Gongaga Yaoi: Diary [2007, August-January]

August 1st: Harry Potter and the Epic Review in poorly written point-form (Yes, yes SPOILERS- as if it weren't obvious.)

The Hilarious Bits:

Just a side-note, I am TERRIFIED of Dudley's "ham-like-hands". HAMHANDS. No, son.

George's missing ear: AHHAAH what. What the fuck. Seriously. They say they go back to look for Madeye's body, but they're totally going for the ear.

Hermione transforming into Bellatrix: There's no way, NO WAY, Ron and Harry would have let her do this without asking her to lift up her skirt at least once. Who else out there wants to see Bella's bush? I bet it's full of bats. Let's get a show of hands.

The enchanted razor b-day present from Fleur: "tell it precisely what you want" ha ha ha, RACING STRIPE. DORITO CHIP.

Mrs. Weasley's and Ginny's wedding attire: For those of you out there who aren't aware "amythest" is a primary purple, just picture that for a moment on a ginger like Molly. Ew. Seriously. Who let her wear that shit.
And secondly, all of us who painted Ginny as a huge skanky ho- we were right. First #6 with her porking everybody, and now wearing nipple tassels to her brother's wedding.

Harry describing Voldemort's presence as "pressing against the window in the room" in Grimmauld place. LoL. If I were a woman I'd press my bare boobs against glass for the SHEER THRILL.

And on that note... All the times Harry barricades himself in the bathroom to "experience Voldemort". DON'T BE ASHAMED, HARRY. Every boy does it.

Crawling around Grimmauld place: dead mice. Everywhere. I'm surprised ANY of these three survived -not because of Voldemort- because of henta virus.

"The baby, Ariana, was little longer than a loaf of bread and no more distinctive looking". She wasn't crazy, or a squib. She was THE PILSBURY DOUGH BOY.

Harry's ministry transformation: Hermione hands him curly black hairs. I just wanna say- GREATEST PUBE-RELATED PRANK EVER.

"And the merry blond boy swam tantalizingly" in Harry's mind. It's up to you to jump to conclusions about which is gay: Voldy, or Harry? Because it's Voldy's obsession- but maybe Harry's boneration.

Lucius' white peacocks. Just throwing that out there. The man more flaming than an Olympic torch. No wonder Draco's such a fairy. ~Albino Peacocks~.

Crab's death: AHAHAHAHAH. He was defeated by his own hubris.

No, I'm shitting you, he was just being a dumbfuck. What an AWESOME chapter.

Fred's Death: Oh, what an awesome deathmask; died smiling (x o x). The best part, though, is that it was probably Grawp that smashed that wall down. AWWWWW GRAWPY, WHUT R YER DOIN'?

Nevil summoning Gryffindor's sword- I'm just picturing Griphook, sitting in his boudoir, his hard-earned sword mounted on the wall, when suddenly POOF.

The Irritating Bits:

Hermione and Kingsley returning w/ bent coat hanger: Aw, Hermy and the prom-night dumpster baby. What an inappropriate port key. Also, she is clearly down with the swirl. The amount of Hermione time makes me fear, truly FEAR the movie. It'll be ALL Watson eyebrows, ALL the time. Guh.

Lupin the skid row bro: seriously, wtf. Why is Remus such a dick in this? Basically he acts like an asshole to everybody, dickers Tonks, leaves her barefoot and pregnant at her parent's, then dies. I'm probably not the only one who ended up hating him enough to not care when he and Tonks died (thank god for the latter, by the way. What a god-awful Mary-Sue character she was).

Mrs. Weasley is a cunt: her during the wedding preparations made me want to just punch her right in the box. Seriously. If I were Harry I would have cursed her. WHO'S GONNA STOP ME? I'M HARRY FUCKING POTTER, BITCH.

Ron and Hermione questioning Harry's theories about where Horcruxes are hidden: Harry actually MENTIONS Gringotts AND Hogwarts, yet Hermione is all "no that's retarded, Harry". Oh, you know what's ACTUALLY retarded? NOT listening to the kid who can SEE INTO VOLDEMORT'S BRAIN. Hm, let's think- who, other than the Dark Lord, would know Voldy's innermost feelings...
Fuckin' kids.
I have at least 6 new ulcers after reading this meandering bullshit.

Ron during the whole "bargaining with the Goblin" bit; how is it Harry hasn't learned yet- if you're doing something that requires subtlety, DON'T. BRING. RON.

Okay, what the SHIT is with these kids? They INSIST on dealing with dangerous, deranged, bloodthirsty Death Eaters by STUNNING them. I can understand not wanting to kill a person, no matter how evil they are, but could they at least TAKE AWAY THEIR WANDS? Or maybe, TIE THEM UP?
Oh no, no. Let's just knock out this batshit murderer for a couple of minutes, then have a nice long conversation with our backs turned.

The WTF Bits:

Dumbledore is alive! ... At King's Cross: That whole scene, of Harry and Dumbly talking ~in the mist~ was so, SO drawn out. It had a lot of good information, and all, but every five minutes I had to stop and shout, "That's cool and all, but, WHAT THE SHIT IS GOING ON?!".

What happened to GEORGE? With his twin dead, he fell into a deep depression and started working as a buttboy at TJ RearAdmiral's Bar and Grill.

Epilogue: It's been said. ALBUS-SEVERUS? SCORPIUS? As a kid with a strange name, I would just like to extend my deepest sympathies to these poor fuckers. But seriously. SCORPIUS, YOU WILL ONE DAY HAVE A VAST LABORATORY IN WHICH YOU WILL LAUGH MANIACALLY.

"What about your parents?" "They're in Australia". Apparently, as infaliable as Lord Voldemort is supposed to be, he still can't get into Australia? Ha ha ha. Maybe he has a fatal fear of wallabies.

Voldemort's thoughts: "So close, so close". Well, everybody's been asking the question since book5. If Voldy whacks his basilisk, does Harry know? I like to think: YES. ~Erotically~.
Also, while on the subject of trouble down-below, I'm 100% convinced Harry caught the herp from Greyback. Just fyi.

The triple-wand spell: So... The more wands you use, the more powerful the spell? I WOULD CARRY A WAD OF THEM- a WAD of wands. Why don't more people have at least 20 of them duct-taped together?

Tonks as "Dora". Gay. Seriously, that's a TERRIBLE nickname. Nobody in the Western world can hear that without thinking of Dora the Explorer and her multi-lingual journeys.

Victoire in the epilogue; am I the only one who thought Ted jr was porking men? Victoire is a very... "androgynous" name for a girl.

"Knocking the goblins aside like Skittles". Product placement FTW! "Harry's thirst was quenched by his CHERRY COKE. He wished he was back at the Dursleys' playing his new NINTENDO WII".

The DA escapees who were hiding in the Room of Requirement didn't need a washroom before girls started joining? UH.
Dean: Before the Patil twins joined us, we just pooped in the corner.

Oh shit, Ravenclaw's dorm? Being known for intelligence is fine, but that's like three fucking flights of stairs, EVERY DAY... TWICE. Fuck that noise, Hufflepuff is where it's at. Proximal to kitchens, no stairs, and alllll the house elves you can rape.

"Snape-shaped hole in the window". HAH. How cartoony. Also, we've all suspected it, but Severus Snape is... BATMAN.
Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh
Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh
Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh
SNAPEMAN.

Okay, I'm not English. But, "done a bunk?" Ha ha ha. Snape has done a bunk?
For all the Brits out there who understood completely what that means, to everybody else, it sounds like a poop-related matter. ~The More You Know~.

Ron/Hermione snogging while their arms are full of VOLATILE and POISONOUS fangs. Oooh- careful there... And that's how they died.

When Draco gets punched by Ron: "his mouth bleeding, utterly bemused". I know it LITERALLY means "confusion", but nobody thinks of it like that anymore. Wry humor. That's what I think of- but far be it from me to argue. Maybe Draco really DOES feel wry humor at being socked in the face by an invisible fag.

Snape's death: How lame. He's standing around, then a bubble with a snake in it gets stuck on his head, where he's mawed at, then HE DIES. Why is Snape a cartoon character in this book? First him going through the window leaving a "Snape shaped hole", then this head-stuck-in-beehive moment.
To Voldy's credit, this is a fucking hilarious way to kill somebody.

August 4th: The Mod Club’s VIP lounge- is extremely sticky.
Jaime’s friend is in town and (thanks to her entrepreneur boyfriend) we ended up on the guest list of the Mod Club, sauntered our way past the hoochies and douchebags, and, from the lofty view of a private lounge, witnessed a) a live band which could have been good if they hadn’t had the volume cranked to the point that all instruments blended into an ear-splitting wall of music, and b) some apparently “famous” DJ who spun the least Mod music in the history of the genre. The closest he got to British kitche was playing Hail Britannia as part of his introduction (though the effect was slightly marred by the strobe lights and trance beat that pervaded the rest of the evening).
Eventually everybody grew tired of conversing solely by misunderstood shouting and gesticulation, so we packed up and headed to The Boat in Kensington, which was the polar opposite of the meat-market we’d just vacated.
The Boat was hosting Going Steady night, which featured a selection of early 50’s music, to which EVERYBODY was dancing and generally having a wholesomely good time.
Despite the absence of visor-wearing DJs and girls with shorts so far up their ass-cracks it was a wonder they could walk, it was loads more fun.
Jaime and I danced the night away, only getting to bed at 5am.

