Blue Dragon was released in 2006, but it lacks features that I would've thought were standard by that point. For example, a zoomed-in map. Whenever I press start, I get the whole damned world like it's Final Fantasy V or something. This isn't a few forests with a bunch of scattered towns. There are treasure chests, search points, marshes, what have you. I'd like something with a little more detail, please.

Also, the background keeps on drifting in and out of focus, and it actually is hurting my eyes sometimes. Lost Odyssey was definitely superior in terms of graphics and didn't have this problem.

Otherwise, it seems like your standard JRPG. Well, except for the copious amounts of poop.

Today ISIS revealed videos of them destroying ancient art at a Mosul Museum, which personally upset me more than anything else and I feel disgusted at myself for that. ISIS has done terrible, horrible things: kidnappings, tortures, rape, killings. Those anger me, but not on the scale as this. I can rationalize this: Human lives come and go, but these artifacts have lasted thousands of years. It'd be as if ISIS figured out a way to blow up the pyramids or burn the Sistine Chapel. It creates a more visceral response than from hearing a statistic. Still, a human life is a human life, and I shouldn't say killing a man is preferable to saving an Akkadian statue. Perhaps it's the historian in me, but that's no excuse.

I put fanfiction on my phone to read whenever I forget a book on the train or if there's no internet access to update my news apps, but now the phone's running out of space. Looking for ways to reduce usage, I noticed that .epub is smaller than .pdf for the fanfics. It's just such a pain in the ass to transfer them over... I actually have no idea how to turn a .doc(x) into a .epub though and from the looks of it I'll have to clean out Word before conversion. Or is it easier to go .pdf to .epub?

Man, maybe I should just start deleting apps...

I'm trying to figure out what's energy efficient. I assumed it was to lower the temperature at night so the system doesn't have to work as hard, but then in the morning when I raise it 10°, the heater chugs for a long time to reach the daytime heat. Is it better to just leave the system on at the same degree so it just has to turn on briefly for ten minutes when it dips by about 2°?

News often attempts to engender stories before they actually happen. So for example, today Obama vetoed the Keystone XL Pipeline. In the past few days every paper, nightly news, and blog predicted he would do this. On the sliding scale of egregiousness, this isn't really bad, but I'd prefer for them to report actual events instead of predictions. What makes these reproachable is oftentimes they create their own story, which is often an incorrect abstract exaggerated to generate interest. Back in 2009, for instance, the Senate-House Republican dinner invited Sarah Palin as the keynote speaker. She wasn't certain if she could make it, so coordinators turned to Newt Gingrich. By the time she figured out she was available, he had already accepted. If you looked at the news, it seemed like blood was in the streets between the two camps, and the speech would be the culmination of the tension between the establishment (Gingrich) and the new Tea Party (Palin). If you actually watched it, Gingrich expressed regret that Palin couldn't make the speech herself and thanked her and her family for attending. That's it.

Like any business, news needs to make money. It's nothing recent — many historians attribute the entire Spanish-American War to excited newspapers and yellow journalism — but I'm still hoping we've moved on from "making shit up" to acquire customers. There is exciting shit happening in the world right now: ISIS. Boko Harma. The Ukraine. Racial tensions. Greece and the Eurozone. You don't really need to create anything. It's already there.

Update on UPS-Innovations: Did not receive my packages, but I did receive two identical Loot Crates. ?????

Just putting this out there: I hate UPS Innovations. It's basically UPS, except instead of giving you the package, they hand it to your local post office to finish the delivery. I don't know why this extra step is unnecessary. I'd be okay with this if the tracking didn't stop at, "We've handed the package to the USPS." I don't know what happens after that. Considering I've been having problems with deliveries, this information is extremely important. At the moment I'm expecting two packages via UPS Innovations and I'm constantly worrying whether it'll come or not.

