I think the worst part about the whole Christmas decorations thing is after all that hard labor, knowing you're going to have to take all that shit down in a month.

Tales of Hearts R completed. I never really played the original game, but I'm under the impression they revised a lot in the Vita version, like how they changed the battle system from 2D to 3D and that they added a new character. My only disappointment was Creed, the final boss. What I appreciate about the Tales series is the player can feel some sort of sympathy on some level for the antagonist; although you don't agree with the means or the goal, you can understand the standpoint. I see what Creed was going for, but he's such a dickhead, so egotistical, and so wrong that I don't feel the same connection with him like I did with Yggdrasil from Symphonia after seeing all the shit Half-Elves went through or Gaius from Xillia when you realize the tough choice humanity has to face with the dwindling mana resources. I looked at Creed's death with complete indifference and that's a shame.

Otherwise I found it an all right Tales game. I'm not putting it up there with Abyss but it's not shit like Legendia. It was enjoyable and nothing really comes to mind that was aggravating. Music is OK, graphics are all right (although not up to the Vita's capabilities), no party member was vomit-inducing... But none of the characters really stood out in my mind, nor was the plot particularly moving. It's just there in the middle. I'm not gonna go out of my way to recommend it, but if you're looking for something for the Vita I'm not going to turn my nose up to it.

I was watching Frozen with my cousin's daughter, and one of the protagonists Anna falls in love with a prince named Hans after a few hours of talking to him. They immediately approach her sister Queen Elsa for her blessing for their marriage, and she says no because you've literally only known the guy for a few hours. Later Elsa turns out to be right because Hans was deceiving Anna in order to gain control of Elsa's kingdom. I thought it was a valuable lesson to teach children — ironically a horrible lesson that you shouldn't trust people, but yeah — except Anna ultimately ends up with Kristoff, a person she's only known for a day. So I guess the ultimate message is six hours is too short a time but twenty-four is okay?

Sorry, gotta stop posting until I finish my Christmas presents. Doing it really late this year.

Talking about this with Alex last night. My favorite video game protagonists are:

1. Zidane Tribal from Final Fantasy IX.
2. Link from The Legend of Zelda series.
3. Rudy Roughknight/Cecilia Adlehyde/Jack Van Burace from Wild ARMs Yeah, I know. They just worked so well together I consider them one unit.
4. James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2.
5. Jade Curtiss from Tales of the Abyss.
6. Yuri Lowell from Tales of Vesperia.
7. Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII.
8. Jude Mathis from Tales of Xillia.
9. Ayla from Chrono Trigger.
10. Big Boss from the Metal Gear Solid series.

Mmmm... subject to change. I can't help but feel this isn't right and I'm missing people. I also need more time for top ten video game villains.

Even if you're not well-versed with Biblical history, you've probably heard of Solomon at some point because he's considered the greatest king Israel has ever had. He's best known for wisdom; he once prayed for it, and God personally gave it to him because he didn't ask for something like money or power. Historically Solomon presided over a period when its neighbors were weak, so he was able to flex Israel's muscles a bit and enrich the country. He built the First Temple. He supposedly wrote Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And outside of the Bible there's a plethora of legends and myths from the three monotheistic religions.

But to be honest I have no idea why he's called wise nor why kings immemorial want to emulate him. He enslaved his people to work on his building projects. He mismanaged his money and had to relinquish cities to pay off his debt. And worst of all, because of the influence of his wives, he started to worship other gods. Seriously, how can you claim someone is the ideal role model when he breaks God's most important commandment? Although he did increase Israel's power, the Bible itself said the kingdom was split and enfeebled after his death as punishment for his perfidy. That isn't the qualities of a good leader. I can't be the first person to notice this, so why have people from all over the world think he's the shit?

Sorry, no time for a post tonight, so here's a silly video:

A video posted by Sadia (@thesadia) on Nov 24, 2015 at 4:26pm PST

Rizhall the Loner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3sBZ5Nr4hc
Rizhall the Loner: Here, watch it.
Rizhall the Loner: For Barret
dundun: God.
dundun: Fuck.
dundun: It actually looks good.
dundun: Fuck.
Rizhall the Loner: Yeah...,
Rizhall the Loner: I'm gonna be WARY.
Rizhall the Loner: Who are we kidding though?
Rizhall the Loner: We're both gonna preorder the most expensive edition of this game.
dundun: I know.
dundun: Even if we didn't fucking watch this trailer
dundun: And all the evidence proved that it was shit.
dundun: We still would fucking do it.
dundun: AND
dundun: AND
dundun: AND
dundun: If they had three different expensive versions at different companies but different stuff came with each edition
dundun: We would get all fucking three.
Rizhall the Loner: ... Don't jinx this shit.
dundun: Amazon, GameStop, and maybe some big chain like Target or Walmart.
Rizhall the Loner: And Best Buy.
dundun: And for some reason some place you'd least expect like Pathmark.

Me: When I was in a doctor's waiting room today, there was a lady dressed up like a dog and hissing at other patients.
Peguero: ...Was the doctor a psychiatrist?
Me: No! It was just a regular doctor!
Peguero: What kind of dog was she dressed as?
Me: Dalmatian.
Peguero: Solid choice.
Me: What would be a bad one? Caucasian shepherd?
Peguero: Lab would have been a boring choice.
Me: Dickwolf?
Peguero: Begging your pardon?
Me: Dickwolves!

Peguero: I... I don't know what to do with this information.
Me: Well, at least you now know this is a thing and not just me saying random shit as usual.
Peugero: Just because there's a drawing doesn't mean it's a "thing."
Me:
Look, a dude is drawing it for an audience! It's a thing!
Peguero: WHY IS THIS A THING

Now let's see if photobucket deletes those two pictures.

Upon discussing what Christmas decorations to put on my mantle:

Me: Keep the red theme?
Paul: No. Vary it. Gold, red, green, white. Think things like nutcrackers, snow globes, and shit.
Me: Dildos.
Paul: ...Yes. That is exactly what I meant. Get those and display them. I want to see you do that and also explain it to your parents.
Me: I would take you up on that challenge if dildos weren't so damned expensive.
Paul: You could find a few for $24-$30 if you looked hard.
Me: Yeah, but a fireplace this large, you need at least six.
Paul: Decorations will be pricey too. This is an INVESTMENT. Think of what you could do with them after. The people you could ruin. The lives you'd save...

Donald Trump announced a few days ago that he would prevent Muslims from entering the country, which generated worldwide condemnation. Shortly afterward the Pentagon released a statement saying his words created a security threat because ISIS could use this to prove their point — America is against Islam — and recruit more followers. When I read that, I suddenly had a flashback to around 2006 when the Iraq War was in its sectarian violence phase and people were voicing that we should pull out. How often did we hear from the government that dissenters are emboldening the enemy by showing weakness and division? The Pentagon is pulling the same crap right now, except it's for my side!

I'm sensitive to such rhetoric because of all those years under Bush. That administration was very good at smear campaigns and managing the media, probably because of its background in corporations. They would blunt criticism with ad hominem attacks like being unpatriotic. It incensed me at the time because it completely closes the rational debate we should've been having, like what was our goal in Iraq now we realize there aren't any WMDs and it's going to take longer than the six months Rumsfeld originally planned? Exactly what steps can we take to achieve that goal?

I reached my mental maturity at that time and missed the Democratic era during the 90s under Clinton, so the Republican White House and congress were all I knew. In 2008 power changed hands to the Democrats, and I found people were saying the same shit but for causes I supported. I am pro-choice and I think what protesters do at the entrance of Planned Parenthood is distasteful and sometimes goes beyond protesting, but I don't see the debate in black and white terms. I can understand the mental anguish of killing a fetus. I can see why it is not just about a woman's body but also the rights of the unborn child within. But after the shooting in Planned Parenthood, I see articles about how inflammatory words behind the recent Planned Parenthood shooting are the cause, and we've crossed the same line as back in 2006. Because if that's the case, then I can blame the deaths of Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos on Black Lives Matter because god knows very, very aggressive comments are coming out of the black community right now about police violence.

There's a feeling now to shut down hate speech and that worries me. I think people who say such things are terrible and disgusting, but the moment you start to say, "We should start censoring those," then it becomes a problem. After all the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You have to define what's terrible and disgusting. Are they provocative comments said by pro-life supporters? I can see an official somewhere saying that leads to violence, as proven by the recent Planned Parenthood attacks, and then pro-lifers are silenced. Or on the flipside, should we charge people against the Iraq War because there were genuine threats against Bush during those years for being a "terrorist?" The system we have now is pretty decent: As long as you're not genuinely trying to hurt someone, you're off the hook. You can say whatever you want, even if it's hyperbolic, idiotic, prejudiced, or ignorant. Because we as humans all open to hypocrisy, and the moment power switches hands we're capable of the same tactics we complained about when the other was in control. But if you start putting in laws to quiet dissenters of your beliefs, it becomes very, very dangerous.