August 5th: As if one night of skulking around the city’s sexual underbelly wasn’t enough, tonight Beck, Andre, Jaime and I went down to the Cadillac Lounge to see a Burlesque/Improv performance and the band In the Wake.
Jaime and I decided to head down before everybody else, mainly because we had little else to do and didn’t want to miss the beginning of the show. Despite that, when we arrived, the tiny front room was absolutely PACKED.
Among the alternative crowd waiting for their 12$ worth of titillation, the girls were wandering around getting ready, giving everybody a pre-emptive eyeful. Despite not being my cup of tea (by and large, non-professional burlesque girls are best viewed at a distance), everybody was in high spirits.
After braving the crush of people near the bar during the first band’s performance, Jaime and I ventured into the back, only to discover the venue had a MASSIVE and AWESOME back patio (both covered and uncovered with its own bar and… self-serve popcorn machine? LoL).
Jaime and I seated ourselves in the darkest, furthest corner, on an old dilapidated couch. The only unfortunate part of being back there was that there was no sound coming through (only unrelated music), and, though the show was being projected on screens, the front-room cameraman was absolutely atrocious!
It’s as if he had never used a camera before in his life; it cut out, he insisted on zooming in on the girls’ boobs (really poorly, as in… QUICK ZOOM, zoom out, QUICK ZOOM), and he didn’t seem to know how to focus the camera- at all.
Despite that, the show itself wasn’t bad at all. At least the girls understood the concept of burlesque (unlike some previous shows Jaime and I attended), and they did some really cute skits like a fake clothes-ripping fight, and seducing a cute drag-king (complete with little moustache).
Eventually Beck & crew arrived, and not having seen the degree of burlesque than Jaime and I, they were pretty horrified. We chatted and made light of the performances (safely out of ear-shot in the back, of course) until In the Wake came on. Jaime and I stuck around for a bit to hear them, but it really was insanely loud, so we bid them adieu and made our way home, through the insanity that is Queen Street at night.

August 9th: Londonian Gothics - Meikyuu no Lolita. It’s out in Japan, it’s not out here, but I’ve played it, and it left such an impression on me that I just have to blog about it.

I know what you’re thinking, “oh fuck yah, a video game where the main character is a hot gothic Lolita!”. But wait- before you shit your pantsu and order this from Japan despite possibly not even understanding the language, know this: Londonian Gothics SUCKS SWEATY TESTICALS.
There, I said it.
Firstly, we have the main character, Alice, who’s a whiny irritating bitch (though, if you’re playing this sans-translation, you may be lucky enough to not understand all her caterwauling).
Her “quest” is to save Nabokov who fucked up her home’s lovely dungeon (WHUT) by creating evil orbs that make all the monsters crazy. OH SHIT, the monsters went crazy? They were so NICE before.
So, being the sweet tart that she is, Alice badly animates her way to the dungeon, and slips and slides her way through it, activating magic circles to open doors, and collecting the orbs to vanquish the monsters and –get this- COLLECT SEWING SUPPLIES FROM THEIR REMAINS.
I shit you not. This is a game about dungeon-trawling and dress-making.
Different dresses give you different powers.
You make dresses by going to sewing rooms, usually located IN THE FUCKING dungeons.
So, at this point, some people have seen that this is a shitty premise and is extremely tedious. For those of you still hanging on to the idea that this could be great, let me talk about the handling.
If you press forward ONCE, Alice goes about five fucking steps- usually straight into the gaping maw of a monster.
Touching a monster ONCE kills you.
Initially your only attack is lightning which temporarily stuns the monsters (by “temporarily”, I mean for ~.2 milliseconds). The only problem with this is the glitch that, at times, Alice will suddenly walk forward after the attack, RIGHT INTO THAT SAME ABYSS OF DEATH.
Fuck you, Alice. I hate your slidey, pixilated, “whut-whut-whut-ing”, red-eyed-blonde-haired-maid-fuku-wearing face.

August 10th: After having my job taken over by an automated script, Jaime and I went out to forget our sorrows over dumplings, browsing around Chapters, and seeing The Simpsons Movie.
Seriously, I can see why it took so long to get out of production; it’s epic. And the jokes are actually really solid. I’m tempted to say that it’s the best TV-to-film adaptation I’ve seen. It’s not at all like “a super-long Simpsons episode” a-la Family Guy movie.
It’s much more like a stand alone story, with as many serious bits as jokes (Jaime had a tear in his eye at the Homer/Marge departing).
Fair Warning: unless you’re Mr. Burns himself, you will laugh out loud. I was resigned to smirks up until the Disney-esque love scene- the hawk flew in and I just lost it, and the giggles didn’t leave me until the very end.
Seriously, A+, go see it. I was skeptical at first too, but it really is worth the price of seeing it in the theatre.
And, just because I can’t get through a whole entry without complaining; WTF is up with theatre sizes of popcorn and drinks!? We had a veritable BUCKET of popcorn, and 2L of Diet Coke, precariously housed in the flimsiest cup since those dentist office cones.

August 12th: Evil Dead the Musical- I have officially witnessed it, and yet I don't know anything about the series. Beck and Jaime dragged me along under a scheme of inviting me, then making me pay for the damn tickets (BECK! I WILL AVENGE THIS).
Ahem~
I've seen Army of Darkness ONCE. The rest of the series I was ignorant to until Jaime and Beck forced me to watch the 2nd one right before we left. I was generally uninterested, to be quite honest. Really not my cup of tea. But it wasn't bad, so Jaime's contagious excitement about the musical got to me.
Strangely enough, I found it was fantastic.
The musical was really witty, had fantastic (and funny) choreography and avoided being too heavy-handed on the fan-service humor. Even as a casual observer, I laughed, I got the jokes, and I enjoyed the talent that went into the performances. That's really the mark of quality: when somebody who's not a fan can appreciate it.
I was especially awed by the set, which was really seamless (especially during the changes) and fully-puppetable.
So that was the good part- the play itself. Sadly the venue was really undersized for the number of people they tried to cram in there. I had a row of chairs behind me, so I had to climb over Beck every time I needed to get out of my seat. Even when the row behind me was completely vacant, it was still an exercise in artfully weaving between seats.
Most exciting for fans was Bruce Campbell being present, and doing a post-show Q&A.
Though he was really quick on his feet with the less standard questions (like "did you smoke pot on set?"), the audience was fucking ravenous. I have never lost so much faith in humanity than beholding these so-called geeks going at each other.
They were so harsh on the people who were chosen to ask questions; if the audience deemed a question unworthy, they would heckle the asker mercilessly.
I mean- COME ON. It's fine if Bruce Campbell says your questions sucks- he's a performer, he says it with style and humor. Also, he's the star, so even if he insults you, it was still attention payed.
But when OTHER FANS start reaming you? That's just mean. These people need to look back at all the times they were mocked back in school and think about what kind of cocks they're being to each other.
After that depressing show of humanity's underbelly, we poured out into the crush of people exiting the theater, where Jaime and I made a quick escape.

August 21st: It's fucking cold.
Where have I been?
Complaining and working, then complaining some more.
Firstly, Excel "Night Chill" gum, what flavor are you? I think I taste cough syrup, licorice, and Satan's anus. Also, unlike every other Excel gum, you are the consistency of a 50 year old jelly bean. When something that is usually a couple of dollars suddenly drops to 49p for no particular reason, it is a STRONG INDICATION that this product sucks nuts.
But not all is bad, Naruto Saikyou Ninja Daikesshuu 3 is quite possibly the best game in the world. Okay, maybe I'm just thankful after a string of really shit games, but it's a pretty sweet 20th century side-scroller that showcases all the nin powers that we Narutards have come to love.
The game-play is very much controller based, only bringing in the touchscreen for character selection, calling on your backup characters, and certain specialized battles (such as Shino squashing spiders).
The team is broken up into 3, with a set selection for the lead and an extended selection for two backup characters. The backup characters basically come in and do one attack (some only do one-on-one damage, others kill all enemies on screen) then have to "rest" while their power bar refills.
The best part of the game, by far, is the navigation; just as in the series, you can kick off and ricochet-climb between two buildings, walk straight up flat walls, and generally find your way up and around any obstacle.
My only qualm is with the difficulty gradation. It starts out ridiculously easy (which is fine) but within 2 levels, it's impossible. I'd like to at least get to the 2nd last level before having my ass handed to me, thanks.

August 22nd: After a delicious yet nauseating dinner of liver, we watched Blades of Glory. Now, I don't want to say EPIC- but fuck ya. This movie was SO good, it catered to every gay fantasy and is full of MOE. Also, it's full of ridiculous figure skating jokes, which you will get even if you've only GLANCED the sport while channel surfing and stopped because, at first, it looks like the ladies are pantless, only to disappointedly surf away as you realized it was flesh colored tights.
We also started playing FF5, because after watching the GameTrailer's FF Retrospectives, it's impossible not to CRAVE IT. I'd never played 5 before- it's pretty sweet. A lot of nodding, a lot of repetitive fights, but - HYYYYYYYYYYDRA! NOOO! !___! - you really get attached to the characters quickly. I think that quirky insanity is something that got lost after the 2D Final Fantasies stopped being made. It was a bit present in FF7, what with Cloud's zany transvestite adventure, but there's just *something* about it being told with badly translated sprites that's full of charm.
DS-wise, I'm playing Kokocart racer and it's fucking retarded. I'm not even going to grace it with a full review, it's that bad. The short of it is: fucking stupid themes, asinine characters, Mario Kart ripoff.
Also, WARG. NO OJJ! BUH HU HU HU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! T___T WHY CN WHY! ::SHAKES U:: WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

