I have strange tastes.

I have a rather stunning headache at the moment. It’s stunning because I never get headaches. Ever. Oh well, I got some stuff I feel like blogging about.

First of all, 4TB harddrives. 4 Mother shocking terabytes of space. That’s 4,000 gigabytes. That’s like, a crapload of iPods, hahaha. When I was skimming through some old Kotaku posts, the only reason I stopped here because I liked the look of the “cylon” computer. I tried reading the specs, but the only thing I understood was the 4TB harddrive and the Windows Vista OS. I linked it over to Ed, who knows about computers and stuff. He built his brother’s computer and stuff. I wish I could do that, but that’s besides the point. Ed’s reaction was along the lines of: “WTF. That’s overkill!” I asked him, “Which part?” He replied, “All of it. Every single part.” He expected the price to be way upwards of $3000. Haha, that is seriously insane, but I want it. That 4TB harddrive, the ability to play TF2 on full settings, the crazy-cool look of the computer. It all reeks of awesome. Of course, I can also just get some external harddrives and store all the anime, manga, and other assorted files of my dreams onto it.

Second topic of today, the results of the prize I won from the tournament. Apparently, Dustin’s friend Matt may or may not have bought the Shadowmoor fatpack from Target before Kevin could get to it. Small world, isn’t it? Anywho, Kevin instead offered me to order some cards of my choice of the net. I of course, picked one of my favorite cards ever, Phage the Untouchable. Why is she one of my favorites? She is so simple, so focused, and the idea of her walking around is just so cool. Basically, anything she touches dies. She was once a barbarian, but she was healed by another cool Magic: the Gathering lady, Braids, the dementia lady. She was basically superwarped due to a combination of dementia magic and a powerful artifact. Her effect is so cut and dry, once anyone finds out you have her in your deck they will always reserve something to keep her from slapping them. If she deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game. That’s so rad and badass, I can’t even begin. I even love her first and restrictive effect: she can only be played from your hand. No shortcuts, no combos, no special techniques. You just drop her onto the field (called hardcasting) and watch your opponent writh. The untouchableness, that inspired my character Poison, from the My Gift, My Curse, My Friend story I never finished. He was like her, except he also leaked poison into the air and could control the intensity and effect of the poison.

I find I like straight-forward, no run around methods of power. Characters like Toph from Avatar, Guts from Berserk, and even Phage’s nemesis, Akroma, Angel of Wrath, just have that raw badassery. No tricks, no power boosts from flashbacks, no long winded plans that involve losing your memories and getting them back. I mean, that stuff is cool and all, but bluntness is pretty rocking too. In Soul Calibur 3 I play a planned agressive strategy. If I decide “I want to hit my opponent with this move” chances are, I will keep trying it even if they’ve blocked it 3 times in a row. I do utilize a bit of punishment game (dance out of the opponent’s range, and move in ove they miss an attack) and mind-games, but I like the straight-forward, I-will-hit-you-with-this-and-then-I-can-try-something-else.

Sometimes, I even end up liking characters/strategies because they are out there. I can’t tell you how many Magic decks I made with no win strategy. Or I’ll give my character’s really, really weird quirks. Like a guy who likes to drink water over eating food or a 47-year old ditzy army commander who weilds a powerful sword but doesn’t know how to use it. In my older post “Depression Figments” I mention Paradios: Legend of The Dead and The Poisoned. This story revolves around an upstart, introverted necromancer and a preppy-girl turned zombie. He continously tries to take revenge on her for her mistreatment of him by scaring her with sexual threats and giving her really weird/disgusting body parts, but she is still as lively as ever and her tongue hasn’t dulled, so she can still lay down the verbal smackdown. It’s a “buddy” story where they learn to get along while trying to deal with people who see necromancy as sacrilige and finding suitable parts for the girl’s body.

Paradios: Legend of Edge Ninja is about a ninja who believed that the “stealth” part of ninjutsu was pointless, so he’s refined his speed and skill with a ninja’s knife to insane levels. He wears a suit all the time and has a flair for dramatic poses.

Paradios: Legend of Prince of Demon’s Thuder is about the Prince of Hell who is shocking good with lightning magic(haha, puns). He is extra arrogant since he is the son of the Demon King, who is leading a very successful war against Heaven. Hell is happy when the Heaven gives up a powerful general’s soul, who is vastly hated by Hell’s demons, to Hell in exchange for a ceasefire, but the soul reeks havoc on Hell and saves itself by diving into the body of the Prince, who thereby loses his magic, evil nature, and restitance to Hell’s flames. He is sent up to earth with a few bodyguards to find a way of extracting the angel’s soul without killing the Prince. Needless to say, the Prince experiences personalty changes and various mood swings, while trying to deal with not having his way anymore.

