Today we were supposed to have a rough draft of a personality profile turned in. Instead we spent the whole class period working on the drafts while he took his time working around the room looking at everyone's papers. Then the end of the class came around and he said we're to turn it in on Friday, the final product.

I stood by his desk, waiting as he finished checking over another student's paper. I waited for 10 minutes. Finally he finished and I asked if there was any way he could check my paper (he never made it over to me before class got over) and he said bring it to him during his office hours. I have to go to work straight after class, and I have an hour commute back to home, can't do. I asked if there was any way I could e-mail it to him and he responded he didn't check papers over the internet. And that I would just have to do my best on my paper corrections and turn in my final Friday.

I can't afford another failing grade with the erratic way he grades papers. He removes words that he thinks makes a sentence too wordy and takes off 5 points every time and when we compare papers to each other he's never consistent. I need him to look over my bloody paper, but the fucking bastard won't. I'm so frustrated over this I might just break down in tears on Friday. Maybe I should hold them in for when I get my grade back.

I hate this class. Worst writing class ever. We're not learning shit outside of the fact that he's a fucking prick in grading papers.

Congoers: Have you ever had an instance where the host hotel of a convention sells out within 5 minutes of the rooms being posted online?

Dragon*con just did. I shit you not.

October 1st was the date that Marriott, and a few other of the host hotels (Dragon*con is divided up between 4 main hotels, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, and the Sheraton with the Marriot being the awesome one everyone wants) and once the Marriott sold out within a 5-15 minute window the other 3 hotels quickly sold out as well.

I have never ever seen hotel rooms go like concert tickets. I am in awe, and extreme happy Steven managed to nab a Sheraton room before they all sold out. Sheraton has the Whedon-verse and Brit-track rooms, my fave categories of the convention.

Wow... Dragon*con regulars who haven't even thought to look for hotel rooms yet are going to be pissed.

... I GOT A SHERATON ROOM! MWAHAHAAAAA~

In case you needed more proof outside of UF's sports program why the University of Florida is one of the most awesome schools in the nation, take a look at their Emergency Preparedness Plan for various disasters given to students. UF, until today, had no less than six wonderfully detailed pages explaining how students should prepare and act during a Zombie Apocalypse.

It was all over the local Gainesville NPR today. I giggled much, and if I were attending UF I'd totally volunteer for the UF Zombie Response Team, a team that "does not yet exist at the University of Florida," but they "are confident UF administration will soon see the importance of such a group, probably situated within the University Police Department."

Said UF Administration discovered this lovely addition to their Emergency Prep guide and had it removed today.

Seriously, check out the link. Some of my favorite parts are in the Tentative Action Items section:

• Equip all staff offices with “blackout curtains” to prevent identifying worker locations to zombies;
• Equip all staff with long range (e.g. rifles) and short range (e.g. hand guns) firearms or other weaponry (e.g. chain saws, baseball bats, LPs11) for defense against the infected and to dispatch possibly infected co-workers.

UF faculty has no idea how this Zombie section was added, but whoever did get it in there I take my hat off to you good sir or madam... if I had a hat. YOU FRAKKING ROCK.

Now in the spirit of things, I leave you with video footage of a Japanese Zombie boot camp.



God bless the Japanese.

That subject covers every final, every standardized test, every frakking math test or quiz since preschool.

Today I took my first journalism test. It was the worst test I have ever taken in my life.

I was curbed in by a false sense of security with the professor going "As long as you've read the chapters you'll do fine." I am now convinced my Journalism professor is a sadistic bastard who is out to make as many students drop his class by the end of the first quarter of term as possible. I shit you not, 4 people have already dropped. Seriously, I can imagine him now laughing over the test papers, gleefully running a red pen over them all.

I read the chapters the test covered three times over, took notes, and gave myself a little review before the test.

We go in, and he orally gives the questions (so not cool), explains we need to come up with certain terms, define them, then give examples of how they work in journalism.