August 25th: Toronto Comicon- I went last year with a full pass, and also worked the booth, all the while suffering from a terrible cold. So, needless to say, I was high on cough syrup and therefore inured to the horror that the Comicon actually holds.
This year, deadly sober and well enough to take it in, Jaime and I decided to go for a single day- and it was absolutely ridiculous.
Firstly, the sign-in line for people who hadn’t pre-paid stretched across the entire first floor AND snaked around. The thing is, you can SEE the con on the floor below (it’s a balcony-style set up) so the urge to ninja down was extremely high.
Luckily the urge to have both my legs intact was slightly more pressing.
While we spent several hours inching forward, we had ample time to try and decode the notoriously badly put together Comicon schedule. Seriously, EVERY year it’s like this- who the shit put this together? There are events described, but with no room number or time, while those events IN the actual location/timetable are mysteriously named “ultimate g28hl pt 2”. WHAT? What is that? Is it Marvel? Is it Ultimate Gaming? Quick, check the list of descriptions- IT’S NOT THERE.
So, just like last year, we just settled on meandering around the selling floor, which was packed and varyingly smelly. Seems the closer you get to collectable comics and figurines, the more everybody reeks like sausages and rank B.O.
And, as per usual, the horror section fucking owned. The oddities seller had a tent and a carnie talker this time- I want that two headed goat SO BAD. And the face lamp!
AURGH.
If I had a million dollars… I would spend it all on shrunken heads.
The most harrowing section was the “gaming” rigs- they had a couple of DS’, XBoxs’, and some sweet PCs- but WTF guys. There were WOW Guild championships. “Oh, you know what I did this weekend? I payed 50-fucking-dollars to play WOW.”
Stay home you sad, sad bastards.
After Jaime had maxed out his credit card, and I was about ready to punch everybody in the face for awkwardly a) talking to me, or b) bumping into me, we bid the Comicon adieu and went home to play some Final 5 (YES) and make esoteric stuffies (FUCK YA).
This is how you geek to live, people.
When 10 o’clock rolled around, we headed out to –what was supposed to be- the Comicon horror section’s after party at Lee’s Palace. It had been advertised as a night of bloody burlesque, Suicide Girls, and magic. We should have had an inkling about the true nature of what the night had in store when we showed up at the door and were shooed away because they were having sound troubles.
A half hour later we returned, were ushered in by some anal retentive bouncers, and settled ourselves in the dilapidated basement “bar”. Firstly, there was a serious shortage of chairs- not even the DJ had one.
But, to be quite honest, he didn’t deserve one. The first DJ wasn’t bad, but then this dumbass sidles up and starts blaring the worst techno in the world. All the while, I was seated right in front of the mixing board, so I had a clear view of the fucking retarded “sound technician” who spent the majority of the night looking perplexed, fiddling with knobs which would alternately turn off the music or crank it so loud that our ears bled.
After a few hours of this, as the club filled up and the chatter became deafening (and the music volume went up exponentially) it was clear that nobody was dancing and everybody was pretty fed up with the never-changing beat that was dangerously close to The Brown Noise.
Eventually the first “act” came up –an old horror director who I hadn’t heard of, and his Gothic Cowby couterpart. Kudos to the director for showing up at such a sketchy gig, but Cowboy? Fuck you. Your accent was terrible and every single real Texan wants to shoot you square between the eyes.
Sadly the suckitude of that act didn’t lesson my irritation when DJ Assface got back on the tables and resumed spinning the SAME GODDAMN SONG FROM BEFORE.
We endured him long enough to see the Suicide Girls costume contest, which was a sad parade of badly dressed people from the audience being mocked roundly and given mysterious garbage bags full of undisclosed “prizes” for their effort. Where the fuck were all the cosplayers FROM THE CON? They had kick-ass get ups, and yet it only seemed all the real nerds decided to forego this even, leaving only the douche bags and the skanks.
Actual overheard conversation: “I didteh feal itth at firrrsht butt itshhh rly kickigngg innnn.” – Girl in line with gigantic blue dreads.
Maybe she’s Dj Assface’s DEMOGRAPHIC.
But seriously- where was the burlesque? Was it AFTER five more hours of The Brown Noise? For Christssakes, it’s the 21st century,I can see tits online, I don’t have to SUFFER for them.

August 31st: Travel- Jammie loves to travel. He gets bored and taciturn if he doesn't get, what he calls, "a change in scenery" once and a while. Some of you can empathize with this and agree completely, and others are probably more on my side of the fence. Why would somebody want to change something as comforting and well known as home and routine?
Just thinking about moving makes me unreasonably angry, and discussing traveling makes me so argumentative that many people have simply given up speaking to me at all.
Luckily, Jammie is an intelligent person, and instead of fueling the argument or simply leaving, he bought a book (how characteristic <3).
Agoraphobia by Claire Weekes
Like most of you -and anybody who's seen OJJ- when I think "agoraphobia" I think of a hilarious disease that afflicts nerds. That's for crazy cat ladies and guys who spend too much time with Fritos and porn.
Firstly, I hate self diagnosing- I absolutely think that it's ridiculous for most people to even try. They come up with a load of shit that they pieced together from things learned on Oprah and from the backs of her "suggested reading list".
Newsflash: Everybody is mentally ill.
Everybody is afraid. EVERYBODY has anxiety. These are truths- if you go around trying to label every little thing you do and find a deep-rooted mental cause, you really WILL give yourself a complex (just a very, very lame one).
So I didn't go into this book unbiased. I went in with a chip on my shoulder and the firm belief that I'm just set in my ways, that people make me angry because they're assholes, and anybody who self-analyzes is full of ad hoc rationalization and a smattering of Grade A horseshit.
But, lo and behold, the first chapter caught my interest. Weekes redefines the term to include everybody who has a debilitating (severe or mild) fear of leaving their safe base, routine, or home.
For those not housebound, the most common fear is going on a trip. But "fear" isn't the best term to describe it, as people react to the anxiety in different ways. Fear is indeed one (apprehension, avoidance), anger is another, and then there are people who are so worried they become physically ill at the prospect of leaving home.
Now, I’m still not convinced enough to go and say “Oh yah, bang on, that’s me”. I hate self-identifying with these sorts of things, because really, I’m a fully functioning person. It’s just everybody else who needs to get out of my fucking way.
Ah-
So, on that note, just a few things she mentioned with which I empathized.

- Sensitization (the vague fear) generally comes from exaggerated stress such as after an illness, which is never allowed to subside by re-socialization (because the person is elderly, or the illness is prolonged, or the patient is isolated, etc).
For a person who nearly died, alone, in an unfamiliar place, this definitely rang a few bells. But it’s not as if I can say “oh yah, definitely. I became very nervy and a complete basket case after that”. But yes, I have gone through several prolonged illnesses during which I had so few friends that I didn’t have much of a support network.
She also mentions people who faint in public, then develop a sudden fear of doing that again. Now, I’ve fainted in public three times- and I can definitely say it does NOT keep me from leaving the house. I don’t dwell on the prospect of passing out and think “oh god, what if I do that on the road?”. So make of that what you will.
Just sometimes, I have trouble leaving. Not physically, like “Oh god I can’t move out the door”, more like I’ll check things repeatedly until –WTF- three hours went by?
Well. There’s just no point in going now, is there?

- Sufferers of anxiety get used to such a heightened level of stress that one small thing can send them into panic or a breakdown.
This is where I come in again- I can be going about my day just fine, but then something happens (or is even just mentioned) to upset the routine and I either run home (sometimes literally, dashing off across downtown) or I burst into tears (not in front of people, thankfully it’s not that decontrolled) or I puke (blargh!).

- There’s no deep-seeded past trauma associated with agoraphobia. It’s simply hyper-vigilance with which the person deals by requiring an escape.
Weekes’ firm stance on “don’t psycho-analyze” and “it’s not caused by repressed memories” gave me faith in the book- because both of those things are fucking retarded. I don’t have general anxiety because I was beaten or unloved, or something like that. I’m hyper-vigilant and have routine and familiarity as coping mechanisms.
If you take away a kid’s toy, they cry.
If you suggest I go for a trip, I fuck you in the neck.
It’s pretty much the same thing.

Lately, with the prospect of losing my job and not being able to get another one, I’ve admittedly become a bit more batty. If left alone, like I have been in past years, I would probably just go on thinking that everybody hated me, that Something Bad was About to Happen (but what?! WHAT? Oh rationality, where are you when I’m blowing chunks in a park bathroom).
And knowing I’m just paranoid, and that nobody hates me, doesn’t help. They still do, I can see it in their little faces.
And knowing that there’s really no good reason to avoid taking a vacation, doesn’t mean I can’t come up with a million heartfelt (seriously) reasons not to go.
And moving? Well, okay, I can’t even say something glib about that. MOVING? The thought of it makes me weep like a baby getting flogged.

Sept 4th: (-__-) This is my tired face.
The whole long weekend was non-stop insanity. Friday Jaime and I were out shopping for plushie-making materials, Saturday we helped Lynne move into her 5th story apartment in a low rise with no elevators (She was a saint about it though: bought the boys pizza and despite moral objections, bought me a Diet Coke ^_~).
Afterward Jaime and I returned home and crashed ridiculously early.
Sunday Beck, Andre, Amy, Scott and their adorable dog Sadie met up with Jaime and I on Centre island. It was alternately way too hot, then way too cold, yet consistently swarming with bees and tent caterpillars.
‘Tis the season!
Monday I managed to get a bit of respite before my Japanese lesson (my god things are moving fast, I can’t believe how quickly I’m picking it up. Before I knew it, I can just read. I look down at the hiragana on the page and I just read the sentence- brain magic).
But my relaxation all went downhill when Jaime and I spent over three hours out ninjaing in the night. Granted, it was SO worth it since it’s the first of the school month and everybody was moving in/out.
We ninja’ed some fake bulrushes, a spiffy little hanging cabinet, and a LOAD of books, including Best Detective Stories of the Year 1950.
FUCK YA.
Nobody can pick through your bins like me.
NOBODY.

Sept 8th: Super Princess Peach and its Super Princess Weirdshit has restored my faith in video games.
After fuckery like Koko Kart Racer, Londonian Gothics, Pacman 3D, New Super Mario Brothers, and the myriad of other schlock out there for the DS, this quirky little number has really grown on me.
First off, it’s good old fashioned fun. You play Peach, save Toads en route to rescue Mario and Luigi. She has whole new set of powers built on the core of Mario’s abilities, as well as the stuff you learned in Yoshi’s Island 1 & 2 (peach can slide down a hill to kill enemies, do a ground-slide attack, pick up squashed enemies, and bash them with her umbrella).
Peach also has “moods”, which are basically power-ups controlled by a type of magic meter that can be recharged by both blue coins and “consuming” enemies (i.e.: picking them up then squatting- which causes her sentient umbrella to mysteriously eat them).
Moods include: “Anger”, which burns wooden things and allows her to kill multiple enemies by quaking the ground, “Sadness”, which pours tears on plants to make them grow in to steps and makes her power-run, and “Joy”, which makes her float in a cyclone that can also destroy some enemies.
Coins take on a new role and act as actual money- you use them to purchase new types of umbrellas with unique power-ups.
There are also side-games including Peach Vocals wherein you collect music boxes throughout the game to create a band, and a puzzle game.
There is so much content that it’s immediately engaging, but it’s intuitive enough that it doesn’t FEEL like a chore to take it all in.
All and all, this game is entertainingly quirky, well put together, increases in difficulty in a timely fashion, and is SO GOD DAMN CUTE. Play it!

