I swear to god this guy who drives a Suburban somewhere in New Orleans uses maple syrup and sausage in his engine somewhere. I have this 15 min walk from where I park to work everyday. Today I pass in front of the sausage Suburban and now I want breakfast. I never eat breakfast. It smelled good.

The 15 to 20 min walk to work isn’t so bad, but that on top of a 40 min drive kind of blows. I also do pretty much everything in the morning, like feed the dogs, take them out, feed the birds, wake up my wife, and get my lunch… I have learned to do this all by myself or they may not happen or I will be late if my wife and I are carpooling.

Speaking about my wife, she is the reason that this entry is friends only. I don’t really have a lot of “real” friends. There are a few people who I hang out with once or twice a month (at the most) who I would call friends, but no one I can just bitch to and will have them listen. Wow I sound like … a girl.

It has been like this for the last 5 years, so I am use to it.

WWNO (my local NPR radio station) is having their fall members drive for donations. I really should donate as I probably listen to NPR for 5 to 15 hours a week. Maybe I will stop being a cheap skate and donate $50 this week.

Normally I just drink coffee in the morning. It keeps my heart rate up, but it never seems to wake me up any more. I don’t think I really need breakfast. Damn Suburban.

So last night I got home from work and put the YOGO in the freezer. Now I had to stop for this YOGO for my wife. She is on fall break (2 days, or a 4 day weekend, however you want to look at it) and was not leaving the house yesterday. She told me she was going to clean up up stairs, what ever.

I went too far.

Backing up, at work I was having a silly day. I told a co-worker that she stole my copier right from under my nose. She stuck her tongue out at me, so I called her ugly. I then saved myself by adding that she doesn’t have to be so ugly about dealing with me calling her a thief.

Yea, so I told my wife this on the phone. All of a sudden I am a “High School kid flirting with girls.” I can’t make this up; I did not say these words. I gave her shit and asked why she even said that. “I have been thinking that you’re flirting with her for a while!”
“What? Why?”
“The way that I have seen you acting with her.”
“… you have never seen me with her for longer than 5 min at once.”
“It is the way you talk about her and you are with her. You need to be more professional at work!”
“…”

I hung up the phone on her at this point. There were a few reasons for it, only one of which that I was trying to remain professional at work. I wanted to, in front of all my co-workers, start shouting at her. I wanted to put my head into the phone and come out the other side like in a cartoon and slap her. I am not normally too violent. Also because her accusations were horribly inaccurate.

She called back right away. I was not ready to talk.

I hung up on her right away, never said a word. Well it could have been official business, who gives a fuck.

She called back a min later:

“Why did you hang up on me?”
“Why did you say that shit?”
”Because it is true!”
”Yes, for the total of 10 minutes that you have EVER seen me and Kerry together we probably looked like we were having a hard time keeping our clothes on while in the same vicinity or some shit HUH!?”
“Look, I am just saying that while you’re at work you need to be more professional and stop acting like a high school kid flirting.”

I feel like Zack from “Saved by the Bell”. First off, my wife has been into my office about 2 times for about 5 min each. As I think you all know I am in the military. They have this way of making you feel great about the job you do by ranking you on a 1 – 7 scale (7 being the best) in about 30 categories. This pretty much rates how “professional” you are. Let me also just state that a 7 is close to impossible to get, as is a 1. The scale is really 2 – 6 and 4 is considered above average … I need a roll eye emoicon. Needless to say that I just got marked about 2 weeks ago and had only one 4 and the rest were 5’s and 6’s. My job thinks that I am professional, but my wife is the real authority behind this don’t ya know?

I proceeded to tell her she has no idea what she is talking about. The only stories that I tell her are the silly/funny/interesting ones; she has no idea what goes on 98% of the time at work. I got some bullshit line about how it sounds like I am Kerry’s shoulder to cry on. All I do is listen to her complain about her husband… sometimes.

What. The. Fuck. Evar.

So even after a few hours of Sara being a total bitch to me she still called me every 45 min asking me to do something for her. When she asked me to stop at the Asian-mart to get YOGO I confronted her about why she was being a bitch. See above conversation and move it forward in time about 3 hours to get an idea of what happen.

I am home now, YOGO is in the freezer, I go out to smoke a cig while getting the mail. I run into my wife walking back from the mailbox, mail in hand… with my neighbor at her side laughing. Today must not have been to big of a thing to her. We get home and decide on a movie.

Side-note: We currently have over 10 movies to watch, 5 of them are rented.

She decides on watching “Welcome to Mooseport”. I really had no desire to watch this as I knew it would not be my style of humor, but it was better than sitting through “Hildalgo”. After 22 min Sara remembers she hated Gene Hackman and this movie is not really funny.

O.K.

