin from Chrono Cross
21. Oracle Headquarters from Tales of the Abyss
22. Inside the Water Dragon from Ōkami
23. Dancing the Tokage from Chrono Cross
24. Tyrano Lair from Chrono Trigger
25. The Freezing from Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology

Yeah, I fucking knew it:

[22:41:37] kaiserdragonryu6: you're already writing the post now
[22:41:41] kaiserdragonryu6: might as well go through with it
[22:43:12] Dun 4 Hire: I can't narrow it down to ten!
[22:43:15] Dun 4 Hire: This is just Final Fantasy!
[22:43:19] Dun 4 Hire: I haven't even gotten to the other games!
[22:43:35] Dun 4 Hire: You know Legendia is basically going to take up most of that list!

Rizhall the 5th: Can you do me a large favorino?
dundun: I can in the small time I have before dinnerino.
Rizhall the 5th: Are you having pastarino?
dundun: Spaghettino.
Rizhall the 5th: See, this is why I like you.
Rizhall the 5th: You put up with my bullshit.
Rizhall the 5th: You don't ask.
Rizhall the 5th: You don't say anythnig.
Rizhall the 5th: You just put up with it.

In case you haven't been paying attention, an unarmed black kid was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri. The police claim he was trying to attack them, other witnesses say he had his hands up. I don't know, I'm not going to make a judgment call on this one because I can see either side lying. The point is there are protests about police violence, which escalated with the subsequent anti-riot tactics, and at the moment people all over the nation are decrying the militarization of the police as well as the institutional racism in the law enforcement community. Ferguson and St. Louis in particular seem to be particularly segregated, and the vast majority of the officers are white. (I think I read somewhere that there are only three black officers on the entire force.)

The reason why I'm bringing this up is the decision not to release the name of the officer who shot the kid. I actually concur with this. Let's go back to the Martin/Zimmerman case back in 2012. At the time, a celebrity tweeted Zimmerman's address to the effect of, "Go after this guy." It turns out it was actually the address of a couple in their 70s, who received death threats for over a year until after the court case was ended. That was really fucked up. It was especially awful that it happened to an innocent family, but even if it was the right address, you're fucking with Zimmerman's family at this point, who have nothing to do with it. And that's what I'm worried about with the officer; with the tensions that they are now and Anonymous threatening to release the officer's name (and we all know how accurate random people on the internet can be, considering what happened with Reddit and the Boston Bomber), I think we should wait a bit until shit settles down before we work on this. I'm not saying he should remain invisible forever, but just wait until flames (both literal and metaphorical) have been doused. Because the way that it is now, that family is going to be totally ripped apart.

On a side note, Ferguson: When the hell did your police department get enough money to buy armored vehicles and armor? Maybe you should spend some of that money on education or something because god knows you're not responsible enough to use that shit properly.

Update:
Well, that was fast. Let's see how this plays out for Mr. Wilson.

I basically know nothing of Egyptian mythology. I know there's an Isis in there and a Ra (or was he just from Yu-Gi-Oh!...?), but that's about it. So I bought a book about the topic and... well, I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. I mean, it began by telling me the creator god Atum masturbated, put his semen into his mouth, must've realized that was a terrible idea because he immediately spat that shit back out, and from that the world was made. That's... great. We're off to a wonderful start here.

But my favorite was the fight between the uncle and nephew, Seth and Horus. Let's start off by saying Seth, Osiris, and Isis are all siblings. Osiris and Isis are married, and Seth is jealous of his brother and kills him. Isis proceeds to have sex with the corpse and is impregnated with Horus. So that's the background to this fucked up story. Here's what the book has to say:

The gods tell Horus and Seth to make peace and Seth invites Horus to stay in his house. During the night Seth tries to establish dominance by having sex with Horus, but Horus catches Seth's semen in his hand. He tells Isis, who cuts off his polluted hand and makes him a new one. Then she rubs the penis of Horus, gathers some of his semen and spreads it on the lettuce plants in Seth's garden. When Seth eats the lettuces he becomes pregnant by Horus. In front of the tribunal Seth mocks Horus for submitting to him. Horus responds by telling [the arbitrating god] Thoth to call to his own and Seth's semen and see where it answers from. Seth's semen answers the water but the semen of Horus answers from inside Seth. ^*

In case you didn't catch that, Seth tries to rape his nephew and somehow doesn't notice that he didn't cum inside of him. I don't have a penis so I'm not an expert on such matters, but I'm under the impression you can feel whether you're inside a person or not. Then his mother gives him a hand job — I want to point out there was an option to masturbate but his mother decided she was necessary in this process — and sprinkles the semen on some lettuce, which somehow impregnates her brother. Even though he doesn't have a uterus. And you can't get pregnant from that hole.