Sept 26th: Just because cartoons are fun to watch doesn’t mean their fun to make.
I had a sobering moment recently, talking to Beck’s sister, who works in an odor control factor. Basically, the employees smell shit, the chemists put together masking compounds, and then the employees smell it again and tell them if it still stinks.
She LOVES her job.
She says that they randomly have BBQs, they have daily company-wide breaks where everybody goes out and enjoys the sun and nobody is left to work inside. There aren’t deadlines, and there’s a sense of comradery, and when they need more people they HIRE THEM.
I have a job that has literally destroyed my shoulder, that –even when I’m doing the work of several people- I receive criticism. 90% of what I hear from my employers is how much I’m sucking.
I never thought I’d pine for a job rating how stanky something is.

Oct 2nd: I could complain about the craziness at work, or tell you in detail about all the cute critters that were the entertainment at Beck’s wedding shower (just look up “sugar glider” in google images and you’ll get the idea), but instead I will tell you about our awesome neighbor:
He is out on his balcony right now, yelling into his ‘phone. What is he yelling you ask?
GTA cheat codes.
L oh L.

Oct 5th: The week of pure insanity- wrap up at SGS (300 layouts in 5 days) but Beck’s shower and wedding made it seem like cake.
On Sunday, Beck calls me, asks me if I’m ready to go to the shower, which was being held at her sister’s house. Since Amy lives out on the highway, Beck was going to give me a ride.
But right before I was about to leave, I get another call, and Beck tells me she’s at the hospital- Andre tripped and smashed his hand through a glass door, severing a tendon and an artery.
She apologizes for not being able to drive me because they’re in emergency, with her soon-to-be husband bleeding all over the place (of course I was like “Oh Christ don’t worry about me! Just worry about Andre, we’ll get there with hitchhiking and wishes if we have to”).
I talked with her for quite some time, and asked if she needed help rescheduling the shower- but Andre was ardent that she go, so once he made it into surgery to have his wrist sewn up, Becky headed down to her sister’s.
Jaime and I ended up taking the subway as far as we could, and against better judgment, walked the rest of the way along the highway.
It was so much nicer up there- clear air, nice trees, but the highway noise was deafening. After a bit of searching around, we finally found Amy’s house and settled in.
The entertainment was a woman who traveled with a menagerie of animals for people to handle. She had a ferret, a parrot, sugar gliders, a possum, a hairless guinea pig, a snake, a toad, a millipede, and probably a lot of other things I forgot or didn’t see since I was outside with Sadie (the cutest little greyhound in the world).
Since Beck was so late getting there and was keen to return to her hubby, the celebration was short and sweet- which I didn’t mind at all, since I spent the week extremely sleep deprived and a little out of it.
For the next few days, Andre continued going in and out of the hospital to have his tendons reattached, and by Friday (the day of the wedding) he was fully put back together, and extremely high on pain killers.
Despite that, he managed to get the ring on Beck’s finger, say his vows, and even sign the papers (lefty-style! What a drag, getting your dominant hand torn up- I’m sure all the artists out there are cringing).
The ceremony was nice and brief, afterward a multitude of pictures were taken, and finally dinner was served. Now, I’m usually pretty wary of generic buffets, but the food was REALLY good. Especially desert. The other people at my table looked in quiet horror/amusement as I ate a slice of each of the three cakes.
Once dinner was cleared out, the dance floor opened and Beck and Andre shared a first dance- very delicately as to not upset his arm. That was followed by Beck and her father dancing to a song that made everybody in the room start bawling (I don’t know what it was called, but it was a very touching and heartfelt account of a father giving away his daughter, called something akin to “I Loved her First”).
So the evening came to a close, Jaime and I congratulated the new entity known as Beck’ndre, and we headed home.
I think the whole week taught me something really important –watching Beck stick by Andre the whole time, and both of them still stepping up for the big plunge- I learned that one of the best things in life is pickled beats.
Seriously, best buffet ever.

Oct 17th: So, days are good now. No more work, walked out of my lovely five years of loyal service with some mysteriously topped pizza and a couple of people waving adieu.
But Uncle Sam’s milk tastes so much sweeter now that I’m drinking it with seething hate and somewhat soggy bitterness.
Saturday was Braddy’s party, which was awesome if only for the demonstration of pwning in Halo 3, all showcased on his HOME THEATRE. If I had money, and didn’t live in the projects, and had more than 2 feet of room, and couldn’t hear my neighbors whisper their prayers at night, I would set some similar shit up, let me tell you (run along sentence, run along).
Today we went out on a magical adventure for dumplings, and ended up trapped in a film shoot IN THE RESTAURANT. I was like, no, sir. Give me my red bean buns or I will show you Jaime’s ass.
Now we’re back home and he’s trying out teamspeak for the first time on WOW, and I am shitting in silent laughter. If geeks actually got calls on their ‘cel phones, this is how it would sound.
“Can you hear me now? No, you go left. Kill the minions! … Can you hear me now? … What?”
I am so close… SO close to being all LOUDER AND SADDER.

Oct 19th: Let’s party like it’s 1955! … And we’re housewives!
Herein starts the roach debacle.
Nothing like spending a Friday night scrubbing all your cupboards down with ammonia and making sure all your non-canned food is sealed in Tupperware.
Last night Jaime saw a roach run into the heater, and in the morning I had inadvertently trapped it on some duct tape that was on the floor. Now, we’ve all heard the old adage, “for every one you see, there are 300 more”, which made me throw up a little in my mouth.
I’m a steadfastly clean person- maybe to the point of being a little obsessive over it. I clean daily, with rubbing alcohol. I never leave dishes overnight, unless I’m really ill (and even then, they’re soaking in soap), food never stays out, and even my balcony is free of trash.
But, apparently somebody in the building has different ideas of what cleanliness entails, and those little blighters are wandering into my sanctum.
Well, the war has been waged, and I’m hell bent on winning.
On the plus side, roaches aren’t the worst pest- I rather prefer them to the other infestations I’ve lived with in my colorful journey through bargain housing.
Potato Bugs: They’re quiet like roaches, but damned if they are ARSE at hiding. These little fuckers get everywhere, die everywhere, and when you least expect it, reaching for your favouite pair of boots, they are COVERED in eggs and carcasses.
Silverfish: Quiet, hardly seen, but they EAT BOOKS. No, son.
Earwigs: At least roaches have the decency to find good hiding places, that are NOT in my bed. Earwigs love linens. Worst. Night. Ever.
Moths: The pupas will make the gruel rise in your gullet. They eat clothes, you’ll reach for your jacket just to find it covered in those slimy little worms, and they will nest in your crackers, just laying in wait, for the day you inadvertently eat one. On the plus side, the adult stage is pretty charming- like a little brown butterfly that you feel a bit bad for smashing with a hammer.
Fruit Flies: These are probably the least “gross”, but the most annoying. STAY OUT OF MY NOSE. I hate swarms of things.
Mice: And, the worst for last. Even if you don’t get the henna virus from inhaling their poop fumes, mice are LOUD and DESTRUCTIVE. All night it’s squeaking, skittering, and chewing. Then, in the morning, you find little presents everywhere. You can’t even Tupperware your food for safety, because they will chew through it with a vengeance. They’re also not picky, they will eat your soap, and then shit on the remains. It’s like they’re sentient enough to KNOW they’re pissing you right off. I hate mice, HATE- even as pets. They are bitches, and I have no regret for burning their little carcasses in a fire.

Oct 23rd: Before you go into animation, or envy us for having a dream job, this rant is a must-read; I could have written it myself.
… Well, not as eloquently, as I’m overcome with literary turrets when I talk about my job. Fucking twatwaffles and their mightier-than-thou shitfaced lies.

