Lessee… Link dump first. Found a group of people doing music reviews on Destructoid and found some stuff, thus:

http://www.myspace.com/periphery

http://www.metalsucks.net/2010/05/11/periphery-mastermind-misha-bulb-mansoor-talks-the-future-of-the-music-industry/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Corrigan

        First link is obvious, and I think I like them. I’m not sure. I think they’ll go into the same category as Lostprophet’s first album - something I like to listen to, but that I can’t in good conscience call “good” or tell people to listen to.

        Second link is an interview with their main man, who recorded the album in his apartment, which doesn’t show at all in the music. Then he takes it to the record labels and says “hey, I’ve got this here album, want to distribute it for me? no? fine, I’ll find someone else” and ends up signing five different record deals without any bullshit attached. Seems like a pretty smart guy, though he does say that “all of this is affecting the music industry in ways we can’t even predict because of all the ripples that it causes.” What an empty sentence.

        Last time I read a useless sentence like that was reading an article about Tim Hortons basically getting screwed out of a bunch of money by some wonderfully opportunistic businessmen. “‘We consider the uncertainties surrounding this announcement to be a negative development,’ Peter Sklar, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a report Friday.”

        We consider the uncertainties to be a negative development? Thank you. Your eloquence astounds me.

        Third link: Someone, somewhere on the internet, recommended this. I skipped through the first volume or issue or whatever and could not understand why. On every given page was something that made me depressed. One features our sad, middle-aged protagonist going to the grocery store in the middle of summer with a heavy coat, and teenagers accost him saying it’s “too warm for that fucking shit!” He feebly replies “but it gets cold in the grocery store…”

        Anyway, back to my post, which consists of things I completely forgot from my last post. The other thing making life horrible was a cold I got from my grandmother, who sounded like she was dying for three days then got better just as I started getting sick. But then I got better last night! Exercise and plenty of fluids seem to have cured me.

        Now this part is kinda weird. Thursday night, when I managed to fall asleep by accident in between blowing my nose and breathing through my mouth, I had a dream that I was hanging out with a handful of french immersion people. We all pretty much know eachother from different classes over the years. Many of us are in french immersion because we have smart parents who push us to be smart and have opportunities and stuff, and so we’re in all the science courses and advanced english and etc. So these are the people with lockers beside mine, who talk to me about our teachers/homework/whatever, who are freaking out about their grades and scholarships and spending $20k a year on some local bullshit “elite” university, all that stuff. As far as I’m concerned, they can have all the scholarships I’m busy not snapping up because I’ve already got plenty of money.

        So I’m hanging out with these people I’m not really friends with, but that I’ve always kinda known, and I’m acting like I usually do to make sure people like me because that just makes life easy for everyone. We’re walking around and hanging out and stuff, and that was cool I think except it was like a fast-forward music-less montage. Near the end of the dream, we’re at an intersection that basically leads to nowhere, except a really, really, long road that kinda leads back to my place, or a different long road that circles around town and has an ice cream place on it. We’re waiting for a few cars to go by, and this really attractive, outgoing girl turns around and says “you know, Matt, you’re pretty fake.”

        How exactly she would notice that during our brief conversations at our lockers and whatever happened during the dream was completely beyond me, and so it took me entirely by surprise. Normally I’d agree, because clearly I wasn’t being myself since that might not go over as well, but it surprised me so much that I kinda stammered and said that I’d better head home and went up the long road home, while they went off the other way for reasons unknown. If we wanted to guess, the dairy bar would be a good reason. Then I wake up.

        Remember how I said it was kinda weird? Yesterday in calculus, a friend was telling me that he was going to go see The Undertaker this weekend, and I asked him what year he thought it was as a joke, and he told me The Undertaker was undefeated at something or another three times in a row or something, so I laughed and told him it’s all fake and planned out anyway. The bell rings, we get up to go, and what does he come back with?

        “You’re fake!”

