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?