I like being an animator, in particular I like being able to make my own hours and to help create something entertaining, and the work can offer challenges and variety.
The down side of the profession, and particularly the position itself, is that animators are considered on par with mentally impaired factory workers one shiny object away from completely forgetting where they are and walking into some sharp and pointy machine parts at any moment.
Line Managers, Production Assistants, Producers, Animation Supervisors, and even occasionally the mythical Directors themselves will descend from on high and take precious moments away from their hectic schedule of writing emails to condescend to you a very basic and easily learned principle of your job as if you had only moments before decided to pick up animation as a hobby or wandered into the studio by mistake thinking it was an elaborate fruit stand.
I'm not a veteran, but at four years on the job I've passed the point of being considered a rookie or someone who will at any moment realize my mistake and take that old job back with a sigh of relief, looking fondly some day on those wild and misspent efforts of being an animator. Furthermore, I'm not a simpleton, I've worked on many projects, of many shapes and variations, at many different studios - from low budget made for dvd movies to insipid children's cereal commercials, I have sampled the buffet of crap from many a lamp warmed table.
So when a background character isn't animated, it's not because I was lazy, or didn't read the email the day before about the importance of doing so (and subsequently I do not need a paragraph, that seems written by someone who has only a loose concept of sentence structure, reiterating the point at length) it's because the character's symbol comp was accidentally set to 'single frame' instead of 'play once', a problem which takes slightly less effort to correct than picking your nose.
If I have one more person give me that winning managerial smile and tell me the reason quota isn't met is my own 'time management' I may simply snap. It certainly has nothing to do with the scenes being stuck in the pipeline at design or layout for three days while I sat on my ass twiddling my thumbs, or the last minute storyboard revisions because someone felt, in their infinite wisdom, that the angle of the background was inconducive to the emotional impact of the scene where the character opens a door and walks through it. It's certainly not because the network is down for a few hours everyday, that the size of the BG's crashes the program half of the time you try to open it, or that the render farm crapped out overnight. I imagine it has nothing to do with revisions, when someone decides that they want to include a pose/prop/character/entire new line of dialogue into a scene that has already been storyboarded, layed out, animated and approved or those hours I spent swapping out a symbol in every scene after the Creative Executive Producer decided they didn't like the size of the character's ears three months into production. It has nothing to do with the difference between a 10 second scene of a talking head and a 3 second scene where an entire crowd of eight armed aliens spewing puss dances in front of an electric light show that I have to improvise out of my ass. It has nothing to do with hook up problems generated by giving everyone scenes out of sequence, so that the poses don't match up at all. It has nothing to do with dissolving entire departments into one and forcing animators to do designs and layout without decreasing the quota or increasing the pay. And last, but my favourite in terms of absolute hair tearing frustration, it is ludicrous to suggest that the three or four day wait I have on every scene I submit to be approved by the crack team of professional chair warmers has an effect on my ability to finish them before the end of a work week, while they sit in some quantum level of being both complete and incomplete at the same time.
Flash animation, while it has endless untapped potential for efficiency and variety, has been viciously kidnapped by studios that see only the possibility for lower production costs. With very little effort an entire show could be done paperless, drawings rendered on a Centiq screen or Wacom tablet in Alias Sketchbook, saved on a communal server and simply dragged into Flash to be broken up and symbolized, coloured, animated, and exported all in a single program, with only the necessity to slap those shots together in editing and fiddle with the sound as desired. The storyboard can be put directly into a Guide layer of the scene to be instantly referenced by the animator, down to the exact frame. Complicated animation can be reused by simply pasting it directly into the scene, mouth charts and hand positions can be chosen quickly from a list without having to draw them out, a character never has to be cleaned up or kept on model, drawings do not have to be scanned or photographed one by one and then clumsily synced up to some audio just to check out the rough animation. No inking and colouring of every frame! And so on, and so on. This should be a golden age of animation, where all of these time saving breakthroughs are passed on to pre-production and animation, quotas should be going down, not up!
And yet, Flash animated series often have quotas five times larger than their classic counterparts... If it's twice as easy to animate in this program, reasons the producer or accountant, then surely that means we can see twice the amount of seconds coming out of the studio.
And of course, despite this, we'll pay less, we'll spend less time on design and storyboard and leica reels, and we'll hire the entire production staff from a short contract pool of tired, poor and completely uninterested freelancers. And all that time saved cutting corners will be spent, with interest, on revision after revision.
On the average project I don't even speak to the Director, heck, sometimes I never even see what he looks like.
I get a lot of information from the Producer/Production Manager about quota, schedule, and where the bathroom is, but that's about it. Sometimes I get to speak, or communicate by way of very short emails, with an Animation Supervisor after I've completed some scenes, but that's it. Storyboards, if I even get a storyboard, usually have a singular pose for each shot, no matter the length or complexity. No notes in the margin, no descriptions of actions, simply nothing but a hastily drawn off model pose of a character by a rushed and underpaid storyboard artist.

Oct 24th: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (DS) isn’t the WORST game I’ve played, but it ranks pretty high. The general plot is that Harry, Ron and Hermione are off to enjoy the plot of the book, broken down into tedious “quests”, which beg you to use the same buttons and tricks over and over again (granted, much like the original story).
You can choose which of the trio you want to be at the forefront, and each has “strengths” (to be generous). Ron has speed, Harry has attack, and Hermione is fucking retarded. Also, she has good defense, but that counts for nothing when there’s no way to stop her from getting hit unless you’re controlling her- AND EVEN THEN.
Let’s break it down, wizard style.

Character Control: If we believe what D&D has taught us, wizards are slow, so I guess the game was just being true to character when they made all the characters run as if they were stuck in the molasses disaster of 1922. They are INFURATINGLY slow to respond, run, turn, pretty much everything. Even casting spells- which can cause you to get your ass kicked verily.
Magic Control: Magic is way, WAY too simple in this game. Essentially you have A & B. They cast the spells you “need” at the time, as the game sees fit. So if you need to make a flower blossom, press A. If you need to kill a bunch of tree nymphs, press A. If you need to touch Hermione sensuously, press A.
FASCINATING.
Aim: If you’re an Atheist, start believing in god, because targeting in HP&GOF is nothing short of a miracle. Harry can point in about 5° of his supposed 360° attack radius. This means you WILL get molested by gobberworms or whatever the shit Hagrid sends you to fight. It also means that all the “challenging puzzles” of the game are only difficult because the controls suck more cock than Dumbledore.
This is a reoccurring problem among games: if your game is hard because the controls make it impossible, IT IS NOT A GOOD GAME. I KNOW I’m supposed to levitate the beam into the water- I JUST CAN’T REACH IT BECAUSE HARRY IS A MIOPIC TOOL.
AI: So as the character you’ve chosen to control is sashaying slowly around, slamming A repeatedly, your two computer-controlled cohorts are usually off scratching their bollocks. L1 calls them over, but this rarely works. They’re generally stuck behind something, wandering off in the wrong direction, or, in the rare case they DO come to your side, they just get in your way. I would have rather this been solely one character at a time, because it is INFURATING having Ron & Hermione perpetually underfoot.
Their actions are so random, I’m beginning to suspect they didn’t finish writing the AI module at all. Usually they’ll stand around, sometimes they’ll help you pick up items, and when god winks at you in just the right way, they’ll help you fight.
Items: Magic beans are like money, shields are some sort of points, and you also get cards that I could care less about. I’m sure all these things are thrilling, if you could actually catch them before they bounced away and blinked out of existence.
Items are gained from chests, defeating enemies, and smashing rocks, all of which causes said three things to EXPLODE in a rainbow of jellybeans which fly in all directions, only to time out. And even if you aren’t getting raped up the ass by some tentacle vine, good luck getting Harry to run to the item quickly enough to get it.
Sloooow Rideee… Take it eassss-ayyyyy.
Enemies: Generally they will run around biting you and your cohorts, but once and a while you’ll hit them from just the right angle that you’ll be engaged in a confusing one-on-one battle, where it loads for ten minutes, switches views, and forces you to use the stylus to “cast spells”- which would be cool if it worked.
It doesn’t.
Graphics: Oh wow, now, was this designed by kids for kids? Because the characters look like they were rendered by somebody who a) had no training in CG modeling and b) had never seen a human being. Harry, Hermione and Ron look like TERRIFYING VENTRILIQUIST DUMMIES, with strange lines all around their mouths and helmet hair and ungainly pixilated limbs.
Whole pieces of people/BGs/spells will blink out of existence in graphical glitches. And, during the cut-scenes, they ZOOM IN until everything is a horrifying pixilated mess. Whose decision was it to do that? These scenes wouldn’t have been TOO BAD if they hadn’t insisted on putting in camera moves that exposed the shittiness of it all.
Music: I just had to leave this for last so I could properly express my confusion. WHO WROTE THE SCORE TO THIS GAME? Was it a cat? No, really, did they have a wonderful 16bit score which was then overwritten by a cat slamming its ass repeatedly into the keyboard? Because I suspect that’s what happened. I was honestly *taken aback* by the sound. It was like watching Brit at the VMAs, but much worse, because this didn’t even resemble music. It wasn’t BAD, It was CONFUSING.
Random MIDI beeps for all!

Oct 29th: Out of morbid curiosity and innate self loathing as a gamer, I played Bratz Forever Diamondz today. It’s what you would expect- fashion girls want to find a mogul. In order to complete their primary objective they must wear daisy dukes, ride horses, and do a sassy dance.

With the flimsy plot slapped out in the first five minutes, the remainder of the game is broken up into mini games. Even calling them “games” is generous- I suspect they make people play these things in prison.
Basically you’re made to endure the bastard children of popular existing games, and girly schlock concocted by orange 40 year old marketing executives.
The Dance Off: Did you like Elite Beat Agents? Then you’ll hate this- Regardless of how you answered the question. You have to tap stars, hearts and training bras in time with the music- even though the beats don’t sync up even remotely. There is no scoring.
If, by pure luck, you succeed, the ungainly Bratz you’ve chosen to stare at will lapse into a seizure that takes her across the screen. If you do it wrong, she’ll hang her disproportionate head in shame.
The Photo Shoot: In a failed attempt to emulate Pokemon Snap, you’re sent to the local park to take pictures of the five distinct animals that live there. This could have been tolerable, but the camera is literally impossible to control without inadvertently taking 5000 pictures of a garbage can, which will consequently cause you to lose.
Water-Skiing Game: They say your goal is to guide the bikini-clad jailbait through obstacles with the stylus- but the real objective is to not commit suicide or smash your DS in a fit of frustration at the complete lack of control.
YES, SLAM INTO THE BOOEY YOU WHORE.
Horse Riding Game: This is the only tolerable mini-game so far, and even then, it’s not fantastic. If you hit something, your character will blink for a few seconds but otherwise make no other move or slow down. It took me a few times to realize WHY I was losing- but then I was left to ponder why they didn’t spend five extra dollars to make a “falling off the horse” animation.
Pet Training: Basically you scream commands into the mic, while jabbing your pet with the stylus. These commands may or may not work, regardless of how accurate you are with the stylus or how clearly you enunciate the commands.
Your pet’s mood will change to “bored” within three seconds of beginning to train him, and he’ll stop listening. At this point you’re required to shout CUNT into the mic over and over until you feel better.
To be honest, there’s probably more, but this is the point at which I stopped playing, because it was so infuriating and I feared for the safety of my DS.
I expected sexually inappropriate, badly designed girls nancing about in miniskirts and butterfly tops. I was prepared for that.
I was not expecting a game programmed by a team of retarded monkeys.
It’s time to rethink the old saying: 1000 monkeys at 1000 PCs will eventually make a Bratz game- and here it is!