This would be positively fantastic if I had a word bank to go with. I have a memory that's shit. Memory recollection, meaning pulling things on demand from my memory, takes me a while IF my brain feels like digging it up. If I had a word bank there, or the opposite, stated definitions which I'm supposed to write the term for I do fantastic. No problem there. This was my brain's worst nightmare. In a panic it likes to go blank when pulling out words.

And then their was the organization. And the trick questions mixing terms that work in various categories. Total frakking nightmare, and there were only 10 questions.

I won't be surprised at all if he counts off for spelling, something I have a problem with because of my type of dyslexia.

Ugh, I wonder if I'll be able to salvage my grade after this test. A 70 on my first paper, and a test I'll be totally surprised at getting above a 50 on. I know now I have to take finals style studying which means note cards, writing out definitions a zillion times over in hope that I retain them, outlines I write over and over, etc. I wish I had a photographic memory. Severe repetition is the only way I can memorize vocabulary and facts to the extent he wants them.

I am never, ever taking what that man says for face value again. I know the whole class was practically shitting bricks when the test started. I saw one girl actually start crying in what I can only assume was frustration and panic.

It's been a while since I've posted anything on music. Whitney left the tv on FUSE, something it feels like I haven't watched in years, and there was an interview with Panic! At the Disco (yes, the exclamation point is back...) and they were talking about their new album, before showing a video for the new single: New Perspective.

Imagine my surprise when the duo, (Brenden, the lead singer and the drummer) explain that Panic split up, so now it was just... those two. This is total news to me, so forgive me if you've known it for a year.

Ouch. Seriously. They said it was all on good terms and all, but any fan who got into them via the first album before they were huge knows Ryan, the cute little adorable one, was the brains behind the operation. He wrote the music, lyrics, etc, and was just too shy to sing so that's when they pulled in Brenden to do the singing. That was also why I felt the 2nd album sucked so hard, they wanted more of a band coalition that time.

Brenden and the random dude are now by themselves, and they're continuing on calling themselves Panic. What a load of horse shit. They're just trying to cash in on the name now. I just saw their new video and it's just so far removed from the original Panic at the disco album that I couldn't even finish it. Just another random pop boy band now, which leaves me to wondering what the adorable Ryan is up to.

Ryan and Walker have gone off to form a band called The Young Veins, and though I'm sad to see the Vegas cabaret that was the original Panic! album disappear, I like their sound. It's very 60s meets the Kinks... and Ryan is actually singing now so more power to him! So... I'll probably be buying the Young Veins album, while I wish Panic! to now fall into a bottomless abyss. That's probably mean of me, but I never liked Brenden.

The Young Veins - Change

... I still want to kidnap Ryan and make him into a doll for the day by dressing him up however I want. That guy is just that adorable. ... and yet I'm reminded that he's the same age as me, which makes it even more of a freaky thought.

Heart no Kuni no Alice (Alice in Hearland)

By Quinrose and Hoshino Soumei.

Alice in Wonderland themed manga anyone?  Yeah... I know, like we don't have enough of those in existance already.

During an outing in the garden with her sister, Alice is kidnapped by an odd man with rabbit ears who promptly jumps into a hole that seemed to appear out of no where.   There the white rabbit man forces Alice to drink an odd concoction, and once that’s done announces she is now part of The Game (please… no you lost the game jokes please).  She’s given the container and is told that it’ll fill with liquid with everyone she meets, and once it fills up she’ll be able to return home.  Unfortunately the world Alice is now in is insane, confusing, and full of hot guys who develop some odd attraction to her because she’s a foreigner, and everyone seems to be playing The Game.

I really don’t know what to think of Heart no Kuni no Alice.   It starts off as some mad rush to introduce as many cute guys to the reader as possible while confusing you as to what exactly is going on, all with a warped style of Alice in Wonderland symbolism.  Example:  Tweedle Dee and Dum are adorable little boys with homicidal tendencies, and the Mad Hatter is a Mafia boss.  They’re very pretty though if that matter to you.

