"Gee, Pop, that might be some dead guy's spirit." "All the more reason to get it off me!"
I realize that now when I have an interview and people ask "How many peoples you have managed/led in a group?" I can answer "Something on the order of 100." I mean, really, the kids managed themselves at their games once they got all set up, but you don't think they needed me to resolve disputes, answer questions and do everything else under the sun? Also, every freaking staff member who participated in set-up/tear down or anything else had to come to me. "What do you want us to do?" was asked even by the Principal. Srsly. Now I actually answer that bleedin', pesky question without sounding totally pathetic.
Grades are in. Kind of a bleh semester.
GEOG 201 Intro to Geography: B-
BIOL 479 Emerging Infectious Diseases: B+
BIOL 315 Limnology: B-
COMM 103 Public Speaking: B+
I was hoping for an A in Public Speaking... alas. I thought I was going to get a C or worse in Geography. I missed so many days of that class... out of three assignments, I didn't do one of them, and the other two were both one week late. I must have kicked ass on what I DID turn in, and the Final. The Final was so easy it was frightening.
There is something off about Mario Kart Wii. I've found the Time Trials to be much more enjoyable than the Grand Prix. I have 22 out of 32 Expert Staff Ghosts unlocked. The only one I seriously don't think I'll be able to unlock is Rainbow Road... that level is just pure evil. Srsly. Alas, I only need 24 to get a certain kart/bike. 32 gets you an alternate outfit for your Mii. I was having trouble figuring out why some levels wouldn't give me the Expert Ghost, even when I beat the Staff Ghost. It turns out you have to beat the Staff Ghost by almost 10 seconds. I have been dominating the levels with Rosalina on the Flame Runner bike... expert bike, my codlings. I'm just completely confident in the bike's drifting ability, the only problem is that when it gets stopped it takes forever to get back up to speed. That, and Rosalina has a Luna following her who feels the need to shriek everytime you boost. Thankfully, I've learned to tune it out.
I've been wondering why Time Trial is so much more enjoyable than Grand Prix. It's fairly easy; in TT, you get more or less free reign of the courses, even though you have a time limit to beat. In GP, you constantly have other CPUs bouncing you around and raping you with items. It's much worse than it has ever been. They need to get rid of the damn blue shells. They have a cool effect, but they're useless to the people who use them. And when you're in the lead, you can expect up to 5 per lap to be rammed up your ass, ruining your lead and the entire race. They also need to remove the fucking POW Block. You can also expect 20298 of these per lap. They cause EVERYONE to spin out, so they're more annoying than anything. Blimey. And in GP, I'm trying to get a rating of * or better to unlock things, so the constant item rape you experience ruins your rating, even if you claw your way back to first. It's still fun, but could we PLEASE cut back on the computer's cheapness.
The first dream happened after the whole shebang last Monday. I was outside the Walgreens over near the 46th street light rail station with a number of the kids who had showed up to work at the Earth Day festival. Apparently, I was there with them waiting for some teachers to take them to Target so they could complete surveys for employees of Target. While we were waiting, they somehow had access to my Itunes on a computer, so they were listening to various songs on it. The only one I remember was "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada. A bit later, some teacher showed up and took them to Target. Since when do sixth graders listen to Cascada?
After this dream, I was wandering in some strange system of alleys, carrying a R.Y.N.O., looking out for evil robots and such. At one point, I entered a store and saw a television playing something, so I went over to investigate. I hear a noise behind me, and a Lombax has entered the store. He looked terrified, but he saw me and said something like "Oh thank god you're here!" He rushed towards me, and I was trying to comfort him and calm him down. He also wanted me to pet him, as he had just been through some scary things. He looked exactly like Ratchet, only younger. Mawwww... This may go back to that whole fluffy thing I posted after xmas... that no one paid any attention to. So, flipopo bagooola baba yabba!
The next dream involved the Earth Day kids again, only this time I was back at the volunteer tent... playing Mario Karts DS. The kids kept running up to me and requesting that I do impossible things-like complete a 30 second lap on Rainbow Road, or grab a blue shell while in the lead-as this was somehow conductive to their table's activity. This one didn't really go anywhere, so bugger me what the point was.
