ajremix

So my laptop is old. Very old. And I knew, in order to continue my studies in illustration, I'd need a new computer and thus, about two months ago, got one. A real, top-o-the-line monster desktop. And I figured- hey! I can finally play some games on it like the Orange Box that I've coveted my brother's laptop to play. Except, I find out as I attempted to immerse myself in Team Fortress 2, that while my computer is more than capable of handling the games, my simulator sickness, alas, cannot.

So I tried to find little cheats online that might be able to help (i've been able to play halo 2 and republic commando, i was determined to play tf2 and portal). And I think I managed to find a set up where I might be able to work with. The unfortunate part is my monitor is now about four feet away from me meaning, when I need to do regular not-fps stuff on it I'm in dire need of either new glasses or new eyeballs, I'm also ruing the lack of decent lighting I have here.

Also, alas, while I may be able to survive some time on TF2, I don't see myself actually playing it because I have no experience with the game and, due to my annoying simulator sickness, have very little experience with FPS to begin with. Ah well. At least Portal has a single-player mode. And Half-Life 2, should I need more action.

But, since I'm in the mood for TF2, here's a little video I stumbled upon earlier today:

My next assignment is to do six character designs based on three presets the instructor gave us.

BWAHAHAHAHA! MY EXCITEMENT CANNOT BE CONTAINED! THE THOUGHTS! THEY SWIRL WITHIN ME, MERELY NEEDING A PENCIL IN ORDER TO BE UNLEASHED INTO EXISTENCE!

I must say, the only reason why the Twilight trailer didn't make my brain leak out of my ears ten minutes before the movie began was because a trailer for 9 came on right after it. Goddamn but I can't wait to see that.

Five Non-Spoilerific Things I Can Say About The New TF Movie

5. I actually found the twins oddly hilarious and endearing.
4. Of all the franchises they could have referenced, they picked Kiss Players...
3. Oh plot, I stopped paying attention to you when you stopped making sense in the first five minutes.
2. Sideswipe is a sexy ass mother fucker. Jesus Christ. No. Seriously. Sex. On fucking wheels. With knives.
1. I move to have the name of this movie permanently changed from "Revenge of the Fallen" to "Optimus Prime Kicks So Much Ass He Can't Be In The Entire Movie"

Goddammit, every time I think I've finally gotten on top of my school work, new readings are assigned or I have to go to work. Seriously. I'd like to get off this 'time for one meal a day' bullshit and find the time to do some actual grocery shopping and maybe go out into the sun for something other than going to fucking McDonalds because I can't think from hunger. My house is a damned mess, I still haven't finished moving everything off my laptop onto my new computer and I haven't seen my dad like I've been meaning to for the last month AGAIN. Not to mention the friends I haven't been able to see or get too brain-fried to email back. Hell, I still haven't even seen the new Transformers movie because of damned schoolwork!

Fuck that shit. I'm going to the Korean market tomorrow right after I wake up. I can't deal with the lack of rice, let alone the lack of food anymore DX

I just got this email in from someone I used to work for and who absolutely blew my mind with some of the emails what got sent my way during the election. I'm not very much political at all. Honestly, I'm just like millions of others that don't really care about what goes in the highest office so long as I can continue to live comfortably and without harassment from others- individuals or the government (and yet i was in the military, go figure).

Really I shouldn't be doing this because it's just going to make me want to rip my brain out but I'm going to anyway. I may end up passing this modified email back and, in case anyone else wants to add a correction/send this to people just using uninformed talking points, go for it.

( Patriotic Resistance (my ass) )

I just got called in for jury duty at the end of the month.

Craaaaaaaaaaaaap.

EDIT: Just found out I can postpone jury duty due to school. I am now, unfortunately, scheduled to attend some time next month. Delayed craaaaaaaaaaaaap.