It's odd how fandom works. Usually it dies out about a year after a series ends — for example, most communities for Full Metal Alchemist are pretty dried up now — although if it's a game, it usually will last longer since it's a one-time release. Bigger series like Star Trek or Harry Potter will last for years thanks for new members constantly refreshing fans who left. I went through my old Tales of the Abyss communities, and it was really sad to see all the links to livejournal accounts are closed and purged or the links to fanart are broken. I guess creativity and interest dry up, but I wonder sometimes how everyone else is doing.

Man, toward the end I just thought Orochimaru was up to some sort of general mischief. What happened to this plan?

I was talking with Greene about what a shame it was Kankurou and Shino never fought, but I guess they did. Totally forgot about this fight.

Who the hell is translating this? "'Tis a bad sign?" Did Iruka transport from Elizabethan England?

When we first read this, it was already a dick move, and then we find out he's lying just as method to test Gaara's control. How did anyone think this was a good idea.

Oh my god, Sasuke, you were so fucking cool. What happened to you. What the fuck happened to you.

How the hell did you translate the rest of this chapter but weren't able to figure that one out?

Yeah, I never got this. After Shukaku was extracted from him, why was Gaara's eyes still black? Surely he could sleep normally by then.

These people are gonna be so confused when they wake up. Also, I noticed there weren't any ninjas around besides Leaf, Sound, and Sand. I thought people from all over came to see the chuunin exams. No way the other nations passed out thanks to Kabuto's genjutsu.

I also think Kishimoto wanted to do something with this subplot, but it didn't pick up again until the final battle.

Back at Science, Moham and I used to joke about the Third's line that their souls will eternally fight in Shinigami's stomach thanks to the seal, and that right now they're battling just Orochimaru's arms. I think we even drew pictures.

Kankurou, you just got your ass kicked by Shino. How the hell are you still up and walking again?

One of the defining moments of Gaara's life, and I think the layout and focus on the faces were done perfectly here to demonstrate what an impactful scene this was. Bravo Kishimoto.

Holy shit why is Jiraiya so much larger than everyone else he's like three feet taller how did this happen

Kurenai, you wore a short skirt to a funeral? Not fucking cool.

How the hell do you do this? You have a meeting to decide a new hokage, and then two members of that meeting just choose someone else. No, if the person turns down the position, you go back to the meeting with the recommendation and debate again. It'd be as if the House passed a bill, and then the Speaker thought it was pretty bad and rewrites the whole thing. No, it has to be presented to the House!

Also, it's kinda weird to see these two now that I know they participated in the machinations of the Uchiha downfall.

I watched Gundam: MS 08th Team. It doesn't contribute to the overall Gundam universe in any way, but it's still an interesting watch. Honestly I think this could just be any sort of love and war story, it's just they decided to throw Gundam into the mix. It's pretty short and the characters aren't flat, so I'd recommend this if you have the time.

If anyone's asking, Batman: The Brave and the Bold is currently what makes me happy.

I really hate art history. It's fine for other people to study it, but it's just not for me. Still it's important to learn a bit or else there will be huge gaps in my knowledge, so every now and then I gird my lions and yawn my way through a book of it. Sometimes it's worth it for sentences like this: "In Aulay, for example, the vine foliage is being excreted by an anus demon who is holding his legs up in order to be able to set Satan's bonds on their fecal way into the world."^* Or say this: "On the pediments of the same church a phallus man appears two consoles away from a vulva woman."^*

^* Rolf Toman, ed., Romanesque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, translated by Fiona Hulse and Ian Macmillan (Cambridge: h.f.ullmann, 2010), 342.

I remember being disgruntled Viz edited out the swastika in the translated version, but even the Japanese anime did too.

Yeah, does anyone remember this guy? The one who attempted to kidnap Hinata and was killed, so they sent Neji's dad as a peace offering? Who the fuck was he? I was under the impression he was the raikage, but later we find out that's impossible. I think Kishimoto didn't really flesh out his plans for Cloud yet and tried to quietly drop this plot line.

