The lows are low, but the highs are home

It sucks trying to prioritize everything I want to do, or even think about doing. I have x hours today in between doing chores and etc. before we leave to go to Rhode Island (woo yeah) and I would like to finish Heavy Rain at some point (disconcerting), see a friend of mine (kinda important to me), write for tumblr (nice, but…), among however many other things… Tumblr just falls to the bottom of the list. I’ve got at least one post I want to write for the interest/benefit of everyone I’m aware of that reads this (you may or may not know it, but that does include you!) and I do intend to write them all. Writing just takes a lot more time out of my schedule than thinking about writing does. In fact, I do that all the time. I can’t help it. Keeps me up at night, gets me up early in the morning, keeps my mind busy during boring drives… So I’ve got a treasure trove of wonderful things to say, but no time to get them out.

Anyway, gotta go drive my mom to work and then go pick up our mail. Brb.

(edit: also I wrote this post in my head while driving to do errands yesterday)

I haven’t posted in a while! I’ve been busy! I shall walk you through what has happened! First, my family, the lady we’re staying with, my mom’s grandparents, and my dad’s mother went out to dinner before my graduation on tuesday. Then my high school graduation started at 7, and ended around like 11 pm or something. After graduation, at 11:30 pm, I went to Safe Grad - basically a big overnight party for all the graduates to make sure we don’t die. I arrived at home around 7 am on wednesday dehydrated, full of junk food, and deprived of sleep, but chose to tough it out and sleep at 10 pm that night. I slept for twelve hours, waking up at 10 am on thursday. Around 4 pm on thursday, my family and my grandmother went out for chinese food to celebrate my brother’s grade 9 graduation. This may seem weird, because in most of the world, 9th grade is the start of high school. Not so where I come from. Junior high starts in 7th grade, and ends in 9th, which makes more sense than 7-8 and 9-12.

        Anyhow, pictures and descriptions of pictures follow. Oh, about my outfit for my graduation - I meant to have a plain black, button-down shirt and my standard black/red tie, only they got lost or sent away or something. So I had to wear the bow tie. When I told people I had no choice but to wear it, most of them assumed my mom had forced me to. It looks alright I guess, but the tuxedo shirt wasn’t exactly my favourite option.

        My diploma being awarded, with two awards within - $100 for high academic standing (I think 90%+?) and $35 for top mark in sociology. Still have to get thank you notes for the people who donated those…

        My father and a woman he grew up with, plus me and her daughter.

        A friend of mine who often lived in our basement so he could get to work on the weekends.

        My prom date and I, but now without any distinguishing characteristics. Graduation gowns make everyone equal!

        The Matt Squared conglomerate, now with fewer essays to write.

        AHA NO GOWNS FOR US - off to Safe Grad!

        My dad wanted to get a picture of me with his friend’s daughter. We’ve been in various french classes together, and we had a study period together last year, but we hadn’t spoken much in a long time.

        My excellent calculus teacher, and while I could try to make a math joke about him, I would only bring shame and dishonour to his good name and hit or miss sense of humour.

        To replace the picture that never survived prom, we now have a picture of my english teacher and I for posterity. Huzzah!

———————————————————————

        Here’s a run-down of what we do for Safe Grad: the teachers take in $25 (or $40 for late people) per person to cover costs, and put out a call for volunteers and food donations from parents to help out with stuff. After graduation, everyone gets a name tag and gets checked onto a bus, then the list is checked to see if anyone who was signed up hasn’t shown up. If they aren’t there, their parents are called. We go on a half-hour bus ride out to a lobster supper place, from which there is no escape until it’s time to leave in the morning. Also, no students are allowed to drive themselves there - buses only. Anyhow, we get there and eat subs and pizza, as well as drink way too much pop and not enough water. Chips and assorted goodies are also available.

        After about an hour, a casino is set up in the lower level with poker, blackjack, a couple kinds of roulette, and maybe some other stuff I didn’t notice? Anyway, you get ten $100 things to start off with, and at the end of the night, whoever has the most money won a TV. Whoever came in second got an iPod speaker station thing. If you run out of money, you can get $1000 more, but are no longer allowed to win anything. This means that you can get more money multiple times and funnel it towards the greater good, as long as one person in your group doesn’t go back again. I didn’t play anything, but other people did and I lent them money and scouted out the competition and generally just tried to stay busy.

        Casino is closed for about an hour around 3 am for karaoke with randomly drawn prizes given out in between songs. We continue to gorge ourselves on junk food and drink pop, again no easy access to water for some strange reason. Casino opens again, and shortly before 4:30 am coffee is brought out. Then we collect all our stuff and hop on the bus to go to a local amusement park for an hour and a half.

        There’s not much there - one small rollercoaster, bumper cars, bumper boats, a ferris wheel, some spinning stuff to make you sick, and go carts. There were only a few people working because it was 5 am, so if you wanted to go on a ride, you had to get people to line up so they would shut down attraction X to open attraction Y. Go karts were popular and I didn’t do it because the lineups were long and I lost people so I didn’t really want to compete with strangers because that’s less fun. I went on the rollercoaster once, bumper cars once, didn’t want to get soaking wet on the bumper boats, and aside from that just talked to people and debated what we felt like doing.

