Whenever I see New Year's Eve abbreviated to NYE, I keep on thinking we're talking about Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Fuck this cold. Every time I start falling asleep, I start coughing and wake up.

Things that would make Final Fantasy XV better instantaneously:

1. Be able to pick up items whilst riding a chocobo.
2. If an enemy has Analyze used on it already, the stats will remain if you encounter the same enemy again.

I also watched Handa-kun. I never finished the manga (wasn't fully translated and the group doing it seems to be dead), but I thought it was a mildly-funny situational comedy. The anime changed the chronology of events, but what it did portray was a rather faithful rendition. My main complaint is what I found hilarious about Handa-kun were the little details. For example, when the protagonist Handa was fleeing from the student council, his track-and-field "rival" Dash attempted to race him, only to crash into a pile of boxes. Small moments like that were often removed from the anime, which for me were the true charm of the series.

However the anime added this scene, which did make me spit out my drink:

The way the ending also added Handa's each new associate was a nice touch too.

I have no idea why but every year mom forgets this conversation. This past week she's brought it up again but for some reason this time she's more tenacious about it because she discovered the other ladders in the house can only withstand 225lb as well. I can tell she's trying to tell me to use the step ladder from now on so she doesn't have to, but wouldn't it be safer if I just stopped using all ladders altogether? I'm losing weight, but until then should I get something with a greater capacity?

Catching up with all the shit I've been missing since Christmas presents consumed me, starting with Zeta: A New Translation. It's not quite like Do You Remember Love?, which was completely revamped graphically to the point of some of the characters being unrecognizable, but rather scenes were inserted or removed. Consequently when watching it you're stuck with shitty 1980s animation an then suddenly switch to a scene from the early-2000s production level. It's rather disconcerting but it allows you to easily tell what's the new content.

As a movie summary of a fifty-episode series of course they're going to leave shit out to the point of being awkward or jarring. It starts off with Camille in the interrogation room without the scene of him and Jerid fighting, which in turn makes their already weak rivalry somewhat nonsensical. Amuro's also not a little bitch so some of his actions aren't easily explained; in the original show Beltachika had to offer her pussy to motivate Amuro to fight, except here he's enthusiastic from the start so all of these discussions about his fears are odd. Reccoa's dissatisfaction with Char and her way of life was rushed, and hence her betrayal is confusing; she was captured and then suddenly working for the Titans. Most interestingly is Rosamia was almost completely gone. In the original Zeta she had some scenes piloting the Psycho Gundam Mk-II, but her face was never revealed until about thirty episodes later when she thinks Camille is her brother. They added more moments of her in those initial scenes but then removed her plot entirely, which was sort of my point: After Four died I think the writers felt Camille needed a second crazy bitch, but she wasn't a necessary addition. However she strangely appears in the final scene with all the other dead people Camille can hear in space, which would be completely confusing for anyone who hadn't seen the series. There are other small changes, like how Reccoa is killed by Emma instead of Yazan. And Bask is killed by Yazan instead of Reccoa. But of course the major one is Camille doesn't go crazy at the end. I'm guessing they take that part out in ZZ?

Overall I think it's a good adaptation of the series. The condensed time gives greater impetus to AEUG's actions, one of the complaints I had about the original series,, but I feel there's still a lack of overall direction, particularly since Char's speech to the world was cut out. It's not bad if you have the time, but I still say stick to the 1980s version.

Christmas = failure this year. I didn't finish the hat and scarf.

Down to the final stretch...!

I think the album cover of Vent ~ Grandia is probably the greatest of all time:

Typing with one hand is a real bitch. I can barely remember what it was like before I learned touchtyping.

Well, my wrist finally gave out from crocheting. Hopefully I can get it up and running again in a day or two.

Fuck this blanket.

OK, I have to make two scarves, one blanket, one sweater, one hat, and fourteen origami pieces and then I'm done. I'll be done. My hands can finally rest.

dundun: I fished the whole time
dundun: And then I ran out of lines, so when I went to the guy to get more
dundun: Four iron giants popped out of the ground.
Rizhall: Four.
Rizhall: That's a lucky number.
dundun: Actually, there may have been more. I stopped counting after a while when these spiders came.
Rizhall: I had a grim reaper come out with the lemonade once.
Rizhall: ... With the iron giant.
dundun: .........I was genuinely debating whether to ask for further information about that or if I really wanted to know.
Rizhall: It was an honest typo.
Rizhall: That's all it was.
dundun: But of course. The letters are all right next to each other.
Rizhall: One or two mistyped letters can really change things up, you know?