Next, cue the setting of... my house. For some reason, there was a Werewolf dude, some sort of Goth Witch, and some other evil type lurking around outside who were obviously trying to curse me. You know the type, if you see them or look into their eyes, they utter a curse and then you die horribly. I was scurrying around the house trying to close all the blinds so they couldn't eat my soul. There was some other expose, like viewing a house in the middle of a foggy forest and some spiel about "They have stolen over 9000 souls this way", but this proves I've seen too many commercials for movies featuring soul-stealing bogies. You can stop now, Hollywood.
In the same dream, I had gone into the kitchen. I noticed one of my teeth was loose, so I pulled it out. The tooth was about twice the size of my fist now, and it had a HUGE cavity in it. Also, it had split in half. Then I went into the back room, where some nurse type was telling me I needed to have a root canal. I told her I didn't want one, I was fine without this tooth. She insisted, as apparently this tooth was very important. Then she had me sit while she tested some huge steel bolt on the spot where my tooth had been. And I think she was going to do it right then and there. o_o Nevermind the fact that the back room has no curtains, and that regular doors can stop a Werewolf/Witch, but do nothing to keep nurses out. That's totally not how root canal surgery is done. It's still horrifying, but...
The next few all happened Thursday night. The first; there was a bunch of white supremacists/Nazi officials going around searching for black people. They were going to round them up and... I never found out what they were going to do with them. My family was trying to flee the city, and we were loading up our car. My children were with me, and my youngest was a girl I had with a black woman, so she was in danger. Therefore, we colored on her face with crayons to try and make her look Korean. It worked, or so we thought. We were caught in the driveway and she was taken. Dream or no, this was still painful. Like any concerned parent should do, I immediately caused a royal scene; swearing, throwing things and threatening the "Racist pieces of shit" who were doing this. So some skinny asshole in a zoot suit and sunglasses came over and told me to can it, or they'd put me on official report to their Nazi overlords. So I proceeded to knock the bejeezus out of him. With three punches.
Scene shift, the car's gone from the driveway, the Nazi types have gone, and now a bunch of people are setting up a tent for some weird guy dressed in Union attire. Apparently, they're going to set up a Civil War headquarters to re-enact a scene. This scene took place next to the Virginia River, which has magically appeared in our alley. Nothing beats the majesty of a river that's shrunk down enough to flow down a 15 foot wide city alley with room to spare, eh? Still, I'm more concerned with what happened to my car... and my children. Goddamn Nazis...
Now shift scenes again, and everyone's in a panic because there's a storm on the way. This is no ordinary storm, it is a storm of built up magic forces in the atmosphere, and there's potential for huge damages. I was at the Target on Lake Street trying to get supplies; food and such so we (some different family of mine) could weather the storm. As I was trying to grab junky foods for us, the aisles were... shifting. Like they were alive. They were shrinking and flexing around, which was apparently a side effect of the storm. I grabbed what I could, then at check-out spent about $99 out of my IRL bank balance ($None of your fucking business). I rushed home to find my kids playing outside, even as a huge purpley cyclone thing could be seen in the clouds just a few miles away. I told them to get inside, then was trying to secure these huge garbage dumpsters that were in the street. Cut to blackness, it's a few days later and I'm waking up in the basement. I go upstairs and everyone's fine. The storm passed. If the magical storm didn't pwn our house... I'm still not sure why everyone was shitting a brick over this storm.
Last night was rather bizarre as well. I was out in my yard, chasing around a tiny raccoon-like beast that kept hiding in a small crawl space in the foundation. I went inside to get treats for it, and it came out, sniffed the treats, then took them and perched on my shoulder to eat them. I took the little beast inside, and suddenly he turned into a kid. I apparently had freed him from a curse of some kind. I was trying to get him to eat something, as he told me he was hungry, but he was having too much fun climbing on the furniture. ...wut?