I know it can sound contradictory to first say I like blunt and straightforward things while also liking odd and out-there things, but hey, that’s just who I am. I still need to blog about my summer school teacher, but is going to be a pain. Lol, my headaches seems to have subsided, although it might come back now that I’ve started thinking about it again.

Timestamp – 11:20 PM

Spider bites bite.

Ok remember my once healing foot? Well, it had healed at one point, but it’s back now, even worse. The good news, the foot didn’t swell very much at all. the bad news? I have new bites on my right shin and left hand. The venom or inflection or whatever moved from the bite on my hand into my pinky finger. My pinky finger swelled and I couldn’t use my land hand for a good time. The bite on my shin just looks bad and im assuming it wasn’t a spider but just some sort of bug. But, one of those red line path thingys went up my right leg, causing it to itch in non-bite areas. That went away too, thankfully. I never really realized how important my left pinky was to me, you know that?

I didn’t feel like playing tf2 becasue my pinky would be needed for crouching. I know that that shouldn’t stop anyone from playing, but I still didn’t feel like it. I used my left pinky for the shift key and etc, and I lost alot or grip with my left hand since I didn’t want to use the left pinky. Just try it. Compare how hard you can grip things, like a jar lid or something, using your entire hand versus holding back a finger.

I have some other things I want to blog about, but I don’t really feel like adding those seperate topics to this post, so I’ll inform you guys later.

Timestamp – 10:03 PM

Summer: Work, play, and magic

Yesterday was Kevin Van’s birthday. He decided to hold a Magic: The Gathering tournament. I joined up since Martin told me that Alex Bui and Emil would be there. All of them, with some other people, made up our old Magic group way back in middle school. Before hand though, I went to Dustin’s house on Sunday.

Sunday was pretty cool. Went over to Dustin’s house lugging all my extra cards. Dustin had gotten to okay to participate in the aforementioned tourny and asked me over to help tweak his deck. So I did. The day was pretty uneventful in the beginning. When I called Dustin to let him know I was going over to his house I found out he wasn’t even at home. Seriously dude, you invited me over, at least be there, haha. I hung out with Derek, his little brother and Richard, a friend of theirs. The same Richard from the boxing thing I posted earlier. Anyways, I watched a few episodes of an anime Derek helped me find called Speed Grapher, and played Magic with Derek and Richard. But little did I know that Dustin’s family would be treating his dad to a Father’s Day dinner at Sizzlers. Our family had done our Father’s Day thing in the shape of a Hawaiian t-shirt themed BBQ. There were a lot of fake coconuts to drink from and oysters to eat haha.

Anyways, the dinner was pretty cool, and we concluded the night with some funny TF2 videos and some magic deck tweaking. I ended up fixing one of Dustin’s decks, but it still didn’t work out too well so Dustin had to default to his Tri-Color deck.

The morning of the tourny, we had to wake up early and help out at a cafe his parents run. The Lighthouse Cafe, over by Tully and King road. It was kind slow at first, but things got intense quickly since there was a soccer tournament going on that day. Our jobs were pretty much relegated to preparing the free ice tea and water. Had to get the cups, fill them half way, fill with ice, refill the ice, and etc. I also helped out making the iced coffee by pouring the coffee to a certain amount in each cup. From there, whenever a customer would order it, which many did since its a popular drink among the Vietnamese, Dustin or Richard would take the cup, put ice in it, mix it together, and etc. We got to eat at the cafe and we each got paid 20 dollars for our two and a hlaf hours of work. 10 dollars an hour, not bad. I want to work there more often, but I don’t know how I’m going to get there and back often.

Anyways, after working Richard, Dustin, Derek, and I went off to head towards Kevin’s house, although we had to pick up Martin along the way. We had to go kinda early, so Martin wasn’t ready. Richard and Dustin screwed around big time. Well, mainly Richard haha. He like, was driving backwards, doing crazy sharp turns, moving forward then stoppign multiple times to “force us to bob our heads” and stuff. When I got out of the car and rang Martin’s doorbell, they waited for the door to open then they blared Real McCoy’s Run Away. Funny stuff. Then while we were waiting for Martin to get changed, Richard drove around in circles in the court not letting me in the car haha.