Oh Jesus Christ, I just remembered Tales of Berseria is released next month. I'm fucked.

Another thing about the iPhone 7: Wow, the battery life dies quickly. What the hell did they put on this that just kills the whole thing? When I check it's the mp3 player, but I'm only listening to that for maybe twenty minutes? And the rest is in the background. What the fuck is it doing that just drains the thing?

Before if you wanted the lyrics, you'd tap on the CD art in the first picture and they'd pop up. Now you're required to scroll down to look at it. This can get annoying because if I want to rewind, I then have to scroll back up, pull the song back about ten seconds, and then immediately try to go back down and find my place. It's particularly problematic when I'm doing listening comprehension exercises on my phone because god knows I need to relisten every ten seconds to fully comprehend all the sounds coming out of their mouths. I don't know why Apple didn't just keep the lyrics there with all of the controls because it's easier to use if all of the functions and data is on the screen at the same time. It's not like the lyrics were fucking up the aesthetic since you had to tap the CD art anyway to get it.

(Also for some reason the lyrics for half of my songs aren't uploading, even though they were fine in the previous iOS.)

All of these gripes I make are minute in the grand scheme of things, but it just pisses me off that Apple is shown as a paragon of good design when I, some idiot in her basement who majored in Medieval History, can identify immediate problems with their layout and how to fix them. What did these people learn in college? What are they being paid for? How are they messing this shit up?

For some reason since I've gotten back, I've had problems downloading updates for Windows, drivers, etc. Right now I have a Microsoft security definitions stuck at about a quarter in. I have no idea what the hell happened to this laptop while I was gone in SF.

OK, right now it seems the plan is to just crochet every night until I fall asleep on top of the yarn.

During the final battle of Okami, there's a point where you see a group of people standing around and only the chest down is visible. I commented to Alex during our playthrough that I've played the game so much that I was able to recognize each NPC in that shot. And really that was one of the amazing parts of Okami: Each NPC was unique. I can't think of a single sprite they replicated except for some of the guards. Talking to each one gave me a taste of their personalities and really expanded the game to feel like a world.

I'm bringing this up because of Final Fantasy XV. Again, I'm early in the game but I'm worried because so far all the sidequests have been variations of fetch quests or bounties. And half of them come from the same three people! It's gonna get pretty tedious after a while.

See, Okami had fetch quests, but they never told you it was one. You would talk to an NPC and he'd mention he's visiting the city and is looking for a hairpin for his wife. Or another would say someone took his mask. And later on you would find that shit, remember the NPC had mentioned it way back when, and returned it to him. That's part of what made the game immersive. I learned a bit of the people's lives by talking to them -- how he fears his wife's wrath or what that mask meant to him -- and along your journey you bring up those memories when you happen to find it. And when you bring back those objects, you're given another window in the NPC's psyche with how he expresses his thanks. That's what makes a game interesting. Not going back to the same dude and he says, "Hey, thanks for this stuff. OK, I need more of this stuff."

Now that I've played Final Fantasy XV, I've noticed some significant changes between it and the first demo that was released, particularly with the battle system. First of all, all of your weapons were equipped simultaneously (I think there were five or six), and you used them depending on your actions during battle. For example, there was a list like, "Warp," "Close-range attack," "Finishing blow," and you decided where you wanted to put your broadsword or lance.

Then each weapon had its own move. Like the broadsword had "Tempest," the lance had "Jump," and the two short swords had an HP aborb move that I can't remember the name of. So during battle you'd toggle the moves with the D-pad and then press square to do your special attack.

The developers removed both of those completely. You can only equip four weapons (or spells), and then use the D-pad to select which one to use. Not only that, but Noctis doesn't have any special moves anymore. They've been given to your teammates, and for some of them Noctis can join in if you press circle at the right moment. It's somewhat bizarre, playing as a character who only has a limited amount of physical attacks. Maybe this expands later, but somehow I doubt it.

Also because they allowed Noctis to do combo attacks with his teammates' moves, they completely removed another team attack that was in the demo. During battle sometimes a teammate would have a yellow circle next to him. If you stepped in that, a quick-time event would appear and you'd get a multi-hit combo together. Again maybe they add this feature later, but I'm thinking probably not.