I’ve mentioned my english teacher, Ms. Barrett, a number of times here already, and I guess after doing the AP exam is as good a time as any to write about her. At the start of the year, when I wasn’t taking english seriously, my marks were pretty bad and I got super discouraged about my skills as a writer. Now that I’ve learned more about writing and my marks are better, I’m a lot more confident and kinda inspired by the fact that I can get 80-90% on a university level grading scale.

        I’ve got a lot of admiration for Ms. Barrett, or whatever you want to call the grown up version of kids who have a crush on their teachers in first grade. I only really know one person in our class, and I’m usually the one helping him, so I’ve got nobody to check over my stuff and validate my effort except for her. When it comes to class discussions and everybody is just throwing their ideas out there and I don’t want to interrupt anybody, I end up just telling her things directly and if it’s insightful she’ll repeat it to the class, or if I missed the point she’ll correct me. Which really goes against the idea of a class discussion, but I feel really awkward when I’m surrounded by people and they’re all looking at me and stuff.

        It’s like, I don’t want to stare at my desk and mumble and be obviously aloof, but I can’t just stare off into the distance because then people think I’m staring at them. Given that I’m not close to anybody in the class, that’s weird.

        To get back to my original point about her, rather than english class in general, she’s really casual with us, rather than just being a teacher. Let’s see… Last week, we spent an entire class telling her where we were going for university and getting her to guess what she thought we’d do for a living. Yesterday, we spent half the class talking about her life in high school and trying to guess the name of the guy she liked when she went here. By the time she decided we should get back to work, she couldn’t remember how we even managed to start talking about that stuff in the first place.

        When we went in for our AP exam this morning, she left us all cards, although I’m not sure if everyone had something different on theirs because nobody wanted to share theirs. At a guess, I’d say she did write each of us our own personal notes, but here’s what mine said:

        “Matt,

        You are in good hands - your own! Do you best, because you are brilliant. Take your time and show how much you know. All the best today; you don’t need luck.”

        I was super touched. I think I did pretty well on the multiple choice, but the essays were a bit iffy. I wrote the third one in about 20 minutes, and the rest probably aren’t wonderful either. Passable, but not going to win any awards. Apparently, I can’t say any more than that, because I’m under a legally binding agreement to never tell anyone anything about the test, or else they’ll nullify it XD We weren’t supposed to tell Ms. Barrett anything either, but she came in with pizza for us when we were finished, and of course we spent half an hour talking about it with her. She also bought us cookies and pop and stuff to drink during our ten minute break, as well as supplying us with pens, sharpened pencils, and water bottles.

        The problem with AP english vs other AP subjects is that there’s no set curriculum. In AP biology, they know they only covered about 10% of the material, so their teacher told them they’re going to fail. With us, the goal is to know some stuff well enough to be prepared for anything. Anyone can write an essay in two weeks, but it takes skill to sit down and pop one out in forty minutes.  Unfortunately, you can’t study for that. You can do practice tests, and you can think about strategies to do better, but that’s about it.

        Yeah so I had to leave in the middle of making this, and I forgot everything else I meant to write. Five hours away can do that. I did remember my original motivation to make this post, however, and so we have another story!

        It was one of Ms. Barrett’s fancy dress-up days, so she was all decked out in heels and a dress and all that good stuff. She doesn’t need to make a good impression on us, though, so she’ll just take off her high heels and go barefoot because who cares? So we’re taking notes and she’s just explaining stuff, then the principal comes to ask her something and she’s like uh oh I don’t have time to grab my shoes! So she’s standing in the hallway barefoot having a chat with her boss, then she comes back in and tells us how embarrassing it is to have your boss catch you with no shoes on.

        Kinda tired now so that story doesn’t seem as funny anymore. It was great at the time though.

        I’m going to bed.