So I had put “Ichi the Killer” (if anyone knows, does Ichi = 1 in Japanese?) on my Net Flix list and it was at the house. I remembered reading that it was a pretty violent shock kind of movie with good directing and imagery. Well I only made it through 20 min of this movie. Notice a pattern? Well this time it was for other reasons, Sara thought she was going to throw up. She really hates rape scenes in movies, and this one started out with one. It took me 3 times to get her to finish “A Clockwork Orange”. Oh well, she is getting home late tonight so I will just finish it then.

Next was “City of God”. A sort of docu-drama kind of movie, I recalled it being recommended from a few people so I put it on my Net Flix list as well. Take a guess? That is right seven minutes. Then some kid knocks on the door trying to sell his wares. My neighbor is out front working on Halloween decorations, Sara offers him our help (not like I wanted to FINISH a movie tonight, just watch them). I am done at close to 9:45pm so if I want to get any sleep I should not finish a 2h10m movie I am only 7 min into. Sara said we should help my neighbor so I blame this all on her.

IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT YOUR LIFE IS NOT WORKING 100%
GET OFF MY BACK AND STOP TRYING TO BRING ME DOWN WITH YOUR DEPRESSION!

So your health is not at its peak, neither is mine. You’re ahead of the game, you quit smoking and I can’t. You have a 4.0 and got accepted into your nursing school of choice. So you have a few health problems, we are FINE.

Yea, I am just going to wait it out. Normally she knows she is being a bitch, but won’t admit it for a while. See, I am trying to keep things in a positive spin so I tell my wife about the silly things at work and what happens? It really fukin backfires on me.

I am going to go see if anywhere is still serving breakfast. I think I want something with out maple syrup just to spite that bastard in the Suburban.

Well, I don’t know how I really feel right now. I had a nice relaxing weekend camping out in MS. Unfortunately this ate up all of my free time this weekend and I did not get a few things accomplished that I was really hoping to for TGQ.

Today I find out that my wife has an ovarian cyst. Her reproductive organs are… not right. I did want to have a kid in the future, but I guess there is a chance she can become infertile.

I got Mario vs Donkey Kong for the SP which is pretty fun, but I am pretty sure once I beat it I will never touch it again.

Shaolin Soccer: It was pretty good. I watched the Chinese version (the US version was cut by 20 min, but I don’t know what was cut). The subtitles Miramax did were as bad as a bootleg, seriously. It was a really fun and funny movie. 3 out of 4 stars.

I don’t know what is going on, but I can’t seem to do anything today. I am just slowly reading through forum threads hoping that the day ends and I can go home. I woke up and wandered around in a daze through my house. After I let the dog out I went to the bathroom to take a shower, but somehow fell asleep on the bathroom floor. Today has been strange.

I am nervous about a few things, and I just think that when I have the whole TGQ rolling a little better I can have some focus. Speaking of TGQ I am no longer banned from my site at work, which makes me wonder why I could not access it all last week…

I need to put together my mission statement.

I am doing it. The idea has been brewing for a while, but I want another option out there. A quarterly gaming publication. No numbers allowed. No system or topic taboo. I want everything to be heavily opinionated and I want depth damnit.

The problem: I cannot do this alone. I know a bunch of people who can write, but I just know you all, not know-know you. So I am asking for interest. I will be willing to do just about everything for this but I can’t write the whole thing myself. If you’re interested in helping on this project please let me know.

For those interested here is what I am thinking; in depth articles on gaming that are at least 2000 words. No number grading system, plot analysis, editorials, strategy, score system breakdowns, genre discussion. Currently I have a small group of people (including a copy editor, artist, comic strip, and writers) but am looking for more help still.

I would like to get the ball rolling with this to have the first .pdf available by March next year at the latest with an aimed release of January. I can’t really offer to pay, but I will set up a cafepress account with options to buy with profit going to web space first, and then spread out to everyone else. Based on the first issue I will gauge if a real printing would possibly work.

Any questions/comments/concerns are very welcome for this project.

So where am I going with this you may be asking, well I am not sure yet. Anyways, I have tried to work for game review sites for the past 4 years or so. Every time something seems to go wrong (the site
either; shuts down, never starts or it falls apart). Every time my hopes have crumbled about this so I started up a little site of my own. Aside from some self-promoting no one was going there. My live
journal gets more reads than my site was getting. So I went back to trying to write for others. After the most recent place I was “hired” fell apart in early September I have been brewing this idea that has now taken shape(r… sorry bad pun).

So what did I think about when putting this together? Well I went over everything that I have seen go wrong or bad at the other places I have worked (6 including the last).

1) Overcomplicated. If the format of submitting your articles is too complicated, or you’re expected to do all your own editing and revising, the system will be less accessible and alienate the people who want to help.
2) Overworking. When you’re not paying someone a hell of a lot of money (or any) you should not put extremely heavy demands upon him or her. They wanted to work for/with you, don’t piss ‘em off.
3) News. Not only is news snooping tedious, but also most other sites do it well. You just come across as unoriginal or a leech.
4) Updates. Frequent updates to a smaller site kind of void out the purpose. If you fill up your news with things that everyone else has (and less than them on top of that) your original content is buried and missed. You loose people coming back.

