The promised follow up. Not perfect, but better than usual.

So I managed to finish some French bookwork and an English paper on Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I still have to do my English outside reading presentation, my French Babar Poem, and answer a bunch of questions on “Le Compte the Monte-Cristo,” which is the French version of The Count of Monte Cristo. The biggies are the poem and the presentation, but I won’t be starting them now ahaha. I didn’t get as much work done as I would have liked, seeing as how from 9-1 I was sleeping, but this is a hell of a lot better than what I usually get done. I know that sleeping at 4 doesn’t sound any better than what I’ve been doing before, but from 1-4 I was continuously working without distracting myself with Internet, so I still feel good about myself, no matter what the clock says.

The journey of a 1,000 miles starts not with a step, but the acknowledging that there is a journey to take.

Timestamp – 3:57 AM

I feel it again, how important sleep is

I’m going to barrel through this so I can get to the main point quicker. Yesterday, I got home around 2-2:30 and slept until 7:30, which is dinner. I then slept immediately afterwards and woke up at 11:50ish. After that, I surfed the magical Internet, paying a lot of time reading wikipedia articles about old Cartoon Network. I managed to not do anything for a long ass while, and I did one measly homework assignment at around 4AM-ish.  I say measly, because all it was was updating a few errors in the French text and doing a reprint. Then I slept at 4:10ish, planning on waking up around 5:30 to do some other minor French assignments. I managed to wake at 5:30, but thought, “Too tired. Must go back to sleep.” Which I did. I then slugged through school, Tuesdays being my most hated of days, got home, and did not sleep.

Yes, I managed not to nap. I got home around 4 since my dad wanted to stop by the nearby petshop and buy a new fish. After a hotdog (since staying up late makes you damn hungry) I had to trim some hedges, the ones that seperate our driveway and our neighbor’s driveway. I initially complained, but I was using a pretty nifty electric trimming saw-like thing that reminded me greatly of a chainsaw sword. I had some fun, but not too much since there was dust everywhere and had to sweep up afterwards. I then decided I was going to nap until 5:30, and then start homework. I lay down, but around 4:50 Brian Ha, DDR Club member that hasn’t been going recently, called me to continue our talks about a replacement pad for our malfunctioning metal pad. I won’t go into details about it, but it got me up and running since there were links I needed to check out and stuff. I dropped Mr. K an email about the situation, and then emailed Brian letting him know that I emailed Mr. K.

At this point I wanted to nap, but the laptop in front of me demanded I check the websites that I check on a regular basis: DeviantArt, Kotaku, Capcom Unity, Onemanga, Animebreaker, Anime-Blogz, PSP-Hacks, PSPHacks (yes these are different sites), PSPFanboy, XKCD, Nakama-Fansubs, Nerfnow, Menagea3, MistakesofYouth, VG Cats, Dominic Deegan, ThreePanelSoul, TheBookofBiff, Explosm, and Waspi Square. There are some more webcomics in the mix, but I didn’t list the ones that don’t update Tuesdays. Yes, I spend much time on the Internet haha.

I managed to distract myself from 5 to 7:30 with the above mentioned sites until dinner. Dinner was lackluster since there were no dishes that I particularly enjoy, and I went to Onemanga afterwards and read the two new chapters of Liar Game. My eyes are still tired from the lack of sleep, and I feel some sluggishness, but all in all I feel pretty prepared to work. Why you ask? As long as I stay away from Wikipedia, I’ve already exhausting my distractions. I can resist console and PC gaming very well haha. I’ve still got some major things to do, and although i know I won’t be able to finish everything that needs to be done, I can easily take care of the majority of them. I feel a lot more hopeful than in recent days. : ) (God I wish I could put a colon and a close parenthesis right next to each other without it turning into a smiley face emote)

I owe it to the extremely excessive napping, but also from choosing to sleep from 4-6:40, the time I get out of bed. Also Brian of course, who started the chain of events which got me off of my lazy ass. I’ll probably do a follow up post just before I sleep and detail just exactly what I managed to finish schoolwork wise. Here’s hoping folks! Here’s hoping.

