A Few Spare Cycles

Cleaning

2010-04-25T22:36:00.002-06:00

I was cleaning out some of my room today because I move across the country in two days. I'm coming back after four months, but I'm moving into a new place, so when I leave on Tuesday not much is going to change by my hand. There was more stuff then I thought there would be, but less then one would find in your average room after 19 years of living there. At least I would imagine so, I'm not exactly the type to collect stuff. Actually as I write that it's interesting how I can now clearly see my two main collections, that being a rough two dozen ties hanging on hooks that were not designed to hold ties and are probably damaging them because of such, and my hundred or so Archie comics. I don't think there was actually any overlap in when I was collecting those, my sadpiphany(an epiphany which brings sadness) that Archie comics are actually terribly written came before my love of ties, which really didn't start until I started having a reason to wear them, so by that logic it must have been sometime during the ballroom era. I'm still not sure whether or not to say that era has ended, the AG (who is the reason I'm moving across the country by the way) says that she wants to get back into dance when we move in together out here, which I suppose I'm all for, I did love it at the time, I'm just wondering about costs and time. I'm fully expecting to be low on cash, which, honestly, will be new to me. I've never really been in a point where there's something that I needed and could not afford. Plenty of wants, but I've learned to largely ignore those (I'm fairly sure this is part of the reason that the concept of a woman finding me attractive is largely baffling).

Right, so that was a large digression, but hey, that would seem to be my writing style when it comes to these posts. Chances are pretty good I could write more if I simply just sat down (well, not really sure you'd call what I'm doing sitting as I'm currently half propped up in bed) more often to write, but as nobody really reads this, I'm okay with that. Hey, a digression about a digression, fun. Anyways, about the cleaning, two things struck me as kind of interesting, one was the vast amount of batteries I had collected, must have been at least two dozen of them and I'm really not sure why, they weren't even all in the same place. And the second is that of pretty much all of the pictures I had laying around I had almost no idea of who they were of. Faint recollections of when they were from, summer camps mostly, but no real clue as to the owners of the images. Was weird to look at them and think "well, at some point these people must have known me well enough to let me take a picture of them". I don't exactly make relationships easily (and I uphold them even worse), so it was interesting to see all of these pictures of seemingly random people. Though, I suppose there's not much point looking into it as it was mostly summer camps and it always seemed like very short term relationships is what they were mostly about. Though, I suppose I've also been bad at gauging just when a relationship was over, or really how to renew an old one. I can think of maybe three people I knew in some fashion who it would be nice to still be in touch with if I had the social adeptness to figure out how to manage it. Pretty sure one of them wants nothing to do with me, though I could never figure her out. Which is kind of funny as she spent all of her time chasing a guy she could never figure out herself. Of the other two I never really did have much of a relationship with one but always found her to be pretty awesome and the third I did have a friendship with but it was rather casual in how much we actually hung out. Actually, I think I only miss the first one in how interesting she was, it was always kind of odd hanging out with a person who I was well aware didn't care about me at all.

Not entirely sure any more what I was really intending to write about. I think it was just the pictures. I've still got more cleaning to do, and then I've got to get all of the stuff out of the hall and back in to my room in some fashion, hopefully a compact one. I think I've thrown out more then I've tossed into the "others might want" pile. What I actually want I could easily put into my back pack. I suppose this could be taken as a sign that I should clean more, my room even looks a little bigger now. Oh, one interesting note, found a pair of shoes in my closet that though I had thought I had grown out of them years ago they still fit. Odd.

Games, you should play more

2010-01-26T10:22:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-18T13:23:00.004-07:00

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.