On track to getting two second place finishes in as many rallies? Check
Helping your teammate take the driver's championship lead by two points? Check
Helping the team close the manufacturer's championship to six points? Check
Making up for all the mess ups that happened at the beginning of the year? Check
Driving flawlessly for three days despite pressure from behind and ending the rally 50 secs ahead of the rival team's driver in third? Check
Throwing it all away by crashing out in the final stage in front of spectators and your entire team? AFGLKAERWPJUDFG';LKASDF

Some things happen perfectly. For everything else there's keyboard smash.

Latvala. Seriously. I don't even know what to think of you anymore.

Taken from a couple different people on my f-list. Giant gay alien robot meme imminent.

( Yeah, yeah, bandwagon!jump get )

So I seem to be on a bit of a posting role recently... Just want to take a quick moment in welcoming ilkanta, mecteol and phookie who came in via the Iran friending meme. I really have no idea how to welcome people coming from friending memes so, uh, hi and enjoy? XD

That being said, the main point of this entry is to guide you to a good, and important, entry by a friend of mine. Because it really is sad that we, women especially, have become so used to be marginalized and maltreated. And though her post is specifically about women, it also fits for people in general.

It shouldn't be hard for someone to treat other people as a human being. It shouldn't be difficult to treat others with respect. Yet somehow it is. It's somehow become okay for one gender to feel privileged over another, for a race or religion or any other category to do so. But it's not.

She's told me about the difficulties she's faced being a woman in the gaming industry- an industry I'm looking to break into after I graduate from school. The same kind of treatment I'm not already unfamiliar with. During my time in the military I've met both the guys and That Guy and sometimes they ended up being the same person and sometimes they were my friends. Sometimes they were the ones that stood up for me because how I was being treated wasn't right. Sometimes they said or did things that pissed me off or made me uncomfortable as a woman. Sometimes I was That Woman and stood up for another female that was in an uncomfortable situation. Sometimes I didn't and sometimes that was because I didn't realize it at the time or because I, like so many other women, have been conditioned to 'not rock the boat'.

You shouldn't need to be praised to be a decent human being, just like you shouldn't expect being praised for doing something as mundane as holding open a door for someone, or helping a distraught friend in their time of need. It shouldn't be hard to be a decent person and yet somehow it is and that frustrates me beyond words.

Found this review in my mail box for What's Wrong with a Little Destruction?

"hello. i'm azzi's twin sis. thx for making her happy before she died. i
received the news this morning,going through her computer, i relized you were
the only author who responed to her reveiws. she went MIA 3 days before her
unit left. her body was found last week. i thought you might want to know. i
can see why she liked your stories they'er good. anyway thx again."

I really wish there was a way to get in touch with the reviewer so I could offer my condolences and say how happy I am to have entertained her sister while I could...

I have been finding myself getting more curious in news, mainly kicking off with the '08 US presidential elections. I still wasn't getting too much into the meat of things, but I actually took the time to find out what was going on, what the main opinions and arguments were, etc. Which is more than I could say I've done for the previous two elections, only one of which I was eligible to vote in (which i did, btw). I have found that, since then, while I still wasn't too knowledgeable in the goings on in politics, mainly thanks to ontd_political, I could at least find out the main points of what was happening.

Then Iran happened. And I've found myself being sucked into what was happening. It's the kind of oppression I think everyone in the US (and perhaps other places) are aware of in that area, but to hear about the people being beaten and shot and jailed and the nondiscrimination of it all, of wounded people being denied access to hospitals, to a horde of police on motorcycles swarming around someone and beating them with nightsticks, it's just incredibly sickening and it makes my throat tighten.

It reminds me of a line from Generation Kill about a captured Iraqi soldier who says he could be shot for listening to the radio. You know this stuff happens, but when you actually hear about it you think "I can't believe someone could actually do this". You think "I can't believe people actually live like that".

I've never been active, politically or anything. I feel... too cynical? Or perhaps my convictions aren't strong enough? I'm all about protests and having the right to say it- or, in the Iranian peoples' case, taking that right when your government won't give it to you. But the thing is, I have to wonder how much a difference most of those protests make. The war protests, for example, that happened in San Francisco two years or so ago. They can protest it all they want, that doesn't annoy me, but I have to wonder how protesting the war, in a city that on the whole doesn't like the war, will do anything. Or how the group of people that stand on the street corner, calling for the end of the war in my coastal suburb town, are doing anything other than wasting their time.

