My mom often commented when she heard people whining about cubicles, she'd say back in her day everyone was lined up in desks and the boss sat in the front. I've noticed in the past decade offices are moving back to this model, especially in tech start ups. My brother's office for example is exactly like that picture I linked. But whenever I visited him, I thought, "God, I would fucking hate working like this." I'm not talking about not being able to surreptitiously look at porn — even I wouldn't do that when I'm supposed to be working — but just the lack of privacy in general. Part of the reason why I flee to the library, Starbucks, or the Citigroup Building instead of studying at home is because I just can't concentrate in this house with all the distractions. Literally every ten minutes someone's coming in to ask me a question, tell me a pointless story, or ask for me to do something. It's not a very good environment to enter "the zone." And that office seemed to me just like home: There are people chatting with you every five minutes just because you're simply there.

I guess I'm not the only person who thinks this way.

As I said before, John is very laconic. This lack of flow leads to conversations that I personally find absolutely hilarious. Let's look at this from the second chapter (my translation from the Vulgate):

And three days later there was a wedding in Cana, Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding, and they lacked wine.
The mother of Jesus says to him, "They don't have wine."
And Jesus said to her, "What is it to me and you? Woman, my hour is not yet come."
His mother said to the servants, "Whatever he will say to you, do it."
And there were six stone water pots positioned there following the purification methods of the Jews, holding two or three measures each. Jesus says to them, "Fill the pots with water," and they filled them all the way to the top.

I feel this is the equivalent of my family driving on the road and suddenly the battery going out, and then mom turning to me, snapping her fingers, and saying, "Okay, fix this." And me, knowing I'm Lamb of God that came down onto the earth to save mankind, saying, "Mom, my appointed time is not yet upon us." And she replies, "Yeah, yeah, tell me when you're done." Mary just completely ignores Jesus' statement. She doesn't even deign to give him a response. I can totally imagine her rolling her eyes after he says that and then turns to the servants while Jesus seethes in the corner, grumbling, "Geez mom, you're so pushy. Fine, where are these pots? Fill them with water. Man, I can't believe I'm doing this..."

This week Rep. Michael Grimm from Staten Island pleaded guilty to tax fraud, although there are plenty of more charges he has to deal with. Considering that he was handed these indictments before the elections, that he threatened to throw an NY1 reporter off a balcony, that he couldn't remember the last book he read during a debate, and said that the crowning moment of his tenure was the opening of an Applebee's, you wonder why the hell Staten Island voted for him. Of course this is where I insert jokes about the idiocy of that borough, but the voters during the last election were facing a choice between him or an idiot, Domenic Recchia, who said he had foreign policy experience since he was an exchange student in Japan. Staten Islanders weighed their choices and decided to go with the guy who at least knew what he was doing, even if he was a criminal. Now they're facing a possibility that their representative will be in prison, especially since the constitution has no guidelines on what to do in this situation. Which makes you wonder why they didn't. Well, okay, the line is, "The President, the Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States," but that last statement is really fucking vague and some say the legislature doesn't apply. I remember as a child reading about the debates they had during the Constitutional Convention about what to do with a shitty president, but it never occurred to them you could have rogue congressmen? Right now the impeachment process is done by congress. As we all know, having a body police itself is one of the stupidest ideas in the world. Admittedly I doubt Grimm will stay on if he's convicted because the House wouldn't want an actual prisoner to tarnish their already terrible image, but I'm certain if there was an independent body watching these fuckers we wouldn't have so much corruption in congress.

Wow, they were already posing Sasuke with snakes as early as chapter 24? How far ahead was Kishimoto planning because god knows whatever he had in mind got severely derailed.

It's funny how much emphasis they put on seals and shit early on, and toward the end of the series no one gave a shit.

...Shit, ten years later and I still get emotional during this scene.

I remember the anime episode ended with this scene too, and I was totally pumped to see what the fuck would happen next, but unfortunately regents were happening and Harlan told me I couldn't watch any more until I was done. Honestly he made the situation worse because instead of concentrating all I thought about was Naruto.

I always found it weird how Kakashi needed a scroll to summon his dogs whereas people like Jiraiya and Naruto just needed some blood. Actually, later on I distinctly remember Kakashi just summoning one like it's nothing. Why did he need a scroll at this particular moment?

I don't think I realized how ridiculous this looks until now. What the hell is up with those two biting his legs? One looks like it's high and the other is being raped. And seriously, one's going after his sword? Doesn't it realize it would just cut up its fucking mouth if you bite a sword like that? And no one knew this at that time, but the useless one hanging off in the front would be Kakashi's main dog.

Honestly, these chapters were some of my favorites of the series. It was just a complete emotional roller coaster. You had Sasuke awakening his sharingan, him "dying," Naruto flipping his shit, Haku's sad story, and this was just the cherry on top. God, I remember when Haku lurched forward in the anime and all his fucking guts and blood just fell to the floor. They edited out Kakashi actually puncturing his body, but I think it more graphic just because of the moving blood and the sound of it splattering everywhere.

Since Vesperia, the Tales series has allowed you to put on the outfits of characters from previous games. It's a cool way of reminiscing about games past. That is until recently when I realized they just recycle the same people over and over. When the new costumes for the newest game Zestiria were announced recently, I saw at least five that were done already, three of which appeared at least twice before. Seriously, this is the fucking Tales series. I literally have a 2" thick book of character design on my shelf. It's not like we're bereft of characters here. As much as I love Luke from Abyss, there were tons of other people from that game. Why not try Jade? Anise? Peony? Yuri from Vesperia was awesome too, but this is ridiculous. You've been giving his costume to people it doesn't even fit because they have really short hair. I know Lion's won the Tales popularity contest like three times in a row, but you can stop putting him in now. How about Woodrow? He was fucking cool.

The whole point of this was for Tales fans to feel nostalgic, so why not open the field a bit so I can really remember shit instead of these particular three characters?

I don't think I've have greater moments of self-reflection than when I talk with my cousin's daughters. It all boils down to this question: "How old are you now?" When one of them said ten, the first thing that popped into my mind was, "Oh, that's about the age when I started my porn addiction." Then I look at her childlike, innocent face and think to myself, "What the fuck was wrong with me?"

Also, the other was born two weeks before September 11th and is entering high school next year. Christ.

I'm reading a book right now that looks into the break down in the 1st platoon of Bravo Company that led to the 2006 rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family. One of the perpetrators, Steven Green, expressed racist opinions from the start of the war, which were only exasperated as members of his platoon were killed. At one point he was encouraged to see a therapist:

Green told [the therapist] Marrs he was having suicidal and homicidal ideations, especially thoughts about killing Iraqi civilians. One his one-page intake sheet, Marrs noted his wanting to kill Iraqis four separate times. One entry states, "Interests: None other than killing Iraqis." She diagnosed him with Combat and Operational Stress Reactions (COSR), an Army term to describe typical and transient reactions to the stresses of warfare...As one Army journal article puts it, "Those with COSR are not referred to as 'patients,' but are described as having 'normal reactions to an abnormal event.' " Thus believing Green's psychological state to be normal, Marrs prescribed him with a small course of Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug that also treats insomnia, and recommended that he follow up with another visit...and sent him back to his unit. ^*

We all understand that anger is a natural part of the grieving process, and the combat stress unit no doubt receives lots of soldiers who express frustration and hatred toward the Iraqis, but I think I'd be concerned about any soldier who says he wants to indiscriminately kill any Iraqi. Of course we're expecting our troops to kill Iraqis. That's our job. But the Iraq War was like the Spanish-American War: The point was not conquest but to help another nation. Although in hindsight we're upset at many of our actions, being nice to the Germans or the Japanese wasn't necessary part of WWII. That's the exact opposite for Iraq. If you don't have the populace on your side, you've lost the war. And if there's a crazy fucker running around shooting at random Iraqis, it does the exact opposite of what you want.

Then again, in Marrs' defense, I don't think anyone really knew what the hell we wanted to do with Iraq.

^* Jim Frederick, Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death (New York: Harmony BOoks, 2010), 157-58.

Sorry, Paul came over. I beat Tales of Xillia 2 last week. Its existence exposes the first game's main flaw: It just simply wasn't finished. Let's compare it to Tales of Destiny: That was a full game that could've stood on its own; Tales of Destiny 2 just expanded the story. Xillia is like as if in Symphonia we had just discovered about Tethe'alla and about a dungeon later solved the problem of the mana tree and the exspheres. That's a lot of plot you're missing. Namco tried to throw the vestiges of the first together to create the second game, but it wasn't entirely satisfactory. The episodic system just seemed silly, and in particular having to pay off a 20,000,000G debt off the bat is just insane. I'd turn to Atlus if I wanted a lot of grinding.