        We got on the buses from there and went back to the school, where we had a continental breakfast. My grandfather and my mom were waiting for me, so I grabbed a croissant - it was awesome - and left because I knew I wasn’t hungry, just dehydrated.

        Then I spent the rest of the day working at getting 100% on Rathcet & Clank: A Crack in Time. I really love those games, and I had completely missed out on the optional mega puzzles the first time through. They’re really neat and excellent, and I had a lot of fun doing that.

———————————————————————

        So my brother’s graduation, he was meant to wear his own pants and jacket with the black shirt and tie I was supposed to wear to MY graduation - but since they were lost, he also wore my tuxedo shirt and bow tie. I got a black t-shirt with minimal stuff in the chest area and threw on my own jacket and called it a day.

        My brother and I after exiting the intensely hot gym of his (and previously my) junior high. Traditionally, the graduation was held in the gym of the high school, using the same set up used for the high school graduation - however, since ours was done at the local sports arena place, that wasn’t an option.

———————————————————————

        Anyway yeah that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m not dead!

I didn’t sleep last night, but I’m hoping things will be better tonight. It’s muggy out, and I’m sticky and sweaty, and that’s terrible. I’m more tired than I was last night, but not as much as you’d expect after not sleeping. At least, I don’t think I slept - I felt like I was up all night thinking. Maybe I fell asleep at some point without noticing. When I had nothing to think about, I couldn’t close my eyes. When I started to think about something, I got tired again. It was brutal.

The main thing is being conscious tomorrow night, as I’ll be up all night and stuff. I’ll probably have some pictures of myself in my graduating gown and whatnot, and possibly pictures I was subjected to from people I haven’t known for years. Ah well. Won’t see them again after tomorrow. Little bit too late for them to decide we’re friends.

After several weeks, I’m finally typing up my thoughts about the RSA Animate video The Secret Powers of Time about time perspective. I sent myself an e-mail with some notes so I’d remember what I wanted to say, and I think I’m good to go. Now that school’s over, I’ve got plenty of time :D

        Speaking of school, yes, I am graduating from high school next tuesday. My last exam was yesterday. Of my friends on facebook, 24 of them are in my graduating class. One girl, intelligent and likely with plenty of great things ahead of her, made a status update about being glad to be done. A middle aged man commented to say that she may change her mind about that in a few years.

        Really? I mean, seriously? Being a teenager and being in high school is lame. There’s nothing about that anyone sensible wants back. You can hang out with friends, relax, and have fun at any age. The fact that you’re a sad old man whose life peaked after winning the big football game is not a fact of life, it is a fact of your life. It is so simple and so essential that we refuse to accept the idea that the future is a terrible place where we will all be miserable, because it will become a reality if we don’t. If we allow ourselves to go to waste, jump into marriages we’ll regret, and generally just wait for happiness to magically come to us, yes, high school will in fact be “the best years of our lives.” If your life is on a downhill slope from the minute you accept the responsibility of being an adult and taking care of yourself, you have failed. I’m not going to sugarcoat that because I take for a given that anyone who reads this is not going to accept defeat and intends to go places with their life.

        After seeing that message, I went looking for similar comments by similarly downtrodden people. I was scared that everyone would have a sad old man (or woman, but it’s typically a male sentiment) telling them not to be happy, and that they’d better get used to pain and suffering because nothing they do will amount to anything. Surprisingly, very few people had even mentioned being done of school, and there were no other comments spouting “the best years of your life” bullshit. That’s pretty good, and I didn’t really expect it. It is a pleasant surprise, at any rate.

        Now, the RSA Animate video mentions two forms of past oriented people: past positive, and past negative. The man who tells his children that high school will be “the best years of their life” could be nostalgic for his past, or fixated on what went wrong in his life to bring him to the terrible miserable life he lives now. Neither of those is particularly healthy, when taken to the extreme that any possibility of progress is ignored and the thought of improving one’s own life is impossible. An appreciation for what your past has taught you is good, and paying attention to your mistakes so you can avoid them in the future is also good. If you spend your life living in the past, you will never find your way to the future. Then you’ll be forty, maybe fifty, years old, you’ll be well on your way to losing the metabolism that kept you fit and attractive as a young man, and you’ll drink beer and watch football and blubber about the good old days. You don’t want that.

        From the age of five, I have been raised to always be oriented towards the future. At the age of five, parents in Canada have the choice to put their children into french immersion (or english immersion, in places where french is dominant) or leave them in regular classes. Basically, if you are an english speaking family, your child will learn french for free and gain access to the bilingual jobs you wish you could have had. At the age of five, we don’t make these decisions on our own. Our parents, looking to give us the best life possible, have the choice to unlock a very large number of opportunities for us. Of our graduating class of roughly three hundred, only fifty or so are in french immersion. There were perhaps 60-70 in the very beginning, but that essentially tells you who looks out for the future of their children and who doesn’t.

        That sounds unfair, but the effect becomes more profound as you get older. The people in french immersion mostly keep to themselves as kids, so I know most of “us.” Later on, of course we made friends with people who shared our interests regardless of whether they were in french, but that didn’t happen much when our classes were almost exclusively in french. When we got to junior high and only 3/7 of our courses were in french, we went out and made friends with plenty of people. In high school, where only ¼ of our classes each semester were in french, you would think we would almost lose the tightly knit groups of purely french immersion people. This was not the case. In junior high, there was no choice of classes. You were shuffled randomly into the required courses and went on with your life, hoping you happened to land in a class with a group of friends. In high school, suddenly we got to pick our courses, and if we wanted to be with our friends, we could make it happen. As frightened young teenagers, picking courses was something we had no experience with. So we turned to our parents for guidance once again.