This is usually when I throw out a line about this is why Christianity ultimately won in the end (remember, Egypt was the center of Christian culture until the Muslim conquests), but then I remember our own Old Testament has stories about Lot impregnating his daughters. Then again, although salacious, these involve people and not the gods you're supposed to be emulating. And even with all the weird sexual crap going on, it's nothing compared to what the Egyptians got. What the hell was going on in their culture to come up with stuff like this?

^* Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 81-82.

I usually write on my origami paper, and because of the limitations of gel pens on colored paper I find myself often using white for ink. However no one fucking sells white ink pens. My favorite for a long time was Uni-Ball Signo brand — not the UM-153 type because the ink would turn into this weird dust, as Franklin can attest from the origami I gave him — but the UM-120. Now I can't find this shit in stores anymore; Amazon sells it for exorbitant prices, and Kino only has the 153. So I moved onto the Pentel Sunburst, which conveniently came in bulk, but now they're not selling white anymore. Gelly Roll does have a white version, but they're fucking atrocious. One will be fine, but the next one will come out literally as a liquid. This is a fucking gel pen. That is the opposite of what I wanted.

Seriously, what the fuck do artists do? Where do they get their pens? Don't tell me I need to start mixing ink now.

I remember back in the day there used to be a full screen and wide screen version of any VHS or DVD release. That's because our screens were 4:3 and couldn't accommodate the length you see in a movie theater. So when you bought it for your home, you had the option of cutting the picture to fit your TV or see it in its full glory but with long, black lines on the top and bottom. Now that we have 16:9, this should resolve the entire issue. However I'm still seeing these black lines again. Why is this happening? Why are you doing this? It's the right fucking ratio. We're done with this. It's in the past. We've moved on. Why would you insist on continuing this?

In July of 2012, the sun emitted a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is more or less an eruption of solar wind. The sun has large loops of magnetic fields that usually reach the surface and then go back into the interior. Sometimes these interact with each other in complicated ways, and the energy has to be released out into the solar system. That's usually what we call a solar flare. But if a larger amount of energy is ejected, we call it a CME.

These events happen all the time, but the one in 2012 was the largest one ever recorded. How large? Well, if we had been hit with it directly, we probably would have a blackout lasting several months at least. And by "we," I mean humanity. As in, a huge portion of us.

The last one of that magnitude to hit us was in 1859, called the Carrington Event (named after an amateur astronomer who noticed weird shit appearing on the sun's surface). When the earth was hit, a geomagnetic storm started all over the earth — aurorae could be seen all over the Earth, not just up north — but importantly for us, telegraph systems all over just failed.

Now, this is back in 1859 when pretty much the only electrical thing that mattered were telegraphs. Think about how that would affect us today. First off, most if not all satellites would just be fried, so no GPS, cell phones, whatever. Large transformers would be completely destroyed by the huge current of electricity flowing through them, and entire countries may be without power. Fixing all of this would take trillions of dollars.

It's just luck that this missed us, but it can happen again. We're not really ready for it; the best we can do is observe the sun and give fair warning to shut down the grid and move satellites, although I doubt anyone would listen if astronomers start making a fuss. (Certainly no one did anything in 2012.) It's just one of those things that keeps me up at night as I wonder what the hell we'll do if it happens.

Well, that took awhile but is now taken care of. Moham and I try to meet up every Saturday to work on models now, but because of scheduling problems we couldn't all the time and this took several months longer than expected. We're probably going to paint it next, so I'll post more pictures later when that's done.

As you can easily see from looking at it, all the weight is on the back. I haven't watched Endless Waltz in over ten years so I can't remember if Wing Zero went to Earth or just stayed in space the whole time, but I can't imagine this surviving with normal gravity; it'd just fall over backwards. Before we attached the wings, we noticed the legs are disproportionally large in comparison with the rest of the body, which I'm assuming is to make up for the weight in the back.

Consequently the wings are going to support most of it. The "feathers" are made of rubber, and the lowest ones are definitely going to be permanently bent thanks to this.

This comes with four different wings: two on the exterior with rubber feathers, and two perpendicular with the back. The latter have this cool mechanism where they can extend using springs if you raise them upward, only to revert back to normal if you lower them back down.

It has two LEDs to light up the chest, eyes, and jewel on the forehead. Whoever in Bandai designed this should be completely ashamed of themselves. Attaching everything was a complete nightmare. They intended for the wire to go down a hole, have the LED placed on top, and then everything is screwed down so that serves as the conduit from the wire to the LED. The fucking screw just was too small for the hole, and after several laborious hours we just soldered the whole thing together. And that was nothing compared to the battery part. Moham deals with this type of shit for a living, and he said it was one of the worst things he's ever seen.