But I feel Xillia 2's greatest flaw is its lack of expansion. Going back to that Symphonia comparison, if they made a Symphonia 2^* you'd expect it to be about all that Tethe'alla shit you missed. Xillia 2 did not give any of that: Only four dungeons and one town are original. That means literally you're walking through all the same shit you did in the first game; they didn't even change the graphics at all. I played the two back-to-back over the past couple of days with Paul, and it was somewhat frustrating for me to have explored a place and then finding myself having to do it all over again twenty hours later in another game.

If Namco had just gotten its shit together and made a complete game, I feel Xillia would've been one of the best of the series, but they fucked it up. That's why I gave it such a scathing review last time; they teased me with greatness only to fall short.

^* Okay, yeah, they did. But bear with me here.

These're the headphones that come with your iPhone or iPod. (iPhone has a microphone on it to make phone calls, which aren't in the iPod version.) That part with the + and - obviously is the volume control, but that space in between the two is actually a third button. Three years ago when I got my first iPod I played around with it and discovered when you pressed the middle button once it stopped or started the music and pressing it twice would move onto the next track. Simple yet functional.

Harlan bought me a new iPhone during the Thanksgiving break, and considering the problem with my iPod is the increase volume button is broken I thought I could use these headphones to work around the problem. I noticed Apple did some tweaking in the three years since I last used them. Before it had a minimal amount of features because there were just three buttons. Since then they've added fast forward/rewind, switching to the previous track, and ... I don't even fucking know what this is, but sometimes when I try to stop the music, instead this voice comes on that tells me the name of the track (and considering I listen to a lot of anime music she usually completely butchers the pronunciation) plus the names of all the playlists. What was working before is just a goddamned mess because half the time when I want to move to the next track I'm suddenly fast forwarding or having this motherfucking voice telling me what I'm listening to (as if I can't see the screen) and my playlists (as if I forgot what they were). I should probably go onto some website to tell me what the hell I'm doing — Is it the speed that I press twice? Is fast forwarding pressing higher up and not in the middle? — but I really shouldn't have to do that. Before I was able to intuitively figure out how this works, which is how good design should work. For a company that prides itself in such matters, they completely screwed this one up.

I beat Octodad, which is one of the most ridiculous games I've ever played. The plot is you're an octopus masquerading as a human and you do everything in your power to prevent others from noticing this. The developers purposefully created terrible game mechanics so that you'd have difficulty moving about and could possibly raise suspicion. That is essentially the game: Doing things that would be simple in any other game, like walking up the stairs, in a normal fashion so that no one realizes you're an octopus. Of course this raises several questions, like how does your wife not realize she's married to a mollusc? How did you even procreate?

It's been a pretty normal semester in French. My teacher's more friendly than usual and really young, but he always answers my questions seriously and in an easily-understandable way. That was until last night. The running joke about French movies is the first ten minutes is sex and the rest is just them constantly arguing. The movie we watched never got past the sex part. About twenty minutes in, I realized it was just porn. There was no allusion to what was happening; you could see everything. The "plot" was essentially an hour of guys cruising by a lake. At some point I wondered why the professor wasn't stopping this, especially since all the men were not very attractive. Why are we watching this then if out of six dudes only one is palatable? I guess to teach me how to say, "Your cock is beautiful," because god knows they wouldn't stop saying that.

I was always was kinda fuzzy on this. Are the hunter-nins a subsection of ANBU or a completely different organization? Or are they part of the police force that the Uchiha headed? Either way they're shitty because non-hunter-nin are always the ones taking the rouge ninjas out.

Naruto is the type of person who learns through action instead of words or reading, but I'm still surprised he managed to graduate. Forget not knowing bunshin; how the fuck did you pass the final exams? It'd be like me taking a math test and not knowing what a variable is.

And that was the first and last time Sakura seemed impressive in part 1.

The anime really cleaned Haku up; he's virtually unrecognizable here. Everything is just wrong with the proportions and his face almost seems smushed. I'm glad they decided to completely revamp him, much like Square did with Amano's character designs.

I mentioned in the last post that some things are not easily transferable to animation, but conversely animation can provide things that comics cannot. For example, voice acting. I fucking loved this moment in the anime: Instead of being a little side thing whilst the focus is on Sasuke, the director gave it a scene all of its own with Takeuchi Junko perfectly expressing the confusion in Naruto's voice. I spent many times rewinding these ten seconds over and over because I found it so funny.

Jesus Christ, they toned this own in the anime. At least he still had, you know, arms.

I asked my professor for suggestions of something easy to translate from Latin, and she told me the Gospel of John. One of difficulties early Christianity faced is its sacred text was not as impressive compared to the polytheistic religion. If you compare this—

The Levites asked him, "Who are you?"
And he confessed and did not deny. And he confessed, "I am not Christ."
And they asked him, "Then what? Are you Elijah?"
He said no.
"Are you a prophet?"
He responded no.^*

—with the melodic lines of Homer, Ovid, or Vigil, it's rather pathetic. People would sneer at the simple syntax and poor rhetoric, but that was the Bible's appeal: It used the common speech to connect with the masses. Still, I'll admit if I were an English teacher I'd give the writer of John a poor grade for repetition, bland writing style, and inability to construct scenes properly. It's literally the bare minimum to get the point across.

Which makes this line for me all the more hilarious. The disciples are starting to gather around Jesus. After meeting him, Philip runs to his buddy Nathaniel:

Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, "We found Jesus, the son of Joseph of Nazareth, whom Moses and the prophets wrote about in the law."
And Nathaniel said to him, "Can anything good be from Nazareth?"
Philip said to him, "Come and see."^**

Okay, I need to first emphasize how jarring John is. He has such difficulty making transitions from point to point. He'll be talking about one thing and with little segue move onto the next. It's really minimalist. Even though he skips things all the time, he somehow thinks insulting Nazareth is important enough to include in this book. Not how that interview with the Levites ended, not how Jesus heard about John the Baptist, not even the birth story mentioned in Luke and Matthew. John doesn't mention any of that. But having someone crack the line, "Is there anything good at all in Nazareth? Like, seriously. I doubt this guy is anything useful because he came from Nazareth." That got included for posterity.

^* John 1:19-21
^** John 1:45-46

I'm already perplexed at delivery men's inability to press a doorbell, but they've been pulling shit that's just infuriating me. For the past three or so months, they refused to deliver four packages because it's an "incorrect address," so I'm forced to go down to the post office or UPS' hub in the South Bronx to pick it up. And each time I look at it and see it's the right address and ask what the issue was. The reply is always, "You didn't put an apartment number." Of course I fucking didn't; it's a goddamned house. Are you seriously telling me you picked up that package, looked at the address, and decided it was pointless to deliver even without attempting? Once is okay. But this shit keeps on happening, and I'm about to flip my shit.

Harlan was helping mom back up her iPhone onto her computer. I went downstairs in the midst of this, and later found an email Harlan sent me from her address. It had no subject, no message, just an image called "riva_kill.png":

(123) 456-7890. Everyone knows the first three digits are the area code, but most can't name the other sections. I learned the middle three as the "prefix," but I've heard some people call it an "exchange." The prefix for my house number is 567 and for years I wondered why they chose that. As a child I could tell it was by neighborhood — all my neighbors and local businesses used 567 — but I could never understand why I was 567 and the next neighborhood over wasn't 568.

It wasn't until the other day when I asked dad what his telephone number was growing up and he replied, "Oh, it was WALNUT-519." There was a long pause before I said, "Wait, what?" It turns out the letters were the "exchange," which was basically your local telephone center that connected all the lines. Dad described a large building in our neighborhood with wide windows, and you could see the machines chugging along as people called. An area the exchange covered would be given a name, and your personal line number would be slapped on the end. Dad's growing up was WALNUT, and he explained there were many famous ones known nationally, like around Madison Square Garden was PENNSYLVANIA for obvious reasons, MURRAY HILL was the east side, and Morningside was UNIVERSITY. Ours was LORRAINE, which on a number pad is 5677243, shortened to 567. An exchange became influential; mom told me her stationery used to have her business' word on it, and around our neighborhood lots of places where called Lorraine: Lorraine Florist, Lorraine Butcher, Lorraine Fabrics...

People became upset when the exchanges were dropped in the 60s for a purely numeric system because the exchanges were easier to remember, but I can understand why: It's probably easier to just generate a number instead of a word. Still, it would've been interesting to be known as a Lorraine instead of a 567.

To be honest I expected an indictment to come down for Darren Wilson and I'm very disappointed that it didn't. I made a point of not getting too deeply involved with Ferguson because it became very emotional and I was afraid I'd get too swept up into it. The problem with impassioned cases like this is when you've taken a side, you become ignorant of anything else that contradicts your viewpoint. This happens whether you're Republican or Democrat, man or woman, majority or minority, American or non-American. When I was younger I was very strongly anti-Bush. I still am, but my arguments nowadays I hope have more consideration and thought to them than me just foaming in rage and parroting whatever I heard that's convenient for my opinion.