        What do you think the wise future oriented parents of french immersion children said? “Keep your options open. Take all the science classes, take the extra math classes, just in case you need them or find you really love them.” The “english kids,” who never actually thought of themselves that way, are a mixed bag. There are perfectly intelligent individuals whose parents never forced them to learn french, and likewise there are individuals who made poor choices after their parents chose to give them a chance at awesome bilingual jobs and ended up being not as intelligent. I can name each individual in french immersion who didn’t follow the model path their parents set out, yet I can also name the individuals outside of french immersion who took every science course, calculus, advanced english, etc. without giving up.

        Taking advanced english is a very good indicator of just how hard you’re willing to work for future benefit. Further, taking Advanced Placement English for university credit is the epitome of being future oriented. To put it bluntly, none of the thirty or so people who signed up for it were intelligent enough to survive advanced english. The twenty four people exiting that classroom, after much effort and an admirable amount of mental breakdowns, are finally intelligent enough for advanced english. Those who couldn’t handle the prospect of improving upon their failures (or couldn’t be bothered to read books) dropped the class, and instead took an easier english course where they might have received better marks. I’ve got a photograph of our class and those who elected to take AP English, and here’s the breakdown:

• 9/24 were in french immersion
• Half of us (12/24) chose to take the AP English exam
• Five of those students were in french immersion

        Nine out of 24 in french immersion doesn’t sound like much, but that’s nearly 1/5 of the french immersion students. However, seven of those nine students took at least 2/3 science courses this year and last year, as well as advanced math and calculus. There are, of course, students in french immersion who also did the science and math but not advanced english, and off the top of my head there’s… nine or ten people who did all the science but not advanced english in our french classes. That makes 16 of 50 french immersion students “keeping their options open” and overloading themselves with work for future benefit.

        Yet the RSA Animate video even says that a future oriented person must be able to trust that their decisions will benefit them in the future. Some people can’t trust that future benefit will follow their decisions because they are ignorant of the possibilities, and those are the people who never become future oriented. Of those who are, when we become disillusioned with the life of a model citizen, we crash. When we no longer trust that taking all the hard courses in high school, then university, will give us the perfectly happy (and also rich) lives we were promised, we doubt ourselves. We doubt the system itself. Will the degree I signed up for today be worth $20,000, even $50,000+, in the future? Will I be able to pay for getting it in the first place? Will it land me a good job so I can provide for the little munchkins who will one day follow in my footsteps?

        This is where I am now. I don’t know if I can run off to spend an exorbitant amount of money on learning about a field that I can’t guarantee will bring me either the joy I want or the money (and thus freedom) to find it. So I’m thinking about skipping that whole process. It’s possible that I will go to university to take something practical and tell people I’m smart so they’ll hire me, but that’s to be determined by my financial situation. If I either have far too much money or far too little, I’ll go. Maybe I’ll become a teacher and inspire a future group of kids much like those of us who took smarty pants classes like Advanced Placement English… Looking at this picture of us with Ms. Barrett, I can almost see it happening. I’ve never wanted to be a teacher, because it’s a mediocre job and I’m not very good at teaching people things, but I mean, I’ve got the perfect name for it. Sure, they’d laugh at first, but it’d be endearing after they realize how awesome I clearly am.

        Now I’m off to run through my daily routine of browser based games for future oriented mice like me who crave some immediate reward with their long-term plans. A character I’ve been playing for something like two years is almost the strongest among his class :’) He’s all growed up, and soon I’ll get to turn him into an immortal powerhouse. Aww yeah.

I feel like I haven’t said much recently, so here’s how the week has been:

        Presented our sociology project on monday, did pretty well. I was going to write up a post discussing all the stuff we said, then I realized that this article has all the information of all our sources combined, so you may as well just read it instead. Monday was also my brother’s birthday, so in addition to the books I bought him we went out to lunch.

        We got out yearbooks wednesday, so I signed those and got mine signed by people and the cool teachers I’ve had over the years. They’re really nice, which explains why they cost $50. I also went to check my mark in english, and found out that I got 95% on the final exam. Not sure what my overall mark is, but I expect I’ll be proud of it. I worked pretty hard to earn it.

        Thursday was the real exam day for sociology, so I sat there and listened to the last of the presentations while doing calculus review. Later, I took up half a page of my friend’s yearbook telling her how much she means to me, her friends were confused and a little bored because they had to wait for me to finish writing it. We all went to a buffet for lunch, and I paid for most of it, but it wasn’t too bad. Afterwards, I bought BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad and some headphones, because I’d heard nothing but good things about both. I also accidentally stole a birthday cake because it was forgotten in my van.

        Friday I bought Settlers of Catan and the 5-6 player expansion for $60 and as a gift to the intended recipient of the cake, and delivered both along with a couple of friends. When the four of us got sick of the cake, I traded it for half a bag of Sunchips and confused the hell out of everyone nearby. Then they realized the cake kinda sucked.