Timestamp – 8:28 PM

Yeesh…<_<

For the past few days now, I’ve been having very disturbing dreams. At least, they feel disturbing to me. The thing about this recent string, is that they are very very well tied to what’s going on in my life. For instance, I took a nap today when I got home from school, and in said dream my English teacher told me that upon further inspection of the most recent paper we turned in, he would be dropping my score form an 85 to a 70. You see, back when I turned in said paper, I told Dr. Lemco that I’d wasn’t too proud of the paper I was turning in and said that I would turn in a better version sometime later. I never did, and that fact never sat well with me, since I don’t believe that paper deserved higher than a 70.

Also, the dream I woke up with on Sunday had me frantically trying to fastforward through a videotape while my teachers were expecting me to turn in a video project. In the dream, my family had decided to watch the tape, and after watching it, they decided to rewind it. But, the part I needed to turn in was at the very end, and time was running out, so I was scrambling as I attempted to fastforward to where I needed to be. All the while, I hear the voices of my teachers demanding the tape. When I woke up, I heard a humming/buzzing sound that sounds very similar to an old tape rewinder, which turned out to be my sister using a hair dryer. But you see, in Multimedia 4, for my 3rd independant project, I was going to record and choreograph a fight between my friends Alan and Alex, who use TKD and jujutsu respectively. I couldn’t finish in time for deadline, but once I explained the project to Mr. Huynh he told me I could get an extension. The deadline was the Friday before break, and I had planned on filming over break, but that didn’t happen. And you know something, that didn’t sit well with me either.

Finishing up, on Saturday, I had this extra strange dream involving my French teacher. I can’t remember it too well, but we are on some sort of a field trip, and we are having fun. I don’t remember the circumstances exactly, but somehow I get my hands on the sniper rifle used in Killzone. Don’t worry, I didn’t shoot anyone, or at least I don’t remember shooting anyone. At some point in the dream, I turn in a late assignment called the Babar Poem,which in real life was due before the break, and I still haven’t done it. I’m in high spirits because I feel as though I’ve done a freaking excellent job on it. I start to do some jabs, just for fun. As I’m doing them though, I notice my left arm doesn’t feel right at all. The speed is just way too slow. I start to panic because I don’t know whats going on, and I keep trying to punch with my left arm, but it’s just going slow mo. Then my French teacher grades the assignment extremely harshly, and begins to walk way, almost as if she is disgusted. I aim at her with the sniper rifle, but I choke up and break down. I try to slam my fist on the floor in anger, but my arm has the sensation of I’m pulling it through gelatin. It’s a horrible feeling. I woke up that day with my left fist clenched pretty tightly. I had to shake off the feeling by doing jabs in front of my mirror <.<

I think, if anything, it’s because I’m really ashamed of not working as hard as I should be working, since those are the teachers I worry most about. I think I need to start taking my work more seriously before the dreams start getting worse. I read this “how to overcome procrastination” thing online, and it had some really great advice, only I don’t feel as though it would work for me. Since I’ve read the article, and the tips it mentions basically involve changing your mindset, I know that if I try to implement these changes that a voice in the back of my head will say, “I know you’re trying to overcome procrastination. Do you really think little things like this will do you any good?” I’m basically defeating myself before even trying. *sigh* Let’s just hope I can change before something bad happens, eh?

I’ll share the link with you guys, it’s good stuff. Overcoming Procrastination by Steve Pavlina

Timestamp – 1:05 AM

The One Week Late Birthday Breakdown!

Alright. It’s been a week since the actual birthday party. I have no excuses for my tardiness haha. First and foremost, I’d like to thank everyone who came (in no particular order): Dustin, Andre, Alex Antoku, Bryan, Ed, Alan, Tejinder, Victoria, Maily, Martin, Tony, and Henry. I hope to god that’s everyone, haha. It’s been a week, <.<

Secondly, before I go into the breaking down of the party, I’d like to say, mission complete. You see, Feb 10th was my 18th birthday, and as such I wanted to do something really cool. I wanted to differentiate it from my regular birthday parties, which consisted of everyone playing games. I mean it lol, for my 17th party, I think all we did the entire time was just straight up play video games. Anyways, I had a variety of plans, all of them not working out. Some of them included going to an arcade like center, like Chuck E Cheese, Dave and Busters, or Nickel City. But that wouldn’t work since not everyone can find something fun to do at an arcade. Paintball or Laser Tag? Too expensive on our half and once again, not everyone would find something to do. Maybe the theaters? Nah, by sitting in the rows, you can’t talk to someone 3 seats away from you. A house party would satisfy the need to have everyone get to do something fun, but then wouldn’t that end up with just video games again? Thus I planned on having a two-day party, one for regular video games and the other for DVDs and board games. Then my parents said no to the two-day thing, so then I just fit everything into one day. Which we did, quite awesomely I might add.