Not knowing Wilson or Brown personally, I honestly can't say if Wilson is the type of person to shoot a person who isn't attacking him, nor if Brown is the type of person to attack a police officer. Witnesses say Brown wasn't, but witnesses have been proven to be wrong before. I've heard there's forensic evidence proving Wilson's story wrong, but my sources are from people who are definitely pro-Brown and I'm ashamed to say I didn't follow up on it myself. That's actually why I really wanted an indictment: All the evidence would've been laid on the table. The prosecutors and defense could've spun it the way they wanted, but at least it would've been out there in a way that's beyond the noise of everyone else who's angry and upset.

Is there a problem with unarmed black men being shot by police officers? Of course there is and we need to address and stop this from happening. Whether this is an instance of that I have no idea. I wasn't there and I haven't seen all the evidence. What I have seen is how Ferguson treated the protestors, and that I can easily condemn. It was mismanaged, despicable, and overblown. As rowdy as they may have been, there's no excuse to bring in that much artillery and weaponry. In fact, the police shouldn't have that at all, and I'm worried the same tactics will be used as protestors gather again. I was hoping Ferguson would open up a movement to demilitarize police at least if stopping the killing of black males wasn't going to go anywhere, but unfortunately it only allowed a small debate that faded away as the news cycle moved onto the Ukraine, the war in the Gaza Strip, ISIS, Ebola, the elections...

An indictment would've helped both sides because if he did kill Brown unjustly, justice would've been served. And if he didn't, he could cut through the disinformation to prove his innocence. I can see the argument here that you don't want officers second-guessing in the heat of the moment whether their actions could land them in court, but here I think there's enough out there to say we need to take a closer look at it. And really officers need to fucking think about their actions because this has happened too many times.

In the academia the motto is "publish or perish," and I read periodicals to keep on track of current developments in my field. Famous ones include Oxford's The English Historical Review or the Medieval Academy of America's Speculum. The idea is to get it peer-reviewed by other professionals so that there's a sense of quality control.

Recently there's been an explosion of "fake" journals: Predatory publishers send out advertisements so that, for a fee, your article can appear in their journal. However no one will read this unknown periodical, and your money went to waste. Particularly since there's no peer review, so any idiot can publish their findings.

To demonstrate this, here is an article about The International Journal of Advanced Technology. What I love about this is that they didn't even give a glance to the paper. I know no one's doing proofreading, never mind fact-checking, but you'd think someone would at least give a glance.

I went straight from iOS4 to iOS8 on my iPhone, so the changes are immediately noticeable and extensive. I had to spend a day fiddling around until I figured out how everything works. For a company that prides itself on design, I can say Apple fucked up on the mp3 player. This is the current iOS screen:

In iOS4, the playback bar was above the album art, which for me makes all the difference. I think whoever created this forgets it's not a mouse but rather my ginormous fingers controlling everything. By cramming all the controls at the bottom, it's easier for me to accidentally press something else, especially since this is an mp3 player and half the time I'm not really looking at it. Before there was never an issue because it was separated from everything else, so it was harder for me to fuck up.

You probably can't read the German, but those pink buttons on the bottom weren't there either. From left to right, it's the repeat, create a new playlist, and randomize. Those weren't there before either; they were tiny and diagonal to the playback bar instead of right next to the volume bar, which also means I'm tapping that shit unintentionally.

But this is the most annoying aspect for me right here. On iOS4 if you tapped any random place on the screen, the lyrics would pop up. If there weren't any, then nothing would happen. Here instead the artist's name, title, and CD disappear and the ability to rate the song pops up. Those dots can turn to stars if you tap them accordingly. Considering I'm already fucking up over accuracy, having this shit pop up every three seconds instead of letting me move onto the next track, lower the volume, or progress further into the song makes me want to pull my hair out. Was this something people were complaining about? In the previous iOSes you could still do it, but there was a step or two in between. Were people saying, "Man, what I really want is for it to be easier to rate these songs and tapping to a star menu was too fucking difficult so please smash as many functions into this tiny space as possible." Because that's the only reason why I can imagine they designed it like this.

Jesus, I kinda forgot about this. Okay, back on track.

Did you know the German dub pulled crazy 4kids shit? They felt blades were a no-no and edited out things like kunai. This particular scene took a new twist:

So he says, but later in the series gave me the impression that everyone and their mother could use the Sharingan so long as they tried. Also, Christ this scanlation group needs a better typesetter/editor.

I really miss these splash pages because they were usually pretty funny or cool to look at. I've noticed that with some long-running series: The page numbers per chapter start decreasing. I remember paintpixel started coloring some of them, and because I had access to the color laser printer in the weather station at Bronx Science, I got so many requests to print them out. Ah, the memories.

People complain about Naruto and flashbacks, which is true, but I think they forget it started really early on. Considering these pages come from chapter 12, it's not like the reader forgot any of this. The anime was also pulling this bullshit by this point: I distinctly remember this episode spent the first ten minutes recapping the previous one.

People fucking forget how great this plan was. It's no Shikamaru level, but it's still pretty fucking excellent. I wasn't expecting this from Naruto, especially at this early stage. What happened to this kid? I guess that's what happens when you have infinite amounts of chakra; you forget about complicated plans and just plow people over with your superior powers.

I use this as an example about the problems of moving from one medium to another. I saw this first in the anime before reading it in the manga, and this move took a good ten, fifteen seconds. At the time I thought, "Why the hell is Zabuza continuing his attack when it's obvious that Kakashi's copying it?" In the manga, this looks almost instantaneous. Because the animators had to accommodate all the seals, they created a drawn-out sequence that looks ridiculous in real time. Naruto as a series suffered a lot in the action scenes because of all the internal thoughts, which created awkward pauses. Compare that to something like Cowboy Bebop that had smooth fights without having to stop everything for a character to contemplate what to do next. It works better on page than in animation.

Also, does this move win the prize for amount of seals? It's not that amazing compared to some of the jutsu later on.

Considering I technically beat it even though I have tons of levels to finish, I should probably talk about Hyrule Warriors a bit. I've mentioned my biggest complaint before about character additions as well as unimportant enemies suddenly being given a prominent role. Second to that, I feel there's not much consideration given to games other than Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, or Skyward Sword. Lana has a few moves that give a nod toward Wind Waker, but that's it. Instead of Wizzrobe, Cia, or Volga, you could've had Agahnim, the Skull Kid, Vaati, Nightmare... I heard they're adding more characters with the new DLC, but so far they're from the three games already covered. Hyrule Warriors isn't a nostalgia game like Dissidia, but I still would prefer a greater appreciation for the series as a whole instead of the recent 3D ones (and they even skipped Majora's Mask!).

The plot wasn't amazing but then again Zelda rarely is, although this one shocked me. Ganon got his ass kicked by the new character, Cia. There wasn't even a level to show the ass kicking; it happened in a cut scene. Do you honestly think he could be dominated by some newbie? No. He would fucking destroy her. Her plot wasn't really necessary considering Ganon is the main villain; nothing would've changed if they had just removed her from the storyline, which is probably why I despise her and Lana so much.

Controls are fine, although I've heard they're pretty bad on the Wiimote. My only complaint is it's difficult to select which enemy you want to focus on. Half the time I'm directly facing a guy, press the lock on button, and suddenly I'm targeting someone behind me forty feet away.

Overall I was pleased with the game, which surprised me. The music is... different considering Zelda usually tries to go with classical and this is mostly metal or rock, it's fun to whack people in the face, and playing around with the different weapons is fun as shit. I wouldn't recommend this if you're not a Zelda fan because I believe Dynasty Warriors probably is more substantial, but it's a great way to pass the time.

We all know what the shitfest Assassin's Creed - Unity is, but what interested me is Ubisoft's demand that reviewers not publish their reviews until twelve hours after the game was released. Corruption and dishonesty has always been a staple of the video game news industry, but I'm on the fence whether this case is unethical. Let's compare this to Kane & Lynch and GameSpot: An editor was fired because the website posted a bad review, and Eidos threatened to pull advertising. There's no black and white there. GameSpot is not demonstrating journalistic integrity and instead bows to pressure.

I agree that Ubisoft's decision is not consumer-friendly, but they're not telling news organizations to lie. To be honest, Ubisoft isn't obliged to give advanced copies to anyone. The BBC notes Sega didn't for Sonic Boom, and I wasn't upset at them for doing so. It doesn't benefit the company itself in any way because reviewers can warn about potential problems. Would that help customers if they did? Of course. But I view video games like movies: If it's a big-name game, people are going to buy it anyway so there's lots of revenue opening day. If it's shitty, word gets out and numbers drop. That's irregardless if journalists are involved or not.