Oct 30th: So I’m a year older and continue to feel a sort of apathy when this time of the year rolls around. I think the OSHIT IT’S MY BDAY wears off when you’re 10, and doesn’t come back ‘til you’re 90. Regardless, it’s nice to hear from everybody.
Indeed, I got calls from my friends, my parents, and woke up to a lovely email from my dad, my mum, and most hilariously, Ubuntu forums.
I rofled at my own geekitude, as my inbox was populated by From Dad, From Mom, From Ubuntu:

After a day of running around to get my JpRail pass, Dorian and Duncan took me out to dinner for some delicious Indian food, and Jaime and I returned home to “Read the Elric Saga”.
Ha ha ha, you wish it was innuendo. God damn I love that albino and his perpetually mentioned Flashing Red Eyes.

Nov 8th: I was chatting with Heath about web comics the other day, and it lead me to create this spectacular meme which you must immediately complete. Are you ready for it? “My Favourite Blogs”. Yes, RUN, run away.

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Nov 11th: Last night a momentous event occurred! We saved the universe from the n-zone, and all rejoiced.
I’m already feeling the post-reinforcement-pause from playing Final Fantasy 5. By far this has been the most epic of the Final Fantasies I’ve played, not only in length, but in the constant pressing quests that you’re put through.
There aren’t any parts that drag, or impossible bosses that frustrate you, or overly long dialogues/FMVs.
Really, the main thing I felt after completing it was irritation that it’ll fall into obscurity, having only recently (and too late, I think) been released in North America.
Of all the FFs, I think 5 had the most interesting system with the multi-class option. It’s amazingly customizable, as you can make hearty wizards by training them up as knights, or fighters with a bit of healing ability.
That said, the characters don’t become cheesy-ultra-powerful a la FF6 Esper method, because mastering a job class really takes time, your character will initially suck in any new class, and any non-fanatical player will divide them up only according to need.
Story-wise, FF5 suffered from having a pretty run of the mill tale- “big bad guy wants to consume the world, four unlikely heroes stop him”. Granted, the characters themselves have a few quirks that make them interesting, but they’re not the most colorful I’ve seen, and pale in comparison to FF6 and 7.
My only other complaint is the repetition; this game is LONG, and though the overall variety of monsters/locations you experience are numerous, there is a LOT of a repetition (music, enemies, etc). You’ll fight the same monsters over and over in any one dungeon, and variants of them in others. Though it makes the introduction of new monsters that much more exciting, it still had me wishing running from battles was a bit easier so I wouldn’t have to fight so many fucking rabbits.
Finally, FF5’s worst attribute was definitely the music- which isn’t that bad when you take into consideration how great the rest of it is. The BGM just… Repeats… A LOT, the riffs are short and will loop ad nauseum when you’re in dungeons, and they just love reusing the most irritating ones everywhere.
I forget what town it was, but the GRATING 8 BIT IRISH JIG that played there nearly made me say fuckthisshit, and ignore any info the townsfolk might have for me.
Ultimately, though, I just turned the volume down a bit.
Still.
IRISH JIG.

Nov 20th: A few days ago Beck & co and I went to see The Bee Movie or whatever the devil it was called with that bloke from Seinfield.
Now, I realize this is a kids movie (in our defense, we had kids with us -they followed us soon as we offered them candy- no I’m shitting you, Beck & Andre’s kids came) so I’ll forgive it for the scientific inaccuracies. (POLLEN DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.) I realize the story flow is meant for children, and I understand that means it may not appeal to adults, but what I can’t overlook in the name of “Rated G” are the TERRIBLE designs.
I KNOW kids won’t be able to tell the difference, and they think CG is just fantastic, but you can’t just feed them shit and say it’s strawberries.
Why did all the human characters look like they had fetal alcohol syndrome? Especially the main woman, it was uncanny. Maybe they needed to put her eyes so far apart to accommodate shots with the bee- but for the love of god! I haven’t seen worse 3D designs since the early 90’s.
The rest of the characters looked like they had been assembled by some interns with a Creating Animation for Dummies book, wherein they give you a set of features and you plug them in at random.
Round head, square eyes, pig nose, fat body.
OKAY BOSS, I’m done! NEXT!
Finally -the bees themselves. Now, these are the main characters, you’d think they’d spend a little time making them look like bees. They all looked as if they were wearing mouth guards- is it hockey season, guys? WHERE ARE YOUR TEETH.
I am aware bees don’t actually have teeth, yet cartoons need expressive mouths, so CHOOSE ONE. Do not go INBETWEEN.
I could go on, but thankfully I don’t remember most of the movie due to how boring it was- I’m flabbergasted that the kids in the audience managed to stay awake and seated; ADD indeed, this movie proves there is no such epidemic.

Nov 22nd: Jaime and I have been reading Stranger in a Strange Land, which I had been enjoying immensely up until recently.
The first part -wherein Gill and Ben are introduced and they attempt to make contact with him- is just fantastic. It’s well written, gripping, and the characters are really interesting. It just gets better when Valentine is officially introduced and the point of view begins to include him and all his otherworldly idiosyncrasies.
I happen to love exposition and how it makes you take a step back from immersion in our own culture and see it from a completely novel perspective, such as that of The Man from Mars.
I can’t give high enough accolades for the first half (from Valentine escaping with Gill, to their stay with Jubal, and even the meeting with the world leaders) of this book.
Then, Valentine has an epiphany, and becomes (in Martian terms) “a man”. At this point he leaves Jubal and runs off to the circus with Gill, wherein they both completely lose their original personalities and become complete fucktards.
I know time is supposed to have passed and their characters have theoretically grown and changed, and having such a stark difference is acceptable if there are previous hints that these people have hidden traits, but Valentine going from a confused, innocent (yet indefinitely loveable) character into a self righteous gallivanting asshat and Gill going from a stalwart nurse to a high class prostitute that loves her job- well, that’s really a stretch.
This is the point in the book where they tackle the whole polyamoury debate, and I really didn’t mind the way they handled it. What I did mind was that in one scene, Valentine and Gil bang a woman, then moments later, Gil pontificates on how she had to explain homosexuality to Valentine, but that she wasn’t worried because he would grok “a wrongness” about any man who propositioned him in that way.
WHOA. Whoa. Gil, you just dove the muff, you CAN’T start calling “wrongness” on men who enjoy the peen.
So, at this point, I was pretty infuriated. But then, only a few pages later, Gil starts expounding again, this time on rape. Since she’s a slutty ho now, she starts thinking about why men react to her when she’d dressed solely in a piece of candy floss, and comes to the fucking retarded conclusion that RAPE is ALWAYS the woman’s fault as well as the man’s.
NO.
Whether a lady is wearing a peanut butter bikini or a nun’s habit, she’s not ASKING some guy/girl to run out of nowhere and assault her.
~It’s a fact~.
I won’t pass final judgment quite yet, as I still have about 20% of the book to finish, but I highly doubt the warped and now irritating characters will be able to make up for these two massive slights.
Mr. Heimlein, I applaud your writing, and initially you spun a great story, but you need to taste the cock and embrace it.

Nov 24th: It’s that time of the year again! And by that I mean, time to defrost the ‘fridge.
(Unenthusiastic hurrah.)
Now, I have a ‘fridge from c. 1950. The freezer is just a box right in the main part, and within six months of cleaning, it becomes so encrusted with ice that it’s difficult to fit a single popsicle in there.
And yet, whether it’s just been defrosted, or is encased in a meter of ice, the fucking thing CAN’T KEEP SHIT FROZEN.
How is that even POSSIBLE? The laws of thermodynamics state, that with so much ice completely surrounding an item, IT TOO SHOULD BE ICE.
But, no, apparently it didn’t work that way back in the day- when my ‘fridge was created. I think I would literally be better off with a garbage bag full of snow.
So, right, the defrosting- I do it the lazy way. Instead of chipping away at the ice, I just empty out the whole ‘fridge (tossing the stuff onto my balcony out into the unforgiving north, which, incidentally does a much better job of keeping things frozen), unplug it, and then wait for the ice to melt.
It takes about a day for it to all disappear, and about 50% of that is waiting for the lower bit of ice to fall off on its own accord.
Whoever designed this must have been the engineering intern.
The inside of the freezer, which is a smooth box-like shape, lets the ice come off in great chunks once it’s melted enough to break it. That takes about 10 minutes.
The bottom (outside) of the freezer, however, isn’t flush against the sides of the ‘fridge, creating a crazy zig-zag pocket full of ice that’s climbed up there, attached to the main body of ice, and makes it literally impossible to slide out.
WHO THOUGHT OF THAT?
Did they imagine that their machine was built better, and wouldn’t have this crazy frost problem? Or were they just retarded?
Seriously.
So, eventually, I give up on waiting for the bottom shelf of ice to detach itself, and go to bed, invariably being woken in terror when it finally does dislodge at around 4am, coming down with a deafening crack.
OMFG.
IT’S THE ROBOT DEATH SQUAD COME TO TAKE ME AWAY!