        Today, I let my brother spend $40 on Pokémon cards because people are starting to play it here. In a bit I’m going to study chemistry with a couple of guys, then after that I’ll probably keep playing The Last Remnant for PC. It seems pretty cool so far. Before today, the last (and only) time I had played it was july of last year. That’s how long it’s been since I had time to sit down and fully devote myself to a PC game, which is a bit more of an investment than a console game because it cuts off my ability to talk to people.

        Are you now satisfied!?! Good! I shall now commence preparing the studying subroutine and hopefully do an alright job of helping review chemistry. I’m notoriously bad at explaining things.

Was hanging out in the Bowser’s Castle channel on Kongregate again, which seems to be the regular haunt of a couple of other cool dudes. We’ve had some pretty awesome discussions, but tonight I felt like sharing this part.

LunacyVII: There are probably samples you can get online set up for FL, and you can record your own stuff, so it’s not like you can’t make excellent music for it.

Fnar3221: But can I? I doubt I have the talent.

Fnar3221: I guess it was just a silly aspiration. Who am I kidding? I’m not a musician.

Fnar3221: Thanks anyway.

LunacyVII: Best bet to become a musician would be to take some classes in an instrument that interests you. Kinda like the first step to becoming an artist isn’t to buy a How To Draw Manga book.

NihilistMachine: Fnar, you can do whatever you want man. You know the scene, the sound, and you have the will.

NihilistMachine: Don’t listen to these people.

Fnar3221: But I don’t have the time nor the tools at my disposal, if you will.

LunacyVII: Soulja Boy made a ton of money making music with FL, and I doubt he learned much about music beforehand…

Fnar3221: I think if I start making music, I won’t be able to appreciate some of the bands I enjoy listening to.

Fnar3221: Kinda how any meaningful endeavor kinda ruins the area for you…

LunacyVII: Nahhhh. Even if a band is less than stellar instrumentally, you can still enjoy it for how it sounds. Not everyone has to be Yngwie Malmsteen.

Fnar3221: Have you ever paid attention to the comments for any of Mt Eden’s songs?

LunacyVII: I disagree about hating something because you’ve worked with it. I like to write, and it’s only made me appreciate books more.

Fnar3221: I don’t want to end up like that.

Fnar3221: I don’t want to be one of the mates who realize that Mt Eden is pretty err… basic, when it comes to music and you could probably make the same in a half hour if you really tried.

Fnar3221: Etc, etc.

LunacyVII: If we’re talking meaningful endeavours of any kind, likewise helping people has only made me appreciate the beauty of life.

Fnar3221: True…

LunacyVII: I don’t know what kind of music Mt Eden plays, but consider the subgenres within metal (ok, maybe not your thing, but it’s where I have the most experience) - there’s super complex genres and you could never copy them if your life depended on it…

Fnar3221: I’ll think about it some more then.

LunacyVII: and then there are bands who are just as good to listen to as the most basic atmospheric metal band.

LunacyVII: As long as it sounds good, it’s good to listen to.

LunacyVII: Nobody hates on Mozart for being plainer than Bach.

LunacyVII: (if that’s incorrect, I apologize profusely, but who really cares)

Fnar3221: Aye.

Fnar3221: I guess when you know all about how the music produced and see a guy who has over 17 million hits because supposedly it’s unique and “filthy” etc just to find out that’s pretty generic… Isn’t that bit of a let-down?

LunacyVII: Maybe, but that only means there are similar bands for you to enjoy, and even better than that, there are bands who probably knock them out of the park.

Fnar3221: I didn’t see it like that before, Lunacy… Thanks for the enlightenment.

LunacyVII: It’s like if you thought deathcore was the greatest genre ever, only to find out about progressive death metal. Sure, your old sacred cow isn’t so special, but you’ve got something new, maybe something better.

Hopefully I was there at the right time with the right words.

Ever noticed how much more tempted you are to get three games you didn’t want, and one you did, for a relatively good price? Ever wondered why? Psychology has the answer! Three Reasons Why We Buy Those Crazy Steam Bundles over on Gamasutra.

        I finished Slum Online, and one particularly interesting thing to me is that everyone in the book considers their online characters a persona they assume solely for going online. It’s not “I threw a low kick and chained into a dash-throw,” it’s “Tetsuo threw a low kick and chained into a dash-throw.” They see their concerns as solely those relating to outside of the game, and their character’s goals are their own. Tetsuo the street brawler (main “character”) wants to be the strongest fighter there is, whether recognition comes with it or not, and Hashimoto the ninja wants to investigate the mystery of Ganker Jack. Etsuro, the protagonist, wants to spend more time with his charming classmate and attends classes he hates just to be with her. Hashimoto’s player, by contrast, is a complete shut-in who won’t even respond to his mother. Hashimoto’s player plays the wise ninja as a way to escape his life, but doesn’t believe he’ll gain anything from Hashimoto’s growth as a character.

        Hashimoto tells Tetsuo that “their characters are not them, they are enhancements of their personalities… while they may become friends online, there is no guarantee they would be friends IRL.” Hashimoto’s player doesn’t want to connect his useful online persona to his “useless” identity as a social shut-in. In the end, though, he’s wrong: his player, Jun, used to be friends with Etsuro. They reconnect outside of the game after working together to solve a mystery, and Jun looks like he’s going to develop a healthier life outside of the game. By adopting the persona of Hashimoto online, Jun did grow as a person and re-established an important connection with a friend he had given up on.