[15:18:21] Dun 4 Hire: https://twitter.com/t_santa/status/667581681885298688
[15:30:40] Turinturambar200: Now I'm on a list somewhere
[15:30:41] Turinturambar200: great
[15:32:55] Dun 4 Hire: Man, you've been my friend for over a decade.
[15:33:01] Dun 4 Hire: You've been on a list for a long time.
[15:33:34] Turinturambar200: Yaoi gets you on a different kind of list
[15:33:38] Turinturambar200: as does shitting dick tits
[15:49:39] Dun 4 Hire: Hey.
[15:49:44] Dun 4 Hire: I didn't specify which list you'd be on.
[15:49:55] Dun 4 Hire: You'd just be on someone's list, somewhere.

When I pull out my camera, I always ponder this question: Why am I taking this picture? If I know the point, then I can easily decide how to create the optimal angle to shoot it. If it's a valley, I need to pull back to demonstrate its magnificent breadth and length. If it's a flower, I may need to zoom in to focus on the pistil or perhaps zoom out a bit to show its place on a plant. If it's a group of people, try to figure out how to include everyone and whether you want them posing or a candid shot.

I guess a lot of people don't do that, which is why selfie culture exists. Today I went downtown with Ate Neneng to look at the Christmas decorations in the shops, and after the fortieth photo she asked me to take for her, I started wondering why we were doing this. After all every single one had her prominently displayed in front, and after each shot she would spend a few minutes flipping through and deciding which one she looked prettiest in. We literally walked all the way to Rockefeller Center to look at the tree. Who cares about you in this picture? It should be the fucking tree. That's why we came here. If you really are just interested in yourself, why not just get a professional photographer for a session and doll yourself up for it? That way it's not some shitty iPhone and the lighting would be perfect. Clearly the point for you is not the tree but rather yourself.

In a way it reminds me almost of stoners. Their stories always revolve around being high: "I went to the beach and got high" or "I was at the amusement park while I was high." Instead of experiencing life, they just look at it through the lens of drugs, which is what I feel about Ate Neneng or others like her and photography. After we took a picture of her in front of the tree, she immediately lost interest and wanted to walk to Saks so she could take a picture of herself in front of the windows. Or later when we were in Bryant Park, she spent the entire time flicking through the pictures of her in front of the ice rink there and not paying attention to the variety of interesting shops we were walking past. I don't mind people taking photos of wonderful things, but if the point of visiting these things is for you to stand in front of it and slap it on Facebook instead of pondering its beauty, then I think you're missing out.

I forgot to mention I beat Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void. I really, really liked the mechanics behind this campaign, but that may be due to my bias since I usually roll Protoss. The general idea is to unite the feuding Protoss sects against the hybrid threat, and your units can be switched to reflect that. For example, you can exchange the Colossus with the Reaver or Wrathwalker, the Colossus belonging to the robot Protoss, the Reaver to the regular, and the Wrathwalker to this heretical sect. Best of all, the Protoss were traveling the galaxy on this ship like the other two campaigns, but this ship could provide support like shooting lasers at enemies and I exploited that to the max.

However the plot has taken a dive. With the new relationship between the Protoss and Zerg with the Xel'naga, the Terrans have been pushed back to minor players in this whole mythology. The three were more closely intertwined in the first game, but now really the Terran campaign just feels like an internecine battle that has little effect on the grander machinations the Protoss faced. What people appreciated about StarCraft was its balance. Although fighting-wise it still maintains that, the story lost that.

I enjoyed Legacy of the Void, and if you're a StarCraft fan you're pretty much required to play it. After you're done with the campaign, there is an epilogue involving all the races, which makes me wonder whether this is it but knowing Blizzard probably not.

Seriously, what is it with Christmas ornaments now and glitter? All I want are glass balls and nutcrackers without this shit spreading everywhere, and I can't find anything. It's getting pretty ridiculous.

Socrates made such an impact on the field of philosophy that anyone who came before him are lumped together as "the pre-Socratic philosophers." Of those Heraclitus is one of the most prominent, and if you ever feel like reading him then I feel fucking sorry for you. Much like Sun Tzu Heraclitus' works are mostly easily-quotable one-liners but unlike Sun Tzu half the time they make no goddamned sense. There are vague statements like "the eyes are better witnesses than the ears" or "lightning rules all," and you spend forever trying to figure out what the hell he meant by that. Admittedly his works are fragmentary, but I get the feeling his contemporaries thought he was a nutjob too. The Greek historian Neanthes wrote of his death: After contracting dropsy, he went to doctors and asked if they could make a drought after a heavy rain. When they couldn't comprehend what the hell he was talking about, he covered himself with cow shit, expecting its warmth would pull out the liquid in his body. Of course that didn't work and he died. Most historians think that story apocryphal, but considering the whole thing is a jab at his penchant for nonsensical question and philosophy (which was about fire and warmth), most likely its author found him as weird as I do. If you want to preach a certain point of view, you should provide a logical system for your audience to understand. Otherwise some asshole is going to spread rumors about you dying in cow crap.

Yesterday's San Bernardino attack started a debate about whether it's terrorism or not, which officials to their credit said there's not enough information yet. I'm somewhat confused why people have problems with this because I think "terrorism" has a pretty clear definition: Violence used to achieve a political goal. It doesn't matter the means. It doesn't matter how many people die. It depends entirely on intent. If you bomb an institution because it's Jewish, then that's terrorism. If you bomb an institution because you were recently fired from there, then that's simply murder. At this early point in time, we don't know whether Syed Farook was a crazy person who stockpiled ammunition and exploded after an argument with his coworkers, or whether he had ties to ISIS and was egged on to shoot a soft target in the West. Either is viable, but one is terrorism and the other is not.

Likewise last week's attack on Planned Parenthood is terrorism. Robert Dear had no personal issues with any of the people inside but instead the institution, and he wanted to stop abortions because of his pro-life stance.

Or conversely the Germanwings crash earlier this year, although it killed 150 people, is not terrorism. Andreas Lubitz was not making some sort of political statement; he just had mental issues that he took out on everyone on board.

This isn't very difficult to understand. Why I always have to open a paper after something horrific and see an article, "Is so-and-so attack terrorism?" Once we find out the motives, there's no fucking question! We know!

Adventures with Harlan and his girlfriend, Part VIII:

After cleaning up the roof of the garage whilst dad stood on the porch and directed them:

Harlan: Okay, I'm going to hire a gardener for you guys. And I'm going to put in his contract a 7% pay increase whenever dad's home for "dealing with annoying micromanagement."

Adventures with Harlan and his girlfriend, Part VII:

Harlan's girlfriend: Riva, where do you want to go in Japan?
Greene: Akihabara.
Harlan's girlfriend: No! That's where otakus go!
Greene: Have you seen her bookshelf? What did you think she is?

Adventures with Harlan and his girlfriend, Part VI:

Harlan: Dad, did you have a paper encyclopedia?
Dad: Oh yes, before the fire we had Funk and Wagnells.
Harlan: I wouldn't trust a Funk and Wagnells. Maybe for James Brown, but that's it.

Ate Neneng today said this at least three times: "Why you so ugly. You ugly. So ugly." Thanks.

Adventures with Harlan and his girlfriend, Part V:

Harlan randomly texted me this. No context.

Me: It's a unisex bathroom.
Ate Neneng: What?
Me: Bathroom for men and women.
Ate Neneng: Oh, that no good. Gonna rape, that one.

Adventures with Harlan and his girlfriend, Part IV:

Dad: There was that kid in pre-K whom you hated because he called you "Harlan Barlan."
Harlan: That's right. That motherfucker. That's the worst. That's the worst insult.

Adventures with Harlan and his girlfriend, Part III:

Harlan's girl: So what do those two kids look like? Are they cute?
Mom: (nonchalant voice) Yes.
Harlan's girl: Awwwwww.
Mom: (nonchalant voice) They look like Nazis.

Adventures with Harlan, Part II:

(whilst on a crowded, very quiet train)
Harlan: Hey dad, could people look at porn in the library?
Dad: What?
Harlan: Can people look at porn in the library?
Dad: What? Sorry, I can't hear.
Mom: (loudly) Porn, he's asking about porn!
Dad: What?
Mom: (shouting) Porn! He wants to know about porn!

Adventures with Harlan and his girlfriend, Part I:

Harlan's girlfriend: Is that Donald Duck?

