Twice more, with feeling

Let's give this another shot, shall we?

I've been meaning to change things up a bit, and move the focus a bit from me ranting aimlessly to me taking pictures aimlessly and ranting about that. I won't erase the previous posts, but I'll be pretty much considering this the zero post from now on. That doesn't mean that I've forgotten about all those PuDS out there... You're all still on probation. Anyways, I haven't had a camera of my own in years, so now that I've got a little point-and-shoot Nikon, I need to make up for all those years I've spent not taking pics of every little insignificant thing I find. Keep in mind, this is for fun, so don't expect expert composition, masterful lighting, or any other poser photography dicksuckery.

I wanna begin with a note of nostalgia. When I was a young boy (after my father took me into the city), me and my neighbor used to play with his LEGOs day in and day out. His dad would always get him big, piece-laded sets and we would lay all the blocks out in our front yards and build anything that came to mind. Thanks to my (still) overactive imagination, epic starfighters and motherships and grand space operas soon began taking shape. LEGOs weren't the only construction equipment to our imaginations- does anyone remember K'nex? Or Zaks? Look them up if you're ready for a nice hit of nostalgia, or alternatively to see what you missed, you childhoodless heathen.

Anyways, as is always the case, as the years passed, the LEGOs were put away but never forgotten when video games came into our lives. Well, back in February, I decided to do a little Spring cleaning and lo and behold, look what I found:

My Lego/Zaks stash!

Upon seeing them, I very quickly started remembering how to put them back together and their individual stories... I felt myself turn 8 again.

This little mech has a beam sword and a shield, and vernier thrusters out back. Yes, even then I needed my fantasies to have practicality to them.

This would be the red mech's rival. Couldn't find his other arm....

F-15E Strike Eagle, because even as a young child, I knew that the Hornet sucks, and that the Eagle and the Tomcat are superior.

These two are one-person speeders, because speeders are awesome.

This whole mess is the inside of a large, square Millennium Falcon-type ship, what with powerful weapons and living quarters and stuff. Yes, I was a budding nerd even at that tender age. Those red and black dudes are grunts, with the little LEGO figures as the protagonists.

Yes, they are all very dusty, it's been years since they've seen the light of day. I'm in a dangerous position right now: my imagination and desire to play with LEGOs has only increased since I was a kid, and now I actually have the money to keep buying sets... You guys better learn to be careful of the past you dig up- it might end up costing you...

Disparate musings of one shafted by the TSA

Ok, so it took me a bit longer than a week. You guys oughta be used to it by now. In fact, you should check out my DeviantArt page- I was away for around nine MONTHS there. Yes, I'm the very definition of a lurker.

Obviously, a lot has happened in between, and I'd be hard-pressed to remember all of it. In fact, I can barely remember what I was doing before I logged in today. It's been a sleepy semester for me- went by very quickly, but at the same time it felt like it dragged on. Then again, that's how it usually feels, doesn't it? My friend is playing Yoshi's Island DS right beside me, and I hate him for it. With any luck, he will be stricken down by random act of nature, say, a stray piece of the ISS falls and knocks him out, freeing him of his DS duties so that I may abscond with the game. Yes, I said duties.

Oh, and about last time, I just wanted to mentioned that while perfectly understandable, there's a lot of pages that default to Spanish when I visit them, including Blogger. Everything computer-related just reads so very weird in Spanish- mostly because it seems to be written in European Spanish. American Spanish is to Spaniard Spanish what American English is to British English... That is to say, our Old World counterparts sound more... formal, even haughty... Which is funny, 'cause Spaniards are awesome at cursing people out.

I notice I'm veering off topic. Now I notice I have no topic whatsoever, so I'll look around the room for stuff to talk about- you know, for text padding. Ah! Mario Galaxy. You should play it- it's superb. So is Mario Strikers, for that matter- it's like Smash Bros. with a football in the middle. A real football, I mean- not a pigskin. I find it very hard to classify American Football as, well, football. Most of the time they're HOLDING the ball. They should call it American Handball. Or American Ovoid Brown Ball. Or Calvinball.

