The other day dad was telling me about an article he read that talked about a man in our area who repaired old game systems and such. Quote my dad, he handled things like "the PS2." My first reaction was, "Holy shit, the PS2 is considered an old system? Goddammit, he's right! The fucking PS2 is old! Christ! What the hell does that make me? I consider that shit a newer system!" Like the other day. I can't find my DS charger, so I went to GameStop to buy one and the woman said she had a double charger that handled both the DS and another system. So I asked, "Oh, like the SP?" And there was a tangible pause before she said, "No... not that far back. I mean the 3DS." And I knew from the expression on her face that just by asking that question revealed my age.

Fuck. I hope as the years pass I don't lose my love for RPGs just because they revolve around teenagers.

Zeus loved fucking, everyone knows that. But sometimes he loved transforming into an animal before starting the fucking. Okay, for those with a bestiality kink bulls and horses, whatever. I can see that. But sometimes he did shit that didn't even make sense:

• Demeter: As a snake. Admittedly she too was a snake at the time. Why they couldnt just, you know, have sex normally is beyond me.
• Persephone: As a snake too. Which is kinda fucked up considering Persephone is his and Demeter's daughter.  Literally born from that time those two decided that serpine shit was in. Like mother, like daughter, eh Zeus?  Well, Demeter is his sister, so I guess for him it was just one more step away. And he must've really liked it because he went after Persephone a second time, only disguised as her husband, but unfortunately Hades only has one penis, unlike a snake which has two.
• Nemesis/Leda: As a swan. I have met swans, and they are vicious, vicous creatures. I would not get one near me, much less near my vagina. I would be too scared of it biting the shit out of my labia instead of sticking its crazy duck penis into me. After this union Nemesis/Leda (name depends on the myth) laid an egg, millennia before hentai discovered it, which hatched to give us Helen of Troy.
• Eurymedousa: As an ant. I'm not even gonna touch this one. I don't know why he thought this would be a good idea.  Even if you crawl up there and not get crushed, I can't imagine that being pleasant for him. I'd just go for the bull option again.
• Phthia: As a dove. I actually laugh as I think about this because I can only imagine her grabbing him and shoving him up her vagina.
• Danaë: As a golden shower. ...Yeah. I think Cooper and Bayne explored the idiocy of this very well.

I managed to get my hands on Minish Cap, which I said before was my number 7 favorite game of all time and definitely my favorite Zelda.  I probably haven't touched this game in about five years -- I beat it so thoroughly that playing it again would seem like a waste of time when there's so much else to get to -- and now looking back it, I stand by that statement.  Part of it I think is nostalgia: My first Zelda was A Link to the Past, and consequently the overheads hold a special place in my heart.  Out of all of them, I really do feel Minish Cap was the most polished.  It had the right level of difficulty, exploration, side quests, and overall fun.  The earlier ones don't have all the features (because they're, you know, on the fucking NES), and the later ones were annoying because they either required you to go to the fucking Ocean Temple or ride around on a train.  Minish Cap was really the old school Zelda at its finest, and I'm sad that no one really played it.

Man, I'm linking back to xanga posts.  I can't fucking let go.

Selfridges is a department store chain in the United Kingdom, founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge, an American who was pissed at the selection he found in British stores. Back then it was pretty shitty to walk around on the streets -- literally because of the horses -- and even today you can see in Britain and Ireland by the entrance of some buildings a place to scrape your shoes. Consequently at that time perfume was very popular, even more so than today, and he placed them on the first floor as a marketing strategy and to keep out any undesirable scents from the streets. This idea spread to other department stores and consequently that's why today you can't walk into one without wanting to gag.

Which makes you wonder why Macy's put their butcher store on the first floor too. Now it's the men's section, but up until the 70s there was literally a fucking butchery on the 7th Avenue side. Mom always tells me about that and assures me the quality of the meat was good, but I can't wrap my head around it. Imagine shopping for perfume, a winter coat, some ties, and then thinking, "You know what I'm missing out of all of these shopping bags? Meat." And then you just casually walk with your fancy jewelry and shoes into a place covered in blood and said, "Yes, I'd like a pound of prosciutto and some spare ribs, please." It blows my fucking mind.

Ate Neneng today told me I was having a spinach cupcake for dinner. Like all of you, my own reaction was, "What the fuck is a spinach cupcake?" I spent several hours in confusion and worry until I find out it was a quiche. Thank god for that because who the hell knows what disaster could've occurred otherwise.