You get confused with the pace and the events happening around Alice rather quickly, and with a regular manga this would be horrible, but with Heart no Kuni no Alice, I hate to say it, but it’s effective, and it gets away with this because this is a weird retelling of Alice in Wonderland, a story that never made sense from the get go, but in all the confusion people still love it and sit through it.  It’s fun insanity. 

Knowing it’s based on Alice in Wonderland I suppose I’m being a bit lenient with the critique of it.  It can be rather effective actually because you’re confused with Alice about the surroundings, learning with her, sharing shock when people are suddenly killing each other… however if it all makes sense in the end is something I have yet to discover.   A volume and a half into it and I’m still having problems telling up from down, but in the spirit of Alice in Wonderland, I’m oddly ok with this.  The introduction of new, bizarre remakes of classic Alice in Wonderland characters and the introduction of some original characters, as well as various mysteries as to what The Game is, is keeping me interested enough to continue on, and the art isn’t a negative either. 

Outside of Alice unfortunately you aren’t exposed to each character at the moment long enough to get a good idea of their personality.  Everyone at the moment just seems happy go lucky nuts at this point, but Alice, thankfully, has some personalities to her and even shows some brains here in there in terms of analyzing her situation, and looking back on her psychology knowledge.

Hoshino Soumei’s art style is very nice and airy, and though her characters can seem a little stiff at times there isn’t much to complain about, especially in comparison to typical, generic shoujo manga you come across.  It doesn’t help that the outfits are cute, and the character designs are pretty much gaurenteed to appeal to cosplayers.

I’ve avoided mentioning it because I wanted to focus on the manga as just a manga, but I’ve got to mention it at some point.  Heart no Kuni no Alice is based off a videogame, and not just any game, but an Otome dating simulator for girls.  Considering what it’s based on, a game where you go around to guys and develop a relationship with the one of your choice, the speed of which new characters are introduced to you and the fact that everyone is quickly growing attracted to Alice isn’t surprising.  However the manga introduces the scenario with the confusion in a way that it may actually develop into an interesting plot.  A possibly predictable plot in terms of who Alice will end up with (if he doesn’t kill her first), but still with all the insanity going about it may just be entertaining to those who are fans of Alice in Wonderland clichés.  Those who aren’t Alice fans or huge pretty boy/bishonen fanatics may want to avoid this like the plague.

 Tokyopop has been rumored to have licensed it if this listing is any hint.  Maybe if it sells enough of the manga someone will decide it wouldn’t cost too much to translate a PC port of this Otome game… (Is an Alice fanatic who wouldn't mind at all to have a Alice themed dating sim to buy)

Ah, the dreaded return of the first paper where you discover what sort of grading style a Professor has. 

I just went from a usual A/B writing student with the typical writing class to now suddenly being faced with a big giant 70.

Oh the painful pit of despair you fall into as you see all those little red marks across your paper.    Then follows the confusion as you try to decipher his chicken scratch called handwriting that can rival your own, if not totally beat it down.

WHAT THE FRAK DOES UNDERLINING A WHOLE SENTENCE AND WRITING "logic" ABOVE IT SUPPOSED TO MEAN TO ME?!

I really can't read most of what he wrote, and then his only note in the end, which has me worried since other people seemed to get a whole page of comments, says to me " "needs a tighter edit and check the A.P. Stylebook."

What is this A.P. Stylebook and why the fuck is this the first time you're telling us about it in this class.  It wasn't in the textbook list, and you didn't tell us while writing the paper!

/disappointed anger, enter determination to kick ass on the next paper.

I know we have the A.P. Stylebook for sale at the bookstore.  Even if I currently can't afford it (again, telling me to get this book when I had my financial aid at the school bookstore would have been a big help) I can look at the book at work.