Speaking of ovoid balls, I am pretty much resigned to the fact that I am bound by a tenuous but resilient soul-link to people that like to speak up in theaters. Seriously, I can sit way up front in an empty theater, and the loudest person in the vicinity will sit right behind me. I mean, if only they made good jokes, but I've found the louder the person the lesser the wit. I'm sure there's some sort of math formula involved. You can tell when a loudmouth has negative wit- he'll start using the same joke over and over every 3 seconds, no matter what's on screen. He gets bonus points if he thinks nobody heard him so he repeats the joke, but louder.

And speaking of donkey shows, did you know that I need to get permission from the government to partake in flight training, all because I'm not a US Citizen? It's interesting how my 21 years of legal residency amount to a big, fat, ovoid zero. It's also interesting how I have to pay the TSA to run background checks on me. Oh, wait, it's not interesting- it's fucked up. EVERYBODY should get background checks, not just non-citizens. Just like you suspect me, you should suspect John J. Patriot from Austin, Texas.

TSA, what a bunch of PuDS.

But, I digress. Back on topic, I'm finding that drawing on MSPaint is unusually relaxing. Go fig.

Wait, that's not my topic... Ah, screw it, I'm gonna go draw.

Later!

Windows needs your permission to suck balls

How ya been, people? I disappeared for a couple of days, but such is the nature of a lurker. I warned Lola about me not being very social or committed at all to internet things, so this small hiatus should come as no surprise.

Anyways, as I write this, I'm setting up a computer my dad bought. It was pretty cheap, one, because it's an eMachine, two, it's a Pentium 4, already pretty ancient news in this world of multi-cored computers. Now, since Microsoft is dead-set on jamming, fisting, permeating, nay, donkey-punching Windows Vista into our collective rectum, this comparatively old, low-end, clearance-sale computer has it, even though it very probably shouldn't. It's the Vista Home Basic edition, which, aside from not including the much-hyped translucent version of the Aero theme, probably has as many features as, say, Windows 3.1.

So I set up the computer and start it up, an immediately notice that the image looks like crap on shit, because the refresh rate is higher than it should be. Good start. The EULA greets me, and tells me that everything I do will be notified to Microsoft via intrawebs, but that it won't contain information that identifies me (You know, other than the fact the information is being transmitted from my computer).

I'm glad they have a sense of humor when it comes to invasion of privacy. It's like a guy walking into the women's showers at the gym and going "Don't worry, I'm not here to look at your faces."

So, this spawn of ME and XP finally starts up. Well, it tries to. I wait for a while. I go drink a Coke. I organize some of my anime. Ah, there we go, it started. First things first- I gotta lower the refresh rate, because the image looks like a failed abortion. Right-click on the desktop and click on Preferences, renamed 'Personalize'. Hmm. Nothing... happens. The computer clicks rapidly, as if it were doing something incredibly strenuous. I wait a little more. I'm geting worried. This processor supposedly clocks as fast as mine, there's no reason for it to click for its life like this. I quickly open the Task Manager. Actually, I quickly move the mouse and issue the command- the Task Manager is not quick at ALL to appear.

Finally the poor thing opens up. 70 Running processes. No, wait. 72. What. The. Fuck.

This is why people build their own machines. The sheer amounts of pure shit that comes pre-packaged on startup on these store-bought bitches is staggering. There's 18 processes for McAfee alone! What the hell?! NAPSTER. Why does this thing COME with Napster? Why does it load it at Startup? Ten service hosts... GoogleDesktop, GoogleDesktopCrawler, GoogleDesktopIndex. Good god. Do the asshats that assemble the program packages for these things actually USE them? The load on the memory that all this useless crap causes is an amazing hindrance on performance.

Do you know when is it that I see more than 35 processes, and more than 5 icons on the tray? When I'm fixing computers laden with spyware and adware. Not when the computer is fresh out of the box. Unacceptable.

Let's forget this ugliness for a minute. Let's try out the Aero user interface. Let's see. The top menus are all gone. The status bar is 15 times bigger, the folder explorer is there, sort-of, and the icons are massive. There's a new bar below the navigation buttons, which I'm guessing is the replacement for the actual menus. The names for these seem rather ambiguous, like a Thai hooker. Is she a woman, or a tranny? I can't tell!