Because of that dream about the root canal, and one of my friends having to suffer through such a thing, of course I needed to look it up IRL. Oh sweet merciful jesus... why did I do that? Drills... files extracting pulp... drilling down to the root... *dies* Wiki argues that it's now a relatively painless procedure when done properly. "Relatively... when done properly..." Ooh yeah, I likes me them odds, especially when it comes to DRILLING MY TEETH OPEN AND EXTRACTING THE DELICIOUS GOO INSIDE. Thank bob I don't have to have one... and if I did, I would not submit until they put me under with vast amounts of thorazine.
"Delicious bunneh, may I taste you?" I've noticed that the Shiva bunnehs are sparkly when I photo them. I think it's because they inherited their mother's fur... Shiva has shiny, glossy fur. There's a specific word for this, but I can't remember it. That makes her very difficult to photograph up close.
Seven of them were clustered together on the box, so I had to take a picture.
And you can't see him very well, but this one's mine. The No Stripey bunneh. MINE.
Viperinabox!
As you can see, $60 doesn't get you a big model. However, the fuselage piece is VERY nicely detailed and scribed, with a minimum of flash.
If you look closely, you can see the panel lines and such. One of the pointy tips on the end of the wings broke off, but it's still in the bag so I can probably salvage it. I remind you that this IS a proper 1/72nd scale model... I just have to find a way to keep Gildy from trying to eat it.
I was going to show you my masterpiece, but someone threw it away before I could photograph it. Basically, I had a tray lined with aluminum foil. Several plastic pudding type cups were on it, to serve as molds for the crayons I spent all last weekend melting and re-forging. I let quite a bit of white wax sit too long, and then attempted to pour it into the cups on the tray. After the third one was poured, the first two melted and poured their wax everywhere, also melting the remainder of the cups. At least, all but two. The next day, the wax mess had hardened with the melted and unmelted cups still in it, and it formed a nice little tray of its own. I called it... "Melted Wax Miscarriage" or in a more proper artsy term: "The Commercialism of Man's Soul Tormented by Non-Being". Yeah. I'm sure if I had brought the piece of crap down to the Walker Art Center or summat the yuppies would have flocked around it. Bloody imbeciles.
So far, Venture Bros has me impressed. And here I've had it for over a year... unwatched. Blimey.
And of course I had stuff I needed to do today, so they don't wait for me. Dammit...
Edit: Somehow, in trying to improve my GP ratings in 50cc earlier, I managed to get through Rainbow Road without falling off once. Huh.
Grades are in. Kind of a bleh semester.
GEOG 201 Intro to Geography: B-
BIOL 479 Emerging Infectious Diseases: B+
BIOL 315 Limnology: B-
COMM 103 Public Speaking: B+
I was hoping for an A in Public Speaking... alas. I thought I was going to get a C or worse in Geography. I missed so many days of that class... out of three assignments, I didn't do one of them, and the other two were both one week late. I must have kicked ass on what I DID turn in, and the Final. The Final was so easy it was frightening.
There is something off about Mario Kart Wii. I've found the Time Trials to be much more enjoyable than the Grand Prix. I have 22 out of 32 Expert Staff Ghosts unlocked. The only one I seriously don't think I'll be able to unlock is Rainbow Road... that level is just pure evil. Srsly. Alas, I only need 24 to get a certain kart/bike. 32 gets you an alternate outfit for your Mii. I was having trouble figuring out why some levels wouldn't give me the Expert Ghost, even when I beat the Staff Ghost. It turns out you have to beat the Staff Ghost by almost 10 seconds. I have been dominating the levels with Rosalina on the Flame Runner bike... expert bike, my codlings. I'm just completely confident in the bike's drifting ability, the only problem is that when it gets stopped it takes forever to get back up to speed. That, and Rosalina has a Luna following her who feels the need to shriek everytime you boost. Thankfully, I've learned to tune it out.