Alright, I don’t remember the order of who came, but I’ll start the breakdown! (play music)

So I woke up at 6 AM because the night before, Alex Antoku told me his parents would be gone the whole day, starting at 7 AM. I got the ok from my parents that Alex could come over early at 7ish so that his parents could drop him off. Little did I know, Alex was able to contact and get a ride from Henry at 12ish, the time I invited everyone else. So I was up at 6, waiting for Alex who wouldn’t come until 12 ish haha. Around 11:30 AM, Dustin came early again, bringing with him Rockband 2 and Apples to Apples. Andre had come too since Dustin didn’t want to be the only EV kid there. I understood the need to know more than just one person at a party haha. So Victoria came next, and sorry for making you bring your Wii, haha. We ended up not using it. <.<

So as we were getting our Rockband on, other people started to arrive. At one point, I did this sweet slide/jump to get across the room without obscuring the tv. Haha. As the gaming went on, we dicided to play a multiplayer free-for-all game of Magic. Before we started though, I shouted across the Rockband room, “Ed, did you bring your deck?” To which Ed asked, much to the hilarity of everyone, “Did I bring my dick?” Ah man, you just had to be there. I used my Sliver deck, Dustin used his black and green deck based around tokens and -1/-1 counters, Ed used his uber aggro black and red creature destruct, Martin used his red and green aggro based around small creatures getting massive pumps, and Andre used Martin’s burn deck. Dustin scared everyone by busting out a 4th ot 5th turn infinite damage combo on Martin, until Martin used the rule of stack to kill one of the creatures invovled in the combo haha. Andre freaking sweeped me of all my slivers at one point with starstorm, asshole. Ed rammed Dustin with his 7/1 Bilstering Cat once, but Martin pumped the living sh*t out of 1 card at smashed Ed with 19 damage on one attack haha. It was so broken. Dustin tried pulling out the infinite damage combo again, but Andre did the same thing Martin did and killed a key component. Andre then killed Dustin, and by that point I had rebuilt my sliver army. I won thanks to my eternally useful Ward Sliver, haha.

While we were playing Magic, Bryan arrived. Thus, after the 5 man free-for-all, Dustin, Bryan, Andre, and I took the stage to rawk the eff out haha. The original placement put everyone at (what I believed to be) optimal positions, Dustin on guitar, Andre on drums, Bryan on mic, and myself on bass. I was hoping Bryan could show off the golden vocal cords that he showed at his birthday party in November, but I don’t think Dustin had the setting where the singer’s voice was louder than the in game track. Oh well. We shuffled around so that I could sing some, and Andre could sing some. I think at the end of the Rockbanding I was on bass again, Bryan on drums, Dustin still guitaring, and Andre singing. Dustin kept wanting to play songs to screw with Andre haha, whether they he was playing drums of singing. I can’t remember the song, but I decided to go up to expert and I asked Dustin, “do you think I can do this?” To which he replied, “It doesn’t matter if you can or can’t do it. The thing you have to remember is, once you go expert, you can’t go back.” Hahahaha. Funny stuff, but I did go expert. And it worked for a while, until we picked this one really hard song. Dustin said for me to go to hard since, “he wanted a chance to beat the song.” Hahahahahahaha. I tried expert and failed miserably, and as the song went we all started failing one by one. It was a mess haha. I don’t know when, but at some point there was Meleeing (Super Smash Brothers Melee) going on in my room, like last year. I didn’t melee this year though, (DUN DUN DUNNNN).