I never really understood completely why Kabuto knocked out Kiba. Part of me wants to say it's because he wanted to eliminate any potential obstacles before the fight, but another part wants to say he did it to keep Kiba out of danger when the fighting goes down. Well, maybe I'm giving him too much.

Seriously, out of everyone I think Naruto was the true ninja. He came up with the most sneak attacks that aimed at the enemy's inattention and moments of weakness.

Shikamaru, what are you here for? What is the point of becoming a ninja?

I forgot how Gaara just casually killed two dudes on the way to fight Sasuke. Man, he was totally fucked up.

So... there's just a giant shuriken stuck in a wall in the Sand Village? Like, no one tried to pull that out? Who the hell threw that anyway?

I remember when they introduced elements in part II, I wondered whether that was another thing Kishimoto invented at the last minute. I'm starting to think he actually thought this out from the beginning; I've been watching carefully throughout this entire rereading and it works according to that later canon. That, and a scene like this which implies both Sasuke and Kakashi were lighting elementals.

I'm not certain if Kishimoto figured out what he wanted to do with Orochimaru. Sometimes I heard his motivation was to collect all jutsu, sometimes it was to make the world interesting through war, sometimes it was to become hokage. Or maybe it was Kishimoto demonstrating even Orochimaru had no real goals.

What the hell did the Third do here? How the hell do you just stop a summoning like that? Why the hell didn't they do that during the final battle?

If this was your life goal, you picked the wrong profession. You know Konoha has other jobs than ninja, right? You could run a ramen shop.

God, I totally forgot for the end of the chuunin exam, the only scanlations floating around were from the Chinese.

Mardi Gras supposedly is the last celebration before the beginning of Lent. It's literally just a day to go crazy before the seriousness kicks in. Nowadays when people say things like, "Oh, I'm giving up chocolate for Lent," it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but back in the day people didn't fuck around. You had to fast like crazy. You had to attend services every day. You couldn't engage in any form of entertainment. Mardi Gras was the method to cram all that fun in that you're going to miss in the next forty days. I was talking with my German teacher, and he said Mardi Gras, or Fasching or Karneval as it's called in Germany (you've undoubtedly heard of the latter in its South American form) starts at 11/11 at 11:11. O...kay. I think you've forgotten the point. This is the party before the low period. Your party is longer than Lent itself. By a long shot. Lent about 1.3 months. Your Karneval is about 3 months. Do you honestly think Lent is so bad that you need about triple the amount of comfort time to deal with the trauma?

Concurrently studying German and French opens my eyes to supply and demand. If you had to compare between the two, French is definitely more sought after amongst Americans than German: Most schools offer French or Spanish, and Bronx Science, which had a wonderful language program, did not even have German after the previous teacher retired. My French language school is a multi-story complex in midtown Manhattan with smart-screens as a chalkboard and countless courses. My German school has to beg for rooms from NYU and has difficulties filling up the roster. I can see the difference outside of the classroom too: tons of shelves dedicated to French in bookstores and maybe half for German, online there are plenty of forums to ask grammatical questions in French. I'm not saying the resources aren't there, but there's a noticeable discrepancy. I wonder how people feel for really rare languages, like Finnish or ancient Coptic. What help do they get?

[15:45:10] Dun 4 Hire: Dad's refusing to start a wrestling tag team with me.
[15:48:23] gtaex2739: that's some bullshit
[15:48:35] gtaex2739: is it cause he wants to wrestle solo?
[15:51:04] Dun 4 Hire: I can't believe he's turning on me like that.
[15:51:08] Dun 4 Hire: I thought we were a duo.
[15:51:44] gtaex2739: don't worry, i've seen this episode before
[15:51:49] gtaex2739: you just gotta hit him with a chair
[15:52:03] gtaex2739: then piledrive him through the announcer's table
[15:52:12] gtaex2739: then after that you'll be reunited by against a common foe again
[15:52:30] gtaex2739: that was a mess of a sentence but i stand by it