The New York Times today featured videos of each of the mayoral candidates responding to these questions: who is your favorite mayor; Mets, Yankees, or Red Sox; what makes you angriest about New York; what's your favorite movie; and where would you live if not New York. Two of those questions are completely worthless and the rest aren't the foremost questions I'd ask if I had a chance to talk with someone running for an election. I guess someone's favorite mayor would give a sense of what that person hopes to emulate. And living somewhere else would show what kind of city they would like New York to be. What makes you angriest about New York could be informative about what they'd like to tackle, but it doesn't address how they'd do it. For example, I really fucking hate people walking slowly and getting in my way. I have no idea how to change that without fundamentally hurting people's rights. Yeah, do you want to hear a mayor say that?

I believe the news asks these types of questions way too much. Seriously, I don't give a shit about what type of car they have, what's their favorite song, or what they have for breakfast. I don't actually know what to do with that information. The topic should be issues, issues, issues: What does the candidate find wrong, what does the candidate intend to do about it, and what methods will be employed. Otherwise we're just delving into gossip really. That's not to say we shouldn't examine the candidate's personality and private life because they can also demonstrate what kind of a leader a person would be. Anthony Weiner's case is a good example. Honestly I don't give a shit about adultery so long as there was no corruption -- you don't fire a McDonald's manager for sleeping around so why should a politician -- but this dude literally plastered his problems on Twitter for the world to see. Now it's our problem, and considering he seems to have no inclination to stop I can only imagine what kind of a work environment women in his office would have. There, that's something we can talk about. I don't really give a shit whether he supports the Yankees or Mets.

But I can't blame the news media for everything because they know their audience is eating this shit up. Seriously, how often do people vote for a candidate not because of the issues but because he/she feels like one of them? I think Sarah Palin is a good example. Many people reacted positively to her because she originated from the same rural environment as they, and conversely she represented everything someone from an urban environment disliked. Or how often does race factor in? A white / hispanic / black candidate can count on a certain percentage from their community just because of the color of their skin. If people were actually paying attention to the elective process, someone like Alvin Greene would never have won the South Carolinan primary.

Although we all complain about the inactivity in government nowadays, why the fuck are incumbency victories over 90%? If we really thought they were doing a shitty job, we'd just kick them all out and put in some more reasonable representatives. But we're not paying attention and consequently we get interviews with crappy questions.

Me: I have a bite on my ankle. I never once took off my shoes during that party. That means the mosquito literally had to crawl inside my shoe to bite there.
Peguero: What a determined little asshole.
Me: "I'd fucking bite the other one if you didn't just walk back into the house, you little shit."
Peguero: My final count is seven bites. Motherfuckers.
Me: Twenty five so far. I'm still finding more.
Me: Annnnnnd... twenty six.
Me: They appear as they become itchy.
Peguero: Did you use the bug spray at all?!
Me: ...No. They scare me...
Peguero: The bug spray scares you?
Me: Yeah, what if I lick myself and I get poisoned?
Peguero: I accidentally rubbed that shit in my eye and I'm fine wait why would you lick yourself.
Me: I have to once every hour to stop the dogs from barking in my head.
Peguero: Oh, well, that makes sense.

Final count was 44 bites. Christ. And then of course other jackasses in my room bit me up some more later. I looked like some sort of smallpox victim.

My aunt returned from the Philippines recently and started talking about their mess of a public transit. Several years ago a policy was enacted that paid bus drivers not a normal salary but by how many passengers they had. This eventually became a giant fuck up. For one, buses were now getting into more accidents as drivers wanted to be faster and thus transport more people. For two, buses actually became more like a cab service. People would hail from anywhere and be dropped off anywhere. Imagine standing on Madison, waving your hand at the nearest bus, board and say, "Hey, can you take me to Rockefeller Center? Thanks." It sounds cool initially until you realize there is no sense to bus routes anymore.

So the government returned to giving bus drivers regular salaries, but my aunt said Filipinos are now complaining about this because they now have to walk four blocks from the bus stop instead of being dropped off at their door. Man, even when you try to get things right people are just pissed off.

Holy shit, since yesterday I've counted 33 mosquito bites. Anyone else worse than me?

I started up Skyward Sword again, and for some reason I can't get a handle on the landscape. With every single other Zelda game I've played, I've already memorized where everything is and how to get to it. Here, I can't even figure out where the houses are in Link's hometown. I can remember focal points like "lake," "big tree," "open field with mushrooms" and be able to navigate them with ease, but I can't remember where they are in relation to one another. Is "big tree" north or south of "lake?" How do I travel from "lake" to "open field"? No idea.

I've been racking my brains and the only solution I've got is this: For some reason, Nintendo didn't add a minimap for this game. You have to open up the menu to orient yourself, and it's not even that good. Not A Link to the Past awful but still undesirable. It's weird because I live my life without a minimap and can still make it around in a 3D environment, but this is just impossible. Maybe because there aren't as many visual cues like in real life. A ledge looks like the same as every other fucking ledge.