... a 70... it almost makes me want to cry or something, maybe slash my wrist in an emo attempt.  (not serious about this)  But no!  This will only motivate me to be better!  I refuse anything else to take over.  You can't see it, but there be fire in my eyes I tell ya.

Sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do. 

Rinko Ueda  has created an amusing mix of Pretty Woman / My Fair Lady with her Hadashi de Bara wo Fume (Stepping on Roses Barefoot).  In this Meiji Era tale (1860s+) Poor fifteen year old Sumi has several younger siblings to take care of but her older brother keeps gambling their way further into debt.  Being harassed by creditors to no end, Sumi feels like her only choice to keep her siblings from being sold off is to sell herself (prostitution) to make money.  Enter Souichirou Ashida; high class gentleman fighting for his place as heir in his family, and most importantly full of many that Sumi so desperately needs.  He offers to pay off Sumi’s debts if she agrees to pose as his wife with one condition; she doesn’t fall in love with him, and she doesn’t expect him to love her.

So begins your typical, abusive shoujo relationship that would make the most minor feminist’s stomach turn.  It’s rather degrading for women everywhere, but there’s something oh so entertaining about watching it go down.  It almost makes me feel ashamed in taking some enjoyment out of it.  Almost.

What is there to enjoy?  A twisted, upper class love triangle that some could call juicy, and the cliché “girl warms up a frozen heart” story that’ll amuse girls who like that type of bishonen.  You’ve probably read stories like this a hundred times over, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from going after them some more if the Romance novel industry is anything to go by.  Still, that isn’t much for the series to survive on.

Thankfully (or disappointingly for some) the manga stays rather away from any pervy sex moments, making it less shameful to read, and Ueda’s art style features a delightful 60s/70s motif in her character designs that scream of the Rose of Versailles era, giving it a refreshing retro look when a lot of manga now a days looks the same.

Still, in the end, the story can get rather predictable and the historical accuracy of some of the dress designs is in question.  If you’re looking for a good waste of a couple hours Bara wo Fume is good for a laugh, but I’m not rushing to go out and buy it any time soon even if Viz has licensed it recently.  You can do better Viz.

Every once in a while you’ll stumble across a manga you just can’t seem to put down. If you’re even more unfortunate, this manga may be the sort that rips away any shred of dignity you may have left as it causes you to roll around in glee moaning “Awwwwww” and shouting various exclamations of cute. Gakuen Alice/Alice Academy transformed me into a sad little puddle of pudding doing just that from its overwhelming cuteness and touching relationships.

Mikan Sakura’s best friend, Hotaru, has been taken away from her to join an elite school for geniuses called Alice Academy. Worried after not hearing something from her for so long Mikan steals her grandfather’s saving and heads off to the city where the top secret Alice Academy is. After several futile attempts in getting past the gate security into the school Mikan runs into one of the teacher and begs to be let in. He informs her he thinks she just might have what it takes to be a part of the school and finds herself instantly signed up.

There she finds that the school isn’t for geniuses in the intelligence sense, but for people with special powers, psychic and otherwise, called Alices. After a run in with the class pyromaniac rebel who to her horror steals her panties, Mikan finds herself in the same class as her friend Hotaru, but finds it’s harder to get accepted by her classmates than she thought, especially when she doesn’t have a clue as to what her Alice power may be.

Gakuen Alice suffers from the typical school cliché’s every manga that takes place in school has; from school dances, Valentine’s day, to the culture festival, they’re all here. However Higuchi manages to keep your interest up by almost masterfully working in underlying plots and mysteries in the typical school setting so much that you’ll find it’s hard to put down the further you get into the story.

With the Kodocha style art (I swear I had to give it a double take to make sure it wasn’t the same artist) of fine lines and giant saucer eyes the manga looks innocent enough, but Higuchi was quick in surprising the reader by letting them know the happy go lucky cuteness overload campus of Alice Academy isn’t as sweet and innocent as it looks. Higuchi could have kept it at a naive, idealist school where all students happily mature with their powers, but she throws in a bit of a reality check by putting in another force in the school that uses specific students with specific powers for a darker purpose, putting those students at risk on the job and through their health by being over worked. The fact that students outside of the ones being used are oblivious to it add to the suspense and give depth to the plot and the character involved.

