man the summer seems to fly right by. i wonder if there’s ever going to be a way to combine the shit i toss on facebook with this journal. that would be swell…and convenient! well anyway…for this particular catch-up post, i won’t bother with catch-ups. it’s just been too long since the last real entry. i ate, drank, went out…etc etc. i was going to write about my travails with women too, but i’ll save that for it’s own post. it’s categorically comical anyway.
what i will post on though is that beauty up above…woot figureprints! it’s been nearly six years since i started playing world of warcraft, and i no longer feel the need to justify nor explain why i play and why i’ve played for this long. my life is dandy, i’m not a proverbial basement dweller, and my social life is more than adequately healthy. that being said, it’s always been hard to quantify the near six years spent playing the game in a physical form i could hold, until figureprints came around. for a nominal fee, they’ll take any of your characters and print out a 3d statue of it. so i thought for a brief second, then went…fuck yea, i want one. it was meant as a birthday present to myself…but i got another present for myself anyway (i’ll get to that later). and this was the first cycle/expansion where i’d been part of a group that has cleared through all the content (still currently working on hard modes), so i thought it fitting to commemorate that in statue form. anyway…whatever. it rocks. tho i will admit…damn sonatine looks scrawny. anorexic blood elfs don’t look so intimidating in statue form…*shrug*. my armory pose still looks infinitely more heroic.
oh right…and in addition to this, i also got myself a big 50″ plasma. there’s that too…woot.
el journal es muerto! just kidding…it’s not. well, not technically. laziness (and starcraft 2!) abound. but i’ll make a post once i get the awesomeness in the mail sometime next week. awesomeness i say!
man a month past oh fuck nearly two months lol…and i finally get around to posting about my trip to scotland. better late than never eh. and i even decided to give the flickr slideshow a whirl. i don’t know why i never used it for my past trips. has it always been there? mysteries…
the thoroughness of this recollection of the trip is suspect at best, given it’s based purely on the photos taken. i didn’t bother jotting notes of my trip, since most days were taken up with drinking. lots of drinking. fuck, so much drinking. i have a newfound fear of drinking with glaswegians now.
GLASGOW i arrived wednesday morning. max came by the airport to pick me up…him and patsy had been in scotland for a while already sorting out wedding details and concurrently having their work visas get fucked. that’s another story tho…and not even mine to tell. so moving on…i dropped my luggage off at the hotel before we roamed glasgow. this was my fourth time in the uk, but my first time in scotland. the other three times were based solely in london (and a side trip to the english countryside). we grabbed lunch with one of max’s friend who works for the company both max and i used to work for (it was a scottish firm). after lunch, we went for my kilt fitting. yea…kilt fitting. word. i’m in scotland for a wedding, fuck yea i’m wearing a kilt. a nice one at that. made of alot of wool…in the mild/warm scottish spring weather. i would regret this later. but for now, i just wanted a kilt. we roamed some more afterwards, and most likely drank beer. it’s sorta fuzzy. i was most likely groggy and jetlagged and inhaling coffee later in the evening. anyhoo…moving onto the next day.
EDINBURGH max and patsy had wedding details to sort out, so i took a daytrip out to edinburgh. there was something weird about glasgow as we were walking around the day before, and i figured it out when i got to edinburgh…no asian tourists! actually, hardly any tourists at all in glasgow. in edinburgh tho…yea, everywhere. definite tourist city…and rightly so. it’s very picturesque and touristy, with it’s royal mile, closes, and of course, edinburgh castle. pretty place. tho one aspect let me down. i was hoping they’d play up more of the haunted aspects of the castle…which they didn’t. at all. sad. i also decided to climb up arthur’s seat, this massive hill in holyrood park. i don’t know what i was thinking…that was a bad idea. i have enough things in my life to remind me that i’m out of shape…i didn’t need a vacation to remind me too.
i got back to glasgow in the evening and we went to a house party. more drinking ensued.
MAX AND PATSY’S WEDDING we had lunch with max and patsy’s family before the wedding in the afternoon. from there on out it was a brief wedding reception, then nonstop drinking til i don’t know what time. 3am? 4am? i don’t remember. and that wool kilt and ensemble? yea, that was painful. i stripped off the wool jacket shortly after the reception, but still had on the wool kilt and wool vest. blargh. on the flipside tho, the sporran was totally rockin’. i kept my wallet and iphone in there. handy. it’s like a purse…but manlier.
POST-WEDDING we had lunch with max’s family the day after, and then roamed glasgow. we drank more at night. yea.
AMSTERDAM i planned a nice one day layover in amsterdam before heading back to nyc. it’d been years since i saw lysha and alice, and i thought it’d be a nice place to (ironically) detox after scotland. lysha lived out in ijburg, and we just laid on the beach in front of her apartment for most of the day. we grabbed dinner in amsterdam, then roamed the canals for a bit. <3 amsterdam. i also really wanted to see the old neighborhood…the amsterdam branch of the company i worked for was shuttered months prior, and the old animation space was turned into an underwear shop. how sad.
