Games, you should play more

Now and then I'll get this voice in my head that tells me to write something. I'm not really sure why. I mean, I talk to the AG about pretty much everything in my life so it's not like I'm keeping anything in that needs to get out or whatnot. And anything that doesn't come up with her comes up with the cousins. Not that there's anything I won't talk to her about, she just doesn't share the same love of Futurama and video games with me as I do with them. Ah video games, truly a wonderful thing. I'm actually quite convinced that if more people played video games together then better friendships would be had. And I don't mean playing across the internet with somebody you've never heard of, or even somebody you know. Just not the same. I mean being in the same room as your friends and laughing with them as a bomb-omb bounces off of one players shield and hits a totally unintentional target, knocking them off the playing field. I am of course talking about Super Smash Bros, and this did actually happen, we still talk about it. Actually spent a few minutes playing SSB and Mario Kart on my lappy with Dance Partner B. AG was Dance Partner A, which is why you'll hear me refer to her as either my girlfriend, my best friend, or my old dance partner, but Dance Partner B was around at the same time as her, back in that brief period where I had two partners. Actually I suppose I had two partners when DPC was around, but not really the same as I was only her partner on the grounds that it didn't interfere with DBA/AG/BFF(which of course stands for bear fromm froshed). She was alright, just rather young, in that annoying teenage girl stage. Man, where was I going with this? Right, video games with DPB, t'was good times. Naturally being a girl she was terrible, but it was cool playing with her and she's intent on making it a semi-weekly basis. Our relationship has been kind of odd in my mind. We were always slightly friends ever since we were partnered back in the day, but never the kind of people who would actually hang out together. Only this term we've started doing that, brought on by having a similar schedule with similar breaks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's fun hanging out with her but she's got some strange traits. What I find the strangest is that she has no problem talking about the details of her sex life with me, but can't say the word "penis" in public. Although, I guess that is adorably hilarious.

Now that I think about it, video games are great, but my message of "play more games" can really be extended to pretty much any game. Definitely wouldn't be as close with my cousins if it wasn't for games day. Started playing charades with our own words. Was rather impressive that Gamer Cousin was able to get Nibblonian in three guesses. So, basically, play more games with friends, or random people, basically everyone. Gaming makes for better relationships. Man, I haven't played Settlers in forever.

Guilt Free Piracy

First off, BAM. For those of you too lazy to check the link, P2P (which includes torrenting) downloading of music is completely legal, since 2003. Uploading is a different story, but I'm not arguing that. It's also illegal in other countries, but international lawsuits are almost never an issue for us low-level file sharers. Now, before you start writing me off already as somebody who's against supporting musicians I beseach you to read to the end and then make up your mind.

One thing I've noticed in common among webcomic writers (besides the self depreciation and love of alcohol) is that they almost all have donation buttons on their pages. Some are subtler then others, but for the most part it's an easy option (and I'm sure it would only take one email to get the option up on those who don't already have it). So, if you're thinking to yourself, "hey, I really appreciate all of these awesome comics but all of their merch sucks and I still want to give them some money" you still have an option. Isn't that great?

Introduction to topic number two. I was over at my cousins house for the usual Monday festivities and one of them has a problem. He's somewhat recently become a big fan of the band Children of Bodom (a Finnish black metal band) but can't find any of their music for sale in town (because they're a Finnish black metal band). He can however find their entire collection on iTunes for $40. The problem with this of course is that buying something from iTunes is much like making a deal with the devil. It will never be as useful as you want it to be (you can only share music that you've bought off of iTunes with 5 other iTunes users, all of which you have to allow by giving them your log in info), and it will always have the stench of the Devil clinging to it. However a third option exists. Much like everything else that can be reduced to a clever combination of ones and zeros, the entire Children of Bodom collection can be torrented for free. However, my cousin, being the ethical kind of guy that he is, doesn't want to do this as he see's it as stealing from the band. So, wouldn't it be great if the band took after our impovershed web comic writers and put a donation box on their website. That way my cousin could simply give the band itself $20 (which is way more than they're going to get from iTunes anyway) and happily torrent all of their music, bypassing the hellish institution that is iTunes (have you ever actually read any of their agreements? Apparently it's illegal for me to use anything I've purchased from iTunes outside of Canada, even the free stuff) and still get money to the band.

Now, what I need you guys to do is make sure that Children of Bodom and Infected Mushroom (whom I'm currently listening to thanks to the wonder that is torrenting) start reading my blog.

And once again, we've got time to kill.

Thought I was gone for good eh? Thought I didn't have time for you any more? Well, you thought wrong, for once again I am faced with time to kill and thoughts to share, which as you may recall is the entire point of this (and more than likely the vast majority of all blogs out there) blog. But now I'm faced with a problem. I did just say that I had thoughts to share, and indeed I have at least one, but I've been away for so long it just seems wrong to not fill you in at least a little bit. What with it's a good hour before I should even be leaving for my lab chances are pretty good I'll be doing both, but which order should I do them in? Quite right, it wouldn't make any sense to have the refresher after the main point of this post would it?