Join that with various mysteries you find in Gakuen Alice, be it who exactly Mikan’s parents are, relationships between other students, various school conspiracies, and the extent to the level of some student’s powers go (or even what exactly their Alice is) and you have yourself a rather enthralling school drama.

Besides all that, can you really go wrong with a possessed teddy bear with homicidal intentions? Either way, I blazed through 119 chapters of this manga, can’t wait for more, and will be going out of my way to make this a permanent edition to my library. The cuteness demands it.

Gakuen Alice is being released here in North America through Tokyopop.

Dragon*con was fantastic, and I'll do an actual update on it later, this is just an art "musing" I'm posting about.

I couldn't buy much, but what I DID buy were some super cheap Yoshitaka Amano art books I've been meaning to buy for years now, but they were always so expensive.  They had The Worlds of Yoshitaka Amano for 10 bucks, and the Vampire Hunter D artbook/coffin book for 20.  I jumped at that and have been staring at them for a good long while because they're nothing short of absolutely gorgeous (and hello Final Fantasy artwork I've never before seen).  But they did what I was hoping, and they've inspired me.  Done a couple sketches, but the biggest thing was my discovery that Yoshitaka Amano did NOT use watercolors.  I was always under the impression he did, making me bemoan the fact that watercolors were my worst enemy, and I would never be able to get that light, bright color style he does so well.  But no, the art books all say he uses color ink and acrylics.  Insert my big suprised eyes there, I have and use those.  I use them with a very heavy, thick hand, but I'm assuming he waters down the arcylics so... now I can't wait to try painting and experimenting, trying to emulate Amano's style.

So... I need to set aside a painting day to do this.  It's so sad I need to schedual a 'painting day" but I've just been so busy, and I don't want to start painting only to have to go to work after a couple hours, so here I am, all pumped, with big plans for Sunday.

God damn Sunday is so far away.

I leave you with a purdy Amano painting to drool over, if the link will even work.

Anyone who has looked more than once into the world of Japanese doll collecting has probably heard of Pullips.  They're basically small versions of those super expensive 300+ dollar dolls, with various themes (the Gothic Lolita ones always appeal to me) and well.. huge heads, eyes, tiny bodies... they're cute.

Today I came across their Evangelion Pullips, and at the MSRP price of 119$, I want to cry.

Check out how cute Asuka and Rei are.

Seriously, I wish I had 240 or so to blow.  I REALLY want these dolls.

Someone, please buy me these super expensive dolls! XD

Haaa~

I haven’t posted here in a forever period it seems.  Lots of nothing happened this Summer, and lots of crap have been happening since I’ve started my first week of my last semester here at Santa Fe.

So, Teacher breakdown, a tradition I’ve done with this blog.  I’d accompany my teacher doodles, but my scanner is dead, so that’ll be saved for another time, if I remember at all.

I’m taking 2 course substitution to make up my math credits since I’m now certified incapable of Algebra.  Those would be Animal Behavior and Critical Thinking in writing.  Out of those two, I’m most excited for Animal Behavior, but the downside is it’s all an online course, and my teacher apparently lives in Maryland.  I was hoping there’d be class trips to the learning Zoo they have here on campus (dude, they have exotic cats from South America) but that dream was shattered as soon as I signed up for an online class.  I’m still looking forward to it though because I have an interest in zoology, and that along with psychology seem to be subjects that come easily to me.