Just like the transition from 2000 to XP, Vista seeks to cater to the mouth-breathing, bottom-feeding, cattle-balling, banjo-plucking, PuDS-eating, Great Unwashed. It's been idiotized down to what I guess passes for intuitiveness down at Microsoft. Here's the problem though- Windows has always had a tiny share of the Operating System market. Somewhere around 154% of it. Everybody and their mom, brother, weird touchy uncle, grandma, etc, have used Windows for eons. People who grew up with Windows are gonna wonder where everything is this time around. I mean, everything has a different name and is under a different menu. You can try to make it look like older versions, but there's still a lot of unfamiliar shit that's bound to cause fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Now, there's this series of commercials with a laid-back dude and an awkward office dude, representing Macs and Windows respectively. A recent one shows Windows dude making conversation with Apple dude, and a big Men in Black thug behind the Windows dude. Every time Mac or Windows talk, the thug goes 'Apple just talked to you, allow or deny?', to which Windows dude has to reply 'Allow' to continue conversing. The point is Apple making fun of Vista's new security monitor. Well, it turns out, they were NOT exaggerating. I tried running MsConfig, to turn off the 70 processes, and then Windows got dark and a prompt appeared. "Windows needs your permission to continue."

'No fucking way', I thought.

"Fuck yeah." said Windows, reading my mind.

I then insalled the Vista-enabled versions of CCCP and Firefox, and got asked TWICE for permission. Basically, Windows is trying to protect me from me? Smart. Very smart. Oh, and you might say, "It's like a Firewall! After you get permission for all your stuff, it's all good :D"

Ha. Ha. Ha.

No.

The bitch keeps asking when you try to do the same things. Not cool at all. And, let's not forget that nothing works for it unless its basically pre-approved by Microsoft. Way to royally fuck anybody who wanted to upgrade and then find that NONE of their shit works.

Bah. Vista has worn me out. I was gonna talk about women. And Andrew. Pardon the redundancy. I'll catch ya laters (but not too much later)

Andrew, the Speedy Speed Boy

Today, Jessica, the sweet, sweet girl that blogs Jessbait, had a pic-a-nic at her house, and so she dragged me from my bed and to her house. We spent the day just hanging around, and photoshopping. Oh did we photoshop. Double chins, buck teeth and facial hair was added to otherwise unblemished faces. Gravity's effects on the female body were lessened to a good degree. A lot of pictures were taken and edited, much to the pleasure of the sometimes (always) nihilistic Jessie.

Andrew came in, 20 hours late, as usual, and then it became a party. Raquel and I watched with glee as they got into the jacuzzi and Jessica proceeded to predate sexually on poor Andrew. Fun stuff. They managed to soak us completely in the process, and we took pictures of Jessica's boobs in her swimsuit. It seems hard for her (Raquel and Andrew as well), to grasp the nuances of night-photographing. They made damn sure to ruin every picture by moving the second they saw the red-eye laser, as if the camera had finished taking a picture, even though I told them many times that night-shots take longer. But hey, nobody ever listens to the black guy.

Anyways, time came to leave, and I hitched a ride with Andrew. Now, you gotta understand, Jessica's urbanization is pretty much an enclosed megalopolis. The time it takes you to get from the next town to her urbanization is the same time it takes you to travel from the gate of the urbanization to her house. It's absurd. Now, knowing this, as we left, Andrew somehow believed that the first left turn he saw was the exit to the urbanization. Not so. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, everybody can make that mistake.

The problem was we were doing 60 when he realized in his head that maybe he should make that left turn. And like something out of Initial D, Andrew turned full left, skidding the car over the moss and gravel that covered the road.

Now, Puerto Rican roads are built with the drainage exposed, not under the road or covered with grates, which means that at intersections the road will dip some 20 feet down and up abruptly.

We still had excellent forward momentum as the car nose-dived into the drainage ditch (canyon), slamming the fairings and left wheel with hearty, crunchy sounds, like how your cereal should sound if you're not a PuDS. Then he realized that the exit is still 8 hours away, and so we had to turn back over the same drainage ditch, just to make sure that the car is messed up evenly on both sides underneath.