At Kevin’s house we arrived pretty goddamn early I have to say. We just hung out waiting for everyone else to arrive, Sunny (or Sonny, I can’t remember, <.<) Pham, Alex Bui, and Emil. Kevin used a white (maybe weenie?) aggro deck, Martin used a super evil blue counter and control deck, Dustin had his Tri-Color, Derek used his green/black fungus deck, Richard used a green and white life gain/token deck, Sunny had a green/red beast aggro. Emil had a green (elf-based?) aggro, Alex used his red goblin aggro deck (than can kill you by turn 4 if you’re unlucky) and I used my slivers aggro. Haha, a bit too many aggros if you ask me.

Anyways, since Alex’s goblins deck was the favorite to win (and because of the drawing) he was seeded to fight one winner from the first tier. Kevin beat Dustin by dropping a Wrath of God on all of Dustin’s vital mana producers. Sunny beat Richard, but I was busy playing my game to know any details. But then Sunny got murdered by Alex Bui’s goblins. Those goblins are fast. I beat Emil with my slivers. Each game was 2 out of 3. I beat Emil pretty soundly the first game, but the second was down to the wire. Ok, here’s something that was really, really bad. Martin and Derek started their matches before everyone else, they actually had time to finish their first match before we left Kevin’s house to go to the nearby park and start the tournament there. They finished last. Martin couldn’t draw anything he could use to kill Derek, and Derek was stuck with nothing to play since Martin kept countering and bouncing all of Derek’s cards. It took forever and ended with Derek suiciding to mana burn.

Round 2 would be Martin, Alex, Kevin, and myself. I got slated to play Martin and Alex took on Kevin. Now before I continue, let me say that I utterly hate Martin’s counter and control deck. It controls the board way too damn well and just about beat out all of my other decks quite often, even my slivers. But, due to some clever sideboarding on my part and a rule preventing Martin’s use of a certain banned card, the game was mine. I won the first two rounds and moved onto the finals. But so did Alex. It was funny since while we were sitting down for round 2, Kevin said that he bets that Alex will make it to the finals. I can’t remember what Alex Bui said, but I told him that Kevin is just saying that since there is a 50% chance a Alex will go onto the finals. What do you know? Both Alexs did.

We decided that since it was the final game, that we should do 3 out of 5 instead of 2 of 3. I won the first two rounds, surprisingly. Yeah, I stopped and shut down the 4 turn killer. Then we took a break and ate some McDonalds, haha. Then, when we continued, he demolished me for two games. Last game would determine it. I ended up winning since Alex couldn’t get his needed cards, which also explains my first two victories. I had difficulty believing it, but thankfully I won.

The prize is slated to be a Shadowmoor (the newest set) fatpack (a bunch of cards and etc), but Kevin hasn’t bought it yet and there’s a chance it won’t be at Target when Kevin decides to go, haha. I can’t believe I won though. I faced down the toughest decks at the tourny. Emil and Alex were the favorites to win, and I knew Martin’s deck was a vicious beast. Kevin for some reason decided not to use his own vicious Mass Hysteria deck, and I don’t know how good his white aggro is. Either way, I’m pretty proud of my Slivers. Haha, maybe I should reward them by putting them in sleeves.

But damn, summer school starting this Thursday. Let’s try to have some fun, eh folks?

Timestamp – 5:42 PM

RED MOON

Due to the various fires that have been breaking out in California, the moon is now red. RED, my people, red. Well, yellowish now, but it was red. A very scary thing, made scarier by the fact that it is Friday the 13th! I tried to take a picture, but you can’t really tell it’s the moon. I went down my AIM buddylist telling everyone when I got the call from Alex Antoku hahah. Some people weren’t fazed because they saw the discolored clouds and sun earlier today, but I didn’t look haha.

So, take this day as a sign. Either of danger, or a tribute to Disgaea. Either way, today was interesting.

Timestamp – 10:18 PM

No more summer bug blues!

Foot is healing wonderfully. I can walk normally without irritating the foot, although if you touch it directly it will itch. The color is no longer the red it started as, the purple it grew to, and it is now a brown-ish color that just looks like a really weird tan line. It is going the way of the bite that I mentioned earlier. Soon, the color will fade and the place will only be distinguishable by me.

Oh yeah, no school! But i have summer school starting the 19th. The good news? The classes are at Silver Creek, so no crazy ass commute for me! Muwahahaha.

Timestamp – 9:05 PM