My Trip to Japan: From Wonder to Fuckery

Nov 27th/28th: The day started briskly at 7am, at Jaime’s insistence that we “have a good meal in us” before the voyage. Seeing as our flight departed at 1:55pm, and there was literally nobody there when we went through security, we had MORE than enough time to eat, travel, check in, and tool around for hours.
The flight itself was long -14 hours in total- but otherwise uninspired. The food was mediocre, the movies B grade at best, and I wasn’t able to sleep a wink.
The only notable part of the flight was the time slip, wherein we chased the sun. We left in broad daylight, but in no time witnessed the sun set. There were a few hours of darkness before the sun rose again. Then, once again, as we descended into Narita, the sun set.
We officially arrived in Japan just after 5pm (the 28th) and, before we were allowed to leave the airport, were photographed and fingerprinted along with everybody else- it took forever and nobody was in a particularly good mood, but the staff remained admirably polite and patient.
Once through, Jaime and I claimed our JR Pass, boarded the Narita Express, and spent yet another hour in transit to reach Tokyo station, where we switched lines to Ueno, couldn’t figure out how to make it the rest of the way, and hired a cab.
This is where things got interesting; we got in the cab, only to find the driver had NO English whatsoever. Everybody else up until this point (within the airport) had spoken at least a little English, so it was up to me and my dubious Japanese skills to direct the driver.
As one would expect, I didn’t succeed, and all my perfectly rehearsed “useful phrases” meant nothing when I couldn’t understand the response or pronounce the kanji for the address.
Luckily, the cabbies of Japan aren’t like the cabbies of North America. Not only do they have uniforms, white gloves, help you with your luggage and have clean cars, but their dashboards are equipped with GPS map displays, which our cabbie easily used to find the location of New Koyo and see us safely there.
We arrived, and I quietly sat in horror as we checked in.
Now, I hadn’t really been paying close attention to the hotel booking, but I had the notion that New Koyo was Not a hostel, when really, it is- disgustingly so.
At this point, with flashbacks of the boarding house combined with the lack of Diet Coke in this country (SERIOUSLY), my Japanese falling and the fact I hadn’t slept in more than 48 hours, I did the fancy mental break down dance.
Luckily Jaime was my shoulder to cry on, and I eventually calmed down enough to see the optimistic side of things, and start enjoying Japan.

Nov 29th: Well rested (to the point that we woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6am) and full of adventurousness, Jaime and I set out for Akihabara today. We started out the journey with a trip to MacDonald’s, to try the notoriously strange Japanese McD’s menu; Jaime sampled a ham & cheese and ranch breakfast bagel, while I picked at his hash brown and remarked at how EVERYBODY in there was smoking (don’t get me wrong, if there’s one place you should be allowed to light up, it’s inside fast food joints) but I was still taken aback, what with Western culture having their panties all up in a knot over cigarettes.
Also notable, but less thrilling, was the radio playing popular North American hits, but translated into Japanese. Amy Winehouse sounds better when you can’t comprehend her retarded lyrics, to be quite honest.
Sated, Jaime and I made our haphazard way around Akiba, on foot; through we were leisurely about it, and meandered quite a bit, we were ultimately trying to find a couple of doujinshi stores for me, the addresses of which I’d heard recommended online**.
ELEVEN hours of walking later, we learned a few things, not least of which:

• If there’s adult content in your store, you can flaunt it in banners outside, sell it to anybody, and even carry sick shit like “pictures of real little girls in swim suits” (actual CD I spotted), so long as you put up the Safety Bear caution signs. Now, this will only be funny to a few SG and 2ch people, but PedoBear, the cartoon mascot that makes touching on kids amusing, is FULLY THE CHARACTER on the safety bear signs.

• People yelling outside your store is the ONLY way to promote your wares. Every store had at least one pretty girl handing out flyers, or one crazy guy screaming into a megaphone about deals. It was a delightful cacophony amid the techno music of Denki Town.

• No building has an address clearly marked on it.
95% of our search difficulties came from the complete lack of an address system in Japan. People rely on landmarks, but when you’re from out of town and the only familiar place is 7’11, it gets INFURIATINGLY confusing.
It was only with printed maps (with landmarks included), tenacity, and a lot of asking for directions that we managed it.
Luckily, people are extremely helpful, as two separate strangers came up to ask if they could help us- the first with directions, the second in a restaurant with punch-in menus (we weren’t clear on what to do with your order ticket. FYI: leave it on the counter for the chefs).
I can’t believe how easy people were to lend a hand –if this had been in Toronto, we would have been fucked- lost, and probably shot for holding up the yakisoba line.
(But, to be fair, the restoraunt was really good. For 5$ two people get their choice of veggie/meat/egg soba, and can either sit down and eat it, or stand at staggered bars like the rushing businessmen who frequent the place.)

** Yaoi doujinshi are not in Akiba, even though there ARE Mandarake and Kbooks locations there. If you too look up where to go to buy doujin in Japan, know that the recommendation to go to Akiba for yaoi doujin is WRONG. AKIBA ONLY HAS YURI DOUJIN.
For yaoi, go to Mandarake’s or Kbooks’ Ikebukuro or Shibuya branches.

So after refueling, Jaime and I braved the glittering insanity of one of Akiba’s many arcades. This particular one had six floors, though multi-level arcades are the norm. Each floor specialized in a type of game (casual –DDR/Guitar Hero/Taiko Drumming- fighter, adventure, quiz, cards), and aside from the first floor being smoke-free, the rest of the arcade was like an old-fashioned pool hall.
Though it was tempting to try our hand at a few games, the combo of crazy smoke, the cacophony of 1000 different machines, and the massive evening crowd made it a painful assault to the senses, so we took our leave.
The next place we hit was Super Potato, known world-wide to gamers as the mecha of vintage games.
People, the legends are true!
Though its entrance looks like an alley, located within another alley (as are most non-chain stores in Japan), Super Potato is three glorious floors of every game you’ve ever enjoyed, heard of, or imagined for (S)NES, Game Boy, Atari, N64, etc, etc x1000 consoles you probably haven’t even heard of.
Every floor is literally jam-packed with an overwhelming number of games- more so than any chain retailer or reseller I’ve ever seen in North America.
Actually, this is a theme in Akiba that’ll baffle most anybody who visits: Whole, multi-story stores devoted to one simple hobby, making way for some of the oddest specialty products you’ll see (doll stand upgrades, replacement bows for your schoolgirl cosplay, wig dying & styling kits, videos of girls dressed as maids and posing with guns while waltzes play in the BG, and cel’phone dongles of EVERYTHING THAT HAS EVER EXISTED).
Really, after a long day of hardcore hitting Akiba and seeing a good percentage of it, I can only come away with awe, and the desire to never look at more than one thing at once ever gain…
Stores upon stores with more stores within them, all blinking with a rainbow of lights to match the strobe of the innumerable products crammed into their cramped showrooms.
If my eyes could hurt from over stimulation, I would need some soothing fucking balm right about now.
We ended our day with a painful walk back to New Koyo, wherein, tired and sore, Jaime and I took a wrong turn and ended up in a closed down covered market full of old hobos pottering about.
They were setting up their beds and shanties for the night, and being fed by an overly gregarious middle-aged woman who was handing out fish and rice.
Despite being among vagrants, I wasn’t the least bit uneasy. It was a strange discrepancy between the crazy, cracked out homeless of Van and TO, who’ll hold you at needlepoint for 5$, and these old guys who just seemed down on their luck.
Maybe I’m being naive, but with over 50 homeless around, we weren’t once asked for change- and really, there’s something to be said about a man, even a homeless man, who can build himself a makeshift hut, instead of passing out pantless on the steps of city hall.

Nov 30th: After a breakfast at Denny’s (which was much like its Western counterpart, but with specialty items such as rice or miso soup with your Grand Slam –oh- and TINY pancakes about the size of a Pringles cap), Jaime and I headed on foot to Asakusa, which is aptly nicknamed “the temple district”.
There are more than twenty temples in this single prefecture- and we managed to hit quite a few.
We saw a Shinto ceremony, rang the prayer bells, bought a fortune for good luck & tied it to the traditional bars, and even paid homage at an entertainers-specific shrine (for good fortune at finding a job ^_-).
The exit of the largest temple lead to an open market full of Shinto related items, souvenirs, yukata, and so many food stands that both Jaime and I were stuffed for hours, despite all the walking.
It was odd, I expected many more tourists here, but it was mainly school children and old folks.
Jaime and I continued to meander until we reached Kappabashi, the gourmet accessory street, where we perused the specialty shops, and one grocery store (which once again reminded us that Japan is insanely cheap- 2$ for a pre-made meal, 5$ for a huge bento of sashimi).
After a delicious meal of noodles and gyoza at a little hole-in-the-wall ramen bar, we hit Rox Department Store; it was very much like a Western mall, only taller, and with some curious items (giant lizard & panda costumes in the women’s department… ?? What!).

The highlight of the mall was the arcade at the top- we tried our hand at Taiko Drumming, a UFO catcher (which I failed miserably at), and one round of pachinko- which Jaime and I both agreed sucked nads (WHY is it so popular…).
The only good thing about the pachinko section was one of the machines which had paid out while nobody was around. Since we were literally the only people there (it was 8am), we took the tokens and used them on The Game.
I have no idea what it’s called, but it was an absolutely addictive game of chance, based solely on feeding tokens into this machine.
Basically there are six stools around a huge multi-level dome. Inside the dome (among flashing lights and running toy trains and all the flashy jazz) are metal push-arms stacked high with accumulated tokens.
You drop your tokens into a slot which ricochets it down a series of pegs and into the mass of other slugs at the bottom. If it lines up just right, it’ll push a whole mess of them out the chute.
If you were good at this, you could play forever, just spending and receiving tokens- but there are also prizes (little toys like mini dragon balls) stacked on top of the slugs, which, if you’re REALLY lucky/determined/obsessive, will fall out if you manage to hit out enough slugs.
I’m probably not explaining this game very well (I have no idea if it’s popular in NA, I’ve never seen it in an arcade), but whoever designed it was a GENIUS. It’s simple, it’s rewarding, and damned if those accumulated coins in the machine don’t ALWAYS look as if they’re JUST about to fall.
Once we exited the arcade, now aware of what pachinko was, we began to realize just how many pachinko parlors there are in Japan. Just in this prefecture there were dozens, all packed with people (keeping in mind it was BEFORE NOON).
This game is GOD here, and I have no idea why. The prizes must be great.
At this point we were cold (it was drizzling all day) and tired, so we decided to head home- the trek went well until we got to our actual neighborhood, which is a MAZE of back streets, and promptly got lost AGAIN.
Later we headed out to the local mall, which turned out to be very much like an NA mall, but with all the to-and-from paths to stores outside (I guess like a multi-level strip mall). Also, it had the Crazy Japanese Pizza you’ve all heard so much about- Pizzas with eggs and mayo, and other stomach-churning combinations involving roe and cheese.
We opted for some crepes instead. Oddly, they were one of the few foods adopted by the Japanese that was done right- actually, maybe even better. You can get crepes full of CHEESECAKE or PUDDING. Fuck ya.
It’s only by the breath of god that I’m not a fatass, for real.