What I like about the perfect grade is the fingers have joints and you can put them into any position that you like.

Now that I'm done, I'm infuriated that this doesn't come with a stand, nor is Bandai producing any for the 1/60 size. As far as I can tell the Action Base 1, 2, and 3 only work for 1/100 and 1/144. Ridiculous.

Well, we're done. Now onto Metal Gear!

Occasionally we can find ancient graffiti carved into the walls of floors of ruins. For example, in the Coliseum in Rome oftentimes people would write their name as a method of reserving it. But a scholar must be really skilled to be able to read these; most of the ancient texts that survive and we study are of higher culture — The Iliad, The Aeneid, Cicero, Aristotle — so these are of the common folk, which often don't use such flowery vocabulary or syntax and employ slang.

Pompeii is a good place to study these because the city remains in pristine condition. For those of you who don't know, Pompeii was a relatively populous city that was completely buried under ash and mud after the nearby volcano Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. For centuries it was forgotten until the 1600s and was not fully excavated until the 1700s. People discovered the bodies of the citizens trying to flee the fumes and ash but ultimately failing. The buildings still had their original mosaics and paintings, and for the purposes of this post, graffiti. Here are a selection of them for your pleasure:

• Secundus likes to screw boys.
• Virgula to her friend Tertius: you are disgusting!
• (On the side of a brothel) Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!
• Restitutus says: "Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your hairy privates."
• On April 19th, I made bread.
• The man I am having dinner with is a barbarian.
• (Next to the door of a bar) I screwed the barmaid.
• My lusty son, with how many women have you had sexual relations?
• Two friends were here. While they were, they had bad service in every way from a guy named Epaphroditus. They threw him out and spent 105 and half sestertii most agreeably on whores.
• Chie, I hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they every have before!
• I screwed a lot of girls here.
• Defecator, may everything turn out okay so that you can leave this place.
• (On a inn wall) We have wet the bed, host. I confess we have done wrong. If you want to know why, there was no chamber pot.
• I have fucked men.
• Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.
• Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog.
• Phileros is a eunuch!
• On June 15th, Hermeros screwed here with Phileterus and Caphisus.
• Lucius Istacidius, I regard as a stranger anyone who doesn’t invite me to dinner.
• Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here.
• If anyone sits here, let him read this first of all: if anyone wants a screw, he should look for Attice; she costs 4 sestertii.
• O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.

Whilst Philip IV was engaged in a war with England, he decided it would be appropriate to tax the church. The pope at the time, Boniface VIII, didn't like this because he believed the church to be a separate entity from the kingdom; it could not be considered an arbitrator and be above such worldly engagements if it's actively helping in the war effort. Philip's response was if you own so much land in my country, you better damn well provide some funds for the kingdom. Their argument got more and more testy until Philip sent some men to Rome to find Boniface and physically abuse him.

I just want to repeat this. Someone thought it appropriate to send some dudes to beat the shit out of a pope. This was not just something that was contemplated, it was actually done. Can you imagine something like that today? For example, Kerry got some heat during the 2004 presidential election because he's pro-choice with some bishops announcing they wouldn't provide him with Communion. Can you imagine Kerry blowing his top and then getting some guys to corner the bishops — not the pope even! — and delivering a beat down? It's just insane. How the hell did he get away with it?

I can't stop watching this:

I'll post something tomorrow. If can I ever take my eyes off of it.

You may be wondering why I felt the need to post the dictionary entry for the word "governor." Personally, I'm wondering why I had to look this word up at all. In a particular dungeon of Wild ARMs 2, several of the enemies had a move called "Governor Off" that boosted their stats, much to my confusion. I could only imagine it being something similar to a dance off, only with governors: "Well, I as the governor of Maine cut property taxes in half!" "I as the governor of Virginia raised the minimum wage!" It just didn't make any sense. After seeing this for the twentieth time, my frustration finally overrode my laziness and I got up to look up this definition. I'm guessing they were aiming for 4a: By removing the governor on their physical potential, they can increase their stats, similar to Rock Lee opening his Spirit Gates. However these were not machines, which the dictionary states needs a governor, they were organic enemies. Even then, who the fuck uses the word "governor" like that? I teach English for a fucking living and I've never heard of this. When you were translating this, did you think, "Man, no one is going to understand this at all. Let's even put an 'off' at the end to make it more confusing than ever. There, that's a job well done."