In Eastern countries, when the beaver finds that it cannot evade the dogs which are following it by its scent, it saves itself by self-mutilation. By some natural natural instinct it knows which part of its body the hunter really wants. The creature castrates itself before the hunter's eyes and throws its testicles down.... If a beaver which has already lost its testicles is hard pressed a second time by the hounds, it rushes to the top of a hillock, cocks up one of its hind-legs and shows the hunter that the organs which he is really after have already been cut off. ^*

What the FUCK is going on in "Eastern countries" that makes them want beaver testicles so badly?! I love how the author doesn't even fucking explain that. He just assumes everyone should know and follows this passage with a couple of quotations from Juvenal and St. Bernard about eunuchs, as if that's what we're really interested in reading, as opposed to what's so damned good about beaver nuts.

^* Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales, trans. by Lewis Thorpe (New York: Penguin, 1978), 176.

Gynecologist: When was the last time you had a gynecological exam?
Me: Uhhhhhh... eight or nine years ago.
Gynecologist: (gives me a look reminiscent of my mother)

The Battle of Lapanto is considered one of the turning points of Europe against the encroaching Ottoman Empire. Although it didn't stop the threat — the Ottomans would besiege Vienna about a century later — it provided a boost to a disheartened populace, who had been losing territory steadily across the decades.

Supposedly.

The Reformation started in Europe with Luther nailing his 95 Theses on the door in 1517 and didn't really end until the closing of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 when people were too fucking tired of killing each other over religion. Of course the Protestant-Catholic enmity would last for a long time — there are still prejudices to this day — but kingdoms' appetite to slaughter each other over transubstantiation had quelled significantly by the end of the 1600s. Lapanto however had happened in 1571, right in the middle of this period.

If you look at Europe geographically, you can pretty much create the Protestant-Catholic divide between the north and south (Ireland being the exception). Which is understandable; it's harder for the Catholic Church to combat Protestantism the farther you leave Rome. Also harder for them to combat ecclesiastical excesses, which is why places like Norway or Scotland were open to the Reformation since they felt the majority of the corruption. Anyway, because they were in the south, Catholics bore the brunt of Ottoman aggression. If you're based in Turkey, which would you attack first: England or Italy? Italy of course. Eventually Pope Pius V couldn't take this bullshit anymore and created the Holy League, which was a bunch of Catholic maritime states like Venice or Spain, to take on the Turks. And they did. The Battle of Lapanto was a decisive victory.

But the north's reaction is interesting. Whilst the south was celebrating, the north felt ambivalent. After all, it was a Catholic victory: those heretical papists who has the Antichrist Himself as a pope. Still, the enemy were Muslims. But these Muslims don't like idolatry, which means they're not as bad as the Catholics. These mixed emotions played out in several ways. Elizabeth I of England, for example, on several occasions tried to offer support to the Ottomans to get the Catholics off her back. James VI of Scotland wrote an epic celebrating Lapanto, but had to write a disclaimer in his preface to say he doesn't support Catholicism. The idea of "Christendom" had broken down. Even back in the old days with the East-West Schism, neither side would've asked the Muslims to take the other one out. Neither would the Gnostics. This shit was new. And it showed how fucking serious the situation was: Both sides hated the other so much, they were hesitant to celebrate a victory over Muslims because it didn't involve their own group.

I think of that now when I look at the Middle East. Even though America is the Great Satan, more Muslims have died from suicide bombings and militant slaughters than Christians ever have. Yeah, all right, there are more Muslims living there and statistically are more likely to be hit, but most of the ire seems be between the Sunni and Shiite lines. Baghdad was depopulated not due to American missiles but because of Shiite gangs threatening Sunnis. And although ISIS has committed horrific crimes upon Christians and Jews living in their territory, they still claim responsibility for countless attacks on Shiites, like that twin bombing in Beirut yesterday. Like Western Christianity in the 1500s and 1600s, Islam is fracturing violently. I really hope this doesn't culminate into their version of a Thirty Years' War because no one deserves something that terrible.

[11:03:46] Dun 4 Hire: Gonna be honest, I totally forgot the plot to Brood War.
[11:03:59] Dun 4 Hire: Since like 2011 when they released Wings of Liberty, they keep on referencingshit that happened
[11:04:02] Dun 4 Hire: And I cannot remember any of it.
[11:04:04] ZsuPb: u kno what, i did too lol
[11:04:24] Dun 4 Hire: I just remember Kerrigan tricked Raynor and won in the end.
[11:04:36] ZsuPb: she tricked him?
[11:05:04] Dun 4 Hire: She pretended to return to normal because the overlord was killed at the end of the original game
[11:05:20] Dun 4 Hire: But she was still crazy.
[11:05:30] ZsuPb: WTF how do u pretend to be normal when u have like insect parts shooting out of ur body
[11:05:43] Dun 4 Hire: Listen, you're a man.
[11:05:57] Dun 4 Hire: If the woman you loved acts like she's not crazy bitch queen of blades, your penis will guide the way.
[11:06:26] ZsuPb: thats like....totally true

FUCK Legacy of the Void. I'm too fucking busy with other games right now. I can't take this shit.

I kinda wanna join a monthly flowers club, but I have no idea where to put this shit in my room.

I've been keeping a diary on and off since childhood. In recent years I've been pretty rigorous and writing daily, and can usually finish about three journals per year. If you look at my bookcase, you can see my collection lined up on one of the shelves, although most are empty and ready to be used in the coming years. Today I listened to a podcast about diaries and it brought in ideas I've never thought of before, like an audience. Many people seem to run into a mental block about this and wonder whom to address. Some name their diaries, like Michelle or Clare, and then use that in constructing sentences: "Michelle, I had a tough time today at work."

To be honest it was natural for me to just write down my stream of thought, and upon reflection I realized why. The podcast also said what made a good diary: Write the facts about what happened and then your opinions about it. If you just write the facts, you'll forget how you felt at the time. Write only your feelings, and you'll forget what you're so emotional about. I tend to do the former, and for that it doesn't really matter who the audience is: It's literally just what I did that day. Occasionally I'll throw in a line — "Yeah, and that whole process really pissed me off." — but I never delve deeply into my psyche. I suppose it boils down to why I write a diary. For some, it's a cathartic experience. For me, it's more like being a historian. Ten years from now, I'm going to be interested in what I was doing every day. I suppose if I just blandly describe my sentiments, I'd still get that historical note that the podcast described: After all, my point of view now about my past is different than what it was at the time.

Which makes it all the more regretful that I lost those diaries in the fire. The ones from my middle school and high school years in particular would've been fascinating to read since those are a very tumultuous era in anyone's life, although I get the feeling mine would just be about Harry Potter and Naruto with poorer spelling and grammar.

Yeah... this Bob Ross marathon needs to end. My productivity has taken a hit because I just spend hours watching it.

I don't know what the fuck NYPL is thinking. Their website had noticeable design problems. For example, if you wanted to request an offsite book, it took you to a completely different, older version of the site and you manually had to input information that should've been already available if you were logged in. A few weeks ago they rolled out a new webpage and I hoped that some of these issues would be resolved.

Of course, the situation was just made worse.

When you create a website, you have to consider two things: ease and aesthetics. It's better for the user to see more information in one location so they're not constantly flipping back and forth between pages, yet simultaneously you don't want it to seem cluttered or confusing. On the original page, the checkouts were highlighted different colors to give you a sense of how much time was left until the due date. That's a good choice because without even looking too deeply, I can easily sense from a glance whether I'm fucked or not.

They removed those little things that helped the user experience and added steps that previously could've been done in one. For example, on your "checked out" page, there was an option to add the book to your "completed," "for later," or "ongoing" lists. That meant not only could I do that, but I also had information on the titles I had out and their due dates. All that could be done on one page. Now if I want to move something from "for later" to "completed," I have to go to that last (requires to proceed through two pages), manually go down that list and somehow find the book, then change it. When that could've been done with ease before.

If that's not enough, they completely screwed up the app. Originally it was probably one of the slowest apps I've ever used, but it was functional. It had four tabs: one for browsing, one for searching, one to check your book statuses, and one for library locations. They completely scrapped all that and their app literally is just a link to their mobile website, and we all know how great those are.

Seriously, whom the fuck did NYPL hire because they should fire them and demand their money back. I don't know how you make something demonstrably worse. How do you screw this up? It's 2015. Surely web design schools know by now how this works and teaches its students accordingly.

According to iTunes, these are the top ten songs I've listened to:

1. Tsuna Awakens from Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
2. Imposing Visage from Tales of Destiny
3. Suoh Mikoto from K
4. A Despair-Filled Farewell from Shadow of the Colossus
5. Saber's Edge from Final Fantasy XIII
6. White Light from Tales of Zestiria by Superfly
7. Influence of Deep -CM Version- from Parasite Eve
8. Battle: VS Cocytus from Wild ARMS 2
9. Battle 2 from Final Fantasy III
10. Uragiri no Yuuyake from Durarara!! by Theatre Brook

I was... very surprised by this. I think at least two these, White Light and Uragiri no Yuuyake, are up here because I left my iPod on repeat all night, but I cannot explain Tsuna Awakens. I mean, I like the song, but not that much. And I don't remember listening to it that many times. A Despair-Filled Farewell yeah, but not that.