REMAINDERS oh, i got my niece a mini-kilt and a clan pin from edinburgh, and my brother-in-law a bottle of bowmore whisky. you’re welcome dave!
new york city’s an infinitely changing city. it always has been and always will continue to change…that much is stating the obvious. but aside from seeing old photos or hearing about the city of the past, it’s not always as easy to relate to or personally see until you get to a point in your life where you can slow down, look around, and go “what the…where the fuck am i?“
case in point…we’re moving into a new office sometime in september. our space is still being renovated, so every so often we get an email showing the progress, with subject lines reading “new photos of the tunnel” and “tearing down walls at the tunnel“. and i kept going “the tunnel, the tunnel…what the fuck is the tunnel?” whereby the reply was “that’s the name of the building“. a light bulb goes off. i put two and two together. i knew we were moving to the far west side of chelsea, but it took me an embarassingly long period of time to realize that the building we were moving to was in fact the old site of the club “the tunnel“. fuck…am i now old enough to be working in an office housed in a space where i used to club when i was in high school and college? admittedly i wasn’t a massive clubber…more of a wannabe raver that clubbed occasionally when i wasn’t raving. but i’d been to numerous new york staples in my youth (tho the majority one or two times at most). and even then, i only have slight recollections where most of them were even located. most are gone now…nyc clubbings mildly comatose these days. not that i would even know if it wasn’t. so it got me wondering what happened to the other places i used to go to when i was younger…
the tunnel | welp, now i know what happened to the tunnel…it turned into my new office! i don’t have many memories of this place. in fact, i don’t have many memories of most of the clubs i went to, save a few. the thing was, back then, i didn’t really pay much attention to the area. i just remember dark side streets, lights all around the entrance, and late night food vendors lining the sidewalks. it’s probably easy for me to say that the area probably didn’t look anything like it does today…
palladium | see…this one i already knew about. the palladium was (one of?) the largest clubs back in the day. it’s now the nyu dorm called the palladium on union square south (hint…trader joe’s resides in the ground floor). i recall union square being pretty shitty back then. it’s cleaned up nicely.
limelight | it’s a mall now. if you told me ten years ago one of the best known clubs in nyc was going to be turned into a shopping mall inside a church, i’d laugh hysterically, then maybe go “for serious? are you a time traveler?“
twilo | i have a higher than average amount of memories of twilo…but still not much. i remember the bouncy ball chairs upstairs tho. i was trashed this one time and bouncing around on them for an indeterminate amount of time. i stopped going long before it became spirit, tho i don’t know if its still around. it still says spirit on the awning on google street views…
wetlands preserve and vinyl | these two i lump together because i have the most memories from both these places. partially because we went so many times, and partially because i was sober every time. in high school, i ran with the ‘white hat’ crew…the majority of which liked to see jam bands and whatnot. a small fraction of us frequented clubs however. so when we headed out, these two places filled our needs quite well. wetlands was a jam band venue for the likes of dave matthews, from good homes, moe, etc…while vinyl featured the likes of françois kevorkian and was literally down the block. so we’d head in on a weekend, split up between the two venues, then meet up again at three in the morning. both are long gone now, replaced by fancy pants luxury apartments. i googled the addresses yesterday and barely even recognized the area…
still not an actual post…summer’s been surprisingly lively this year. huh. but i thought i’d drop a brief post for shigs and niggles. my new computer arrived yesterday…my first non-shuttle in a long while. its hot-ness…woot. and in an unrelated note, new harry potter trailer is out for the final two movies. argh! come out faster! that is all…
on hiatus until i can find some free time again. there aren’t enough hours in the day! and i still need to write up on my scotland trip (which rocked)…
it may not be readily apparent, but this is the second iteration of this entry. the first one was lost when internet explorer crashed…again…and apparently my entries that are normally auto-saved were in fact, NOT auto-saved. so let me preface this entry by saying…fuck you internet explorer. i hate you so much…so much in fact that im downloading portable firefox as we speak.
anyhoo…onto trying to recollect what i had written. and auto-saving frequently while doing so. oh who am i kidding? i’m totally going to abbreviate this entry now that i’d already written it once before. i did stuff, and i went out. woot. highlights include getting a new job back in may (bai bai chelsea, hello tribeca!), i ate and drank with friends at places that had been mentioned before…more likely than not numerous times before. etc. and hey, i’m flying out to scotchland tomorrow for max and patsy’s wedding. its my first time in scotland…we contemplated going, back when fish and i went to london over the new years in…i don’t know what year. but the edinburgh trip would’ve been more than a day trip, so we actually decided to go to stratford-upon-avon instead and see shakespeare’s dead self. this will be a glasgow trip however, tho edinburgh is on the agenda. and as an added bonus, i’m taking a one day layover in amsterdam, so i’m squeezing in a visit with alice and lysha as well.