Of man now I can’t remember the order. Either we stopped for Scourge of Worlds DVD first, or we played Lips, an Xbox 360 karaoke game, first. Anyways, Scourge of Worlds is a “choose-your-adventure” Dungeons and Dragons themed DVD. I knew it would be a good thing to watch and laugh at, and it was haha. There was a scene when the four adventurers are in an abandoned temple, and unnatural wolves attack. Regdar, the warrior, wants to fight, while the halfling girl wanted to flee. Everyone voted on “flee” since they wanted to see the halfling die haha. What ended up happening was, the two girls, the halfling and the elf, got out of the temple while the two guys, Regdar and Barathian were trapped inside. Regdar and Barathian get killed by the wolves, and then the wolves turn on the girls and kill them too haha. There was just a lot of fun with seeing the bad acting, the awkward animations, and the voting on how to progress. We reached a weird ending and when we tried to play again choosing different options, we reached the same ending. Hahaha, it was so lame. Luckily for Dustin and Ed, they managed to install World of Warcraft onto my laptop and had fun doing that. Dustin has his WoW installed onto his harddrive, so he was able to play that on my desktop whithout needed to install anything. I don’t remember when either, but Henry started using the computer for Starcraft, hahaha.

Lips was fun, except the guys kept losing badly. First round was Martin and I, and Martin kicked my ass haha. I don’t know these songs! <.< But when Maily and Martin played, Mai destroyed Martin haha. She got like, over twice his score. Turns out, you get points for doing a “vibrato bonus” where you somehow make your voice vibrate or something. No guy could do it, while Victoria and Maily could. It was maddness haha. The fun thing about Lips is that you can plug in an mp3 player or usb with songs on it, and play it on Lips. There isn’t a grading system, but it was fun haha. Alex and I rocked out to Flobot’s Handlebars. Everyone thought I was losing, and I did too, until I remembered I was holding the top player’s mic hahahahahhaha.

But what made the party especially fun, was when we all went into the living room for board game and card game hijinx. First we played Apples to Apples, with everyone jumping in later ahaha. I think the first round the topic was, RADICAL and someone threw out JACKIE CHAN. Jackie Chan took it of course haha. The category was LUCKY and Dustin put out AIDS. Everyone burst into laughter at that hahahhaha. Dustin had some really really good ones haha. When Maily was judge and her category card was EXHAUSTING, Dustin won the round with MY BEDROOM. There was one where Alex Antoku declared that if someone put out GILA MONSTER as the card, he would pick it no matter the circumstances. His category was CHARISMATIC, and Dustin put out a blank card proclaiming it as, TWO GILA MONSTERS. Dustin didn’t want to tie with someone who could have put out gila monster haha. For some strange reason though, Alex went with NINJA. Ninja’s are not charismatic, haha, and I don’t see how they beat two gila monsters, but oh well.

After that we went on to play Backseat Drawing. It’s a game like Charades, but the person who sees the clue doesn’t act out or draw, but gives directions to someone else to draw haha. On my team was Martin, Ed, Bryan, Henry. The other 6 folk were on the other team. We didn’t know how to split the teams, so we just cut the room in half lol. What was sad though, my got utterly demolished haha. In the early rounds, when Martin was director and the word was cherry, he was trying to get me to draw the stem on the cherry, but I wasn’t putting the lines where he wanted them to be. So he said, “draw the lines on cherry!” To which we all laughed hahaha. Whenever Bryan was director, he had to include action lines haha. “Draw a trapezoid. Then a line coming down fromt he middle. Now draw lines coming out of the trapezoid” And then for rain, he had the artist draw movement lines showing that the raindrop was falling when we couldn’t figure it out haha. Dude, they had some strange ass telepathy going there haha. The word was swordfish, and they got it with a triangle, an oval, and a line. |>0- was basically what was drawn, but they got swordfish. The last round we played was turtle haha. Ed was trying to get me to draw pentagons inside of the turle shell, but by then the other team had got it. Man, they had a semicircle with four circles underneath it. It looked like it was supposed to be a car hahahaah. We finished with everyone making the peace sign with their hands and touching fingertips to make a star. I can’t remember who took the picture, but it should be on facebook soon.