I'm glad they have something they can support so readily, but what difference are they actually making?

And now I'm here, typing on an lj that few people friend and less actually keep up with, and I'm telling you about this place half way around the world whose means of communication has been cut off. Phones, internet, even journalists being threatened not to report on what's happening. And I'm frustrated and angry and sad and it's mainly because I don't know how to help any of them. What can I possibly do, one small person so far away with no influence, someone who wants so badly to make a difference to at least one person in her lifetime?

Their candidates mean nothing to me because I don't know who they are (though from what little i recall of their current president pre-election has not endeared him to me). Perhaps it's the wrong thing to think, perhaps it's the right thing, but who wins this election doesn't matter to me. All I care about is the people being given a voice and being allowed to use that voice to say something. And they're not. There's a huge glass wall between the people and their government, one they can see through and believe if they scream loud enough, if they beat it hard enough, they can get through to the other side. But the government doesn't hear them, is just outright taunting them with a right they never intend to give the masses.

They aren't allowed to have a voice. But if I bring this situation to the awareness of even one more person, maybe I can say someone has heard them. Maybe that's the only difference I can make. Maybe, if enough 'one more' people are made aware, that's all the difference that needs to be made.

ontd_political post here to bring you up to speed if you so wish.

adsflkjasghl;jadf why was I never told Chii was turned into an anime? s-so much cute!

Feeling so very much more relaxed in which case main objective of vacation: get. Also have done a bit of writing and drawing in which case secondary objective of vacation (return of creative flow): get. The only real problem I have now is the underlying current of stress and abhorrence to the idea of going into work tomorrow but, hey. That's just how it goes. And it's also part of the reason why I'm going to be starting to look for a new job now, but I'm not getting into that right now.

( Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. )

My grandma also let me help her make a lemon meringue pie and I learned a tasty new potato recipe that's really easy to make! Just slice up a potato and onion, wrap up in tinfoil with some butter and pepper and cook until it's soft. They put it on a grill but they said it probably wouldn't be much different to stick it in the oven so I'll be trying that for myself in the future sometime.

I also may have spoiled my grandma with my DS showing her both the Cooking Trainer thing and the Sudoku games on Brain Age XD

Now to catch up on stuff from the past week.

Pixar's Up was surprisingly sad, the first part of it especially. Made all the more heartbreaking, of course, by the fact I was watching it with my grandmother.

Going to be disappearing to Texas to visit my grandmother for a week. Not expecting her to have much of an internet connection so don't be expecting me until next Wed or so.

I... don't even really know what to think about this.


"The LA Auto Show is once again hosting its annual Design Challenge in which automakers are asked to let their minds wander and think freely about what future vehicles might actually be like. Last year's theme was green, but this year designers are being asked to imagine what motorsports will be like in 2025.

Mitsubishi's answer will be the MMR25 Rally Racer, a way out there concept that draws upon the automaker's long lineage of successful rally racing to create a sand crawler like we've never seen before. We've only got a sneak peek for now, so there's no telling what exotic or outright fictional engine powers the MMR25, but expect it to be just as crazy as those multidirectional wheels."

source and one more photo

Well, here's my final anthro paper. Don't know how good it actually is (in terms of the class) because it was turned in on our last day but for those of you that were interested (especially those of you that helped me with it) it's up for viewing. And link away to anyone else from Poly that would be interested in seeing it, I don't mind.

( Amateur ethnography ftw! Maybe. )
Man... rereading this NOW makes me realize I should've done a better proof-read than a 2-in-the-morning attempt.

Also this entire thing reminded me how much I enjoy/miss RPing. If the urge is still there when I get back from my grandmother's I may talk to people about apping.

BBL, TOO BUSY LULZING MYSELF DEAD TO HAVE COHERENT OPINION

Argh. Paper fail. I completely lost track of what the hell I was doing about half way through. I don't think I have time to do any better on it.

......fuckit, my means of caring has long gone out the window for this semester.