Either way, what the fuck Nintendo? You couldn't add that shit? Or is it because half the fucking screen is taken up with instructions on how to play this shit?

I wonder sometimes if the WWI vets felt gypped out because all we talk about is WWII. Dad says it's because all that's left are the latter, but growing up there were still doughboys running around and I still didn't remember ever discussing WWI. Hell, I didn't even know what it was about until I studied it in high school. I know why one is more popular: You've got big names like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman, Churchill, and Yamamoto. You've got big events like the Final Solution, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Blitzkrieg, Pearl Harbor, and D-Day. It's easy to make a movie out of that.

But it's not like WWI didn't have its own memorable moments. The Ottoman Empire fell after a 400-year run, the Paris Peace Conference changed the fate of Europe and the Middle East to this day, the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians, and the bombing of the Lusitania. I also know it was the end of the 19th-century style warfare and strategy and the entry into the modern era with trenches, gassing, and submarines. Admittedly though, I can't think of a single military commander in that war and the only civilian leaders coming to mind are Wilson and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose death was the immediate cause of everything.

Maybe because Hollywood hadn't latched onto it in the same way because there wasn't such a clear-cut "good" and "bad" side, nor was the United States' influence that great; hell, we didn't even join the League of Nations that Wilson himself proposed! The UK and France basically steamrolled their desires through and partitioned the Middle East between them while Wilson stood at the sidelines, desperately saying the Middle East should rule on its own.

But that doesn't mean those vets' suffering wasn't any lesser. They went though a lot of the same shit as the guys in WWII, but they weren't call The Greatest Generation. They don't get a new documentary every month. They don't have a whole channel dedicated to them. I wouldn't say they went into the dustbin of history, but they sure as hell didn't get as much honor and respect as the people fifteen years later.

Maybe the people serving in Afghanistan thought the same shit while the Iraq War was going on.

Remember that huge blackout that took out the entire northeast and parts of Canada? The tenth anniversary for that was yesterday. Jesus Christ.

Recently there's been a bit of debate about grammar and its necessity. Given the prevalence of Internet Speak and how it's creeping into even professional work, some wonder whether to even teach it. Well... yeah, you should. Let me give you an example of something Ate Neneng said to me verbatim the other day: "Maybe raining, Ate Neneng she not come. Maybe not raining, Ate Neneng coming four o'clock." If you're going to say that language is only necessary for communication and the niceties aren't important, then everything Ate Neneng said to me was perfectly fine because I understood her statement completely. The grammar was atrocious, but the meaning was there.

Okay, okay, I'm being mean. I know most of this debate is crap like their / they're / there or how to use quotation marks properly, but I feel like it's still important to teach. On the internet often all I know about you is from your comments on a forum or your musings on a blog. As a human being I'm going to try to pick up any information I can about the other person whether consciously or not. If we were meeting in reality I would assess your appearance, body language, and vocal intonation, and make assumptions from there. On the internet my initial impression of you is actually not your message but your spelling and grammar. If I see "your a idiot," "mother's for gun control," or "who's child is this," I automatically conclude you're not well educated.

I'm not saying everyone should write like me in texts, Facebook, etc. That's your private life and you do whatever. I'm not offended. (Unless if you pull that l33t shit with me. I've actually stopped talking with people until they put it in Roman characters. I fail to see why you would type \/\/ instead of a goddamned W.) But you should be aware if your messages get out, a lot of people will judge you.

Ultimately that's why grammar should be taught in schools. Even if you're not doing it personally, at some point you'll have to write something professional. And again, that's people's first impression of you. Even if you're an expert on your subject, it's negated by the words you choose. All we can see is, "You're investments is in good hands." You have to demonstrate you have rudimentary education. I'm not asking people should know what an Oxford comma is, but to say that grammar knowledge is unimportant shows your lack of appreciation for proper communication.

Maybe we should just give our kids this.

They're releasing Harry Potter with new covers? Why the fuck would you do that to me?

That's our living room prior to the fire. The ceiling is causing us some problems because it's unique to the block. The same architect designed every single house so they're more or less similar -- in fact, one house is almost a perfect replica -- but we're the only ones on the street who had that paneling between the beams. Everyone else just has white plaster instead.