I went ahead and recreated the planview of Jessica's suburb from city records. The red line represents Andrew and me's journey.

This is a simple diagram of the incident. I'm certain we left a good chunk of tire on the road, as well as a good chunk of Andrew's soul.

The Brio didn't deserve that, Andrew.

The Puked Diarrhea Scabs Eaters

[EDIT: The HTML for this is killing me- I'll fix this ASAP]

[[EDIT: The HTML has utterly defeated me, at least for now. I've been trying to get a post breaker so that this incredibly long post would appear on its own page instead of the front page, but Blogger is being a total, complete whore. I'm considering moving to Wordpress, where all this would just be a simple button click, but nothing ever goes my way. I'll expand on this in my next post.]]

Some people....


So I've been running a word-of-mouth poll on that deep wound of a subject that Puked Diarrhea Scabs (hereon after PuDS) is to me. As I've explained to my friends, there's not that many things that make me gag, but PuDS and most any oatmeal (for its similar consistency to PuDS) will nauseate me. How something so vile could be ingested by otherwise seemingly normal people, I'll never know.

Anyways, I've talked about this with a number of my friends, most found the suggestion of letting cereal age in milk to be ludicrous. What saddened me was that there was more than one other person that actually liked consuming PuDS orally- I was too disgusted to actually pursue the reasoning behind such atrocious behavior...

Oh, and not only that, I got into this argument with Armando, the second of my so-called friends to reveal to me his sickening lifestyle choice-