People know my interests and usually ask me, "Who is so-and-so saint?" They don't realize there's literally thousands of these fuckers running around and unless you specialize in it, I have no idea unless they're a major one like St. Paul or St. Helen. Nevertheless it's kinda embarrassing to reveal my ignorance, so now whenever I encounter a saint I don't know, I try to look him or her up quickly on wikipedia and write a few bullet points. It really reveals the range of saints. Nowadays there're strict rules: A local bishop starts an investigation and puts it before the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican. At that point, the person is a "Servant of God." If the Congregation approves, they put it before the pope and the person is called "Venerable." A person can move onto being "Blessed" if he's a martyr or has one miracle under his belt. If there are two miracles proven, then finally the person moves from "Blessed" to "Saint."

Before, whoever the hell seemed like a good candidate became a saint by the local congregation. "Saint" is derived from the Latin word sanctus, meaning "holy," so really you just had to be a well-liked, religious individual. So let's take some examples: St. Hilary of Poitiers (c.300-c.370) is considered a "doctor of the church" (meaning a person who wrote several theological tracts that helped change Christianity) and fought against the Arians. By doing so, he helped definite an orthodoxy that we hold to this day.

Then we have St. Maxentiolus (d. 5th century), who founded Our Lady of Cunault Abbey. That's it.

Nowadays when you have a saint in the news, they're usually a really, really big figure like John Paul II or Mother Theresa. But Maxentiolus was known in his area and was acclaimed before this Congregation was set up. No one needed to consult Rome and for many years once central authority was set up, Rome had to send out representatives around the countryside to assess what the locals did. I've read a report of a disgusted prelate to discover a shrine was built to a dog who saved a girl drowning in a lake. Although great, an animal can't be a saint. In recent years the church has been divesting themselves of superfluous saints and to be honest I'm not certain if St. Maxentiolus was cut from the list. And I can see why; Maxentiolus may have been a nice guy and I'm certain Cunault Abbey did a lot for its community, but you want the title "saint" to have a greater sense of reverence.

I'm trying to figure out how this happened. In the early hours of Sunday morning, the toilet clogged in the basement. I plunged it for a bit and the issue was resolved, so I went to bed. I informed dad later that morning about it, and he said he wanted to check the pipe leading out to the street after brunch. Mind you, before this happened we were all using water: washing up in the morning, doing the laundry, turning on the dish washer, and even using that toilet that caused so many problems. No issues whatsoever. Dad went into the meter room ... and did something. I don't know what, but everything's now fucked up. Every time we use water, it starts gushing out of this pipe, which is fortunately in the water pit and over soil. Unfortunately there's been so much the ground is completely saturated and at the moment we have about three inches of standing water. Every four hours after the ground soaks it a bit, we have to decide what major water activity we want: finish the laundry? Wash the dishes? Take a shower? And we have to check it periodically because otherwise toilet paper gets caught in the pipe, the water backs up, and starts pouring out of the shower drain. But seriously, what the hell did he do? It was fine until then!

Jesus Christ, the Majora's Mask pack is out for Hyrule Warriors. I haven't even finished the first map yet. Either way, I was repulsed to see it was kid Link and Tingle. Kid Link? Why do we need that? It's not like there're small holes for me to crawl through. And the best part is his special moves just basically turn him into... adult Link. Fucking great. Tingle is, naturally, Majora's Mask Tingle, meaning the hideous one. Not that he's an attractive dude in general, but that was was particularly unappealing. But seriously, no Skull Kid?