Oh man, there’s just so much that went on, hahahaha. We played Killer then Mafia next haha. I can’t possibly type out everything or the rules of Killer, but remember that in Killer killers can’t kill killers. So Dustin and Tejinder were laughing about how in the first round they kept continuously winking at each other thinking, “why won’t he die!” Also, when there was just 3 people left, and Henry was the remaining killer, as soon as someone accused Henry of being a Killer, he did this rapid-fire thing and killed the remaining two people when they looked at him to accuse him ahahahahah. At one point, I saw Mai winking at somebody and accused her. When it was just Ed, myself, Bryan, and I think someone else, I said, “I knew Mai was a killer cuz I saw her wink over there, wait. Bryan didn’t die. I accuse Bryan!” Ed seconded, and we got Bryan hahaha. Bryan couldn’t do what Henry did since Ed and I were smart enough to stay looking down during our accusation.

The funny point of Mafia, is when I was the cop, and investigated Victoria. She was an innocent, but during the daytime lynching I shouted, “I am the cop, I investigated Dustin, and I know he is mafia!” And everyone was on the verge of lynching me, but then for reasons unknown they decided to kill Dustin who was a civillian. I was hoping the doctor would save me from the mafia killing next round, but they didn’t <.< When I got killed, and revealed that I was the cop, everyone was just like, “Why would you do that!” I found it hilarious, that’s why hahahahaha.

After all that, my parents brought home some KFC for eveyone to eat, and I opened gifts. I got two dress shirts, to which Tejinder commented, “Now you can dress like Martin,” who did bring a similarly styled dress shirt haha. Tony, who could only come to drop off a gift, got me a really nice t-shirt haha. My brother got me a pack of deodorant, and Victoria got me a book of mind puzzlers and a drawing of Fire Emblem: The Shioken Star. I like it a lot, even though I’ve never beaten a Fire Emblem game haha. She used Oscar’s design for myself, and I don’t remember everyone else’s base, but Maritn, Victoria, Nahida, and Mai are in the picture as well. At least, that’s who I think are in there >.> “Together… We Ride!”

Bryan managed to get me a birthday card despite the super short notice, which beats what I got him for his birthday (nothing). Everything after that is mainly a blur haha, as people starting leaving. Dustin was last to leave again, but before he did, Victoria, Alex, Dustin, and I manage to throw down some Tales of Vesperia. It’s too bad we didn’t get to fight anything too challenging, but it was funny watching Victoria help Dustin figure out where he needed to go next. I do remember sometime around 11:20 PMish, I realized I was massively tired hahaha. I mean massively, drop dead tired. I managed to hang on and help Dustin and Andre pack up the 360 and the Rockband gear. We came close to last year’s 13 hr party, but this year’s was significantly denser in terms of fun hahahaha. Besides, a 12 hour party isn’t so bad, no matter what kind of party you compare it to :p

Timestamp – 9:53 PM

I wish I was strong as I think I am

*Sigh* This week, as with most vacations, really highlighted my insecurites. Procrastination, poor use of time, and the inablitiy to stay interested or complete anything are the usual suspects -and don’t get me wrong, they popped up- but also I truely felt my hollowness this week. I always knew in the back of my head that I wasn’t an extremely dedicated artist; I’ve all but stopped working with Movie Maker, Photoshop, and I haven’t written anything out side of school. But I thought I was better at helping others.

I won’t go into details out of respect, but a friend of mine was hurt, emotionally. Painfully. The situation was very dramatic. And even though I found out about what happened within a day, I found myself unable to say anything. I knew I needed to say something, send an email, call, leave a comment on the blog post, but I couldn’t think of anything. I had never felt so powerless. I wished it was like an anime and that all it would take to make things better was just a few words, some sage adages, or hilariously blunt advice. But real emotions aren’t fixed so easily. I couldn’t say anything. Not a goddamn thing.

A week later, I leave a comment on the post, saying that I know my words won’t help, but that I’d do anything to ease the pain. I made a speech about it in Speech class, about how I wear a mask, and make myself out to be an invincible juggernaught of optimism. That I like to be the one people come to for advice or stability. But when a friend needed it the most, I waited a week before saying anything. I just, well… Read the post title again.

Timestamp – 12:53 AM