This picture is the best we have, so we showed it to everyone involved in rebuilding the house. One day the contractor called us over to discuss the little finishes to our house, e.g. the size of the trim along our doors and the design of the windowsills. But when we started talking about the living room ceiling, it started getting weird. If we were to look parallel to the paneling, we'd see something like this:

Those lines you see running across perpendicular to the beams? That's the molding or little decorative piece of wood you usually see near ceilings or wrapping around doors. It helped divide the panels and even wrapped along the side of the beams. However when the contractors started talking, we quickly realized they were envisioning something like this:

When they saw the picture, somehow their interpretation was instead of molding, there were little spaces in between each panel, which gave the effect of them floating. For me who knew the reality I just cannot imagine how they conceived this, but the light reflecting off looked like plaster and they believed the shadows represented a little valley. Thankfully we were there to put all doubts aside and say no, we were dealing with a convex situation and not a concave.

If this were an academic situation, there'd be a whole colloquium where scholars would blow up that picture and debate whether it was molding or plaster. And ultimately there'd be no answer and everyone would disperse to write in journals and periodicals defending their side. I guess that's why people hate the humanities sometimes; it's really hard to be right. I believe in my field there is a "truth" based on facts, but with so little evidence we can't reach it. It happens all the time in archaeology; you have to gather all the information together to paint a story, and every archaeologist comes back with a different narrative. The same thing during court cases with each side seeing the forensic evidence in a different light. Even for opinionated fields like English and art history probably have a "truth" to them, but unfortunately the creator is usually dead so we can't ask. How do you know that the author intended this scene with the dogs barking at each other to represent the tension in the protagonist's life? What if the author just simply wanted a scene with dogs barking?

At the end of the day, we were around to tell the contractors that they were wrong and corrected it, but I wonder what other people from history would say if they saw us now. I'm fairly certain if we had a time machine a lot of egos would be crushed. People would come and say, "No, you fucking idiot. You wrote a 200-page book about me and were completely fucking wrong about everything." Hell, I've read over 200 pages just about this one page from a manuscript and all of its symbolism. I'd love for the artist just to come back and say, "No, I just wanted to create a pretty picture. I don't know what you're talking about with the moon, the Eucharist, and fertility. It's just a fancy X, R, and I."

Wow, the set up for my point took fucking forever this time around.

You know how Google has "SafeSearch?" They need a "UnsafeSearch" mode, i.e. I want only pornographic images and nothing else. That'd help me a lot.

Harry Potter as a child was almost painful because it was so close being in our universe and yet so far. Possibly there were wizards and witches in our midst and only through vast conspiracy of magic were we ignorant of the possibilities. And yet now I look at them and think: Wow, we are definitely kicking their asses. If I had a choice today to be born either a witch or a Muggle, I would pick Muggle any day of the week.

That's not to say they still are way ahead of us in some fields. We can't physically control people like the Imperius Curse, use a Memory Charm to wipe their minds, teleport from one location to another, remove every bone in a person's body and then regrow it with a nasty potion. We can't do any of that shit.

But let's look at what we got. First off, they are still on the radio. They don't have televisions or movies. All of that culture we got is completely nonexistent for them. You can say they have photography that is more lifelike than ours, but I have never seen them in the series use it in a similar manner to a TV series or a movie.

Then we have the internet. That alone I think just completely knocks down anything the Wizarding World has to offer. Okay, Owl Post? Fuck that shit, we have emailing, texting, blogging... We can get the message out and fast. Remember how long it took Sirius to respond to Harry's letter in The Goblet of Fire? Yeah, he would've gotten it instantaneously if he were a Muggle.

Then there's just the sheer mass of information we can share with one another. For god's sake, they're still dependent on magazines and newspapers for anything. Right now I can pull up tens of thousands of articles in any major language just from Google News alone. In fact, I have a tab open about the train crash in Spain written in German. Wizards couldn't fucking imagine doing that.

Look at their damned currency system. If the rest of the world is complaining that we're still on the imperial system of measurement, at least it's still 100 cents to the dollar. That's easy to compute and convert. Forget 29 Knuts to a Sickle, 17 Sickles to a Galleon. That's 493 Knuts for 1 Galleon. That's a pain in the fucking ass. And I love what Hagrid said after he explained this all: "It's easy enough." No, not it is not, and I don't know how you thought that is other than you've lived in a delusion your whole life.

And our banking is far superior to theirs because of, again, our fast communications. As far as I can tell, they don't even come close to the telegraph system. I've seen the use the Floo Network, but that only works within Great Britain and isn't good for anything international. Harry had that mirror with Sirius, but I doubt that works extremely long distances.

Then we just have the fucking atom bomb. Oh great, you have Avada Kedavra? We can literally wipe a city off the face of this earth. In fact, if we use it enough we can wipe us all off the face of this earth. Yeah, it's just like your cute little basilisk there. You need to up the efficiency for killing people.

I'm actually surprised a lot of our innovations haven't crossed over. You'd think some enterprising Muggle Born would realize there's a good business opportunity and no competition.