I remember a day almost ten years back - I must have just been starting high school, Dad and I were talking about what I could do when I grew up.

Jokingly, he told me, "If the job market sucks, there's always bounty hunting."

As the days (and listings) go by, that's sounding more and more like the wisest goddamn career advice anyone's ever given me.

I ain't going to be the last one off this bridge:

Comment and I will comment back with a picture of the fictional character that most reminds me of you. Then post the same in your journal.

"The world was simpler in those days, Jaime thought, and men as well as swords were made of finer steel. Or was it only that he had been fifteen? They were all in their graves now, the Sword of the Morning and the Smiling Knight, the White Bull and Prince Lewyn, Ser Oswell Whent with his black humor, earnest Jon Darry, Simon Toyne and his Kingswood Brotherhood, bluff old Sumner Crakehall. And me, that boy I was ... when did he die, I wonder? When I donned the white cloak? When I opened Aerys's throat? That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead."

---

Oro.

Got to paging through this book again, stumbled across this part, and found myself frowning at it for a while.

I never wanted to empathize quite this much with it.

It's been ages since I made a real update to this thing, so I figured I'd at least break the silence to make an entry about my next big creative project - for those of you who remember those kooky yet insatiably fun roleplaying "tournaments" we run, the next on the list is an idea I cooked up about two years ago: Eternity: Spellbound, a tournament of mages and magic warriors from mostly games and anime all published media! If you want to know a little more about the premise, here's an overview that covers most of the bases; the premise, as you'd expect, takes something from the Bard.

And I have wanted to do something like this for a long while - the 'caster tournament to end all 'caster tournaments. Hell, where else could you conceivably see these two having it out:



... <=D

Early January is the target date for this baby, and I aim to have the trailer up by December 5th at the latest, but really, this isn't going to be something you have to play reference with. With kaede and darkken on board for the overstory and Plasmos making his debut with a straightforward system, we've got an excellent team put together for this one. Swing by and put on your robe and wizard hat!

And now I'm off to a long afternoon of trailer-writing amidst...ah...flowcharts and pseudocode. Orooo.

I don't often talk NFL in this journal, but I may put that last quarter on a DVD in case I ever need a guaranteed adrenaline high. This drink's for you, Colts!

What is with me lately?

Five weeks into the quarter, and the kind of effort it's taking me to maintain interest in these classes would have gotten Sisyphus up that damn hill. It might not be so bad if they weren't taught by infantile professors - if I'm asked to write 250 words in response to the question "Why are we answering the above question?"*, I begin to suspect this has less to do with network administration than is indicated by the title of the course. And if I'm asked to answer 60 questions in seven days and end up getting a perfect score because there are, indeed, 60 answers on the page, then I really begin to suspect so.

I don't regret going back to school, you know. I just suddenly remember why I was so happy and proud when I thought I was done with it.

Aaand it looks like I'll be short one wisdom tooth on the 11th. Won't that be an interesting week...

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(happy days are come again~)

The simple farewell scene between Luke and Han on Hoth. From the time they turn to face each other, these are the four lines of dialogue that their farewell - which it turns out is going to last until Jedi - actually consists of.

Han: "You all right?"
Luke: "Yeah."
Han: "Be careful."
Luke: "You too."

That's it. But if you've seen the scene, you remember that wordless farmboy pause of Luke's, and you remember Han's tight, effortless smile that gets Luke to nod an "I get you", and you remember the way the smile disappears from Han's face when Luke leaves. You remember all the little touches that go with that farewell.

You get the point: it's a tiny slice of our heroes saying goodbye that consists of four lines of dialogue, and yet it has more emotion behind it than any weepy, violin-and-piano-glazed farewell I've seen in film. I think a lot of people gloss over the Luke-and-Han scenes when they watch Empire, especially here...too caught up in the action, especially at Hoth. But they're part of what lends his decision at Dagobah that reverberating gravity - he wouldn't have had any training to leave if Han and Leia hadn't come for him.

I think it says something that ever since I saw these movies as a kid, for all my beliefs and dreams and aspirations, deep down, I just want to be the kind of friend Han Solo is.

---

More importantly, excited as all hell and starting Saturday I won't be around for the next week or so. There's some epic win headed my way. ^______^x

Raaar~

The sun blazing on your bare chest, sweat flying off your brow, and a heavy lump of iron in each hand! This is how man was meant to live! Perseverence, pain, and passion! I have the power! I have the ability! I have TEH NUKLEAR HEATZ-

*drops unconscious*

(the above may or may not be a blatant attempt to get a certain individual to comment with a good old "ora ora oraaa!")

That's about what it looks like from the end of my neighborhood. This is all one big backfire operation by the local firefighters to kill off some potential fuel for the flames, so it's not dangerous, but it's a good idea of what the view's been like for the last couple days, and I swear, the plume behind it makes it look like a volcano woke up drunk and horny. (That's my analogy and I'm sticking by it!) Put some other shots over here, including two of the creepy pink sunrise this morning.

And on a completely random note, I loves me my French onion soup.

Woke up and found my neighborhood covered in smoke.

This is the first time I've ever had a wildfire so close by (this is the La Canada Flintridge fire, which is on the hill right next to mine) I could actually see the flames building the body of the smoke cloud. The whole place smells like a big charcoal cookoff, but what really threw me for a loop was the color of the sun through all the smoke - I've seen it used for all kinds of similes and metaphors, but had never actually seen the exact color.

Yeah, not surprised Sith lightsabers get compared to it. ^_^;

No going outside today - wishing all the local badasses in our fire department the best of luck; they've been at it all night.