sadly, i already know that the entirety of this entry is still shorter than the partial entry i had written before ie crashed and burned. ah well…fuck you internet explorer. it’s your fault for destroying my motivation to write lengthy posts.
oh shit, nearing mid-may and i haven’t posted since mid april. whups. well…it’s pushing close to 1am, so meh, i don’t think i’ll be posting a legit journal entry. maybe during the week. for now…i’m just admiring my pretty new wallpaper(s). plural, actually…since there are a couple on rotation. but for now, this is my favorite…
i quite like posting these anime entries. there’s always this rumbling amongst the anime community about how the quality of anime out there has taken a nose-dive. but you know what…i…sorta agree. heh, no really, there’s still too much tits and panties and general retardation out there. but alongside that pile of shit are animes that still rock hard, and definitely deserve attention. as long as they get the recognition and the crotch-shot animes get relegated to bargain-bins, then it’s all good…
first…a note. i usually follow specific fansub groups each season. and by and large, they’re the ones that really determine what i watch. if they chose an anime that i liked one season, i may stay with them in the hopes that they consistently sub animes that appeal to me. listing a few fansubs off the top of my head…the groups i follow are eclipse, horrible, bss, gg, mazui, doki, and coalguys (when they/he decides to actually fansub). i lean towards speed-sub groups. tho in these cases, their quality is usually pretty good already…so speed-subbing isn’t an impediment to the quality.
anyhoo, last season, i watched:
baka to test to shōkanjū | surprisingly better than originally anticipated, given that it has one of the stupidest titles. it meanders considerably during the middle of the season (you wonder whether they forgot about their original plot), and too many gags are overused. but still worth a watch.
dance in the vampire bund | creepy loli (but she’s a vampire and not really a 10 year old!) but another one that turned out better than expected. the first half of the season was sluggish, but the season ended on a high point. the animation takes some getting used to tho. shaft’s style worked for bakemonogatari…not so much for action animes.
durarara!! | the highlight of last season, durarara oozes with style and originality. and for split seconds here and there, you could imagine the characters really inhabiting some hidden corner of ikebukuro. even the ‘fantasy’ characters are given a real personality. i usually dump past season’s animes from my hard drive to make room for the new season…unless they’re worth keeping. and durarara definitely gets classified as ‘worth keeping’
edit…ha, i didn’t even realize it was ongoing. episode 12 ended so thoroughly, it seemed like the end of the series. bonus.
fullmetal alchemist | dear god episode 52 and still going. not that i’m complaining…this shit is good. i definitely liked the first anime’s “interpretation”, and having never read the manga, i always wondered why the more devoted fans of the manga decried the changes. but now i understand. it wasn’t that the older anime was necessarily worse than the manga, but the manga’s story was more expansive…it had more stories to tell, and had such a broader scope that the older anime seemed myopic in comparison.
ladies vs butlers | tits. lots of tits. otherwise meh.
omamori himari | yea i watched it, but i didn’t want to. ;p no really…it was bleh.
so ra no wo to | the supposed “k-on goes to war” anime. the first few episodes bored me stupid, and made me wonder what the shit cutesy moe girls were doing in the goddamn army. i ended up wandering off…anyone else finish up the series? maybe i should revisit this one…
the qwaser of stigmata | the infamous tit-sucking anime. i keep reading about it. i’ll admit i’m curious…should i download it?!?
to aru kagaku no railgun | railgun finished up this season, and it was pretty good. they’ve always been pretty clever how they weaved their stories…small episodes earlier in the season informed later episodes. and by the end of the season, what seemed like individual self-contained stories were in fact just components of the larger picture.
and the new season has already started. i’ve decided to watch the following animes:
angel beats | interesting premise…so far it’s kept me fascinated. it’s like a more violent haibane renmei…maybe.
arakawa under the bridge | quirky…but the lead guy annoys me. i feel urges to kick him in the testicles. but i’ll probably stay with it.
b gata h kei | retarded thus far. but i do allot a few “dumb as shit” animes in my line-up each season. but this categorization shares the same allotments as “just for tits” animes…and the tits get precedence.
heroman | i hadn’t even heard of this anime before, but horrible listed it and i gave it a roll. it was actually created by stan lee (whuuuut), and he even cameos in the first episode. its pretty interesting so far, and it’s animated by bones…and that’s never a bad thing. if anything, it’ll be interesting to see an anime do “slice of life” with an american slant.
k-on s2 | moe! this and the continuing fullmetal and durarara!! are probably the headliners for this season, since nothing else seems as interesting…
mayoi neko overrun! | categorized under “possibly stupid”, the first episode was better than expected. may be relegated to forgettable by the end of the season, but it seems like a potential distraction.
working | same categorization as the above anime.
here’s to hoping it’ll be a good season…
edit | i don’t know why the shit the video is mirrored, nor why it’s so damn hard to find a non-parody of the durarara ending. gah!