Beat Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, two years after its release. Which isn't bad considering Wings of Liberty took me... three? Four? Anyway, the plot isn't as good as the first installment. Blizzard managed to wave concurrent storylines quite seamlessly in the terran campaign: help the colonialists find a new home, Tosh's psychics, or the Protoss prophecy. That's on top of the main plot, which had its twists and turns trying to figure out how to help Kerrigan, determining whether you can trust Valerian, and fighting off the protoss fanatics as well as Kerrigan's swarm. Here's it's really simple: get pissed, reverse everything you did in the first game, consolidate your power, find out about the Xel'Naga, save Raynor, get your revenge. That's it. Well, I guess that reflects the single-mindedness of the zerg in general. From the looks of the ending, shit's about to go down in the protoss campaign.

I really do need to replay Brood War though. Someone appeared midway that vaguely looked familiar to me and I knew was from there, but I can't remember a goddamned thing. I do love that he has a volcano inside his head yet he manages to keep his hat on.

Seriously though, I don't remember Raynor and Kerrigan being that involved. Okay, okay, yeah I forgot a lot, but the first game, the one where she was still human, that I can recall with greater clarity and they had a flirty relationship, but I don't think it ever got to the level of Raynor turning into an alcoholic over it.

Shit, I'm hyped over Legacy of the Void. Protoss was always my favorite. Any word when that's coming out?

I was so excited over that Rock Lee/Gaara fight that I completely forgot to save any pictures from it. But I think we all remember it being epic as shit.

Kishimoto definitely had different plants for Kabuto initially. It's a shame because they seemed pretty interesting or at least better than what we ended up with.

I fucking love how few shits Shikamaru gives for this entire process.

Fucking Christ, Jiraiya's opening act was hilarious. When the hell did people stop making hilarious expressions in Naruto? Even ten years later I guffawed at his excitement over Icha Icha Paradise's popularity.

Thanks for talking as if I know what any of this terminology means. Next thing I know, you're gonna start talking about hyperresonances and fon slots. (Sorry, Tales of the Abyss reference only Greene will get.)

I shit my pants years ago at this panel because chakra in the anime was blue, not yellow. I wonder why they changed it; perhaps it'd look too much like Dragonball Z? The blue made such an impression on me that literally until I reread this just now I completely forgot its original color.

I always found this insane. Do you know how much pressure you have to put down to be able to break the skin of your thumb and make it bleed profusely instead of ooze out? How the hell is he not breaking the nail? Also, is that Minato's signature next to his?

Fuck, is this what Naruto would've looked like if he passed the chuunin exam? We missed so much.

I actually read this and was completely surprised upon discovering later it was Kishimoto's. I liked it quite a bit and was disappointed it was a one shot. Maybe he's working on this now that Naruto is over.

Yeah, Kishimoto had different ideas for the bijuu too.

When I was training to become an ESL teacher, they told me to discourage dictionary use because the students should learn to understand the word from context. I thought that was a terrible fucking idea. To demonstrate why, I'm going to translate a paragraph from a book in French, replacing with asterisks any word that I didn't know off the top of my head:

"The glorification of the cloister has been a major theme of monastic spirituality and literature in the 12th century. The two most remarkable ****** of this devotion are School of the Cloister by the Benedictine Peter of Celle, died in 1182; and the De claustro animae (The Cloister of the Soul) by the ******* Augustinian Hugh of Fouilloy, near to Corbie, died in 1174. Peter of Celle insisted on the ******* of the cloister, which are the tranquility of the soul (quies), and the ****** done entirely in the place of devotion (otium)."^*

Awesome. Can you tell from context what any of that means?

^* Le Goff, Jacques, Héros et merveilles du Moyen Âge (Paris: Seuil, 2005), 105-06.

[14:29:51] Dun 4 Hire: Great.
[14:29:53] Dun 4 Hire: My aunt is coming over.
[14:29:56] Dun 4 Hire: Gotta hide the porn...
[14:30:27] kaiserdragonryu6: which one?
[14:34:24] Dun 4 Hire: Physical ones.
[14:34:44] Dun 4 Hire: Should probably close porn tabs too.
[14:34:49] Dun 4 Hire: This one is actually technologically savvy.
[14:48:02] kaiserdragonryu6: non physical aunts?