You know what sucks? Bad habits you managed to pick up without ever really noticing or thinking about them. When there’s a lull in the conversation, or the conversation reminded me of something, I’ll announce how people ought to feel about what I’m about to say. Usually in the form of “it was x… last night I was reading/watching/talking to/etc.” or whatever the case may be. If it’s funny, I’ll say “oh, yeah, it was kinda funny… last night I was…” If it’s something interesting I read, like this here article about how to properly praise your children, I’ll say “it was interesting, I was reading this article about…” It was only when I said exactly that during a “group discussion” we were having in english that I realized that a) I do it all the time and b) it makes absolutely no sense except as a way to let everyone know I’m about to speak.

        So, if I can keep that in mind, I’ll stop doing it. Hopefully. I don’t hesitate too much when I speak anymore, so hopefully I can keep weeding out things like that when I pay attention to them.

        As far as today’s english class goes, it was pretty cool. We put the desks in a circle again (which makes it hard for me to stare aimlessly at things because there are people in every direction, but it’s still cool I guess because usually you just sit in your rows and the teachers stand up front and talk) and discussed what we were doing next year and why. I guess there are school-specific scholarships and stuff she had to recommend us for, which is awesome on its own. The best part was that afterwards, we got her to guess what she thought we’d all be doing by our ten year reunion. Some of the chatty girls were a bit pissed that she was vague with their predictions (yeah, I think Jill would make a good teacher… or teacher-y thing) but screw them. I couldn’t stand up and pick out a career for everyone in the class, and neither could they.

        She said I’d be the smart guy behind the scenes who writes the speeches for the prime minister. Who knows? I’ve considered it once or twice, because I can convince people and sound smart if I want to, but politics is a miserable career and I’d hate doing it. It’d be “easy” to get some kind of government intern job in Ottawa though, and likely that’s what I’m going to be doing during the summers because apparently relaxing for two months is wrong.

        If I were going to go for a career I might not enjoy, I’d likely go for math/science something anyway. At least I enjoy figuring out interesting physics/math problems, as much as I hate sitting down to do twenty of them for homework. It’s not even that I can’t cut it doing hardcore science/math. I learn the stuff by heart and then lose 20% on stupid mistakes. I could find the perfect balance between Earth’s gravity and the Moon’s gravity with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back, but on a test/exam I can’t seem to remember to, say, square the period or write the resistance for Resistor #5 in the #5 box. Then again, my marks in calculus are awesome, and my teacher for that class is a great guy. Our physics teacher, on the other hand…

        I look at my work schedule, and think geez, I have no time. Then I look at my tumblr and think man, I have more than enough time. It’ll be nice not having a piece of paper to tell me how much stuff I can’t do for the next month.

        That being said, I have my AP english exam in a little over two weeks. No meeting about that today, because our teacher got food poisoning :( Sad, but we read A Modest Proposal for our “exam,” which was fun because I read it as a kid and loved it. While I was debating the economics of breeding children as livestock, others didn’t seem to understand because they probably only read three sentences before giving up and skipping half the words.

        As far as that exam goes, wow, I am so unprepared. Why? Well, I don’t have an essay ready to go for every potential topic they could ever pull out of their asses. I’m not really a deeper meaning kind of person, and I can’t read a book and go “oh hey a tree got struck by lightning, THAT SYMBOLIZES A CATASTROPHIC BREAK IN THEIR RELATIONSHIP HOW BRILLIANT.” I mean, really? Yeah, I get it, but I don’t know that’s going to happen yet! By the time it does happen, I don’t remember the tree in the first place! I could probably put together a decent essay about a tragic hero, or a character that’s a foil for another character, and other things like that where you can see it without having to read a five hundred page book twice in the same sitting.

        I’ll probably sit down with the list of essay topics they’ve given over the last 40 years and jot down ideas for each, so I have a general idea. No, I’m not fucking kidding. That’s a bare minimum of effort for this, and if I’m lucky might help me scrape out a decent mark D: It’s not like I’ll fail, judging by the failed essays we read, but… How well can I honestly do writing an essay, with a time limit, on a random subject?