It's not like I'm comfortable with the agreement that Ubisoft made with news organizations, but both sides were brutally honest here. Ubisoft wanted their pre-order and first day money, and news were allowed to complain all they wanted... so long as it was after the release time. If it really bothered them, they wouldn't've signed the agreement with Ubisoft. In reality I don't give a shit what places like GameSpot have to say considering as I've mentioned above their morality is dubious and reviews in general don't sway me. At the end of the day it's an opinion, and I often have a different opinion than other people. I have a lot of respect for Yahtzee and Zero Punctuation, but he and I disagree on a lot of things. He derided many things I loved, and that didn't stop me from buying it, much like anything I write here won't stop him from loving things. Admittedly here it's dealing with facts and not opinions — a glitch exists regardless of how you feel about it — but at least it's not like the old days where once you buy a cartridge, that's it. And Ubisoft learned their lesson this time around.

You may have heard about the 2009 earthquake in Italy that got several scientists convicted for not properly telling the population that one was imminent. Surprisingly I'm on the fence about this one. See, if that sentence were completely true, I would totally agree that Italy is out of its fucking mind. There's no way a seismologist can predict something like that. But that's not the full story. The town had experienced minor tremors prior to the big one and called in some dudes to ask if something's going to happen. They gave varying replies, but some of them said there's no danger of an earthquake, which then occurred. Yeah, then I'm going to blame them. Just like you can't predict when an earthquake happens, conversely you can't predict when it doesn't. So the town went back to their lives without realizing 300 of them would soon die.

Seismology is a reactionary science. Maybe some day we can give a date and time, but right now all they can do is examine the aftershocks. It's not like volcanology, where if you're looking at it carefully enough you can tell it's gonna blow. What the scientists should've just said is maybe. Whether that's enough to charge them, I don't know. I don't think it's the same category as an engineer saying a building is stable and then it collapses, but I don't think the seismologists acted properly in this situation either.

When Charles VIII of Frances died unexpectedly in 1498 without any heirs, the throne passed to his second-cousin, Duke Louis of Orléans. Nowadays we think of the French kings as some of the most powerful of Europe, but particularly in the early days of the Middle Ages they barely had any real authority at all. Technically they just controlled the Île-de-France, a small area surrounding Paris. Eventually through marrying heiresses or employing escheat were the French kings able to become the towering figures we think of like Louis XIV, the Sun King.

Louis of Orléans, or now Louis XII, comes in during that consolidating period. And he faced a problem. Charles VIII had married Anne, the duchess of Brittany. Now that she's a widow, the dukedom reverts back to her. Brittany is nothing to sneeze at; it's double the size of the Île-de-France, plus it's always been quasi-autonomous and troublesome, so to put it under direct control of the French royal family would solve a lot of issues. Not wanting to lose this opportunity, Louis planned on marrying Anne, but unfortunately he was already married to another woman named Joan, who was Charles VIII's sister.

Normally in these situations kings use consanguinity, which is basically an anti-incest law. The degree depended on the time period, but during Louis' time the church prohibited within the fourth degree unless you got a papal dispensation first. And the pope allowed this marriage, so Louis couldn't use that route, never mind they actually were legally far apart enough to marry, surprising considering everyone was related to everyone in the European nobility by this point.

Next he tried to say lack of consent. Charles VIII and Joan's father, Louis XI, arranged this marriage, and it eventually came to fruition when the two reached puberty. Age of consent back then was fourteen, but unfortunately Louis nor anyone else could really definitely say whether he was fourteen or a little younger.

So he picked the most humiliating way possible: He couldn't consummate the marriage due to her physical deformities, which is humiliating to say the least. At this point Joan got pissed off, so she produced two witnesses who said Louis bragged after their wedding night he went for three or four rounds, so he countered with he couldn't have sex because she used witchcraft on him, and her riposte was how does he know what sex is like with her if he's under a spell.

Clearly Louis was just making shit up as he went along, and if Pope Alexander VI didn't need his help against the Sforza, there's no way he could've obtained an annulment. But that's always what I wondered about this case: If Alexander was under your thumb anyway — anyone who's played Assassin's Creed knows the French are invading Italy at about this time — there wasn't any need to start grasping at straws for a reason. Just stick with the consanguinity thing and Alexander will provide. It's not like the Borgias were known for their moral probity here. This way it's not obvious that you're lying and you have the added bonus of not insulting your wife, who may I add loyally managed your estates and helped your release after you were an idiot and rebelled against the French crown, only to be captured and imprisoned. Jesus Christ son, have some class.

Have you ever heard of William Van Allen? Probably not. He was the architect behind the Chrysler Building. Prior to that project, he was partners with another architect named H. Craig Severance, but the two had a falling out. Later on, Severance was hired to create the Bank of America Building, now known as the Trump Building. You probably recognize it by sight but don't know it by name. Whilst this was going on, Walter Chrysler hired Van Allen to create his building, and the two started construction concurrently. At the time, it was the big news as to who would create the world's tallest building first. Each week newspapers were stating how many stories were added, and the other side would read it and add more to their building. It got so bad that to fool Severance, Van Allen had that famous spire of the Chrysler Building constructed inside the skyscraper itself and then hoisted up after the Bank of America Building was officially completed. There's no fucking way this would be legal now.

This story had drama, passion, and everything a news organization wants, but my favorite part about it is after all that effort and fighting, it was a moot point because less than a year later the Empire State Building was made. How's that, you little shits. Fuck Chrysler, fuck Bank of America, the Empire State is here to kick all your asses.

(Actually the worst part of this story is Chrysler never paid Van Allen. Part of the reason why Van Allen and Severance stopped collaborating together is Van Allen had no business acumen, and thus only assumed Chrysler would give him his due without actually writing up a contract.)

Wow, I swear I updated more recently than this. My bad. Lemme rant for a little bit though. It's one thing to be lazy and it's another to lie. Tonight when I got home, I checked the tracking for my shipment. Thank fucking god I did because it said it was delivered and specifically said it was given to an individual. So I ran upstairs and asked mom and dad where my package was, and they said they hadn't received anything. I'm about to start calling neighbors to ask if it was sent to the wrong address, but then I thought, "Wait, let me check the front door first." And sure enough, it was sitting there in plain sight on the steps. I know this company has an option "left at door" because I've seen it before. I don't know why the delivery man would do this, but I'd rather he just admit he was too fucking lazy to ring the bell than say he did the responsible thing and actually handed it off. Because now I'm in panic mode, not certain where the hell it is. And seriously son, you came at 20:30. Why the fuck can't you just ring the bell so this box isn't out in the open all night? I'm not even expecting you to stay and wait for someone to come. Just let us know you were there so I can bring it inside.

Today my French teacher was explaining a grammatical point about the verb "to like" and pronouns. This is a little complicated, but stay with me. There're three ways to say "it" in French: le, la, and ça. Usually when you're making a pronoun, you use le and la. He said to us that you can say, "I like her" or "I like him," but you cannot use le and la for "it." You just repeat the phrase: "Do you like miso ramen?" "Yes, I like miso ramen." You can't say, "Yes, I like it."

When someone pointed out there's still ça, he said, "Oh, but we only use that for sex:" "Do you like it, you slut?" "Yeah, I like it." They fucking destroyed an entire construction just because of sex. Now everyone is forced to repeat the entire direct object since sex ruined it. Fucking French people.

Some of the levels in Hyrule Warriors are fucking impossible to beat on your own. There's literally so much shit happening simultaneously that you can't physically be everywhere at once, so you need to play with a friend to divvy up all the tasks. And I feel they really dropped the ball on this one. I've gone to Wong's house twice to help out with the missions she's stuck on and she's ahead of me, so there's a part of my mind that's thinking, "...Jesus Christ, in about a week or two when I catch up, I'm gonna have to do all this shit over again." Why the hell didn't they make a fucking online multiplayer co-op mode? That way we can work on it from our respective accounts and reap the rewards together. What makes it extremely aggravating is they did a half-assed online thing, where random players' icons will appear on your map, and you can help them with a level. Not help them beat it, but beatit yourself and they receive some money or whatever.

I'm trying to figure out whether to blame Nintendo or Toei for this. I haven't played any Dynasty Warriors game, so I can't say whether Toei has the capability to make an online engine or not. And Nintendo's online capabilities were always shit. Perhaps it's a combination of the two.

According to Hyrule Historia, this is the chronology for the Zelda games. I knew some shit was up about eight years ago when I read Twilight Princess took place a hundred years after Ocarina of Time. Until then I thought Zelda was like Final Fantasy: games with similar elements but without any relation to one another. Nintendo devotes a lot of time in this book explaining how each one is connected, but it just doesn't make sense. The series began without any intention of creating this timeline. Yeah, okay, Zelda II was a sequel, but A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening sure weren't. I feel like in the mid-2000s suddenly someone in Nintendo said, "Hey! Why don't we make this all one universe?" I said this at the time on xanga, but let's just compare Twilight and Ocarina then. If that's the case, how the hell did the Temple of Time acquire legs, move away from Hyrule Town, and plop itself in the middle of the Lost Woods? Why is Hyrule Town in the middle of Hyrule Field instead of to the north of it? Why is Zora's Domain northwest of Death Mountain instead of southeast? The fucking tectonic plates don't move that fast in a century!