        All of this just reminds me of the approach Persona 3 and Persona 4 take to this theory. There, a person’s persona is a deeper of themselves that creates (or evolves because of) conflict in their life. By misunderstanding or completely missing their true feelings or desires, problems arise for the characters you meet throughout each of the games. Your party members, who fight as you do with their personae, become stronger as you work together to help them understand themselves and solve their problems. The non-combat party members don’t consciously recognize this change in themselves, though your main character can tell and grows through their connection to all of the people they’ve helped. When your social links (the game’s representation of your relationships) get maxed out, that means they’ve come to terms with themselves and resolved the conflict in their lives. It may not be perfect, but after conquering their pivotal problem, nothing else can really hold them back.

        Which brings me to my whole connecting point with this: how our online personae and the relationships we make online teach us about ourselves, and how it helps as much to consider them as separate from ourselves as it does to simply be ourselves. First, words typed online have no less meaning than words spoken out loud. The difference is when instant messaging (or e-mails) is a way to avoid potentially awkward conversations, or it’s a message that takes guts to deliver. I prefer to have important personal conversations in person, because it’s more intimate that way and it proves a point to go out of your way to connect with someone and have the courage to speak your feelings out loud. Aside from that, there’s no less value in a relationship that communicates based on usernames rather than given names.

        I don’t think people make less personal connections online than they do in person. I couldn’t really say, either, if choosing the level of anonymity and being able to pick and choose what someone knows about you encourages close relationships. What I do know is that by acting like someone else, we can make friendships and form relationships online that we wouldn’t have the courage for, or otherwise be able to make, in person. Whether or not those relationships get closer, and move beyond the online personae, depends on the people adopting them. When we do choose to be someone else online, we do it for a reason, and developing relationships with others with that altered personality reveals things to us in much the same way the main character in Persona ¾ reveals the truth to the people he meets. Children learn things “they” couldn’t have learned otherwise by imitating others and playing roles, and doing the same online is a similar experience for an older child. Everyone and everything I’ve been online has contributed to who I am today, and it’s strange to imagine who I might be in an alternate world without the internet…

        I have a hard time justifying all of the effort that goes into a truly complete role-playing experience, because I’m just not creative enough on a regular basis to become someone else entirely. When playing games, though, I do fall into the usual psychological trap: I consider one of the characters to be “me.” I’ll raise “my” agility, or train “my” skill with daggers, and then if I control a party, the others take secondary importance to my “main” character. They usually get to be their own characters, perhaps less developed than “my” character, but they’re unique and serve whatever purpose they need to for the success of the party. It’s an opportunity to learn things about yourself when you role-play your characters, but generally I go for role-playing lite and converse and make story decisions based on my own beliefs and values.

        When it comes to the usual fantasy/sci-fi RPG, it’s a bit hard to “be yourself.” But this is where the recent Persona games come into play. They’re set in a modern setting, and when someone has a problem, it’s a run-of-the-mill problem normal people might have. I played through both Persona 3 and Persona 4 playing the main character as myself, and acting how I would act in that situation, even if it didn’t get me the best in-game results. Oddly enough, Persona 4 in particular showed me things I had no way of experiencing previously: Naoto’s struggle with her gender identity and Kanji’s struggle with his sexuality have been surprisingly useful to me. By considering myself the main character, I got to test myself in situations I’d rather not screw up in. Of course, a live human being is almost guaranteed to react differently than a scripted character in a video game, but it’s the experience that matters. A lot of people panic when they run into a situation they’re completely unfamiliar with, or feel uncomfortable, and at least thinking about what I might do in a situation like that left me well prepared for the future.

        Bonus thought: “Like magnets: opposites attract. People are the same. Everyone has their flaws, their quirks. Rub them together, you get friction. It’s the places where they’re different that locks them together.” You ever meet someone and just click? Maybe it happens right away, maybe it happens when you aren’t looking over the course of a few months, but I like that as an explanation for it. Comes from Slum Online like all the other quotes here.

        It’s not so much about opposites attracting as it is about why some people stick together and others don’t. It’s like velcro, or anything else that works using interlocking pieces - similar pieces rub together and only create friction, while different pieces lock together and form an intense bond. You don’t need similar interests or personalities to get along with someone or make a relationship work - you just need something to lock together and make that connection.

So, I took my brother to look for a birthday present (today is his birthday) and ended up taking him to the bookstore. Got five volumes of various .hack manga and Little Brother and For The Win by Cory Doctorow. $10 for each of those 400-page books. As much as I want to read a 400-page book in .txt format… Nah, I got my money’s worth. Plus, For The Win was hardcover, which is like super amazing value considering the average new release in hardcover is like $30 minimum.

Total: $90.

Anyhow, french presentation went well, and I realized there’s no point in me typing anything up about it because it’s basically all in the Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids article. So, read that.

“The cat’s blue. The one in Shinjuku. If you find it,” she said with a smile, “all your dreams will come true.” … If you sold that smile in a hamburger shop, it’d sell better than the fries. That was what it looked like to me, anyway.