So I wanted to take all of these things and remove them. By just getting you’re articles to the Editor and have everything running though one person you simplify it all. At least 2000 words every 3
months makes this very accessible and welcoming to the hobbyist with good opinions/ideas without all the burden of high numbers and quick deadlines (hell, I think it will even help productivity and I may get more input than if a stricter mandate were in position). Don’t do news not related to your site, easy-peasy. Only update or give your output when you have enough to get someone to sit down and really see that it is something original that they will come back for.

All this was put together and the quarterly maga/eZine was the perfect fit.

Also I got Parapa The Rapper 2 last night in the mail. Billy white kicks ass.

Well not much has been going on… I have decided that I really need to start working with EX songs in Pop’n in order to practice. There are not many songs level 33-38 hypers so in order to practice different patterns I need to get more variaty.

Oh and shit on Flux for passing Screen EX

Well, I finished the book last night. It was not the shock/gore fest I initially thought it would be. It was quite reflective and a pretty quick read. I would recommend it to you. Yea, you.

The Day After Tomorrow: Do not see this movie. Go online, download the trailer for this, watch it ad nauseam. You will be far more entertained than with the full movie. This was just… honestly I was expecting it. This needs a good MST3K-ing done to it. 1 out of 4 Stars

Edit: is it just me or is Kaze quite a bit pompous.

For the latests breaking news:

Oi Punk 0 Hyper has fallen to Shaper! We now return you to your regularly scheduled progam…

*arms fall off*

Yea so I am in the middle of playing Pop’n Music. I decided to make the trek upstairs to post about some cool completions:

Twee Pop [H]: 28 (not a fuking 28, but oh well)
Lady Metal [H] 34

Hopefully I can still reach my goal of level 34 competency by the time that Pop’n 10 comes out.

Movie reviews:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: This movie was way more than what I expected. It touches on so many reflective topics too. The imagery is amazing and the directions and cinematography help this out while keeping the suspension of disbelief. I cannot express enough I how much you should put this movie on your “to see” list (it would probably be a good date movie). Unfortunately I cannot get too much into the movie with out spoilers, but I will say that the acting is top quality and things just all fit into place beautifully. 4 out of 4 stars for the most sophisticated love story I have seen.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Hmm, I think this was just a special effects and cinematography show off film. Kind of like how Blood: The Last Vampire was put together to show off new ways of making anime. Anyways the acting was okay at best and the writing was really poor. I did not care about any of the characters. The plot goes where it shouldn’t… It did look nice and the touches of film noir and old sci-fi films brought with a new light was really cool. Seeing New York the way they portrayed it was worth the price of admission. 2 out of 4 Stars

Tomie (pronounced Toe-me-a) is a Japanese psychological horror movie from 1999. It is the first of 5? movies and based on a manga. With that aside, I can’t help but be confused about the whole movie to an extent. The acting was only ok, but the writing was really good. But the film moved at the strangest pace, it was like you were peaking in on someone else’s life. The plot didn’t really lead you anywhere because there was no suspense although there was mystery. Anyways, after the film was over I scratched my head and thought about why this was the ending. It really feels like the first part of a mini-series more than a stand alone movie. I will have to watch more of these.3 out of 4 Stars but up for change if if I am lead down a different path. I really enjoyed this for some unknown reason, and the music did help me enjoy this.

Yea… back to Pop’n!

Yea so I have been playing a shit load of Katamari Damacy… well not really. But I think I am almost done because all I have left is the moon. Anyways I just pwned the North Star on my second try!

Yea this game is addictive. My wife cannot stop rolling either, she picked it up and after a few tips and getting use to the controlls she is loving to go back and roll stuff up that hit her earlier. Seriously though, pwning the N.S. kicked ass.

OMG I was like “Give me Katamari Damacy” at EBGames and the guy was like “OK”. So I said “You got any left over crap you want taken off your hands?” and he was like “hold on.”

WOW! Anyways; Mobo*Moga, A, and V all on one free ass CD. EBGames went up a notch in my book d^_^b

Just to please Random I pulled out Pop’n 6 and played it. I can clear every [h] song that is open currently… what the hell 10 stars is not that hard. I only recorded 1 score but it is not up at Pop’n Navy sorry Random! But I thought that my clear list might be impressive, but I realised it is not:
Soul
K-Euro
SKA
… something els

Anyway the only thing impressive I did was get like 94K on that stupid Country song.

DDR as excercise sucks. Well, not really, but the first 30 min kicks my ass. Then after that for the next 30 - 45 min I rawk. I beat my first Heavy last night (nothing big; Only You - Captain Jack).

I read a bit more and talked to my sister on the phone last night. I also called up my parents: I don’t think that going to Cancun for Xmas will work this year I said. Oh well there is always another year, but nephews only come arround rarely, and I want to spend time with mine.