Armando J Doval: You will never convince me that soggy cereal is anything less than awesome, no matter how hard you try.
GKeepah: I'm sorry dude, but that's the most horrible thing you could inflict orally to a human being. I'm 110% certain that the Geneva Conventions have banned soggy cereal since at the very least 1864. I bet the real horrors of the Battle of Solferino was soggy cereal
Armando J Doval: Some things just get better the more you let 'em break down. Sorta like ice cream. Who doesn't like periodically drinking the ice cream that melts in your cup?
Armando J Doval: It's like cooking in reverse.
GKeepah: Er... I prefer it in its original state, actually. In liquid form, it feels a bit loaded
Armando J Doval: Well, coming from someone who doesn't like soggy cereal, I guess I can't say I'm surprised. D:
GKeepah: And... Cooking really doesn't have a reverse now, does it?
Armando J Doval: Sure it does!
GKeepah: No, not really.
Armando J Doval: Yeah, it does D:
GKeepah: Dude. Will you think about this for a second?
Armando J Doval: Usually, cooking involves heating food to make it more fit for eating/more delicious.
Armando J Doval: So, it's opposite would be...letting it go back to room temperature to make it more delicious?
GKeepah: When you heat food, it changes physically and chemically. You can't really return to uncooked state something that was cooked, in other words, you can't reverse cooking.
Armando J Doval: You can reverse folding, even if the paper doesn't go back to its original (unwrinkled) state.
Armando J Doval: I mean, sure, it won't be perfectly flat anymore, but it won't be folded either.
GKeepah: Folding is not a chemical change through heat, now is it? That arguement is a logical fallacy.
Armando J Doval: No, but it's a process that can be reversed, yet doesn't result in the object returning to its original state.
GKeepah: One thing being true for something doesn't make it true for everything
Armando J Doval: You're missing the point. You can't define a process as not having an opposite just because its opposite doesn't return to object to its original state.
GKeepah: That's what the opposite is!
Armando J Doval: So you're saying unfold is not the opposite of fold?
GKeepah: I'd love to know what the hell that un' prefix is there for, then
Armando J Doval: Well, then, if it is, then it's alright for the paper to be wrinkled, right?
GKeepah: A buh?
GKeepah: Dude, where are you going with this?
GKeepah: Please establish for me how this paper arguement is relevant
Armando J Doval: Your argument is that cooking can't have an opposite because you can't return food to its original state, right?
GKeepah: Yes.
GKeepah: I said you can't reverse cooking, yes.
Armando J Doval: Then, folding can't have an opposite unless you can perfectly flatten the paper so that it returns to its original (i.e. smooth, unwrinkled) state.
Armando J Doval: But if you acknowledge the act of unfolding as the opposite of the act of folding, even if the paper doesn't return to the exact state as it once was...
Armando J Doval: Then cooking can have an opposite action, even if the food doesn't return exactly to its original state.
GKeepah: You can so return a paper to flatness.
Armando J Doval: The creases of the fold will remain. Unless you're a) some sort of Japanese origami master, or b) Noriko Readman, I kinda doubt that >.>
Armando J Doval: Ok, I'll give you a concrete example.
GKeepah: Make a fold on a piece of paper. Unfold it. Put it between two heavy books for a period of time. Lol flat. You're using semantics and an unrelated arguement to try to detract from an arguement you can't debate directly
Armando J Doval: Dude, you will NEVER get rid of that fold.
Armando J Doval: It's always going to stay there. It's a small change, and yes, you can iron it out quite a bit, but it's still not like a brand new sheet of paper.
Armando J Doval: I'll give you a concrete example.
GKeepah: Please do
Armando J Doval: When you cook a pizza, the cheese melts, and you could say it's in a liquid (or near-liquid state.)
Armando J Doval: If you let the pizza cool, the cheese will return to a mostly solid state, although it'll all have fused together.
Armando J Doval: You've returned the cheese to its solid state, and if you were to reheat the pizza, that would be considered cooking it once again, for you would be making it more fit for consumption through heating.
Armando J Doval: Of course, that cheese won't look exactly the same as it did in the beginning, but it's not hot nor liquid anymore, so you've undone the cooking process.
GKeepah: Cooking the cheese has changed its chemical composition. Cheese is a bad example BECAUSE of how much cheese changes. Take mozzarella cheese from the fridge. Heat half of it to melting point in a microwave, then put it back in the fridge until it is as cool as the uncooked half. Taste it. If you can't tell the difference in texture, taste and consistency, then you're inserting it in the wrong orifice in your person
Armando J Doval: Alright. So it's not perfectly analogous since it involves a physical change. However, that's a matter of the degree to which you want to submit it to change.
Armando J Doval: I could argue that if you were to fold the paper, say, 100 times, and then unfold it, the paper would be that much more different from its original state.
GKeepah: Which is why I bothered to mention the chemical change that occurs, instead of just the physical one
Armando J Doval: Hm. Are you sure melting cheese consitutes a chemical change (assuming you don't burn it,) though?
GKeepah: Yes, I'm 100% certain
Armando J Doval: Ok. It WAS a bad analogy. But surely there are things that undergo chemical change if you freeze them, as well?
GKeepah: That's right. And you can't reverse what happened to them either. Unfreezing will cool it down, but the damage is done
Armando J Doval: But defrosting/unfreezing can still be considered the opposite of freezing.
GKeepah: Yes, but it's not the truly a reverse, because you've permanently changed it
GKeepah: It's why cryogenesis is not yet workable
GKeepah: You freeze a dude, and when you unfreeze him, he kinda... cracks and chips, like ice usually does
Armando J Doval: lol
Armando J Doval: Alright, I won't argue that it's a complete reverse.
Armando J Doval: But it's still the opposite action, even though you failed to reverse it totally.
GKeepah: I know. But I was arguing for reversing cooking, which was the word you used
Armando J Doval: Your initial argument was that it couldn't have an opposite, not that it couldn't be reversed, though.
GKeepah: Well, you brought in the paper thing and started using opposite as synonym to reverse
Armando J Doval: Nah, I was trying to use the paper as an example of an action whose opposite doesn't completely reverse its effects (i.e. unfolded paper stays wrinkled.) I was trying to argue that they don't have to be synonymous.
GKeepah: It had the total opposite effect, no pun intended
Armando J Doval: Yeah, I noticed ^^;


And the sad part is, this is one of our lighter, shorter arguments. Now, let's tally things up among people I've asked-

The Sexy Side of Good and Justice

Yamil, Tammy, Raquel, Andrew, Zeraphil, Bruno, and me.
Blessed are those that eat their cereal crunchy, for they shall inherit the Earth.