[20:25:31] Dun 4 Hire: Well, I just ruined everything.
[20:25:37] Dun 4 Hire: Me: Oh, I should check if there are updates.
[20:25:50] Dun 4 Hire: Aunt: Updates? I thought you weren't on Facebook.
[20:25:55] Dun 4 Hire: Me: Yeah, I'm not. I'm on tumblr.
[20:25:59] Dun 4 Hire: Aunt: What's on tumblr?
[20:26:02] Dun 4 Hire: Me: Oh, gay porn.
[20:26:07] Dun 4 Hire: Aunt: .......What?
[20:26:17] kaiserdragonryu6: lol
[20:26:21] kaiserdragonryu6: smooth

The Assyrians ruled Mesopotamia with an iron fist for thousands of years, which is amazing considering it's usually skipped over in history class. Ever hear about the Egyptian library in Alexandria? Yeah, that's just a tiny portion compared to the Assyrian library in Nineveh. And unlike the Roman Empire, which decayed slowly over centuries, the Assyrians fell quickly within a few years after one of their most powerful and glorious moments of their history. It's like the Soviet Union collapsing except a thousand times more important and shocking. Remember, these fuckers ruled for thousands of years! The Soviets were just around for seventy!

I've heard several times about the accuracy of oral traditions because illiterate people have better memories since they have no text to rely on. For example, if I can't read a shopping list, I learn to just remember the twenty items I need at the supermarket. Maybe, but I can say "oral traditions" are complete bullshit because otherwise shit would make sense. You know all those fabulous Roman and Greek myths we know about? Yeah, those are just written down from sung stories, and I can safely say none of that crap ever happened. Zeus never turned into a golden shower to have sex with a woman, however the hell that worked.

I'm bringing this up because of Xenophon. To summarize he's a Greek who joined a Persian army that lost, and he had to get the fuck out of Persia quickly before he was killed by the winning side. He wrote a book about his travels westward back to Greece and he describes an abandoned city he came across, detailing the height of the walls and the size of the buildings. Upon asking the local residents, they tell him it's a Median city. The Medes were a group of people living around the area of Syria and Iraq today, but what's most interesting is they were one of the groups to topple the Assyrians. And scholars realize from Xenophon's descriptions is he's talking about Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

Xenophon came about two hundred years after Assyria's fall, but people already forgot about it. If oral traditions were so fucking good, people would've fucking remembered this huge-ass town — the biggest in the world for a long time — belonged to a civilization that ruled the region for thousands of years. It'd be like archeologists coming to the ruins of New York City and deciding it belonged to the Mexicans. Yeah, you're in the general area, but at the same time completely off.

Fuck snow. My whole body hurts.

Our insurance policy is this: They'll take what you have and depreciate the cost by the year with a maximum of 90% off the original price. If you buy the item back, you'll get the full price returned as stated on the receipt. So for example, I bought Final Fantasy III on the SNES (in reality Final Fantasy VI) in 1994 when it first came out at $50. Given the age, they'd probably give me back about $5 now. Considering it's a famous and old game, I could probably find it in a store for about $60. The insurance would still give me the $60 even though it's old and more expensive than the original price because that's how much it costs to replace the game nowadays.

Right now I'm reviewing all the receipts and comparing them to how much the insurance gave us to make sure they paid the full price. Most of our furniture is old, like my grandparents old and considering they started building a household together in the 1920s that's what we're looking at. But the furniture was really high quality, things meant to be passed down from generation to generation, which is what happened in this case. I'm looking at what we were paid for those, and it's about $20, $30. Mind you, they're deducing from the 1920s price. So yeah, it's important that I review everything and compare to receipts.

That's why if you get homeowners or renters insurance, you should definitely double check the policy to know what you're entitled to or the procedure that's necessary to get your money because we definitely entered this situation not understanding anything.