Right now I'm withholding judgment. So far it's fun and I like it, but I'm worried they're gonna push this game too much into MMO territory (so far the sidequests have been variations of "kill this monster" and "do this fetch quest") without much character development and storyline. Or that may be becuase I'm having so much fun running around in the field to actually progress with this.

"Kusudama" are a type of origami that involve the parts being sewn or glued together and usually hung with a tassel. Supposedly it would contain a potpourri inside, but nowadays it's just a decoration hung from the ceiling. And I wanna say fuck these things. Gluing this shit together is one of the most painful fucking experiences in the goddamned world. By the time I'm done, all my fingers are sticky and I pray to god I didn't get globs of it all over the piece itself. ...But they are very pretty.

Each time I think I've gotten a good count, I suddenly remember one other scarf I have to crochet for a Christmas present. My fingers are going to be sore for the next few weeks...

I want you guys to return to our teenage years and try to remember the run up to the Iraq War. We were already in Afghanistan thanks to Osama bin Laden. It made sense for us to be there because we were out for blood, so the Bush administration had lay groundwork to turn our attention to Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with September 11th. Probably the most memorable part was Colin Powell in 2003 bringing a bottle of anthrax into the UN, but the process was already beginning the year before. Cheney was making speeches declaring Iraq had WMDs, citing The New York Times as proof. From about September 2002 to April 2003, Times writer Judith Miller published a series of articles detailing Iraq's WMD program and the government ran with it.

Which is weird because last I heard the media was a liberal bastion and foe of the conservative president at the time. Bush and Cheney themselves would bitterly complain The New York Times published biased articles against them because it's in Democrat New York City. How can they be simultaneously liberal and yet not only let the Bush administration get away with false accusations but also fuel the justification?

I think whenever people complain about "the media," they really aren't looking at it. Or they just pay attention to 24-hour cable news. Or their perception just is derived from reading shit off of Facebook. And it's funny because reporters can never win. Conservatives hate them because supposedly they're all liberals deep down, and liberals hate them because it's filled with white men who silence minorities. I feel none of these people actually open up a fucking newspaper and look at the whole thing.

For example, right now I keep hearing people whine how no one is talking about the police brutality around the North Dakota pipeline protests. Guess what? All the major newspapers are covering this story. NPR touches on it several times a day. It's just not paramount because our president-elect is announcing his picks for the cabinet, and that's way more fucking important. If the news decided to ignore that and focus on a bunch of people fighting law enforcement in the cold, I'd actually be pissed off. I'd rather be hearing about the people who may shape our healthcare system, our treaties and relations with other countries, or our environmental policy than that. And the editors know it, so the pipeline business, whilst not unimportant, got bumped to page five or so.

Are there biases in the news? Undoubtedly. They know they won't get business if they tell uninteresting stories, so they tend to hype up shit or ignore horrible things that happen repeatedly. Let's go back to the Iraq War. During 2005-06 there were horrific bombings every single day as the country devolved into sectarian violence. All those stories got less prominence because, and this is going to sound terrible, people get bored after hearing about another eighty people who died in a suicide bombing. Hundreds of people are dying each week trying to cross the Mediterranean, but unless it's a large amount of people drowning in one boat those headlines are mentioned only in passing when compared to the US election or some sort of governmental scandal or whatever major sports victory happened last night. And yeah, the reporters may have their own personal proclivities as well. CNN was depicted as racist after Hurricane Katrina because it said whites were scavenging for food whilst blacks were looting stores... but then again no one would've given a shit about the Duke Lacrosse team case if the stripper wasn't black.

I find if you look at the top stories, the editors are able to identify what is most pressing and across all the newspapers it's usually reported with almost the same information. There's no extreme differences in portrayal. When Castro died, that was what everyone was talking about. When the Volkswagen emissions scandal broke, that too was on the front page. And when Ferguson was turning particularly gruesome, then you could view a plethora of videos and photos. Just because you personally are invested in an issue — Harambe, the shooting of Tyre King, gun rights — and the media isn't all over it, it doesn't necessary mean discrimination. There could be more fascinating shit going on. Or people have stopped talking about it because the news cycle has moved on. Instead of whining about it, why don't you actually read this stuff? Because I don't get my news from social media and somehow I'm abreast of all the issues... by consuming media.

Jesus, sorry I've been busy either in SF or Harlan came over. Will try to update diligently.