        @vael: Episodes 13-16 of Baccano! were added to the DVD release after it aired on TV, but I dunno, I’m not sure it would have felt as complete without those episodes. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s perfect and nothing could be better, but complete is a good word for it. Complete in its incompleteness, I guess. The way it manages its characters is what I want for my story when it gets finished in the far off future, but replace immortality with killed-somebody-and-got-a-new-identity.

        Speaking of Baccano!, I dunno when it’ll be localized, but the same studio is doing an anime of another series of light novels by the same guy called Durarara!! Obviously, it is superior thanks to the extra exclamation mark. Aside from that, it’s on episode 14/24 in Japan, but they’re going to add extra episodes for its DVD release too. It has a black man who runs a sushi shop (this is really weird for Japan), a butler who throws vending machines, and a female headless horsemen who rides a motorcycle instead of a horse. Sound exciting yet?

PERSONAL POST REDUX

You know, public education does kinda suck. There just isn’t enough time or enough students interested in the subjects to cover interesting things in depth. It’s all about getting nice numbers on your report cards. Thanks to decent study habits this semester (in comparison to the last few semesters, anyway) I’m doing pretty good and might be able to haul my average up from 84% to ~90% which is worth an automatic $2000.

        See that? That right there is public education at work.

        Anyway, in french immersion here, you do a french language course first semester each year then a social studies course second semester. In grade twelve, the second semester course is sociology. We’ve got a nice big textbook, but I find there’s hardly any information about the most interesting stuff because the curriculum is god :/ The most interesting concepts get only the briefest mention.

        While reviewing the notes I made to study for my tests, the tests themselves, and summarizing them yet again to get it all lodged in my long term memory, I found one of those interesting concepts we barely looked at in class. A little line about how social institutions - religions, schools, communities (yes, that also applies to online communities like forums, and even more so to MMO’s - but that’s a topic for when I finish Synthetic Worlds) - are created by people, but as they grow and develop start to influence the people who belong to it. The idea should seem pretty logical just by giving religion as an example, because the original incarnation of Christianity was likely very different from the one that we know today. As more people entered the church, the religion changed, and it in turn changed the people who would join in the future. That’s interesting enough on its own.

        What really got me thinking was how it applies even on a smaller scale, to individual relationships. A relationship is much like an institution, in the way its dynamics change how you act or perceive others, but that’s pseudo-intellectual swaggering on my part and of absolutely no real interest unless you’re doing a study on the dynamics of human interaction. Back to the interesting part, people create relationships with eachother, on purpose, by association with others, or out of necessity. As we get closer to the people we meet and the relationships grows and changes, we become different people, often better people if we’ve made good connections. Through our contact with diverse and interesting individuals, we become greater than ourselves, which then influences the relationships we make and how we act towards the people we already know.

        Most of my development as a person has come from that, though at a younger age it came mainly from myself, which I’ll talk about when I get around to comparing my life to that “Depression’s Upside” article. I can trace who I was and who I became by looking at the relationships I’ve made throughout my life, and when it comes to milestones in my life, most of them revolve around who I knew and where I spent my time. I’d like to think my presence in some of the communities and groups of my youth helped others the same way they helped me collectively, but I doubt it. Likely they were older and less impressionable, not to mention I avoided drawing attention to myself. Well, except on the forums of NewAge3, where I tried fairly hard to make a name for myself as a master debater and badass pseudo-intellectual. I never made any lasting connections there, though, and that’s probably why I never moved beyond the level of “familiar name” to “guy everybody pays attention to.”