Battle 2 should be in the top three and the fact it's not completely disgusts me.

Could not find the OST track for Tsuna Awakens on youtube, hence the orchestra recording. Why not? Did someone finally claim copyright? For Reborn of all things?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34680564

Reading this reminded me of an electrician we hired to help us set up the CAT6 ports around the house. As he and dad chatted for a bit over tea, he explained the problems with his homeland in the West Indies. During his grandparents' generation they fiercely wanted independence and won it, but he thought at a steep cost because the island as a whole became impoverished. Although they now could control their own destiny, they lost the support from a larger, stronger nation. He compared his home to something like Martinique, which remained with its European overlord: They use the euro, they can send their children to Paris for education, and if there's trouble the French central government has the resources to help.

Unfortunately small, island nations rarely have enough natural resources to support themselves. There rarely is enough land for great swaths of agriculture and it intrinsically does not have enough space to support a large enough population to compete in the modern world. Usually they turn to one industry, which is not ideal: Much of the West Indies is dependent on tourism, which of course could shift the moment a hurricane hits. Or Cyprus which dabbled in banking and its entire economy tanked during the 2008 crisis.

What happened to Hawaii was pretty fucked up, but simultaneously I think they should heed what that electrician said: What is Hawaii gonna do if the US government pulls out?

China's ending its one-child policy for a two-child because of demographic issues. People predicted this decades ago: If China continued that path, the trajectory would end with a substantial elderly population overburdening the younger generation. Their factories would be denuded as people retired and no one would be available to refill positions.

Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population was filled with made-up numbers and facts, but I think some of his points apply. There were "preventative checks," i.e. abstinence, birth control, abortion, etc. And if the population got too large, we had "positive checks" that lowered it like famine, war, or disease.

Malthus wrote his work just as the Agricultural Revolution began, so many of the positive checks never came into place: Less and less people were one bad winter away from starvation, and more moved into the middle class. Throughout the 1800s we learned about germs and clean water, and then in the early 1900s we discovered antibiotics and used vaccines more efficiently. Population really skyrocketed.

But I can't help but feel it's not sustainable. It's literally impossible for humanity to expand exponentially, so at some point we'll have to stop. And then what? What would the checks be? Apparently the preventative ones are only good at keeping the population steady because otherwise you'd enter the situation that China has entered. So then we'd have to bring in the positive ones? Another Spanish Flu? Another World War? That shit sounds terrifying.

Get up on Halloween morning to start carving pumpkin, realize about five minutes in I don't own any pumpkin carving tools.

...Shit.

Woot, managed to make a post every day this month! A lot were pretty shitty, but at least I did it.

When I took Ate Neneng to Elmhurst Hospital, I was surprised to see that there were no Tagalog translators because that area has a large Filipino population. Everyone there, including the Korean receptionist, could speak Spanish, and they often conversed with patients in that language. When I mentioned this to my aunt, she seemed rather put off and said, "Well, that's not fair. How come Hispanics get all these bilingual speakers? I had to learn English, and these guys just have receptionists who can speak their language?" I never really thought about it that way. Usually the dialogue about learning English is between Hispanics and whites, but it's the first time I've seen it from another group. It's impossible for all businesses and institutions to cater to every single language, and if they're going bilingual it'll probably be Spanish because those're the dominant immigrants at the moment. But my aunt has a point: Is that fair?

Now that Halloween season is upon us, I have a question: Does anyone actually fucking like candy corn?

I'm in a bit of a moral conundrum. After talking about it with my mailwoman, it turns out the packages I had problems receiving came from the main post office on 8th Avenue. That's because these are Amazon Sunday deliveries when my local post office is closed, so the person handling it that day did not know the route. Of course the next step would be to contact the main post office with my problem, but I feel somewhat hesitant about it because I've heard horror stories about the USPS/Amazon deal. Although I think you should do your job properly regardless of the conditions and this is entirely the worker's fault, simultaneously I'm sympathetic to being him being overworked and exhausted. So to file a complaint or not...

At some point I realize I've had the same password on an account for over a decade and then a horrible battle begins in my brain between security and laziness.

I'm surprised Onepunch-Man has an anime. The mangaka One only updates sporadically and Murata spends half of his chapters doing cinematic shots that would last only ten seconds in an anime. I'm guessing it's gonna catch up ridiculously fast, like Blue Exorcist did.

Some things never change:

Rizhall the Friend: Reggie's going to a SF tournament today
Rizhall the Friend: hoping it's not too late.
Rizhall the Friend: It's in Flushing.
Rizhall the Friend: And he's in Brooklyn.
Rizhall the Friend: And you know what time the tournament started?
dundun: Uhhh... 10:00.
Rizhall the Friend: Yes.
Rizhall the Friend: Exactly.
Rizhall the Friend: 10.00... Yesterday.
dundun: ...He was a whole fucking day off?

Namco released a PS4 theme for the twentieth anniversary of Tales, which is basically a slide show through the game covers. To be honest I wasn't pleased with it because they only had Phantasia, Symphonia, Symphonia 2, Vesperia, Graces, Xillia, Xillia 2, Hearts R, and Zestiria. That's skipping a LOT of games. I wouldn't care to be honest if it weren't celebrating the 20th anniversary. It doesn't count if you pick the first installment from 1995, then skip ahead four games to the one that came out in 2003, then to the one in 2008. That's not celebrating twenty years of Tales. Even if you were just including the American ones, then Destiny, Eternia, Legendia, and Abyss were excluded. You're seriously telling me Symphonia fucking 2 gets a place in this theme but Abyss doesn't? That had its own fucking anime!

In the year 449 Germanic tribes arrived in Britain from the European mainland, and displaced the native British (Celtic) population, eventually establishing a single language which was Anglo-Saxon in character.^*

When you have people like the Irish, Welsh, or Scots proclaiming their heritage, particularly against those Anglo-Saxon English bastards, it's easy to think of the Celts like this: People who were living their lives in the British Isles until they were overrun by invaders. That's actually far from the reality. If you've read any sort of Roman history, you'll notice immediately that they're fighting them all the fucking time. Nowadays we think of the Celts being on the fringes of the British Isles, but then you remember they speak a Celtic offshoot down in Brittany, France. That's the only vestige left of the great Celtic empire that spread across the European continent.

Because the Celts aren't from the British Isles. Far from it. Scholars aren't completely certain where they're from — I've seen shit from on the northern coast of the Black Sea to around where modern-day Czech Republic is — but they certainly were invaders. At one point they controlled central Europe, France, and most of Spain. Eventually they pushed into the Italian peninsula, where they rubbed against the Romans, who bought them to their doom. Under Julius Caesar they lost France, during the 100s B.C. the Romans sent legions into Iberia, and eventually even Britain fell. So although we say there was a Celtic population in Britain when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, that's not true: It was a combination of Celts and some earlier, pre-Iron Age peoples we don't know much about due to lack of texts. We just have stuff like Stonehenge to give us a sense of their culture.

Celtic pride is often used to show a firey underdog, whether it was the English conquerors in Ireland or Scotland or the immigrants coming up against the WASP hierarchy, but then you realize at some point the Celts were the ones invading and taking the land; we just don't have the records about it unless if we're dealing with the Romans. And Romans were quick to say that the Celts were a pretty fucking terrifying people. It just reminds me that we all have ancestors who were once oppressed, but simultaneously we all have ancestors who were the oppressors.

^* David Crystal, The Stories of English (New York: Overlook Press, 2004), 3.

Zestiria came out! Time to play!

I finished Macross 7 and it was... odd. It did keep in tune with the theme of music and warfare, but beyond that it was a really different tone from any other Macross show I've seen. Let me put it this way: There is an arc in this anime where the protagonist Basara has to sing to a floating, naked chick. This lasts for a good fifth of the series. That, and the core group of characters pilot robots with musical instruments, something I could never take serious. Unfortunately the show really builds on that concept and I spent the entire time feeling incredulous with the whole situation. Sprinkle that with other odd moments like that crazy, screaming, floating chick grabbing Basara and flying around the galaxy for half an episode for no apparent reason, and at some point you start pondering what the fuck you are watching.

But I think the real issue is "Song Energy." You meet this crazy fucker early on in the series who says there's something specific about Minmay's music that was able to reach the Zentradi, and you write him off as some weirdo. However he's for real and eventually it comes to light Basara's music is more special than other music, and they're able to build this stuff called "Sound Blasters" and "Sound Buster" which literally fire lasers through the power of music. Other members of this band are not as good as Basara and often have to increase their "Song Energy" levels to match his performance in battle.