I've been wondering why Time Trial is so much more enjoyable than Grand Prix. It's fairly easy; in TT, you get more or less free reign of the courses, even though you have a time limit to beat. In GP, you constantly have other CPUs bouncing you around and raping you with items. It's much worse than it has ever been. They need to get rid of the damn blue shells. They have a cool effect, but they're useless to the people who use them. And when you're in the lead, you can expect up to 5 per lap to be rammed up your ass, ruining your lead and the entire race. They also need to remove the fucking POW Block. You can also expect 20298 of these per lap. They cause EVERYONE to spin out, so they're more annoying than anything. Blimey. And in GP, I'm trying to get a rating of * or better to unlock things, so the constant item rape you experience ruins your rating, even if you claw your way back to first. It's still fun, but could we PLEASE cut back on the computer's cheapness.
The first dream happened after the whole shebang last Monday. I was outside the Walgreens over near the 46th street light rail station with a number of the kids who had showed up to work at the Earth Day festival. Apparently, I was there with them waiting for some teachers to take them to Target so they could complete surveys for employees of Target. While we were waiting, they somehow had access to my Itunes on a computer, so they were listening to various songs on it. The only one I remember was "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada. A bit later, some teacher showed up and took them to Target. Since when do sixth graders listen to Cascada?
After this dream, I was wandering in some strange system of alleys, carrying a R.Y.N.O., looking out for evil robots and such. At one point, I entered a store and saw a television playing something, so I went over to investigate. I hear a noise behind me, and a Lombax has entered the store. He looked terrified, but he saw me and said something like "Oh thank god you're here!" He rushed towards me, and I was trying to comfort him and calm him down. He also wanted me to pet him, as he had just been through some scary things. He looked exactly like Ratchet, only younger. Mawwww... This may go back to that whole fluffy thing I posted after xmas... that no one paid any attention to. So, flipopo bagooola baba yabba!
The next dream involved the Earth Day kids again, only this time I was back at the volunteer tent... playing Mario Karts DS. The kids kept running up to me and requesting that I do impossible things-like complete a 30 second lap on Rainbow Road, or grab a blue shell while in the lead-as this was somehow conductive to their table's activity. This one didn't really go anywhere, so bugger me what the point was.
Next, cue the setting of... my house. For some reason, there was a Werewolf dude, some sort of Goth Witch, and some other evil type lurking around outside who were obviously trying to curse me. You know the type, if you see them or look into their eyes, they utter a curse and then you die horribly. I was scurrying around the house trying to close all the blinds so they couldn't eat my soul. There was some other expose, like viewing a house in the middle of a foggy forest and some spiel about "They have stolen over 9000 souls this way", but this proves I've seen too many commercials for movies featuring soul-stealing bogies. You can stop now, Hollywood.
In the same dream, I had gone into the kitchen. I noticed one of my teeth was loose, so I pulled it out. The tooth was about twice the size of my fist now, and it had a HUGE cavity in it. Also, it had split in half. Then I went into the back room, where some nurse type was telling me I needed to have a root canal. I told her I didn't want one, I was fine without this tooth. She insisted, as apparently this tooth was very important. Then she had me sit while she tested some huge steel bolt on the spot where my tooth had been. And I think she was going to do it right then and there. o_o Nevermind the fact that the back room has no curtains, and that regular doors can stop a Werewolf/Witch, but do nothing to keep nurses out. That's totally not how root canal surgery is done. It's still horrifying, but...
The next few all happened Thursday night. The first; there was a bunch of white supremacists/Nazi officials going around searching for black people. They were going to round them up and... I never found out what they were going to do with them. My family was trying to flee the city, and we were loading up our car. My children were with me, and my youngest was a girl I had with a black woman, so she was in danger. Therefore, we colored on her face with crayons to try and make her look Korean. It worked, or so we thought. We were caught in the driveway and she was taken. Dream or no, this was still painful. Like any concerned parent should do, I immediately caused a royal scene; swearing, throwing things and threatening the "Racist pieces of shit" who were doing this. So some skinny asshole in a zoot suit and sunglasses came over and told me to can it, or they'd put me on official report to their Nazi overlords. So I proceeded to knock the bejeezus out of him. With three punches.
Scene shift, the car's gone from the driveway, the Nazi types have gone, and now a bunch of people are setting up a tent for some weird guy dressed in Union attire. Apparently, they're going to set up a Civil War headquarters to re-enact a scene. This scene took place next to the Virginia River, which has magically appeared in our alley. Nothing beats the majesty of a river that's shrunk down enough to flow down a 15 foot wide city alley with room to spare, eh? Still, I'm more concerned with what happened to my car... and my children. Goddamn Nazis...