But you have to ask, what is the point? Is there anything to be gained from saying all Zelda games are in the same universe? Nope. I can't think of how this develops the series. Except for direct sequels, saying Minish Cap comes after Skyward Sword doesn't help in any way. So why make this effort?

Consequently, regardless of what Nintendo claims, I'm just going to recognize these:
Legend of Zelda → Zelda II
Ocarina of Time → Majora's Mask → Wind Waker → Phantom Hourglass → Spirit Tracks
And maybe Minish Cap → Four Swords → Four Swords Adventures

Tales of Xillia had a sequel, Tales of Xillia 2, and in it you can use all of the characters from the first game. If you've played the first game, they also allow you to carry over the costumes for the characters in the second. There were often themes: school uniforms, bathing suits, Santa Claus, clothes from Tales characters in previous games, etc. In this new game, they've introduced three new characters, and unfortunately they don't have all the sets. So the rest of my characters are running around with matching outfits and I have three who look completely different. Why would you do this? I'm willing to pay for DLC just to let my OCD be at ease.

Parents get upset at me sometimes for my candy ranking system. Usually I give one piece, but if I really like your costume I'll give more. And I'll announce it: "For having such an awesome Creature from the Black Lagoon costume, you get three!" And then I'll turn to this unoriginal princess and say, "...Here's your one." And the parent who was monitoring from a distance will frown at the unfairness of the situation. Listen, if you were a good parent, you'd dress your kid in something more interesting.

Actually, I've noticed the parents have the best costumes. It's a shame few of the come up to the door because I'd like to give them something too.

Also, kids need to learn physics. I can't open my screen door if all of you are literally standing in front of it. When I push it open an inch and then stop, it's probably because I don't want to shove you down my steps. It's a signal that you need to back the fuck up. Babies, I can understand. They don't know what the hell is going on. But teenagers? You should've already figured out how doors work.

And also, teenagers: You guys down the line have the worst costumes. You need to step it up.

Mom really hates my pumpkins. I've done Pacman, the Prince rolling a katamari, a cactaur, a Mario mushroom, and this year it's Finn and Jake. Each time I proudly present the fruit of my labors, her expression as she gazes upon it clearly says, "What the fuck did she create?" Well, she was never a mother who could fake enthusiasm for the sake of her children.

I've been out of the house for a while, and back in the apartment we never got any guests for Halloween. I was talking with my neighbor to ask what the situation was like last year to prepare the proper amount of candy, and he said we should expect 350+. Jesus Christ. Friday is sabbath, and there is no way we're going to get through the prayers.

Literally the day after I wrote this post, an example arose in my French class. In that language, afin de and pour mean "in order to" or "to" (I slept eight hours last night to be well-rested today). Our textbook pulled the exact shit I'm talking about to demonstrate the similarities in usage and meaning for these two phrases. First they gave us a reading about emigrants from France using the phrase afin de all over the place, and many students had no fucking idea what that meant. The following exercise asked us questions about each of the people discussed in the article and then this happened:

Observez ces phrases (Look at these sentences)
Ils ont tout quitté pour vivre une expérience internationale. (They all left to experience an international life.)
Erwan et Stéphanie sont partis en Nouvelle-Zélande afin de devenir agriculteurs. (Erwan and Stephanie left for New Zealand to become farmers.)

a. Pour quoi est-ce qu'ils ont tout quitté ? Et Erwan et Stéphanie ? (Why did they all leave? And Erwan and Stephanie?)
b. D'après vous, est-ce que afin de et pour veulent dire la même chose ? (In your opinion, are afin de and pour the same thing?)

As a teacher, I see what the book was getting at. The first set of questions about each person is to evaluate reading comprehension. Then these are to bring our attention to the grammatical point of the lesson. It quotes two sentences from the reading so that we understand you can use both afin de and pour to create the construction I mentioned above. However most students don't know why books are formatted this way. They answered a set of questions asking why people were leaving France, and then were stuck on question A because it's literally the same one all over again: "Why are they all leaving?" Well, the answer is right there in the quotation. Do I just write the quotation again? Do I take information from the questions asked before from reading comprehension? What the point of this question considering we just answered it? And then they never moved on. It's shit like this that drives me nuts about language textbooks nowadays.

Have you ever heard of a Thomasson? It's basically a useless vestige of an urban environment — a pipe connected to nothing, a telephone pole that hangs no wires — that is still maintained. The idea came from artist Akasegawa Genpei, who in the 1980s was walking past a flight of stairs that led to nowhere, and yet he could see its rails were recently painted. Even though there's no point, its still retained its upkeep. Akasegawa started a column in a magazine describing Thomassons he found around town, and eventually readers would send in examples of their own. In 1985 he published a book compilation, and eventually in 2010 this was translated into English. To generate interest, the publisher had the translator start a blog about Thomassons he found in San Francisco, and like Akasegawa he too received reader's submissions. However one day he got an image of a middle finger along with a note that said, "Thanks for making my family famous." It as from Gary Thomasson's daughter.

You probably wondered from the beginning of this post why the hell these are called that. Akasegawa was a rabid baseball fan, and in the 1980s an American baseball player named Gary Thomasson was signed onto the Yomiuri Giants. In America he had a splendid career, playing for both the Yankees and San Francisco Giants before heading to Japan. However once there he couldn't perform, almost set the record for the highest rate of strike outs, and was usually benched. Akasegawa saw him similar to these urban remainders: completely useless but being "maintained" through his exorbitant contract. When his book was being translated, Akasegawa expressed fear that the actual baseball player would learn of it and become insulted — regardless of his Japanese records, Akasegawa was still a fan of Thoamsson — and it seems this was realized.

Then why the hell did you name this after him? Imagine for a moment you're a big fan of Dick Cheney, but then you coin a term for any hunting accident involving shooting your friend in the face a "Cheney." And then later you fret about whether Cheney would be upset at what you've done. Well, yeah. It's pretty insulting and humiliating. Maybe you shouldn't've fucking done it in the first place. I myself wouldn't have the balls to do something like that, even if I didn't like the guy. It's just too disrespectful. And this became a movement in Japan in the late 1980s. Everyone was in on calling this guy completely useless.

In light of recent events, Harlan and mom had this deep exchange:

Harlan: Don't get Ebola
Mom: Ok

Pure poetry.

After being trained in ESL, I've learned the reasons why textbooks do things. Let me give give an example from my German class. Usually chapters are about a theme: going on vacation, discussing hobbies, describing your daily routine. On one about families, it starts off with a woman's photo of hers. Students are supposed to discuss the picture to get them into a German mood as well as work on their vocabulary. Afterward they read a paragraph of the woman talking about her family and from the information derived from it, figure out where she and each relation is in the picture. This is for reading comprehension. Finally, students are told to underline words ending in -er and -ste. This is because, like English, the comparative ends in -er and the superlative in -st. So the woman says, "My brother Uwe is taller than my brother Günter. My sister Marianne is the oldest in the family." By underlining the endings, students can notice the pattern and the grammar for the chapter is linked with the theme. Then there are exercises on the comparative and superlative.

As my trainers were teaching this, I remember thinking, "Wow, you guys need to take a foreign language class with this method because this is exactly the crap they pull in my French and German classes and I don't get jack shit half the time." Let me break down what happens from a student's point of view: The teacher is assuming you know the vocabulary for family members, but you don't so when you're called on you can't answer anything. In my French and German class, at least my teacher knows English so I can ask, "What is 'father-in-law' in German/French?" If I'm teaching ESL with a dozen students from different countries, I can't answer that question so they'll be stuck in the dark. Also, I was taught to discourage dictionary use because students have to learn from context. I'm sorry, there's no fucking way to tell from context what the fuck "brother," "grandmother," or "nephew" is unless you know the fucking definition.

After feeling discouraged from the first exercise, you're then put into hell by reading this paragraph because not only are half the words incomprehensible because the first exercise didn't help, you're now given new grammar with no explanation and are expected to unravel it yourself. My trainer said this was called "test-teach-test," i.e. the teacher tests the class with new grammar and sees who's weak and where, actually fucking teaches what he's supposed to, and then tests the class again to assess the improvement. I've found by personal experience you enter this state of confusion because you've never seen this construction before, the teacher explains in the language you're studying so you still don't understand, and then there are exercises you can't answer because you're still bewildered by it all. And then after the class you go home and look up on the internet what you were supposed to learn in class.

Supposedly this approach to teaching works, but personally it just freaks me the fuck out. I feel earlier stages of language learning should be more structured and less open with vocab lists (when did those become non grata?) and more concrete explanations instead of hoping the students get it. Once they have a better grasp on the language, then we can start this bullshit. Because as a student half the time I couldn't comprehend why the textbook was making me do this.

I have no idea whether this is a real article or not, and quite frankly I don't care. All I know is "using her fists in a scientific fashion" is one of my favorite things ever.