That’s from Slum Online, and I’m liking it a lot. It’s pretty short, a little over 200 pages counting the 30-page “Bonus Round,” and I’ve read about 90 pages in the past couple of hours. The main character’s a pretty good player of an online fighting game, and he’s trying to work his way into the top four players of the game. Then he starts talking to a girl who shares a few classes with him and getting to know her. It switches between extremely detailed accounts of his fights online and investigating a character called Ganker Jack who managed to beat two of the top four players without anyone knowing what he looks like, and his time with her in class and around Shinjuku. I don’t know where either of those stories are going (well, except the part where clearly there’s some kind of confrontation with Ganker Jack) but I like the writing and the length a lot. The main character refers to anything he hears in “RL” as sound effects, and online he describes what seems like a pretty accurate version of competitive fighting games. Cancelling out of moves for specific animations, dodging just a few pixels out of the way, break throws and air combos and all that whatnot. If nothing else, it keeps your attention in much the same way a military novel is still interesting if you’ve never been to war.

I’ll finish it off tomorrow I suppose, and hopefully finish the second Dragon Age book as well before school ends. I don’t think I have anything else short enough to finish before school ends. I’ve done my part, anyway!

Some more random links this morning. I question the authority of this writer if they think The Pirate Bay is somehow a deep, hidden part of the internet, but I’ll start with the funny article.

China sensors Garfield, Paris Hilton, and more in an attempt to block porn

The Dark Web/Deep Web/whatever you want to call it: cool in theory, terrible in reality

The Pirate Bay is fearless and evil and lol

How cute :3 He thinks torrenting is some secret little club.

Two weeks later, I’ve realized I may as well post about prom and then repost the extra pictures whenever I get a hold of them. Woo. Speaking of yesterday’s post, you know how I said I go looking for books to buy? Went to a bigger bookstore today, spent $60. Got: Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund (twin children of Lucifer have to survive three temptations and three heroic trials, Max read it but his aunt’s dog ate it, so I bought my own copy), Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (published by the same guys who translated Battle Royale and about a boring college kid playing an MMO and stuff? I’ll see when I read it), The Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (my brother says it’s good, from the 50 pages he read in the car), The Prodigal Mage by Karen Miller (first of a second trilogy in a series I liked to begin with, should be good - fantasy with a heavy cultural/political leaning, so there’s plenty of attention to detail), and finally The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (I’ve actually avoided knowing what this book is about, because I wanted to find out for myself - I’ve heard nothing but good things about this book, and I’ve finally decided to buy it). Moving on!

        Our house, unfortunately, was never really a looker. Gardening and other pretty things were never our strong points. So, when it came time to take pictures for prom… We borrowed the neighbour’s yard. They’re retired, and the husband spends practically all of his time cultivating his gardens. So it was pretty good for taking pictures. Before Brittany, my date, and her friend Lindsey got to our house, my mom got some pictures of me around their yard and a few around our house.

        When they arrived, we got some pictures in front of the house before moving on to the neighbour’s yard. First we got some pictures in front of a flower bed and near the flower bed. Then we got a picture with our moms, her mother being the one I don’t have my arm around. Then they got my boutaneer thing on me, and we crouched down in front of the flower bed because my mom thought it would look nice. Then we moved over to a little white gate thing they had and got some pictures there.

        It was starting to get kinda late, and she was going to get some pictures with the guy who got her hired because he was moving soon, so they started to got meet him before he got off work. Then my mom surprised Britt and Lindsey by asking them to turn around for a picture, and then we got a few more pictures in front of the house of the two of us.

        So I don’t have any pictures of us at prom, because nobody offered to take any or wanted any with us together (my friends aren’t into that, her friends only wanted pictures of her) so I’ve got nothing for that until I get the couple of pictures that did get taken from other people’s cameras. Still, to summarize: we made our own way there, I tried to make my way in through people because she was already inside, I finally get in, we hang around and talk before eating. Food comes in, turkey dinner, couple of things to be said by people, thanks given to the people who organized everything. During dinner we watch a 20 minute preview of our upcoming Grad Video, desert comes in, some more announcements. We wait outside for an hour while they clean everything up and get the dance ready, the niece of the woman we’re staying with (I only found this out later) gets a picture with me because her friend bet her that he was the only one wearing a bow tie.

        Dance starts, Britt and I hang around ‘cause neither of us can dance and we didn’t think we should slow dance together, Ms. Barrett was making her rounds because she was one of the people who spent many hours putting prom together for us, and I got a picture with her. Then we left at 10 (supper started at 7, ended at 8, dance started at 9) because Britt and Lindsey had plans, then I went home and went to bed.

———————————————————————-

        Exciting, wasn’t it? Anyhow, I just thought I’d invite any of you reading this to get a hold of me somehow if you don’t already have a way to IM me. My contact info is at the very bottom of my actual tumblr page, but likely any of you that have a tumblr won’t see that, so my xfire is starvalddemelain and my e-mail address for msn is mapleleafdude[at]hotmail and I’m sure you can figure out the last bit. Unless you’re a spambot! I’m generally always available through both of those, so whichever you prefer is fine by me.

Guest post, courtesy of my wonderful friend Maxwell who typed up a great big seven-week exercise guide for you guys that takes up more space than I want to use here. And, really, if you want to exercise, you know to do whatever you can manage. When you can do more pushups than last week, you win. Yay for you!