This fucks up not only itself but the first show as well. For one, contemplate that sentence I wrote above: The characters literally fire lasers through the power of music. It completely changed the dynamic, much like when they added power levels to Dragon Ball Z. Music as far as I knew should be music, but now I find there are some people whose music are innately better than others. I liked songs like Planet Dance or Holy Lonely Night, but I don't think there's anyone in the world who'd say they're the pinnacle of anything. To say that's the only thing that could cure people from having their energy drained is a bit of an insult to every other song out there.

And then you're saying that Minmay's music also was innately amazing, which it wasn't. That's what made the original Macross so funny; the Zentradi found this stupid little song about a boyfriend being a pilot to be the height of culture, or this "Shao Pai Long" figure to have super powers, and the audience laughed at these silly aliens. It could've been any song really and worked since the Zentradi never experienced this. Simply the power of culture alone helped win the battle. And you knew it wasn't Minmay because at the end of the series her career is shot as she wanders the world trying to find a place that would book her. Minmay turned out to be just a part of the entirety of culture, and although she was useful in fighting the Zentradi there were other things that freaked them out like Max and Milia's baby or seeing people kiss. It showed it was the power of humanity itself that won the battle.

Really the only time I got super excited when watching Macross 7 is whenever Max or Milia jumped into a Valkyrie to fight, but they always kicked ass so quickly that those sequences only lasted about fifteen seconds. Man, those two never should've been put into leadership positions; they clearly were meant to be front-line soldiers. Denied promotion because you're too fucking good at what you do.

I guess you can look at this similar to Chrono Cross: As a sequel it's somewhat disappointing, and actually can stand on its own without seeing the original, but even then it's pretty weird. But Chrono Cross never had something like this:

Macross, why do you keep doing this to me?

Chores update: Mom and dad were aghast that it took me four hours to sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

In the past week both Ate Neneng and dad, the two people who take care of the housework, had surgery and are out of commission. Considering mom's arthritic hips are in a bad state, everything is left up to me. Since then my family has discovered:

• I have no idea how to fold laundry.
• Forget that, I don't really know anything about laundry.
• Washing dishes is not my best trait.
• I cannot make a good cup of tea or coffee.
• This entire time I never learned how to make a bed properly.
• I am completely unaware of where anything goes in the kitchen.
• I haven't fully grasped the process of taking out the trash.

And this is just the beginning. Thankfully so far no one's asked me to mop the floors, sweep the garage roof, or scrub the bathrooms because that is level 10 shit and I'm still getting EXP from this level 1 chores right here.

Me: Bullshit. Nintendo World doesn't have all the amiibos. Where the fuck do I buy those then?
Peguero: You must go on a quest to find them.
Me:
Peguero: See. You help that lil guy out and he rewards you with an amiibo.
Me: I dunno man. Cat quests are always suspicious.
Me: "I need you to harvest the souls of the innocent."
Peguero: Yeah, cats are pretty shady. But he'd probably still give you what you seek.
Me: But at what cost?
Me: Will I no longer be worthy of heaven?
Peguero: You must look within yourself and decide if it is worth what you could lose.
Me: An amiibo or the Pearly Gates... It is a hard choice.
Peguero: Life is full of tough decisions.

Seriously though, what the fuck! Why is this so difficult! I just want three, why can't I find them?

What I'm learned from Super Mario Maker and user-generated content in general: People are fucking assholes.

??????

When I start an anime series, I usually download the first episode or two from every group releasing it so I can get a taste and decide which one I'm gonna hang around with the to the end. Recently though I've noticed they all have the same translation. Maybe two or three seem to be making the effort in the old days — get a raw from somewhere, translate it, then do the timing — but I have a feeling a lot are just ripping off of Crunchyroll because I'm seeing openings that say "Viz" or something in the beginning. This is more distressing for me than the lack of karaoke opening because it constrains us to one translator; the reason why I sampled every group was to attempt to gauge which one had the best one and work from there. I can tell it's a professional working for a wider audience than otaku because consistently nowadays the honorifics are dropped and the names are reversed to match the western style. Although hopefully that does mean the translation should be secure considering the guy is paid for this, that also reminds me of the days of "Valentine Technique" or shit I'm dealing with right now in Tales of Hearts R. I'd prefer to have the rabid fan and the professional working side by side so I can compare, but I think the professional has been wining the war in the past couple of years.

Today I was reading some post about Harry Potter, and the writer kept on referring to this thing called "wolfstar." It took me a few minutes to realize this was referring to the pairing of Remus and Sirius. Jesus Christ, that's how I know I've been out of the fandom for a while; I no longer know the terminology anymore. When the hell did this happen? I'm seeing stuff like Romione for Ron/Harry or Snarry for Snape/Harry too. In the 2000s when the books were coming out, that's how we would fucking write it: character/character. As someone into history and linguistics, I'm fascinated to know when and why people moved from that standard to this portmanteau and neologism stuff when what we used back in the day worked perfectly fine. It survived the move of the fandom from eGroups (remember that shit?) to livejournal, but maybe not from livejournal to tumblr? I'm not certain.

I've been having problems with packages being delivered to my house for years, but a second problem has surfaced that didn't happen before the fire: Deliverymen looking at our address, not seeing an apartment number, assuming that the sender wrote something wrong, and don't even bother trying to deliver it, writing simply "incorrect address" as they bring back to the facility. If he had fucking bothered to come to my street, he would've seen a whole damned block of houses.

Particularly annoying was the incident this week because when I trudged down to the post office to pick up the package that should have been fucking brought to my house to begin with, I noticed attached to it was all of our mail. Did the deliveryman look at all of these envelopes and think to himself that every single sender coincidentally did not write an apartment number?

I'm trying to figure out what to carve on my pumpkins this year. I'm thinking a Zelda theme, but I'm not certain what exactly.

At some point in the later part of the ancient era, the Roman emperors just up and left Rome for a town named Ravenna because the capital had become dilapidated during the waning years of the empire. That didn't mean people weren't living there anymore, so the pope became the de facto leader of the city; the modern word "pontiff" came from the Latin pontifex, which was just a high-ranking Roman politician. Rome and the pope however were in a precarious position, and between 400 and 550 it was sacked thrice. In the early part of the Middle Ages, this Germanic tribe called the Lombards settled in northern Italy (where we get modern-day "Lombardy"), and caused all sorts of problems for the pope and the people of Rome. After a few hundred years of this shit, Charlemagne came down, subdued the Lombards, and gave a significant chunk of Italy to the pope as a buffer zone around Rome and also allowed him to raise a small army if necessary. We call this the Papal States. The pope held onto it for a millennium until it was taken from him in the mid-1800s during the Italian unification, and all that's left is the Vatican. Even his army is supplied by Switzerland, i.e. the famous Swiss Guard.

The Papal States are a symbol of what went wrong during the Middle Ages and Catholicism. Because the Roman Empire crumbled, the Catholic Church became the government: They were the only literate ones who could write decrees, had the records, or the hierarchical infrastructure to deal with governmental business as barbarian hordes started carving out lands to make kingdoms and roamed around to pillage and loot. Although the church owned land from the moment Christianity became legal and would petition to Constantine for favors, it was never on the scale of the Middle Ages. However it was the Middle Ages and everything was poor and terrible, so it didn't matter that much. It was when we hit the Renaissance and Europe started getting money again that it exploded because popes and bishops were taking that money to make palaces and wear silk clothing.

Not only that, but many of the people who entered the church were not really the type of person who should be there. Nowadays people feel a calling and become a priest or monk or whatever. Back then parents would look at each other and say, "Shit. Well, we have three sons. We have to train all of them to become military men in case the eldest dies and the next one has to take over, but what do we do if all three survive childhood? Well, I guess we could find a wealthy heiress for son number two, but that's already hard enough. What about son number three? I guess throw him into a career for the church?" So you have a kid who grew up with swords on the battlefield and suddenly he was told he's going to live the quiet life. Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Originally the Papal States were supposed to serve as a buffer and originally it worked like that. Eventually it became a domain that had to be defended and even worse, expanded. The infamous Borgias did this; Cesare was slotted to become a bishop but instead turned to the army so he could help his father conquer towns and gain land. How the hell is the holy pope supposed to be a neutral, good party when all he's thinking about is acquiring territory and more worldly power?