Man, this year's fall really sucked. I think because it stayed relatively warm for a long period of time, so instead of having all the nice autumn colors it went straight from green to brown. I've been putting off going to the NYBG chrysanthemum show because I wanted take pictures of the forest, but it's ending soon. Oh well, next year.

Greene started and beat Bioshock Infinite at my house the other day. I wrote about this on my xanga, but I do prefer series that are based in an alternate universe because the creators can play around more. It's easier for me to suspend disbelief because subconsciously I think, "Well, that's how the politics work in this world." Or "I guess their physics are different than ours." Or whatever. If a story takes place here, then I'm going to start nitpicking because I've experienced this reality and I know how it works. Considering Bioshock Infinite happens on a floating island in 1912, clearly they have technology we don't. I'd be willing to let that slide if not for the fact they have plenty of things that they shouldn't. Like a PA system. Or CCTV. Or machine guns that were small enough to carry by hand and didn't require a tripod. My favorite part of the game is when you teleport to the future — probably 1960s or 70s — and you see New York being taken down by fucking zeppelins, as if we didn't have the jets with missiles to fight back with. At some point you have to wonder why make the game in 1912 at all. If you're going to have all this futuristic technology, it can be in, you know, the future. Don't give me this half-assed steampunk shit.

Now I'm beginning the Wave Country arc. Nowadays we complain about how long fights take, but holy shit that qualification exam with Kakashi took about four chapters. That's nothing compared to nowadays, but I swore to god it was one or two. It's weird how the memory works.

I like how Naruto decisively defeated Sasuke here and no one remembers this.

When I first read this I was confused and I still am today: Why are they so surprised by this fact? If it has a 66% rate of failure, that meant there should be tons of kids in the Ninja Academy who failed and are hoping for another shot. Why don't Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto know about them?

I've been thinking about this for a while. Considering Naruto's still a genin, does that mean after all this is done, he'll go back to missions of walking people's dogs?

People forgot about this. When the daimyou showed up later and were protected when the Ninja War started up, everyone was like, "Who are these guys??" I kinda wish Kishimoto explored the exact relationship between the ninja villages and the actual government of their respective countries more because it could've provided interesting plot points, but oh well.

[11:15:47] Dun 4 Hire: Yo.
[11:15:56] Dun 4 Hire: So after registering Hyrule Warriors, they made me take a survey
[11:16:11] Dun 4 Hire: And the last question was, "When you purchased this, did you know about the downloadable Ganondorf costume offer?"
[11:16:17] Dun 4 Hire: And I'm like, ".....No."
[11:16:21] Dun 4 Hire: And then it said, "Thanks for taking the survey!"
[11:16:24] Dun 4 Hire: What the fuck??
[11:16:30] Dun 4 Hire: Tell me about this fucking offer, you son of a bitch!
[11:18:36] gattsu456: ..... What.
[11:18:46] gattsu456: They just said, "Aight."
[11:18:48] gattsu456: And that was it?
[11:19:19] Dun 4 Hire: Yeah!
[11:19:20] Dun 4 Hire: Yo!
[11:19:25] Dun 4 Hire: They did the same for SSB!
[11:19:28] Dun 4 Hire: I just did it now!
[11:19:39] Dun 4 Hire: "Did you know about the soundtrack offer? No? Thanks for filling out the survey!"
[11:19:43] Dun 4 Hire: You little shits!
[11:20:33] Dun 4 Hire: " Here’s a nice offer involving a (usually) not-so-nice guy: if you buy Hyrule Warriors for Wii U and register the game with Club Nintendo between 9/26/14 and 10/23/14, you can receive a free download code for the Demon King Costume Set DLC: two costumes for Ganondorf that you can use in-game. "
[11:20:34] Dun 4 Hire: JEsus Christ.
[11:20:36] Dun 4 Hire: Thanks for telling me!
[11:34:36] gattsu456: You know, I think Nintendo's the worst at advertising.
[11:34:54] gattsu456: I feel like I only know about their shit because I look video game shit up online.
[11:35:10] gattsu456: And if I didn't, I probably wouldn't know about half the shit they release.

I'm still a little confused how to get that soundtrack!

harukami.tumblr.com/post/95609393103/unlockaflockofwords-felixlovesyou

Mmmmm... You know, I'm gonna have to side with the person defending Rowling on this one. Although I agree that minorities, gays, and women have under representation in media, I don't think Rowling is obliged to fulfill any sort of agenda. It's a fucking coming-of-age kids book about a boy attending wizarding school and fighting a hyperbolically evil man. Takealookatyourlife is right: "We are not told about any of the Hogwarts professors love lives, other than Snape," frankly because Harry isn't interested. I never would've known McGonagall was a widow and also briefly engaged to a Muggle in her youth if I hadn't read it on Pottermore. It's just not appropriate for professors to be discussing their personal lives like that with students, and none of them really did.

You could argue that it'd be out there, like knowledge that Barney Frank is gay. I'm not certain if people knew; given there's never any mention of Dumbledore in a relationship, even with information Rowling's provided outside of the books, it's possible he kept his sexuality a secret. He grew up in the 1880s for fuck's sake and was attracted to Grindelwald in the 1890s. That's not exactly a gay-friendly time. Only toward the end of his life was society becoming accepting.

The only time in the books I think would've been the opportune moment for Dumbledore to tell Harry would be the chapter King's Cross from the seventh book, after Voldemort "kills" Harry in the forest. It's when Dumbledore explains everything about his past to him. Except revealing his sexuality would've totally fucked up the flow of that chapter. I know as a reader, we would be too focused on the shock of learning Dumbledore's gay to really pay attention to the important issues: Dumbledore's guilt over his sister's death and how Harry can move forward after this.

Although I understand the frustration of felixlovesyou, the person who's so upset at Rowling, at lack of prominent homosexual characters, Rowling not overtly disclosing Dumbledore's homosexuality keeps in tune with the book. Only relationships relevant to Harry — Bill and Fleur, Lupin and Tonks, Snape and Lily, etc. — are the ones explored. It may provide an interesting insight into Dumbledore's psst and ambitions, but it doesn't expand the story in a meaningful way. Considering how many scenes she cut out of each book because they were already so goddamned long, this is just a minor issue.

Honestly my favorite line from felixlovesyou is this: "Including canonically queer characters in this most beloved and formative series of books would have LITERALLY changed - and quite probably saved - some queer kids’ lives." If your life hinges on whether or not it's mentioned in the Harry Potter books that Dumbledore is gay, you must not value it so much.

You know Easter Island? The place with the huge stone heads? When James Cook first arrived in 1774, he found an island with plenty of pasture and a population of only 700 with a few canoes created from driftwood. That is completely different from when people first settled there a few centuries earlier. It was originally full of trees and plenty of wildlife. However the people who first populated it introduced rats, which killed off plenty of the native fauna, and they themselves practiced a form of slash-and-burn agriculture, which destroyed all the trees until there were none left. From that day they had no firewood, no method to create canoes and leave the island, and even more of the animal population left or died out thanks to the forest disappearing. From then on, society collapsed and there was plenty of warfare as people fought for whatever few resources that were left. That's why there were only a few hundred left when Cook arrived even though there were thousands previously; they were killed and the population couldn't rise to its previous levels without the resources.

I use Easter Island as an example of how we're all ecologically destructive, not just modern civilization. Although I agree industrialization and advanced agricultural techniques are able to increase the speed of devastation, even the most primitive societies were environmentally ruinous. Occasionally I hear how it's better to return to a simpler time, but how much simpler can you get than a bunch of Stone Age people on canoes landing on an island? They managed to fuck it up too. And I can list plenty of Native American societies who did similar things — annihilation of species, desertification of land — regardless of what Pocahontas tried to say about them. Every animal on earth is like this: horses graze until the land is bare, rabbits just fuck everything up, rats will consume everything in their path. Rather than sneer at our own shortcomings, it's amazing that we humans are the only ones on earth who realize the consequences of our actions.

Me: Greene's playing a game with me and the main antagonist's name is Comstock, but whenever people mention his name, I hear Cumshot.
Peguero: That's.....maybe a bit of a stretch.
Me: Occasionally I hear Cumsluts.
Peguero: This is like those ink blot test but with words, and all you hear is sex.