        Wide arm push-ups: Just what they sound like, spread your arms as far away from each other while maintaining the push-up position, and then do the push-ups. The farther apart, the harder it is. Just imagine your pinning that hot chick between you and your locker, except the chick is really fuzzy and smells like your carpet.

        Triangle Push-ups: These are hard. If you can do these no problem, then you need to add on a ton more push-up exercises. In order to perform this streneous task, one must first construct a triangle (pylon?) with their thumb and index finger, while in push-up position, with your hands lined roughly with your chest. Then begin hating your life.

        Spider-man Push-ups: They do not make you shoot web from your hands. They make you wish you didn’t follow that guide that you found on tumbl'r. To perform these, assume the position (and clear that dirty mind of yours |:) go down like a regular push-up, but bring your knee up to your elbow each time you go down. Of course you want to alternate knees each time, unless you want to become that soccer freak with that one ripped leg.

        Alligator Push-up: This push-up would make Steve Irwin proud, if he was alive that is. To perform this wonderful exercise doesn’t take much effort, but it is suggested that you focus more on speed because you just want to finish the damned exercise. You assume the regular push-up position, except you slide one arm down to about where you hip is, and slide the other one around where your head is. You should be slightly bent at an angle, kind of like a alligator if it was crawling, then you do your push up, and then slide your other hand down to your hip, and the other one above your head, and repeat until you finish.

        Kelly Keith Push-ups: Don’t ask who he is, for all I know of him is the fact that he is a machine and these push-ups are named after his iron-clad body. You must assume the push-up position, but when you do the push-ups, do them with your elbows tucked against your ribs. When you go down, your elbows should point towards your feet, and you will want to stop all this forever. Then repeat.

Some assorted stuff today. Again, I would have finally typed up my prom post, but I un-gave up on getting the other pictures I was missing because my english teacher said she’d want a copy of the picture I got with her, so that will come SOME DAY MAYBE OR MAYBE I SHOULD JUST MAKE A POST WITH WHAT I’VE GOT, I DON’T KNOW. I guess if I don’t do it tomorrow, it’ll be so late as to be useless. Two weeks late is a bit much. I’ve already got today’s post planned out, so oh well!

First is an interview with Polar Bear Club, which is cool because they discuss how they’ve been helped by the advertising power of the internet, rather than hurt by music piracy, but the real highlight for me is this story:

Your new album is coming out on Red Leader Records this month. Where did the name “Sometimes Things Just Disappear” come from?

We were in the studio and having a really tough time coming up with a memorable/cool/meaningful name that we could all agree on. Actually, pretty much the only thing we EVER agree on is that Taco Bell rules. So we were well in the midst of a competition amongst ourselves that we affectionately dubbed the “Taco Bell Challenge,” during which we all tried to eat one of every single item on the menu over the course over our studio time. As you could probably guess, no one finished and we were all pretty miserable for having tried. But one of the days when some of the guys went to order some tacos, they had a really huge order and were a little short on money, and they had a pretty awkward encounter with a really slick 17 year-old manager guy in a suit who turned out to be one of the best individuals any of us have ever encountered. Our old bass player, Greg, was trying to order his Mexican Pizza and was surprised at the price, and told the manager he was short…to which our hero replied, “you know what? Sometimes things just disappear…” and proceeded to take out a mysterious card and swipe it, giving Greg all of his food for free. Manager dude…if you read this, we love you, and sorry if this gets you fired.

I wish I could be slick 17-year old manager guy who’s comfortable enough with his job that he can do whatever the hell he wants. I do not wish to fail to have that job, however, and so I won’t go looking for it.

———————————————————————-

        Next up is an article about how pirating books hurts the industry. In the middle, when she mentions what happens when a publishing house loses money, that scares me. Not having money means they can’t continue to make money, which basically means bad things in the future unless they get really lucky, and I don’t want that to happen to any of the series, authors, or publishers I really like.

        Then the part about the money she actually makes scares me, because it makes me terrified about the prospect of ever living off of my writing, which I never honestly planned to do, but it was nice to think I had the option! She says she “wrote rough drafts, then did edits (in one case, grueling edits), copy edits, and final pass edits. I wrote back copy and front copy, and acknowledgements and dedications. I maintained a website, I blogged, I did copious interviews, I ran contests, I travelled and spoke at whatever convention would have me. I Tweeted, and Facebooked, and paid for a launch party, swag, and postage for review copies and bookplates.” For $25,000. Three books, if you have never in your entire life read a book, is a lot of writing. Many authors I read release at most a book every year, though perhaps theirs are much longer than hers, and perhaps as well their niche is a much stronger one.

        I can’t imagine I would magically become a Steven Erikson or a Robert J. Sawyer overnight, and from some of the other things I read the day I found this about how brutal it is being an author who doesn’t sell hundreds of thousands of copies (have I posted that stuff? I don’t even know, man) I find myself no longer considering writing novels as a career. Writing as part of a greater project, where my work is part of a whole and I’ll still get paid relatively well if nobody buys the product, is still an option, but you can’t just stumble onto those jobs and unfortunately my chance to be Anthony Burch has already passed.