Organizing and playing podcasts should not be that difficult: They have tags to organize them like any mp3s. If you're subscribing to one, then it should check periodically if there are updates. Maybe the syncing between devices could be an issue, but not excessively. Somehow Apple fails at this:

1. I had a bunch of podcasts that were simple mp3s and I didn't get from iTunes. That programs allows you to take any mp3, select the "podcast" category, and then you're good to go. About three versions ago, that stopped working and I don't know why. On my computer it's fine, but on any Apple device they don't show up. If you use Spotlight it registers, so I know it's somewhere on the device, but if you try to select it it doesn't work. One of them did appear and can play, but the tags are completely wrong and say it's episode four instead of two. I wouldn't be so peeved about this if it was working completely fucking fine last year.

2. Podcasts are doubling or tripling. I can't explain why, and even if I try to delete them they just won't disappear. Something that was fine yesterday suddenly isn't today.

3. Everything is organized newest or oldest, nothing alphabetical or whatever. Considering iTunes fucks up the dates half the time, I have episodes all over the place. If I could just put shit alphabetically, things like "Episode 01" and "Episode 02" would be in good order instead of one being in the top third of the list and the second all the way near the bottom.

4. You can save a podcast onto your computer or just stream it. After I've saved something, I've found occasionally they're not longer saved and will be deleted.

I didn't start listening to podcasts until about 2010 or 2011, but this shit worked fine back then! How the hell did they screw this up?

I love Tales games to death, but it's impossible to multitask with them. I can play a podcast in the background, but I can't do anything else. Take something like Wild ARMs. You input your moves at the beginning of the round and then you're free for the next minute. Or even better, Skies of Arcadia. Those found ship battles went on forever. In those few moments, I could get a turn in for Civ V. Not so for Tales.

3DO sold about two million units? I thought it was something like 5,000. Who the hell were the people buying them? Have you heard of anyone with a 3DO? I went to a rich people's school and no one had that shit.

Jesus Christ, why do people own dogs? Getting up this early to walk them is excruciating.

In case you're wondering, Moham and I are still assholes who talk about nothing:

dundun: Just letting you know
dundun: I'm gonna be busy on Wednesdays for a while.
Rizhall the Friend: Shit.
Rizhall the Friend: Not the Wednesdays!
dundun: They are lost to you forever.
dundun: Well, for like the next three months.
Rizhall the Friend: There are now but 6 days a week.
dundun: God must reexamine the seven days he made this world, and create it anew with merely six.
Rizhall the Friend: Time itself is but an illusion until this error is fixed.

St. Augustine's Confessions is a combination of several genres: autobiography, philosophy, theology... Currently it's his most popular work because of its deeply personal narration of his journey from a life of sinfulness to turning to God. Augustine's dates are 354 to 430, a transitional period within the Roman Empire, or rather the century of its decline and ultimate fall, and for an archaeologist it's an interesting description of life in the last parts of the Roman Empire: being born in a North African province, moving to Rome to find success, returning to North Africa once he found God. It's particularly delightful because Augustine's job was an orator, so he writes in the very flowery and dramatic style of his age.

And then there's this gem:

From the mud of my fleshly desires and my erupting puberty belched out murky clouds that obscured and darkened my heart until I could not distinguish the calm light of love from the fog of lust. The two swirled about together and dragged me, young and weak as I was, over the cliffs of my desires, and engulfed me in a whirlpool of sins .... In that same year, my sixteenth, my studies were interrupted, and .... I began to spend time in my parents' company. The thorn-bushes of my lust shot up higher than my head, and no hand was there to root them out. Least of all my father's; for when at the baths one day he saw me with unquiet adolescence my only covering and noted my ripened sexuality, he began at once to look forward eagerly to grandchildren, and gleefully announced his discovery to my mother.^*

I don't know about you, but if I saw my son with a hard on in the baths, the last thing that would come to my mind is to rush home and tell my wife, "HONEY! OUR BOY IS READY FOR FUCKING! WE'RE GONNA HAVE GRANDCHILDREN SOON!!" It's not the type of thing I'd spread the word about. Imagine for a moment our society was like that: That we all go to communal baths, and through those awkward teenage years your dad is scrutinizing your penis to see if your balls have dropped and you're popping erections. And then it becomes the family gossip once you do. Augustine doesn't mention what happened after that, but I'm assuming the next logical step in this progression is for his dad to start lining up prostitutes.

^* Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, trans. by Maria Boulding, ed. by John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1997): pp. 33, 35.

Sorry, today's post is hard to explain without speaking orally.

My dad mentioned a story he heard about a Hispanic newscaster who received complaints because she pronounced Spanish place names with a Hispanic accent instead of an American one. Many of the people undoubtedly were calling in for racist reasons, but I want you to imagine a person saying this aloud with an American accent, but replace all the italics with a French one:

Last summer I went to France to see my cousin in Paris. Each morning I would eat croissants with café au lait with him, and then look around the city. I visited the Cathedral of Notre-Dame on Cité Island, the Arc de Triomphe in the Charles de Gaulle star, and looked at all the famous people in the Pantheon. Oftentimes I would just snack on a crêpe as I wandered around the city, but sometimes I'd have gratin or a cheese soufflé. For dinner I'd try a steak tartare, pot-au-feu, or ratatouille. I also had day trips to Versailles where I saw the bedrooms of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the cathedrals at Reims and Amiens. I was thinking about going out to Strasbourg, but it was simply too far.

That's my reply: If you think the person above doesn't sound really fucking weird, then go ahead and say Spanish place names in a Hispanic accent. For me, I just like to remain consistent; if it's odd for one language, I can't say it's not for another.

We have sewage plumbing insurance with the city, and after some back ups we called them up and a plumber came over. He said repeatedly there was an issue with the water trap, that he suspected there was a third one buried under the floor, and this was a one-inch pipe, which is not the four-inch accepted by the city. I had a feeling he was full of shit because I personally was involved with the building of this house and I never saw a water trap where he was indicating, and this entire set up was approved by the city inspectors; we would not be allowed to move in otherwise. So our contractor called a plumber he knew, who proclaimed it was a root problem. He also said it was impossible for us to have a one-inch pipe because his 1.5-inch-diameter camera would not have fit into it otherwise.

People are distrustful of plumbers, maintenance men, electricians, and the like because they often don't have the knowledge to dispute their claims and are at the mercy of their trustworthiness. I personally don't think I've been lied to, but the whole affair made me less faithful in these people's abiltiies. It's not just this incident, but others all along the construction project: the AC units, the gas, the electical wires... This isn't like an English class where everyone has their own opinion that's hard to dispute. This is engineering and science that should have some sort of definite answer. What the fuck is causing my plumbing problems. I should not have two completely different answers.

There's an option to change the background of your PSN avatar, and I was browsing through them the other day when I came across this batch:

Now don't get me wrong, I fucking love Wild ARMs, but there weren't that many different backgrounds in total to choose from, and all of these took up a sizable percentage. Few if any games had as much representation as Wild ARMs did. The last installment from this series came out in 2007 on the PSP, and that was a side game; the last major one was in 2006. Why is it all up in here? Do people nowadays even remember it?

Well, I guess it's time to climb under the covers to stay warm. That's actually one of my favorite things.

Back when I finished the original Macross series, I wrote a little post about how movies and television perceive future technology and yet get them completely wrong. I'm now on Macross 7, a show that was created a dozen years after the first series, and I'm still fascinated how they messed things up.

For example, one of the main characters Mylene owns a tablet that has many of the functions we use today: She reads newspapers on it, she keeps her contacts and schedule, etc. And yet it doesn't have wireless technology. Each time she wants a new issue of her magazine, she has to go to the wall in her apartment, insert the tablet into a hole much like a toaster, and take it out once the articles are uploaded. The directors of this show never conceived of everything automatically being transmitted to her tablet like we would today, and the first wireless routers hit the consumer market about four or five years after this show was aired!

Years ago on my xanga, I mentioned I preferred shows that take place in an alternate universe because it's easier for me to suspend reality, but simultaneously when they create a new world they need to have an understanding of our own to properly project how technology, weather, politics, or religion affect people. For Macross 7 I'm laughing how a show that takes place decades in the future doesn't have WiFi. But simultaneously as a medievalist I look at the fantasy genre and think, "Well, clearly they didn't study history because the moment that (e.g. flight, industrialization, printing press) hit the scene, everything changed and we left the Middle Ages."

Admittedly many of the people making these aren't really thinking about that. The goal of the Macross series is to show how music and culture can change warfare, not whether the universe they create is in line with the current projections of future technology. Clearly they didn't give a shit when they threw Hikaru out into the atmosphere of Pluto with just a fucking jacket and helmet to collect a giant floating fish, and said that worked fine with the laws of physics.

Still, Macross 7's and other scifi's mistakes show us the other possibilities. And how fucking terrible it could've been. Can you imagine every time you need to update your newsfeed you have to go to an uploading station placed strategically around the city?