        As far as individuals go… Max and I plumbed the depths of the internet (gaming, too) together, and my early history of online usernames can be traced back to him (Hunter/Assasin, Hobby/MasterAssasin, Nohbody/Lunacy). That’d be about age 7-11 or so. I found NewAge3 in fourth grade, and I remember playing soccer and trying to tell him about how cool it was - I stabbed a guy in the toe for a thousand damage! - only to have him hate it for being text-based. I quit on and off over the years and as the game was reset, but I got pretty heavily into the forums from 8th-10th grade and spent many hours arguing on there while maintaining an MSN conversation or two. The other important thing there is the start of my interest in browser-based games, which is important in a lot of ways depending on the game.

        Around that time same time (10-11), I also started playing Magic: the Gathering and met some pretty cool dudes there, most notably Sebastian who happened to ride my bus when I got to junior high. Loners half by choice and half by necessity, because nobody wanted to sit with us (joke’s on them, they sat three in a seat while we were comfortable with a seat to ourselves), our twice daily conversations about interests few of our (or at least my) friends shared became probably the closest friendship I have with a guy. I remember tentatively mentioning webcomics, but never by name - wouldn’t want to come off as a huge nerd, after all - only to find out he reads it, too, and discuss our favourite recurring jokes in the ones we shared. Good old 8-Bit Theater. Always up for a five hour rambling MSN conversation or a weekend long hanging-outing, his influence on me is equal parts maturity/trying to impress an older person and silly internet things/video games.

        Of course, the big one is obviously Brittany, the only girl I’ve ever managed to maintain a friendship with (average lifespan of my friendships with girls is about two weeks, they lose interest after that), which began in eighth grade. It started off silly, but ended up being the most serious part of my life, and for a long time my routine was simply to come home and hop on MSN all night. Usually we’d stay up later than we should, then I’d get up early and hope to catch her online before she went to catch her bus. Repeat the process for years, barring the odd couple of months here and there where things weren’t great and we likely only spoke to eachother to be rude, if at all. I couldn’t even begin to describe the ways I’ve changed and the things I’ve learned about myself, about life, about other people… Suffice to say there’s no way I’d be who I am today if it wasn’t for that plot to find another guy’s e-mail address without making it obvious that she liked him.

        The shortest relationship to change me as a person, without a doubt, would be one Mr. Vael Victus. Here’s one way that browser-based games affected my life - brought me to MonBre a little over a year ago. There were, I don’t know, maybe 12 users or less when I first joined? Vael was pretty discouraged and was considering giving up on MonBre at the time, and some wild impulse to help someone and give my life a purpose again made me write a big post trying to convince him not to give up. I’ll be brutally honest, I was depressed and lonely, and I wanted a part of that satisfaction of making a difference and being integral to someone else’s life that I got from being with Britt. It made me feel good to help out with MonBre. Again on that same random impulse, I sent Vael a message telling him to add me on MSN, and ending up making a new xfire account simply to talk to him. Our conversations are mainly characterized, for me anyway, by that familiar black window. Without the bright and inviting colours of MSN, talking on xfire somehow feels more formal to me XD I resist the urge to be super correct about my grammar like I used to be, though, because that was a significant change in my life at the time when I got comfortable enough with people and used MSN enough to get a little lazy with my spelling and grammar.

        Outside of MonBre, talking to Vael about life and philosophy has simply made me a better person, in the same way that working at a successful relationship with Britt made me a better person through conversation alone. I’m even more open, accepting, and easy-going than I used to be, which is weird because I never lacked those things before, but there’s some subtle difference I can’t quite identify. Honestly, I’m pretty glad I followed those random impulses. By that same token, I think I’ll be pretty glad I followed the random impulse to propose meeting Vael this summer, ‘cause that’s just something awesome a lot of people wouldn’t do, much like my help with MonBre was supposed to be.

        This post created entirely as a shout out to the people mentioned above as well as an invitation to others to look at their own relationships in the same light. Conveniently also to cheer me up, and hopefully them, too.