It is the best fight in cinema.

I've joked before that I can talk about it for days, but it's so easy to joke about because it's true. I can remember being a kid and watching this on VHS for the first time in my parents' bedroom by myself (they had the bigger TV), lights out, just me and the screen. I've known every second of this fight ever since, and the one meager qualm I have with it is that it isn't uninterrupted. Even then, it managed to drink me in like nothing I'd ever seen before.

It still does, and I feel like sharing some of the mug.

( Impressive. Most impressive. )

And you know, I'm not even done talking about it. The only reason I'm stopping here is because I literally will talk about it for days if I don't shut myself up (and go to the grocery store like I should) now.

I'm well aware other people have their favorite throwdowns in film, and they should - but I hold this in the height of esteem because I always find another layer when I come back to it, technical, tactical, emotional, philosophical, or otherwise. And there's so much otherwise that it breaks my heart. I watch it and I'm ten again and feeling like I'm not even on planet Earth anymore, not really.

Though, ever since these movies, I'm not sure I have been anyway. ;)

It's been one of those weekends where, I swear to God, the best thing that could happen to me is being out on the street, and some smarmy asshole gets in my face for some reason with tons of witnesses around, and makes the wonderful mistake of laying a finger on me.

Just so I have a justifiable reason to beat the crap out of them.

I'd be grateful.

Yeah, yeah, calming thoughts, looking at pictures like this helps a lot...but oh man.

"...a Henry James fan who considers the mark of Great Literature to be the delicately filigreed tale of how the Cruel World ultimately Destroys the Beauty of the Sensitive Soul, is just never gonna get it, no matter how hard you push it. There are plenty of James fans who will insist that The Iliad is Real Literature, as is Hamlet or many other narratives based on outside sources -- and in the same breath say that RotS can't be Real Literature because it's based on Star Wars. I could be the Second Coming of Leo Fucking Tolstoy, and still none of these people would be persuaded that a Star Wars book can be anything other than (at best) an entertaining diversion.

Not that I'm claiming to be in the same league as Homer, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, you understand. I'm far from convinced that my SW books will still be read ten years from now, let alone 400. Or 2500. I would, however, just once like to copy out Homer's capsule bios of each of the slain heroes at Troy, then pants one of these Show Don't Tell fucktards and shove that copy up his ass."

Never stop being the man, Stover.

"You're bleeding," I told him, but that dark gleam in his bright blue eyes never wavered. He kept going on about "Alone against three gunships. Three. Alone."

I told him that I hadn't been alone. I quoted Yoda: "My ally is the Force."

He didn't seem to understand, so I explained: "I had them outnumbered."

-- Mace Windu, Shatterpoint, Matt Stover

Because I know a few people who could use a "I can take on the world" quote this week, and Mace is amply provisioned in them.

No intensely reflective entry this year; that'll come at 25. ^_^x

I was actually wondering if I'd find this birthday a little sadder than usual, to be honest, but I've had a very touching start to my day already; I am deeply humbled and deeply grateful. Thanks for the well-wishes, everyone! But as usual, the best present you can get me is having a great day, yourself.

Have some music from Awesome YouTube Girl that seems only appropriate:

Sweet Chronostalgia!

Earlier today, I was looking through some old links and stumbled across an old site dedicated to a little group's personal roleplays in Xenogears. Rather, I should say Archive.org found them for me, since the page has long since been deleted.

For what was basically a series of one-on-one roleplays, the writing caliber was pretty strong and readable. Mind, a goodly chunk of it is just gratuitous Bart/Billy slash, with all this troweled-on solemnity and Spike Lee-ish approach to sex (you know the kind - you realize you can make the characters do anything you want, including each other, and your fetishes overpower your common sense), not to mention this...bizarre scene where Miang and Hammer - uh, never mind.

Still, a lot of other stuff was on the pulse of the parts of the game I really enjoyed, and I had a fun time paging through them. There was a lot there. Just pages and pages of logs, stories, chat excerpts, outtakes...I can tell they all had a great time.

But it was years ago, and the only thing that remains of it are the archives.

It made me kinda sad.

Part of it is that Xenogears is one of those deeply troubled games (the second disc is infamous) from my youth that somehow managed to capture my imagination despite its flaws. The game has aged terribly, and I can poke fun at it with gusto, and I've said in the past that I was more neutral to it than anything - but no, it's a sentimental favorite...due in no small part to the fact that it was one more thing I could talk about with the old friends I made on FFOnline, whether they loved it or hated it. It's an experience I shared with them, so I also see my friends when I look back to it today.

And I'm sure that part of it is just that feeling I get whenever I go by my high school on a Saturday, and look at that old, empty lunch table, and think of how far away everyone who used to sit at it is now.

I wonder if it's possible to be content in the present, and yet still have to deal with this incurable fondness for the past.

...then again, friggin' Miang and Hammer. Uh.

Today's formula for feeling like I can pull the ears off the average gundark: a 60-minute run and painful weightbench visit followed by a huge bowl of fresh albondigas and a pint of ice-cold water.

Yes, this is basically a reason for me to plug albondigas for anyone who's never had it. ^_-

I brewed this meme for myself a little over a year ago and felt like tackling it again - I've met a lot of them over my years.

( Ten Awesome Female Characters )

My little geek musing of the week. A pet theory of mine about an ancient Ivalician war based on three things I noticed across Vagrant Story, FFXII, and FFTA2.

Hey, at least it's not as long as that Fifty Years' War writeup I'm considering. =)