Now shift scenes again, and everyone's in a panic because there's a storm on the way. This is no ordinary storm, it is a storm of built up magic forces in the atmosphere, and there's potential for huge damages. I was at the Target on Lake Street trying to get supplies; food and such so we (some different family of mine) could weather the storm. As I was trying to grab junky foods for us, the aisles were... shifting. Like they were alive. They were shrinking and flexing around, which was apparently a side effect of the storm. I grabbed what I could, then at check-out spent about $99 out of my IRL bank balance ($None of your fucking business). I rushed home to find my kids playing outside, even as a huge purpley cyclone thing could be seen in the clouds just a few miles away. I told them to get inside, then was trying to secure these huge garbage dumpsters that were in the street. Cut to blackness, it's a few days later and I'm waking up in the basement. I go upstairs and everyone's fine. The storm passed. If the magical storm didn't pwn our house... I'm still not sure why everyone was shitting a brick over this storm.
Last night was rather bizarre as well. I was out in my yard, chasing around a tiny raccoon-like beast that kept hiding in a small crawl space in the foundation. I went inside to get treats for it, and it came out, sniffed the treats, then took them and perched on my shoulder to eat them. I took the little beast inside, and suddenly he turned into a kid. I apparently had freed him from a curse of some kind. I was trying to get him to eat something, as he told me he was hungry, but he was having too much fun climbing on the furniture. ...wut?
Because of that dream about the root canal, and one of my friends having to suffer through such a thing, of course I needed to look it up IRL. Oh sweet merciful jesus... why did I do that? Drills... files extracting pulp... drilling down to the root... *dies* Wiki argues that it's now a relatively painless procedure when done properly. "Relatively... when done properly..." Ooh yeah, I likes me them odds, especially when it comes to DRILLING MY TEETH OPEN AND EXTRACTING THE DELICIOUS GOO INSIDE. Thank bob I don't have to have one... and if I did, I would not submit until they put me under with vast amounts of thorazine.
"Delicious bunneh, may I taste you?" I've noticed that the Shiva bunnehs are sparkly when I photo them. I think it's because they inherited their mother's fur... Shiva has shiny, glossy fur. There's a specific word for this, but I can't remember it. That makes her very difficult to photograph up close.
Seven of them were clustered together on the box, so I had to take a picture.
And you can't see him very well, but this one's mine. The No Stripey bunneh. MINE.
Viperinabox!
As you can see, $60 doesn't get you a big model. However, the fuselage piece is VERY nicely detailed and scribed, with a minimum of flash.
If you look closely, you can see the panel lines and such. One of the pointy tips on the end of the wings broke off, but it's still in the bag so I can probably salvage it. I remind you that this IS a proper 1/72nd scale model... I just have to find a way to keep Gildy from trying to eat it.
I was going to show you my masterpiece, but someone threw it away before I could photograph it. Basically, I had a tray lined with aluminum foil. Several plastic pudding type cups were on it, to serve as molds for the crayons I spent all last weekend melting and re-forging. I let quite a bit of white wax sit too long, and then attempted to pour it into the cups on the tray. After the third one was poured, the first two melted and poured their wax everywhere, also melting the remainder of the cups. At least, all but two. The next day, the wax mess had hardened with the melted and unmelted cups still in it, and it formed a nice little tray of its own. I called it... "Melted Wax Miscarriage" or in a more proper artsy term: "The Commercialism of Man's Soul Tormented by Non-Being". Yeah. I'm sure if I had brought the piece of crap down to the Walker Art Center or summat the yuppies would have flocked around it. Bloody imbeciles.
So far, Venture Bros has me impressed. And here I've had it for over a year... unwatched. Blimey.
And of course I had stuff I needed to do today, so they don't wait for me. Dammit...
Edit: Somehow, in trying to improve my GP ratings in 50cc earlier, I managed to get through Rainbow Road without falling off once. Huh.