The PuDS Ingesters

Their ringleader, Lola; Armando (possibly worse, as he also likes melted ice cream. Ugh.), Apox, Melissa... And Pikkon says he likes it 'semi-soggy'- smells like a cop-out to me.


There, just like Stephen Colbert would do, I have called out the offending parties. I'm hurt, as I thought these people could do no wrong (well, ok, I'm 100% certain that Armando, Apox and Pikkon most certainly could, have, and will do), but then they go and drop this bomb on me. I've known Apox for 16 years! How would you feel if your brother stabbed you in the back and killed your family, at least symbolically through PuDS?

This issue is far from settled- which side are YOU on?

PS: Armando, it's YOMIKO Readman. Noriko is from Gunbuster.

Soggy is the cereal of my discontent

And... back.

So, what's up with taking 12 plastic cups and making a championship tournament out of STACKING them? Seriously, that must get old by what, the second time? I mean, how many variations can you actually think of that involve stacking 12 cups more than one cup high? There's gotta be a better way to exercise you hand-eye coordination... Masturbation, maybe? How about competitive Archery? That's a pretty fun sport. And uh, it's an actual sport too. Hell, I think masturbation is more of a sport than cup stacking. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that masturbation will make it into the Olympics before cup stacking. Seriously, man... Cup stacking?

Anyways, I've pretty much spent the entire day just dicking around, and playing Age of Mythology with a good friend of mine. We realized how much we suck when the computer players, on Titan, would so incredibly easy out-Age us and smother us to death like you would do an unwanted child.
Yes, we suck that much. Still fun as hell.

Me and my friends have been doing these AOM matches from night til morning every few days, I'm sure we've all lost a couple of years worth of college thanks to it. We've been LANning it, one of my friends tried it online and came back battle-scarred. Apparently, we suck and blow compared to real players. Go fig.

Talking to Lola right now, the one that recommended I start blogging, and here's what she told me to say, word for word:

say i'm the coolest girl alive and should be made a goddess and people have to sacrifice their money and buy me a jeep

And there we go, I've used the quote button instead of actually using "", I feel lazier already. Also, although it has its moments, Mind of Mencia will never be as awesome as Chappelle's Show... That show was pure, pure genius. There's nothing quite as awesome as Charlie Murphy's stories, and of course, the Wayne Brady skit... "Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?"
Brilliant.

Tom DeLonge is on Larry King. Cool. AVA ftw.

Anyways, I realize that I've had this window open ALL day and have just come back to write on in every few hours, as if you couldn't tell by the disconnected, slightly bent (read: psychotic) flow of the post.

Anyways, I'm checking out my friend's blog, a blog he had completely neglected to mention he had (some friend the bastard is), and there I find an excellent post about soggy cereal . Now, what saddened me was Lola's reply, coming to you in Technicolor Quote

I like Quaker Cinnamon Squares and I absolutely hate when my cereal is CRUNCHY! You have to let it soak in milk (preferibly if you have milk with cereal instead of cereal with milk) and let it ablandate.

I feel I must say something about this. Soggy cereal is the most horrible thing that could happen to you in the morning. Waking up to ten other guys in your bed, and you yourself stuck to the wall in dried man-spooge, most of it coming out of various orifices in your body, as you take a look around the room and notice that a lot of stuff is missing from your desk, and has made its way up your anal cavity, does not even come close to as bad a morning as soggy cereal makes. It's like you puked diarrhea in your bowl, and your emesis forms soggy scabs that you are about to re-ingest for some ungodly reason. Had man wanted cereal to be soggy, he would have just sold it already pre-soaked in milk, not dry inside a box sold by weight, not by contents. It's simple, really- there's solid food- like, cereal, there's gaseous food, like Coke, there's liquid food, like... Coke, and there's plasma-state food, like flan. Notice that there's no state of matter called 'Puked diarrhea scabs' state... And for good reason, too.

But hey, if you people like food to have the consistency of something that is forcefully expelled from your body because it rejects on account of it being harmful to it, be my guests...

Sick weirdoes.