My Critical Thinking for Writing class, well.. they originally gave me this list of science and writing classes I could pick for my math substitution, and I made really high marks on the CPT for writing and reading, and I do like writing, so I went with the one writing class.  I’m the girl who scored the highest Florida Writes grade for my class year during high school.  I’ve always had an easy time with writing, I take pride in my writing ability, as unpolished as it is.  Critical Thinking for Writing is a joke.  I feel like I’ve been demoted, I’m in the special ed class.  The teacher first off, is like a Sunday School teacher in demeanor, always standing up straight and proper and smiling, and seems pretty anal-retendant on how organized our folders for this class have to be (haven’t been graded on a “folder” and how pretty I make it since high school).  But you can just see the mask slipping off with a bitch underneath if you ask her too many questions.  The class is basically… you get a single question a week related to the chapter, a single question, and you… answer it after thinking very long and hard on your answer.

Here’s what the first week assignment was:

Explain an activity you do that is creative.  Why is it creative, what steps do you take to do it, what inspires you?

She’s going out of her way in emphasizing that creativity = problem solving, but will she really hold it against an Art major if I write a paragraph on my drawing process?  I asked a single question in the class so far, and it was “what if I want to write more than one paragraph?”.  This was in response to her saying she wants a paragraph for our answer, and a paragraph that is a page long.  Sirens were going off in my head about how horribly written a giant paragraph on a page would look, and she responded telling me “well if you want to write more than one paragraph for this assignment, I won’t grade too hard this time, but in the future you’ll have to really follow directions”.  I wonder if she misunderstood my question.  Seriously, she wants me to throw away everything I’ve learned about paragraph form and just avoid using enter/tab while writing this?  Ok… I suppose I can do that.

Finally, my “bonus” class for the term is Journalism.  I was very excited about taking this class since I haven’t been in anything similar since high school, and this term I’m determined to join the school newspaper.  The teacher loves going on in these long monologues about theory, but I was very disappointed to find that he’s never worked professionally in journalism.  He just went straight to teacher out of school, so I’m wondering about what I can learn from him, but still, I’m happy to have some serious writing assignments this term, even if he scared me with the threat of taking 15 points off per misplaced comma, per assignment.  I don’t have THAT much confidence in my comma placement, so it looks like he’ll whip my grammar skills into place. 

I’ve noticed this week end he keeps calling on me to ask my opinion.  Whether it be that I don’t look like I’m paying attention with my doodles (I sit right up front, doodle usually what he’s talking about), or he likes my answers, today it came to my attention that I’m the one he picks on the most to speak up.  I was the only one giving critical critiques to other class member’s story ideas apparently (We have to write a Bright) and after saying something about experiencing a story first hand vs hearing it 2^nd hand I realize a good number of the class was glaring at me (their stories were all 2^nd hand attempts), and the teacher was suddenly sent into a new speech about some students going on about “I really like your story, smiley face, smile face, my little pony!” (his words, I shit you not) and I’m wondering now if I’m subconsciously brown-nosing.   Ah well, final term in school, I’m not here to make friends.  I got permission to write my bright about Dragon*con this weekend, so we’ll see if I’ll go with the Geek Parade, of the World Record Break Attempt for most people dancing thriller, or something that randomly strikes me while there.

Time to eat nothing but ramen and pb&j because I am so low on money~

But still... Dragon*con.    Nerd haven of 40,000 nerds, with BSG and Star Trek (Spock and Shatner!) guest, Felicia Day, Voltaire, Charline Harris, Terry Frakking Gilliam, Tom Felton (Draco! who now I actually want to see after his stellar Half Blood Prince performance), Ianto from Torchwood (oh the injustice done to his character!), Malcom McDowell (should I try and get my Clockwork Orange dvd signed? ... why am I even asking that?).  George Romero, Zombie King, was going to attend but then he canceled last minute.  Booo I say. BOOOO.

But I'm mainly going for the costumes and the Dealer's Room anyway.  Must not spend anymore money from here to their.  *stares down at her tummy as it rumbles*

DAVID TENNANT IS GOING TO BE AT COMIC-CON AND NO ONE TOLD ME!!!