I think the annoying thing about crochet hooks is they come in millimeters, letters, and numbers. So for example, the most commonly-used hook is the 5mm, but in the UK it's sometimes called a size 6 hook. But in the US it's sometimes called an H hook. What's aggravating is every hook I've seen always has just the damned millimeters, and usually they have the UK or US system on the side as an after note; it's usually patterns that rely solely on the letters and numbers. Instead of all this confusion, why not just have the millimeters?

You know, years later, I have no idea why my brother started calling me Dun, and why that has remained my nickname.

You've probably seen some pages of a medieval manuscript but never really considered how they were perceived the Middle Ages. First, paper hadn't been invented yet so the pages were made of vellum. Literally a flock would have to be slaughtered to make a full book, which was expensive. That's why it's rare to find a whole Bible in a medieval library; it's just too much for the whole thing. Then someone has to sit down and write this shit down. Go find some random book. Now copy that entire shit by hand. And remember, you can't use your shit handwriting; this has to be exemplary. Also, there's no premade loose leaf paper back then; you had to measure out the lines yourself. Oh, and do this in a room that has no heating or air conditioning. It's really fucking long, painful, and annoying.

Then consider everything you're copying is in Latin. With abbreviations because the scribe before you was too tired from this shit to write out the full word yourself. So you come across something like "ei" or "i h l." If you don't know Latin that well, how the hell are you supposed to tell from context that stands for enim or in hoc loco? Or even if you did know Latin, how would you know this particular abbreviation? And even if you did have all that knowledge, how are you certain the book you're copying from actually had a learned scribe for that and hadn't made mistakes?

Hence books were sacred things. Some so sacred, they weren't actually supposed to be read but rather just be a holy object in and of itself, like the Book of Kells. Remember, about 99% of the population couldn't read at that point, particularly in the early Middle Ages, so all this shit was just mystical to start out with.

Therefore you can imagine people are pretty possessive of their books. One for the price, one for the labor, and one for the power: You have knowledge from this book that few other people have. That's what happened with St. Columba and St. Finnian, two Irish monks in the 500s. Columba was visiting Finnian's monastery and noticed they had a Psalter in their library. He asked if he could borrow it to read for the night, and during that time he hastily copied the whole thing. If you believe Columba's supporters, his fingers started shining so brightly during the procedure that it filled the whole church. And when a kid came to see what was up with this light show, Columba's pet crane pecked out his eyes for interrupting him. But I digress. Finnian was so pissed off that this had happened and went to King Diarmait to complain, who judged the copy must be returned to Finnian. Columba refused and actually instigated the Uí Néill clan to rebel and have a battle at Cúl Dreimhne. Because so many people died, Columba had to leave Ireland altogether. All this for a Psalter.

So when I hear about copyright issues today, I think: "Well, at least no one's having a pitched battle against the MPAA or RIAA. Because we've gone there."

Saw the lunar eclipse tonight~!! It was super red!!

A recent trend amongst scanlators recently is to put shit in .pdf form. Yep, instead of getting a .zip and looking at all the images, you can get the full chapter in all its glory as a .pdf. This is another method to limit distribution, but I've noticed it doesn't work that well because I still find jpegs in zip files on forums or posted all over online readers. To be honest I don't care about it that much because at least that means they've stopped this stupid password nonsense.

You can see signs that people are writing less letters everywhere. When I was a child, I had a plethora of choices for stationery; now at Barnes & Noble the other day I could only count five letter sets. It's becoming hard to find invitations for my parties. But nowhere more than international fucking stamps. In theory I can buy this, but I cannot fucking find it anywhere. Instead every single post office has international stamps for Christmas, interestingly dated 2013 or even earlier, showing how few people are buying this shit nowadays. That one with the sea temperatures? That's literally the only one USPS is offering that isn't holiday related. I don't want to use Christmas stamps; it's not the fucking season yet!

Octavia Hill was a nineteenth-century social reformer, who particularly worked with public housing. Growing up in poverty herself, she felt the only way to help the poor was for them to become self-reliance instead of receiving government hand outs. As such she herself managed several buildings in urban slums as a sort of experiment for her views, and her method became quite famous in the latter half of the 1800s. It heavily involved personal relations: Hill was the rent collector but also served as a social worker. Ultimately both Great Britain (and other countries like the United States) rejected her ideas and used governmental methods instead, like rent control or whatnot.

I was listening to a podcast about her today, and the show ended with a comment that her reputation since the 1980s has improved as people noticed problems with our current system, but I don't think her methodology was the best either. Remember, her idea was self-reliance. She worked out with the landlord that he would get a 5% cut from the rents and everything else would be invested in the building itself. And to show the tenants where the money was going, they themselves were personally involved in its upkeep. One person whitewashed the walls. One person was in charge of the flowers in the windows. One person fixed broken stairwells.

Nowadays we've become so specialized it's hard to imagine everyone living in a building having all the skills needed for this. Hill would approach a tenant and ask, "What do you do?" "I work at McDonald's." That's great for creating delicious French fries, but not so great at installing new windows. Also, we're so damned busy now. After coming home from a long day's work, the last shit I need is someone telling me I need to repaint in the lobby. Even on my days off, that shit sounds terrible. There were also social requirements, like communal after-school programs for children.

And if you didn't like it, you couldn't get away because they were all up in your business. Remember, Hill served a a rent-collector/social worker. She would literally enter people's homes thrice weekly to inspect it and ask about your family situation. There was no way to hide. Even though nowadays people are open with their lives on social media, I think we'd all freak out if your landlord's representative was having a long chat with you three times a week about why you aren't furthering your career better.

Doing this required a large staff; compared to the system nowadays which just needs one dude stamping paperwork, you need an army of people who can talk to parents, chase down truant children, find doctors and such for the sick. Although I guess it did create a community, I think nowadays people would just find that exhausting.

I want you to imagine for a moment a horrible disaster happened somewhere in the United States, and the only place for people to flee is a Native American reservation and they were expected to remain there for a long period of time, perhaps years and years, as they waited for their home to return to normal. I think we can all agree we'd be understanding if the Native Americans, who experienced great brutality at the hands of white settlers, were pretty upset at this prospect and were not very welcoming.

Although the analogy isn't exact, that's what came into my head when I looked at the situation in Hungary. I'm willing to bet no one reading this knows Hungarian history that well, so I'll give a run down: The Hungarians were originally an Asian-steppe people who settled in modern-day Hungary some time in the 700s. As the Middle Ages progressed, a confederation of tribes coalesced eventually in a kingdom, which later flourished during the Renaissance.

And then the Ottoman Turks came.

For about a period of two hundred years, Hungary became a battlefield as the Ottomans pushed into Europe. The Hungarians suffered from deportations, massacres, loss of land and urban centers. Even after the Ottomans were expelled, the Austrians annexed them until the end of World War I. They briefly had independence until World War II, after which they were under the auspices of the Soviets.

So you can understand why these guys are particularly protective of their country. For about five hundred years now they've been battered by other people. And now suddenly tens of thousands of foreigners, who are either descendants of or similar to the Ottomans who ripped their country apart for two centuries, are showing up on their doorstep, demanding access. They're not like Great Britain or France who almost always were in control of their own nation and even were conquerors overseas. Most of Hungarian history and culture has been on the defensive.

Like the Native Americans, morally the Hungarians should be the bigger man and let them inside. The people who are suffering now at the borders have nothing to do with what happened in the past. But it's still understandable if they're not.

Starting in iOS 7, the iPhone and iPad had something called the "control center," which was a little tab at the bottom of the screen that allows you to easily turn on the Bluetooth, control your mp3s, or whatever without having to go to their individual app:

It's useful, yes, but at the time and still occasionally now I become annoyed because the way to access it is to swipe up from the bottom of the screen. Except often when I'm reading the newspaper, books, etc. I'm constantly trying to swipe up and instead I get this control center. Eventually I got used to it and it's not too much of an issue now.

With the most recent iOS 9, they added this "split screen" feature that allows you to use to apps at once. That sounds amazing for me because I'm constantly switching between my flashcard app and notebook app when I'm studying. Except there's a basic design flaw. You have to swipe from the right of the screen toward the left to open it. That's exactly the same motion as when you have to delete something, like an email or note. It's not like the control center; to scroll down it doesn't matter where my finger is on the screen, so I trained myself not to touch the lowest part so as not to open the control center. In this, both motions are on the far right. And why do that? Why not make it the left side of the screen? There's literally no motion on that side. Why disregard that?