        Then there’s how getting paid an advance actually works. “For keep in mind that an advance is just that: an advance on royalties. So I won’t make another penny on my first three novels until I pay back my advance.” Got that? You get paid with a loan. Then, some day, if you become rich and famous, you get some actual money of your own. Until then, you will sweat blood and books for your masters. However, the internet, as shown by the Polar Bear Club interview, offers many wonderful opportunities for alternative means of success. Perhaps I could sell e-books of my novel to generous strangers until I make enough money to print them off out of my own pocket and make something of a profit. Perhaps I could give my books away and ask for donations. Maybe a major change to the publishing industry is looming on the horizon, waiting to be unleashed the day I get the freedom to write for a living. Who knows?

        The ordeal involved to become a famous author only gets worse, according to the rest of the post, but it’s all there if you want to read it. The main subject is, vaguely, piracy, and so my responses to what she’s said follows.

        I’m one of those people that will go into their local bookstore and actually look for books to buy. I’ve spent many hundreds of dollars on books, and I don’t regret any of it. I don’t expect much for my $15-30. I want, essentially, 2-4 hours worth of entertainment. It’s what I paid for. Generally, I get more than that. That’s awesome. I often buy random books and continue to read everything that author writes until I accidentally forget they exist. I bought The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells because a couple of songs I have reference it, even though Project Gutenberg has it for free. In the future, I plan to read through the “1001 books to read before you die” and, if I can, own many of them. I also plan to have a somewhat impressive collection of books with which to intimidate future acquaintances.

        I have, however, pirated two series of books. One is the Haruhi Suzumiya books, only a few of which are translated officially, and I get the impression they’re not amazing anyway? I’d have a hard time tracking them down and a harder time reading them in public because they’re all fluffy looking. So I suffer through a terribly translated .pdf and it’s ok because I don’t know if I’d get $10-15 worth of neat out of them. The other thing I’ve downloaded is all of the Discworld books, all 30-something of them, and like the Haruhi books they’re pretty short and stuff. They’d probably run me like $10 each - nearly $400 - for like 100-200 pages each I think? Maybe 300, I don’t know.

        But I can get a trilogy of Drizz’t books for $30, which is easily 1000+ pages - i.e. a fair bit more value. If I were buying books, Discworld would be at the very bottom of my list. Like all the music I’ve pirated, I likely would never have paid any money for those things. I don’t need them, and in fact I haven’t read through any of the books I’ve downloaded. I don’t have an ebook reader, and I have a hard time sitting down to read a 200 page .pdf file in front of my monitor. So the fact that I downloaded those books just shows a slight interest on my part, and if it turns out that I’m wrong, and these books are books I would be proud to own and display - I will gladly go out and buy them, no matter how hard they are to find.

Despite the cool things you can do with bombing people and showing them awesome and interesting sites using DP cards and Portals, I think Missions and puzzles are probably the greatest part of The Nethernet.

        Here’s the basic set-up: a Mission is created by any player, usually a Pathmaker, who has something to show or teach people. It’s created by linking a number of Lightposts together, and I don’t believe there’s a maximum limit… You leave a message about the page connected to the Lightpost, explaining briefly why you brought them there. You click a button to go to the next post, or back to see one you just visited. You can stash puzzle crates to make people research the site you’ve led them to, and later (level 7 as a Pathmaker) you can create Puzzle Posts that require the player to answer a question correctly in order to proceed through the mission. I don’t think you should overuse them, but you can use them to highlight an important point. Out of a ten-part mission, make the last a Puzzle Post and ask something to check if they really paid attention.

        You can teach someone how to play a game, or their class, correctly - show them the game’s homepage, then the game’s page for that class, then maybe a post/guide on gamefaqs and some youtube videos of high-level PvP with helpful notes in it. You can show someone your top ten ultra-deathcore bands, although those missions never did very well because the people who made them were just advertising their favourite bands rather than trying to make an awesome mission.

        You could also tell a story with a Mission. Write up a story, use the Lightposts to guide them from page to page - don’t give them the option to change pages on the site, and don’t name it page1.html and page2.html. Add puzzle posts to make a point, add puzzle crates so they research interesting things you’ve mentioned.

        Some people will roleplay their Nethernet characters, and there’s a lot of cool things you can do with that too. You can be a vacant minded Seer, gleefully hopping through portals at the first site of a glowing blue vortex. Or you can be a righteous Vigilante, out for revenge. Maybe you’re a wise Pathmaker, eager to share your knowledge with others. I had an idea once where I’d make a number of puppet accounts and stage a big story on The Nethernet’s forums and through the game itself. I was going to make cryptic posts and riddles with various accounts, and use puzzle crates and more to lead (or confuse) people. I didn’t have the time back then, though, so maybe some day soon…

        Here’s the introduction mission for the game, to give you an idea of how to create a decent mission. Careful about switching tabs or taking Portals or otherwise losing track of the mission, because unfortunately the game isn’t perfect about picking up on these things… There are a number of missions created as part of a contest to teach the game to newer players showing the dos and don'ts of different classes, and those are also good to give you an idea of what you can do with the game.

        Remember the metaphorical reason behind using Lightposts for missions: you’re lighting a path through the dark reaches of the internet, illuminating a safe path to guide and enlighten.

        Edit: Start from here for a cool chain of Portals that recites the poem about the Jabberwocky from Alice in Wonderland.