The introduction that wasn’t

Some people have bad MMO habits. When they’re not at school or work, that’s where they are: in the game. When they have to leave the computer, they think about the game. It’s the only thing they’ve got in mind, all day long. When they should be studying or doing work, they’re playing the game. They’re completely at peace there, and time has a way of disappearing on them. Nothing else in their lives really matters, but that’s alright, because they’ve got a way to escape all of that and go somewhere they actually matter.

        Myself, I’ve had a bad girl habit. When I wasn’t at school or work, I was on my computer so I could talk to her. When I had to leave the computer, I thought about her, about teasing her or maybe inviting her to do something. It was the only thing I had in mind, ignoring the little distractions here and there. I’m sure there were times I ignored my homework to chat, but I really didn’t care. I was, in fact, completely at peace, totally concentrated on her. Nothing else really meant anything to me, but it was alright, because I had a friend to keep me company.

        An MMO is like a good relationship: you can’t just close your eyes, spin around, and grab one at random. You have to go through the proper motions of courtship to find out if you’re right for each other. Like my relationship, my only MMO fixation was completely unexpected and entirely unintentional at first. No courtship at all, just a casual friendship that rapidly snowballed into something much bigger, leaving me entirely unprepared to find a successor. Boredom brought us to talk on MSN, just like boredom brought me to playing Ragnarok Online. Here and there, I’ve tried to see what (and who) else was out there, but each and every time, I leave in short order. Not to mention the ads that seemed relatively interesting, but caught me just when I wasn’t looking.

        Over the years, the relationship was on and off. Servers disappeared suddenly, consumed by mergers and unpaid hosting fees. Other times, activity died off and it seemed like it was time to move on. Of course, things stayed casual afterwards, sustained by happy memories and overall good will. Inevitably, we came back to each other, looking for all the things that brought us together in the first place. Each time, it seemed like it was THE time, the last time, the one where it all works out. For a while, it would be, and when the last time did roll around, it lasted longer than all the others.

        Ultimately, it wasn’t meant to be, and things fell through not long after it finally seemed looked like it was THE time after all. A nice little low-rate server, and I nearly made it to second job class without giving up. Shortly before getting there, though, I realized I just didn’t want to do it anymore. There were other places I’d rather be. Likewise, and it’s a very long story, she decided there was a relationship she’d rather be in, and so that was the end of that.

        The end doesn’t mean it’s over, though. You can’t help but think it might still work out. You wonder what you could have done differently - maybe if I had invested in some good equipment, I could have grinded somewhere more efficient. In the back of your head, you think tomorrow might just be the day that you agree to try again. So you don’t discount the possibility, and you never say never, because then it’s for sure. How can you commit when you really aren’t sure?

        When you finally decide to just be friends, and accept that you’ll never get as heavily invested as you once were, you start to wonder how far the definition of friends can go. You don’t want to watch it become an empty formality, but you’re not quite sure you want to be “friends” without ever taking that last leap. But where’s the happy middle? There’s a lot of options between everything and nothing.

        [So! Finally done! After my word processor decided to freeze when I finished - three times in a row - I realized it just didn’t like my “oh woe is me wahh” ending. So I copied the whole thing and finished in notepad. Show them to censor my writing *shakes fist*

        Speaking of censorship, I almost didn’t finish this tonight because I couldn’t help worrying about who might end up reading it. The bigger the potential audience, the more filters it has to pass through. When it comes to conversations, that’s alright, because I just rewrite a sentence or two and go on my merry way. The internet at large makes it nearly impossible to post things, as soon as I realize there are real live people out there I cut back until there’s nothing left. Even worse when I know them enough to avoid things specifically. Say I know vael is going to read something, I rewrite a couple of things here and there. If I’m considering showing it to my ex, I make sure there are no painfully rough edges lying around. So I sand it down and make sure nobody gets hurt,and eventually start to wonder if dull edges might not be dangerous too, and so I scrap the whole thing.

        When it comes to writing something for a broad audience, it’s hard to please everyone at the same time. And we can’t have anyone misunderstanding or being hurt by a poor choice of words, can we? (/sarcasm)]