And with that, we shall delve into the memories of the last few months since I last talked to you. A delve not unlike the libraries of Fallout 3, mostly barren, disorganized, and with naked people running all over the place. Clearly you weren't playing with the right mods. Anywho, I'm now in pseudo second year at Grant MacEwan University (as of a month and a half ago, used to be a College for those of you not in the know). I say pseudo as I foolishly didn't anticipate what my major and minors would be and ended up taking the first half of first year courses for them in my second half of first year, so I'm taking almost all first year courses this semester. Oh, that major and minor are computing and psychology respectively, in case you were wondering. Next semester should certainly be a change as I'm taking 4 second year courses instead of one like I am now. What else has changed? Oh yeah, I'm now dating the most awesome girl/woman (varies) I know, it's pretty sweet. That statement still holds even with the fact that she's in Ontario. The whole situation's rather confusing even to those involved and will likely not be discussed here, just have to ask me ya'self for that one. Oh, and I'm no longer dancing due to lack of cash and lack of a partner (didn't see my last one for about two weeks before we officially called it quits (which required me to randomly run into her in the hallway as all other methods of trying to get a hold of her failed))(okay, besides that issue she was awesome(ly hot) and now I feel kinda bad for raging on her)(man where was I? too many parenthesis, I'm not even sure if I should be capitalizing things by now), and thus got a job, start hopefully this weekend as a security guard. All right, I think we're mostly caught up now. If I forgot anything, please let me know, chances are you can guess better than I can remember.

Right, as for the previously mentioned thought(s). Was talking with previously mentioned awesome girlfriend (let's call her AG) about sexuality and she mentioned that her and most of her friends don't really think in male/female terms. This concept I have difficulty with as when talking with my second most common conversers (conversees? those who one holds conversations with), my cousins, everything's in terms of gender. Now, I'm not saying that you're either male or female and that's it, but rather that everything's in a spectrum of male or female. How you determine if something's male or female is simply if it's usually associated with men or women. Kind of like French except with adjectives and verbs as opposed to nouns (French (nationality) is decidedly female by the way, the Germans and Russians are the males and Spain is a hermaphroditic mix, but that's another story that will probably change by the time I get to it). Thus, when a persons personality is summed up they will come out as some combination of male and female, never one or the other (except for Chuck Norris, who is clearly the paragon of male). Now I know what you're thinking (thanks to the satellite dish in your neighbors house that's actually aimed at you), wouldn't this be best summed up in a one dimensional graph? Yes, yes it would be. As I'm sure I've previously mentioned, everything in life can be graphed. With any luck I'll start posting graphs on here, just as soon as I start posting on here when I actually have access to some sort of drawing program that's not paint, so next year maybe.

So, that's it for today. Welcome back, glad to see you're still around. I'm not promising I'll update as frequently as I used to, in face I can promise that I won't. But hey, it's not like you're going to bother reading this anyway eh?

And oh yeah, I've updated the webcomic listing. You should check them all out. And read every single one of them, then you will know what it is to have my knowledge.

Bussing Home

Saw something odd on the way home today from my last major final (only computing and econ left). Guy on a scooter was having some trouble getting up the ramp into the bus because one of his wheels gets caught. So, he gets out of the scooter, lifts it into position, gets back into it, then makes an old lady with a walker move so he has enough space to park it in the bus, taking the space of 5 people sitting. Anyone else see something wrong with this picture?

And I almost never use exclamation marks.

Post something dammit!

I came here for an argument, not just simple contradiction.

Man, been over a week since my last decent post. And as per usual, I'm starting this off with my usual don't expect much disclaimer. Man my eyes hurt, no idea why.
Anywho, hung out with the cousins yesterday. Went out to see Wonderland because we heard it had the same director as Superbad. Looks like the only thing the two had in common was Evan (the awkward kid). Had some funny moments, but definitely no where near as good. Then rented Superbad, still most probably the funniest movie I've ever seen.
Ever found that it's really hard to find people to have a decent conversation with? One of my cousins was commenting on that after we had a little debate about why all species aren't hermaphroditic. Due to my lack of much human contact (and extrovert I am not), I notice this a fair amount less then them. It's true though, very few people understand the value of a good conversation. Arguments even less so. Currently working on teaching new partner the value of the argument, not going too well. Luckily old partner has learned the value of such, she actually thanked me for that a few days ago, which was cool. But yeah, arguing just for the sake of debating an idea is great, you should totally try it some time.

Weird

Got called thin yesterday. That's the first time that's happened in... ever?