Moham and I may have been a little too excited about Mario's new outfit in Smash:

[22:48:43] Dun 4 Hire: YO SON
[22:48:49] gattsu456: YO
[22:48:51] Dun 4 Hire: CAN WE ADDRESS MARIO'S UNITED STATES OUTFIT IN SMASH
[22:48:55] Dun 4 Hire: BECAUSE THAT SHIT IS AWESOME.
[22:49:04] gattsu456: YES.
[22:49:06] gattsu456: FUCK YES.
[22:50:24] Dun 4 Hire: NINTENDO HAS FUCKING DID IT AGAIN
[22:50:28] Dun 4 Hire: I FUCKING LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT
[22:50:35] gattsu456: NINTENDO ALWAYS FUCKING DELIVERS.
[22:50:37] gattsu456: ALWAYS.
[22:50:38] Dun 4 Hire: IF MARIO ISN'T IN THAT COSTUME, I JUST RESTART THE LEVEL
[22:50:40] Dun 4 Hire: US OR GO HOME
[22:51:20] Dun 4 Hire: WHO THE FUCK AT NINTENDO THOUGHT OF THAT?
[22:51:27] Dun 4 Hire: WE NEED TO GIVE HIM MONEY.
[22:52:05] gattsu456: HIS BRAIN MUST BE PRESERVED FOR WHEN THE COUNTRY NEEDS GENIUS OF HIS LEVEL AT A CRITICAL POINT IN THE FUTURE.
[22:57:28] Dun 4 Hire: HE IS JAPAN'S... NO, THE WORLD'S LAST CHANCE FOR SURVIVAL.
[23:01:31] gattsu456: HE IS THE ONE THAT WILL GUIDE US INTO A NEW GOLDEN AGE.
[23:09:15] Dun 4 Hire: WITHOUT HIM, ALL OF US ARE LOST. LOST TO THE ABYSS.

I'm up to chapter four now of Naruto, so at the rate I'm going I should be done perhaps six years from now.

Man, I forgot about this. I wonder if he still uses this picture on his ninja ID. Like, assassins from other countries look up his information and this picture comes up. Oh crap, if Kishimoto referenced this late in the series, I think I'd forgive him for a lot.

I kinda miss Inner Sakura (I remember she was pretty much the only special Sakura had in the early days of the video game series), but lack of appearances is more to Sakura's development: She's now more comfortable with herself, so she doesn't have to put up a front anymore and no longer is such a shallow person. Or so I say, but I think Kishimoto just couldn't think of any more interesting scenes with her and dropped it as a concept.

How the fuck did I forget about this???

And thus without much ceremony a team of legend was created.

I was listening to NBC's original radio report of the 1945 crash into the Empire State Building. They laid out what they knew — a plane had collided into the building on a foggy day — what they didn't know — how many casualties there were — and interviewed a couple of survivors. What astounded me the most about the entire thing is at the end the announcer said, "This is the National Broadcasting Company. We return you now to the music of the first piano quartet." And then the slowest classical music begins.

This is completely different to what we would do today. First off, NBC waited until they had some facts before even putting it on the air. They even waited until office workers were saved and could interview them, and god knows how many hours that took. Nowadays reporters would be on the scene within ten minutes, shit would be on the air, and you'd just see an endless amount of raw videos of the incident. And they would never leave the story. Ever. The only thing that could stop them is if Russia started bombing us.

I think it's great that we have the capabilities to see incidents as they're happening, but simultaneously I really appreciate this old 1945 report. I watched the Newtown shootings as it occurred, and after a while I had to turn away from the television because I was becoming so disgusted. First off, nothing was fucking happening most of the time. It was just shots of police officers standing around or a news helicopter filming the scene from high above. And the pundits, oh Christ the pundits. They were saying absolutely nothing useful and literally speaking whatever the fuck came to their heads at the moment. It was a never-ending litany of idiocy and emptiness.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter whether I watched the shooting in real time or read about it later the following day. The immediateness doesn't really give me more information. In fact, it's worse because to fill up the vacuum of nothing happening, news just blabs stuff that's pointless or even worse, wrong. And after fourteen hours just spent on one story, you missed out everything else in the world. On the day of the Newtown Shooting, a man stabbed 22 children in China and Israeli soldiers beat up Reuters reporters. They sure as hell didn't cover any of that. In a way that's why I appreciate news that takes a breath and tries to figure stuff out before reporting, shows like Nightline or magazines like Newsweek. Although it's slower, they're at least not running at the mouth.

Still, NBC, at least you learned how to work on your segues. It's difficult to go from fire billowing out of the Empire State Building to a piano quartet without something transitioning it: "And that is when the rapist clubbed his victims to death with a dildo. That's our report, and now back to our previously scheduled program, Debussy's Clair de Lune."

An auxiliary verb doesn't really have any meaning by itself in an sentence but rather adds mood, aspect, or modality. For example, in English we add a "do" in questions: "Do you eat often?" German uses them too, but they fucked it up. The auxiliary verb is often really close to the verb it's helping in English because that's what makes fucking sense. It's like having an adjective right before or behind the noun it modifies. It'd be weird to have the noun ten words later. In English the perfect tense is subject + to have + past participle then you follow with the rest of the sentence. Sometimes you throw an adverb in there, but any more and it gets confusing. The Germans don't give a shit. They go subject + to have + past participle, but then they throw EVERYTHING in between to have and the past participle. So in English we'd say, "I've gone to the festival in Brooklyn with my friends every year," but in German they say, "I've to the festival in Brooklyn with my friends every year went." Why do that ever? I can understand languages sometimes put the verb at the end of the sentence like Latin or Japanese, or put it at the beginning like in Tagalog, but why ever separate the auxiliary verb and main verb like that? And you know the Germans also have problems with it because there have been studies that show when they read, they often flick their eyes to the end of the sentence to figure out what the hell is going on. It's your own fucking language and you can't handle this shit!

Another thing is they ONLY use the perfect form. Oh they have the simple past, but apparently no one says it aloud, only in writing. So while we'll say, "I went to the store in Brooklyn yesterday with my friends," they'll say, "I've to the store yesterday in Brooklyn with my friends gone."^* Why. Why. Why. You have a much simpler form and this entire construction isn't necessary, but you decided to make it longer just for the hell of it.

^* Actually, like with French some verbs involving movement use "to be" instead of "to have." So they'll say, "I am to the store gone." So weird.

I have no idea why I'm so into playing Hyrule Warriors. I've never played a single Dynasty Warriors game, but I get the feeling this is a watered-down version with a Zelda theme. And I'm loving almost every second of it. I didn't expect this.

I do have one complaint, and it's the addition of two characters, Lana and Cia. Because it's a crossover of several Zelda games, they created these two characters to push to explain how all these characters are together in one universe and to move the plot along. Honestly I think they weren't necessary, and each time I'm forced to play as Lana I get pissed because I'd rather use a character I know and love. Cia serves as the antagonist until Ganon comes along, but there are so many people to choose from in the Zelda series that could've replaced her. Zant and Ghirahim are already there, but there's also Vaati, Malladus, or Demise. You don't need to go deep into it; the plot as is isn't that amazing, and Zelda isn't plot-driven anyway. So instead of annoying me, throw in more people I know.

Speaking of that, who the hell is Wizzro? I know there's Wizzrobe, but it looks nothing like them and they were never important enough to be in such a prominent position. Also, Volga? That one boss from Ocarina? When did he become important?

I got Touch My Katamari but I don't own a Vita. What the hell is wrong with me.

In the 700s and 600s B.C., the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were invaded by the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms and ultimately conquered. Much of their population was deported to Mesopotamia, which was not an uncommon action for the Assyrians and Babylonians to take. When Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated and annexed the Babylonians, he allowed the Jews to return back to their homeland. This period away from the Holy Land is known as the Babylonian captivity. It's an important moment in Jewish history because not only does it provide the materials from the prophets, but also solidified the Jewish mentality on worshiping one god: Until that point, many had ignored that rule and sacrificed to other deities. Perceiving the Babylonian captivity as punishment for their lack of faith, upon their return the Jews decided they were going to do things right this time and cast off the other gods.

Supposedly the identities of the twelve tribes were lost during this period because no one could remember who belonged to which family anymore by the time of their return. And this is where I get pissed off. The kingdom of Israel fell in 722 B.C. and Judah in 601 B.C. According to the Bible itself, the captivity ended in 538 B.C. They can't fucking remember for about a century or even seventy years in the case of Judah what your fucking family is? Jews are all over the fucking world, some groups haven't even entered Israel for over a millennium, but they still remember their goddamned name. Are you seriously telling me the Jews lived in Egypt, became their slaves, wandered in the desert for forty years, and after all that remembered which tribe is which, but give them a century in Babylon and they forget everything?

I really regret playing Hyrule Warriors at Wong's place because now I wanna buy it and play it. I mean, I was going to anyway, but I could wait a bit until I was finished with other stuff. No more.

As I watched Greene play Naruto Ninja Storm Revolution, I realized I forgot a lot of shit in the series, particularly toward the end as I stopped paying as close attention. So I'm rereading it from the beginning, and now a lot of things seem weird in retrospect. So about once a week I'll write a post with comments.

This confused me for a long time because I thought that he was the fox, and later during the chuunin exams they talked as if it was inside of him (which it is). Perhaps it's a translation problem? Mizuki says, "ナルトの正体がガケ狐だと口にしない掟だ," although every version I've seen has Mizuki proclaiming he's Kyuubi itself. I've read websites explaining this away by saying he was saying the prejudice of the village, but part of me wonders whether Kishimoto's original intention was for Naruto to be the fox itself. If you read the pilot chapter, he is a transforming fox and perhaps Kishimoto wanted to continue that but changed his mind later.