And there's gonna be Neil Gaiman, and Hayao Mizazaki and... well I know there are tons more but I'm not going!!  *cries in a corner about not being able to go to her heaven on Earth*  One day I'll attend Comic-Con.  ONE DAY!!

What do you need to do to prove your and even bigger geek than anyone else?

Sign up for the Dragon*Con attempt at breaking the Guiness World Record for the largest Thriller dance every recorded.

It's only bee a couple days now since the announcement was made at various Dragon*con places, and you need over 250 people to break the record. Already 80+ people have signed up, and with a convention that has over 30,000 attendies you can bet a lot of people will be joining on on the day it takes place.  I can't wait. Question is will I be in zombie make-up or not... I so want to now.

Maybe I'll do the makeup on top of my American McGee's Alice costume to be Zombie Alice.  Steven and Scott had already planned to go as Marvel Zombies superheroes.

You can bet this will make youtube easiler, what with most of the people already going to be in random costumes, zombie or not.  Aparently we already have a dragon*rider from Pern in the midsts.  Zombie Dragonrider!  Zombie... *goes off on a zombie rant* 

Oooo, I wonder if there are gonna be a group of Umbrella Corp people at Dragon*con.  That'd be awesome too.

God damn do I love Dragon*con.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~
*takes a deep breath and continues* OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~

THOSE BLOODY BASTARDS! I can't believe they did that. ;_;

I will be pissed for days.

I saw the trailer for FFXIV, and speculation on the wether FFXIV will have connections to FFXI and let you carry over your character or something are already underway, but either way, I know one thing:

I WILL BUY A NEW COMPUTER FOR IT!

I can't wait for all the upcoming news we shall have on it, and continue playing FFXI until it's released.

You wouldn't think figuring out the following was hard:

Having the Xbox360 have dual video output: 1 to an HD tv, and 1 to a regular old tv.

This equation took me like... 2 hours of tech geek research. I will NOT buy a multiple hundred dollar splitter box for this. Oh no. No no no. I'm not that much of a techno geek, and this isn't really my home entertainment system.

Damn HD is so complicated, but I seem to have finally figured it out as long as I go via the HDMI cord instead of the component cord. I just need to buy an HDMI to HDMI female 2x splitter, and an HDMI to 3 RCA male cable and I may just be in business. Now I need to go buy/order these parts and see if they'll work.

Screw you HD, you just about gave me a headache.

I WILL NOT even begin to think about including the Wii into the multi-output update, nor will I even entertain the notion of eventually adding a PS3. But with the PS3 has Blu-Ray capability, I may be forced too. x_X

I know some of you out there construct clothes and stuff, and while making costumes I get frustrated beyond belief with not having a real dress form. Well, I just got paid 200 bucks for a job I wasn't expecting much of any money on (Wow, maybe I should design logos for people more often) and I'm planning on most of it going towards a convention but... I really want a dress form, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or warnings when looking to buy one.

I'm looking at some adjustible ones used off e-bay, and the new ones Joanns has on their site. So... help? I'm a total n00b to sewing still, and I don't want to buy a piece of shit. This is something I plan on having for years.

And oh yeah, got my blond wig from Amphigory for my Naruto cosplay of Yondaime Minato. The one I got is the blond one pictured on the bottom of the page. It's Glam-Rock/Hair Metal-tastic, and I can't wait to start styling it. I'll have pictures I'll post when I do. I look so odd with blond hair... I need a tan. Scott needs to hurry up and order his for Jiraiya, or his costume is gonna suck.

May 15th... like... MONDAY, Greenday's new album hits shelves.

08-3-09 till 08-5-09: Greenday will be on tour in Florida

You can't see my face right now, but it's total "O" face. That said, I'm not too excited about their new single, but have full confidence that the album shall be awesome, and that I will drag my brother to a Greenday concert so that he may see them in their glory and finally agree with me on how much they rock.