I have a thing where I hate the "greatest hits" edition of games. In reality there shouldn't be any difference, but not seeing that black stripe on a Playstation game, or the horrible cover on a Japanese game... it just bugs me. I've been wanting to buy Mario Kart 8 for a while now, both for having a Mario Kart game (the last one I bought was for the GameCube) and for its famous Luigi death glare meme, but I've only been able to find this greatest hits version with a red case that doesn't match the usual Wii U blue cases. I've literally been looking everywhere: GameStop, amazon, J&L, Target, Book Off... Then I find out it actually was released with a red box. For a moment I got angry for lack of uniformity but then I'm like, "Well, I guess it's like those NES gold cartridges back in the day." I should try to see the better side of things. For example, at least it's not the Arkham City Game of the Year Edition cover.

If [a woman] wishes to conceive a male, let her husband take the womb and vagina of a hare and let him dry them, and let him mix the powder with wine and drink it. Similarly, let the woman do the same thing with the testicles of a hare, and at the end of her period let her lie with her husband and then she will conceive a male.^*

Considering what we know of modern medicine and the impossibility of ancient man to understand the mechanism behind chromosomes, I've seen dozens and dozens of different methods to conceive a son ranging from staring at statues of men to drinking bull semen. What was stated above is one of the more mild procedures out there, although still crazy when you think about it: "Would you like to drink this wine spiced with hare womb and vagina?" Still, what threw me through the loop is when I did some research into this and found people are still doing some crazy shit even though we all know by this point how the baby's sex is determined. Oh well, humanity is humanity at the end of the day.

^* Medieval Science and Technology, Elspeth Whitney (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004): 181.

Learning crochet reminds me of World of Warcraft. Instead of knowing what "shammy lvl 60 LFG BRD" means, I now know what "hk 3 times, *sk 2, Thdc tbl in next ch 4 times" means.

I was thinking today: Right now I'm playing Tales of Hearts R and Tales of Symphonia. I'm not done yet with Tales of Xillia 2, and after Tales of Symphonia, I have to play the second game. That is, after at least four playthroughs of the first to get 100%. And Zestiria is coming out next month.

And Greene wonders why I don't play Persona games. My soul is already fucking consumed.

So here's the problem with water-based decals: They move so long as there's water on them. That seems pretty obvious, but that almost means after you're done with one and you're adding a second one right next to it, like literally they're overlapping, the water from the second decal will go onto the other and then you have two moving around all over the place like assholes. I have no idea why anyone thought these would be a great idea.

Footnotes are tricky to pin down because the general idea is "cite something that you yourself took from something else instead of creating it on your own." That's great and all, but considering a huge portion of our knowledge is learning from someone else, that's kinda hard to figure out. For example, let's look at this paragraph:

During the American Revolution in 1776, George Washington was Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. He faced funding difficulties and many times his soldiers were without pay or proper equipment. After being forced from Boston and New York, he won some victories against the British in New Jersey before culminating his victory at Saratoga and Yorktown with the help of the French. Later he became the first President of the United States and served two terms before retiring to a quiet life in the country.

I could literally put a footnote on every single sentence because I never personally did the research into any of that; I just got it from history class. And even if I did, I'd still have to cite all the letters and papers from the 1700s to prove my point. So usually another rule states, "Don't put a footnote on common knowledge." Except "common knowledge" is really vague. I knew all that shit off the top of my head, but knowing students and history I doubt most of them would be able to. So for that audience would I have to write that down?

Let's take another example: My professor complained that I didn't have a citation for 1000 AD as the year Iceland converted to Christianity. I countered practically anyone even remotely acquainted with Icelandic history would know that since it's an easy date; being a medievalist he should've known that. Because then what? Should I prove 1066 was the Battle of Hastings? 732 was the Battle of Tours? 800 was when Charlemagne became emperor? Yeah, none of those dates are "common knowledge," but considering this paper is between myself and my medieval history professor, I thought this would be a given.

To this day I still have no idea when I should add these because you have to make an assumption about your audience, which is a very tricky matter. I've seen papers go overboard and have more space dedicated to footnotes than actual paper. Or those that have too few and I can't check out the source. So I suspect no one really knows and it has to be by discretion, which leads you to having arguments with your professor over whether 1000 AD is a thing.

Found this off of Failbook

I've seen this type of statement floating around the internet, and I don't think it's really fair. If you try to use modern moral standards, there's no country on earth that's ever been great.

Take Italy. Their great time was the Roman Empire... when they invaded and slaughtered millions of people to create it, then used most of the POWs to generate slave labor. On top of that most of even the native Roman population couldn't vote. Women definitely didn't have equal rights to men.

Egypt's great period also employed slave labor (as well all well know), was subject to the whimsical desires of a pharaoh and his family, which often used incest as a method to keep the bloodline pure. God knows they committed war atrocities.

What about the Turkish great period? You mean the part where they invaded another kingdom to create the Ottoman Empire? Or how they would often forcibly take Christian babies from their parents and convert them to Islam to be part of the sultan's elite infantry, the Janissaries?

Or what about the Aztecs? We don't even have to fucking think that hard. Their goddamned religion meant they killed a goddamned person at least once a week to keep the sun moving.

China's had several great periods, and pretty much all of them used Confucianism or something similar to keep women in line. They also demanded the majority of the population to give free labor as part of their taxes, and many of them died in the process. Bribery was pretty much a thing, which meant even with a meritocracy most of the population couldn't get ahead since they didn't have the cash.

You can't look at history from your own position too hard because then there's really nothing good about pretty much anything. What society hasn't put women in an inferior position? Or been prejudiced against another religion/ethnicity? Or had some form of slavery? Or condoned child abuse? Or unjustly conquered another land? Or did war crimes in the process? No one can say they've done none of these things at some point. And although we're getting better than before, it's not going to end anytime soon. If you're thinking we've had a utopia out there at some point in the past, you're delusional.

For me The only real appeal of tablets over laptops is it's easier to browse online manga readers in bed. I remember back in the day I would literally take my entire Dell Inspiron and would figure out the ideal position on my chest as I lounged in bed; occasionally I would even lie that huge thing on its side when I wanted to change positions. Tablets streamlined this process being small, lightweight, and the ideal proportions for a manga page, but I've been countering problems in the past year.

Apple and Apple fans tout that iPads cannot get adware or viruses, which I guess technically is true, but their adblocker is a piece of shit. When you literally can't view a website, you know something is wrong. Literally loading the page would pull up a pop-up page, which then immediately sends me to the app store. If I try to return to the page, it just does the shit again. At one point, I literally had to delete my entire history and cookies because I was caught in an infinite loop of moving me to the app store.

Admittedly some websites are better than others. Batoto, for example, doesn't have this problem at all, but it's nonprofit. Many online readers now are for-profit, so they're willing to pull in crazy advertisers who makes these sorts of annoying "features." Unfortunately they're the ones which usually have the largest libraries (they give monetary incentives for uploaders I think), so they're the only ones worth browsing. I don't mind advertising, but just not the ones that prevent me from doing what I wanted to go to the website for in the first place.

In case you're wondering, water-based decals are hard a bitch to apply. Wow. Jesus Christ.

I was talking with Greene today and about my c.2006 list of games I didn't beat and how I wasn't allowed to buy a new one until every single one on that list was finished. It failed miserably and in retrospect I don't know how I was gonna do that. It got me thinking though, and here is a list of the games I still need to beat (bold is games I owned before but still have not rebought):

• Assassin's Creed III
• Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
• Batman: Arkham Knight
• Breath of Fire III
• Breath of Fire IV
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
• Cooking Mama 5: Bon Appetit!
• Devil May Cry 1-3 (ehhh... I may have someone else play that at my house and I'll watch)
• Disgaea
• Disgaea 2
• Donkey Kong 64
• Elebits
• Fable II
• Fable III
• Feel the Magic
• Final Fantasy I
• Final Fantasy II
• Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Edition
• Final Fantasy XIII-2
• Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns
• Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
• Gardening Mama 2: Forest Friends
• Grandia
• Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning
• Harvest Moon: Animal Parade
• Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar
• Harvest Moon DS: Sunshine Islands
• Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley
• Hyrule Warriors
• ICO
• Kirby Superstar Ultra
• The Legend of Zelda: Link Awakening DX
• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D
• Luigi's Mansion
• Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
• Luminous Arc
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
• New Super Mario Bros.
• Ni no Kuni (just need to finish sidequests)
• Okamiden (...probably not)
• Paper Mario: Sticker Strip
• Patapon (yeah, I'm probably never going to beat that)
• Saints Row 2
• SaGa Frontier
• Sonic Generations
• Sword of Mana
• Tales of Destiny 2
• Tales of Hearts R
• Tales of Rebirth
• Tales of Symphonia 2
• Tales of VS
• Tales of Xillia 2 (just 100%ing it)
• Touch My Katamari
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth
• Viva Piñata (get the dragon...!)
• Wild ARMs 3

God... and this is just console games. This is probably double the length of the list I made about ten years ago. Wow, looking at it now it feels insurmountable...