Let's think about this. Some shithead who couldn't even pass the Ninja Academy exam, never mind the genin exam, somehow managed to slip past security, defeat the hokage, and get his hands on this super secret scroll? How fucking crappy is their security if Mizuki thought this useless kid had a decent chance of success? Also, what the fuck else was in that scroll? Naruto only managed to learn the first thing before Mizuki and Iruka caught up with him. We know there's kage bunshin no jutsu and shiki fuujin, but what else? The way everyone was phrasing it, there's jutsu in there that could topple the whole world.

Is that Chouji's dad right there getting pumped up to murder Naruto? Christ, he seems so fucking nice later.

Man, I miss this crystal ball. Maybe if someone else knew how to use it, Jiraiya wouldn't've had to enter Amegakure on a fact-finding mission and he'd be alive today.

New link. Thanks for the heads up Devin.
*update* Goddammit, taken down again already.

Last week a man named Omar Gonzalez jumped the fence surrounding the White House and made a dash toward it. He managed to reach the North Portico entrance, push aside a Secret Service agent, run into the East Room, and then head toward the Green Room before being tackled. This incident has directed scrutiny toward the Secret Service and several mistakes it's made in recent years: a person shot at the White House and no one realized it for four days, an armed person entered an elevator with the president. Today the director was grilled on Capitol Hill very harshly.

But there's actually something I really appreciate, even though it was probably what the Secret Service considers an error: Gonzalez wasn't shot and killed. Many people are questioning that considering there should be snipers on the roof and each agent should have a gun, but no shots were fired. Considering he could've had bombs strapped on him, it probably would've been understandable if he was gunned down, but I'm still breathing a sigh of relief that for once an incident like this didn't have a fatality. Of course there are major lapses in security here — the alarm on the fence didn't go off, the dogs weren't unleashed because they could've attacked the Secret Service agent (what's the point of them then?), and somehow he took down the agent by the door — and they need to be addressed, but I'm glad for once security isn't so trigger happy, especially with the climate nowadays.

When the Founding Fathers sat down at the Constitutional Convention, one of the problems that bedeviled them was leadership, i.e. should we mimic the two Roman consul model or just have one dude on top? The argument was perhaps there would be too much responsibility placed on one person: As you can see today, Obama not only has to juggle ISIS and Russia, but he also has to face the economic malaise and racial tensions at home. Perhaps it would be better if we had one person handle foreign affairs and another domestic issues. Ultimately the Founding Fathers feared eventual clashes between the two figures would weaken the country and made the president responsible for everything.

That is not the case for every country. Some did chose the two-leader route, and France is one of them: To this day the prime minister is in charge of the home front and the president meets with world leaders. But the delegates at the Constitutional Convention were correct and fights do erupt between the two. Case in point: Poincaré and Clemenceau, two major figures during World War I, hated each others' guts. I'm reading a book about the Paris Convention of 1919, and this is what it had to say:

"There are only two perfectly useless things in the world," [Clemenceau] quipped. "One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré!" ... Clemenceau had been attacking Poincaré for years and even spread rumors about Poincaré's wife. "You wish to sleep with Madame Poincaré?" he would shout out. "OK, my friend, it's fixed." During the war, Clemenceau, who like many leading French politicians had his own newspaper, criticized the president, often unfairly, for the failings of the French military. L'Homme Libre ... carried editorial after editorial, written by Clemenceau himself, castigating the inadequate medical care for wounded soldiers and the shortages of crucial munitions. The conduct of the war was a disaster, those in charge utterly incompetent. Poincaré was outraged. ^*

I fucking love every sentence of this. It's so fucking insane. We often quip about how we've lost our innocence and look fondly on our genteel past, but there is no fucking way anyone nowadays could get away with this. Just put a comparison to today's politicians. If Boehner even attempts to say he can set up a one-night stand with Michelle Obama to anyone who asks, he would be slaughtered by the press and social media. And can you imagine Obama actually owning his own newspaper where he just writes everyday about how much the Republicans suck? People would complain about propaganda in a flash. When people complain about the viciousness of politics nowadays, I just scoff. Our guys are not even on this level, never mind the actual duels people used to do a generation or two before Clemenceau and Poincaré. It's not about truculence; it's intransigence. At the end of the day, people like Clemenceau and Poincaré were able to come together and work things out, something we can't do with this current congress, which isn't even making comments about their wives!

^* Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 33-34.

When my parents first bought the house, they would hear strange noises. For example, there was the distinct sound of someone walking up the stairs, but no one would be there and everyone was in their bed. It took a little while to realize it was the neighbor; anyone who's been to my house can see we're attached to theirs, and like an apartment the noise filter through the wall. In my upstairs bedroom, I could even hear the closet door opening and closing. We moved in about six months ago, but next door has remained empty this entire time until last week. Suddenly they started up again, and it's throwing me off. See, after growing up here I could immediately sort out which sounds were ours and which were theirs. But with the new house, all those creaking and groaning frequencies have changed and I can't fucking tell what's what anymore. Before I could even figure out who was on the steps depending on the sound it made. Now I don't know if it's dad coming to bother me or my neighbor minding his business.

In case you're wondering what's going on in the Naruto universe:

Nova is a famous series on PBS that covers a wide range of topics from archaeology to mathematics. I've been watching episodes on Amazon that are made within the last decade, but suddenly I found one from the 1970s about the Maya. To be honest I found it more fascinating to see how they portrayed the information than the information itself. For example, if they're interviewing an archeologist today, he would say the earliest Mayan settlements are from 80 B.C. or even C.E. However the archeologists here consistently said the phrase "Before Christ," which most today would shy away from due to cultural insensitivity.

They also constantly compared the Maya to the Roman Empire. Nowadays you'd hear, "It seems the height of this city was in the early 300s," but the dude here said, "The height was around the time that Constantine founded Constantinople," as if he expected his entire audience to know that off the top of their heads. Or, "We think this settlement began right when the Social Wars were happening in Italy." I definitely know most people nowadays would go, "What the fuck is a Social War? Is that Facebook versus MySpace?"

In a way I think it reflects our current education system. I don't know the curriculum for about fifty, sixty years ago, but I'm going to assume it's more Euro-centric. Is it that our knowledge of history has declined because not only are we aware of Europe and America, but now we have to learn about everywhere else on the globe? We're given the same total amount of time to study, so consequently we just acquire a little knowledge about everything instead of one thing intensely. I'm actually not really certain whether this is better or worse. I've heard people decry how the American school system has gone down the drain, but I've talk with old people all the time and I can assure you their education doesn't impress me either. Still, I think it'd be cool to make an offhand comment about how this is similar to Scipio Africanus at Carthage and have people know what the fuck I'm talking about.

[12:54:55] Dun 4 Hire: Beanbag chairs are fucking dangerous, son.
[12:55:04] gattsu456: Shit.
[12:55:06] Dun 4 Hire: I just passed out for about two hours.
[12:55:08] gattsu456: Did it finally start attacking you?
[12:55:13] Dun 4 Hire: It is gaining sentience.
[12:55:20] gattsu456: It is slowly stealing your soul.
[12:57:57] Dun 4 Hire: That is its method; it makes you sleep and then quietly sucks it out as you are unconscious.
[12:58:16] gattsu456: In week, it will be Riva, and you will be the beanbag.

I was watching a show on butterflies tonight and it just brought huge feelings of guilt in my heart. Over the course of a month in first grade, we had a class project concerning butterflies. Our teacher managed to acquire some caterpillars, which we were supposed to observe and note about its transformation into a chrysalis and butterfly. We actually had a class book with each student illustrating a page: One kid shows the caterpillar eating a leaf, another kid draws how it crawls about. Finally they all became chrysalises inside a cage we kept near the front of the class.

Every morning we would enter the classroom and play around for about ten minutes until the teacher called a meeting at the front of the room where there was a large carpet. We would sit on it and she would discuss her plans for that day. I remember the teacher asked me to get something for her, and I stood up, got it, and turned around... accidentally knocking over the caterpillar cage. Right in front of everyone. Their gasps of horror still ring in my ears to this day. The images of those destroyed, nearly-born butterflies are still burned into my retina. I just murdered about a dozen butterflies. The ones we all working on together. Giving them nicknames. Wondering which one would hatch first. How we'd tag them before letting them go into the wild so scientists could research their migration path. They were our babies. With one movement I just ruined all of that.

To this day I wonder if my teacher told my parents about that. I asked them once, but they can't remember anymore. What would she have said? "Yeah, I made this wonderful group project for the class and all the kids got emotionally involved until your daughter fucked that all up."

Did you know the actual plural of "chrysalis" is "chrysalides?" I didn't use that because I'd sound like an asshole.