Dec 1st: Despite it opening at 5am and closing at 10am, Jaime insisted we head down to Tsukiji fish market.
The journey there was quite long, as we had to take a very round-about way to avoid private lines; this resulted in a lot of walking around within the subway, then down to the wharf.
Once we approached, we spotted the ocean, Tokyo Tower, and the tops of the market down below, literally covered with dock cats and the cutest seagulls. Normally I hate gulls, but d’awww!
We also had the “pleasure” of going over an earthquake proof bridge, which swayed and bounced so much with the passage of cars that I nearly puked.
Finally we made it to the market, which was pure insanity; the entrance is basically a huge parking lot with little buggies (carting loads of fish to and fro) whizzing by, weaving dangerously through the pedestrians.
I hated those things. I nearly shat every time one careened past us.

Once inside, the venders and stores were a maze of the most crowded and smelly shamble of booths you can imagine. There were odors there FOR THE AGES.
Thankfully we found the sushi place fairly quickly and we queued up (there was a line already!).
When our turn came, we tried to let two old women behind us go first, but this resulted in a “politeness argument” of “dozo, dozo” (please, you first) until I eventually relented, thanked them, and went in. Even Canadians are mowed down by the manners of elderly Japanese.
We sat at the bar, ordered by pointing (as most things were in sets, and I couldn’t read the kanji for their names) and were served some of the most delicious sushi I’ve ever had. It couldn’t be fresher or crafted by better food artisans.
However- while I would recommend tourists to go see the market for the experience of it all, definitely walk to the nearest block to eat. It’s the same fish, just WAY less crowded.
Once we finished eating, we headed down to Ikebukuro, where I FINALLY found Kbooks and Mandarake with a yaoi selection.
Firstly, they were HUGE. Rows and rows of doujin, like a library of smut, packed with extremely geeky girls, many of which were debilitated by fits of giggles.
Oddly, this is where I saw the most gaijin (all women), steadfastly scouring each row for their ship of choice.
I set to navigating the shelves, and now have a mighty stack of doujin to call my own.
Total spent: 100$, which is about 2$/book.
It’s CRIMINAL how high the Canadian prices for these things are! At a con, they sell from 15$-20$.
ASSHATS.
Once I’d satiated my lust for slash, Jaime and I wandered around Sunshine 60 (the famous mall), bought him some jeans from Uniqlo, and eventually limped our way home (it was about 9pm at this point, 12h of walking).
One thing I must say, though, after being in a couple of malls and about a million shops, EVERYBODY is so attentive, greeting you, sending you off with “thank you!”, and helping you at the drop of a hat.
Whether it’s a shoe store, the subway, a restaurant, or a porn store, the staff are professional and eager to give you a hand.
It’s such a stark contrast to walking into Le Chateau and having to “interrupt” the floor workers’ conversation, and then suffering through their valley-girl bitchitude while trying to coerce them to do their jobs.

Dec 2nd: Harajuku is one of the most talked about prefectures of Japan, so I suppose I had high expectations. Really, it’s just a couple of alleys with the shops on Queen & Kensington crammed together.

But the crowds are literally MAD. You are shoulder-to-shoulder with people, slowly trudging your way through. It reminded me of being in a concert, but instead of music, it’s just a wall of 1000 ringtones going at once, girlish screams of KAWAII, and poncy looking guys in animal costumes shouting in every direction for you to come into their ~kewl gothyk fashion~ stores.
We quickly tired of this rampant retardation and retired to the quiet serenity of Yoyogi park, which was linked to the shopping arcade by the infamous “freak bridge” where Lolitas and Ganguro Gyaru hang out with magicians and parapara dancing troupes.
But that’s just the beginning- the park itself is a giant nature preserve. Half is much like Stanley Park, with heavily wooded trails and a few shrines nestled in the deep old growth; the other half of the park is more open and meant for recreation.
This half is where, on Sunday, you will see some of the weirdest/most entertaining shit you couldn’t imagine on the wildest trip.

Rockabilly

~~windmills~~

• Musicians: one whole side of the park was varied musical acts, from choral to garage punk bands, to djembe-playing hippies (complete with tie-dye and their take on what “tribal” is).

• War recreationists: away from it all, in a more secluded part of the park, the navel officers set up camp, and trumpeted out revile over the crowds.

• Lone performers: it seems everybody perfected their hobby to an art, and came to show it off, whether it be juggling, Frisbee tricks, or even mad nun chuck skills.

• Dogs: for those with no skills but who own cute pets, there’s a giant dog run at the rear of the park. On the right day, you’ll see EVERY conceivable breed, and (due to a mad lack of spaying) some in between.
In addition to exercising the dogs, it’s a bit of a show-off place as well, as most of the dogs were wearing specialty clothes.
Kawaii~

• Fashion: among the teens in mangled remains of EVERY Western style (from 80’s neon, to hippies, to 90’s grunge, 50’s poodle skirts, and onward, all with a strange Japanese flare), you’ll see the cutest kids dressed in traditional garb, usually exiting the temples on the far side of the park.

• Other Gaijin: if you’re crying for somebody to talk with in English, this is your best bet, because there are A LOT of white folk around.

After making a few rounds of the park, discovering octopus balls are terribly fishy, and accidentally setting off the “emergency aid” button in the loos because I thought it was the flush, Jaime and I headed back to Akiba to get another memory card for the camera.
On our way back to the subway, we witnessed the oddest thing as of yet. Outside the station, amid a giant bottleneck of middle-aged men, three young girls were performing.
Two were singing, and one (the youngest, not more than six) was feeding a dog and posing with tea while dozens of men photographed her.
One of the singing girls inspired all the guys proximal to her to break out into a rigorous clapping dance, all timed with one-another.
What! Were they idols?
Huh…
With the night ahead of us, we headed to Shinjuku to experience it after dark.

As expected, there are a lot of “massage parlors” and every DVD store has a disturbing contingent of kiddie shit.
On the lighter side, everything in Shinjuku is huge. In a way, it IS Japan as people imagine it. HUGE clothing stores, HUGE pachinko parlors, and an endless variety of restaurants and bars.
Among the winding, neon-glittering streets, throngs of drunk people were falling all over the place.
We also witnessed what must have been a protest, as there was a giant chanting crowd with banners surrounded by stoic cops.
It took us a while to extract ourselves, and to take a rest we stopped in a Lotteria, where we tried the mystery balls ().
They were like dry fruit-flavored timbits, filled with different types of cream. Not bad- but unlike anything I’ve had before.
We headed home around 9:30pm amid a huge crowd of people that flooded Shinjuku station- so far that surprised me the most. Late on a Sunday, the metro was PACKED.
When do people sleep here?!

Dec 3rd: It was a low key day today, as we were both really exhausted from our previous adventures. We stayed close to home and explored Ueno.
Right outside the station is this big market under the tracks, which started in the post-war era as an illicit auction for banned items. Nowadays it’s less sensational- dollar stores, a few sex shops, pachinko (of course) and dozens of restaurants.
We stopped in a tempura bowl place and had a delicious meal.
We’ve now tried just about every authentic Japanese staple- ramen, udon, soba, sushi, odango, octopus balls, tempura, and the vast assortment of tiny drinks.

Once we’d finished eating, we headed South to the temples; unlike Asakusa, it was much more verdant and lush, with shrines nestled in with the trees, all overlooking the city.
We lit incense, read some of the wood-carved prayers from patron s(this temple had them in all languages), and most impressively, saw the Flame of Hiroshima- a fragment of the fire that was found in the bomb’s aftermath, and has been kept burning all these years as a symbol to abolish nuclear war.

Dec 4th: We explored the Imperial Palace- you can’t go inside, but we joined many an old Japanese woman gazing at the exterior.
After, we wandered into Ginza, which was essentially Mink Mile, but instead of just one block of stuffy old men, tanorexic women, and excruciatingly overpriced stores, it’s a whole prefecture of that shit. AMERICAN shit to boot, so we moved on to Shibuya. If I wanted to shop at Banana Republic, I’d do it in the T Dot.
Shibuya was much better, though still stuck up in its own sense. Despite that, we saw the giant scramble crossing, and even sat in the Starbucks above it (which was used for shots in Lost in Translation) as per Jaime’s request.
After a bit more wandering we passed by a windowed basement auditorium, where Hard Gay was being interviewed in front of a studio audience. HARD GAY! We saw him IN PERSON! Omfg~
We snapped a few pics, but eventually moved on.
The next place we hit was Donkiote (Donquixote), which is the Honest Ed’s of Japan in both insanity and crowdedness.
In all, Shibuya has been the best “hip” place (not including Akiba) to explore yet; it’s got the charm of Harajuku without the swarms of tedious teens, and the night life of Shinjuku without the stumbling crowds of drunken frat boys.

Dec 5th: We boarded the shinkansen (bullet train) for Kyoto today, but first went to the post office to get money to pay for our room. Foreigners need to use the post office, because other branch machines don’t take international cards.
HOWEVER, even the post office will not recognize your account if your pin is longer than seven digits. It truncates at six.
LET THAT BE KNOWN! Because I nearly shat before finding a machine that would accept my crazy 106900 digit pin.
So, onward we went, on a scenic two hour journey that took us through industrial blocks, rice fields, and mountains colored with autumn trees.
Kyoto itself was far less impressive, but that was probably our fault- we had trouble navigating the Kyoto terminal, and ended up on foot, in a district littered with pay-only temples and closed shops.
Apparently you really have to dig to find the whimsy on Kyoto, and at this point, we just couldn’t be arsed. There is plenty of easy whimsy to be had elsewhere. Also, the people in Kyoto are notorious bastards, and we get enough of that back home (but with more homeless and less schoolgirls).
We briefly went to Osaka with the idea of finding the Hello Kitty love hotel, but as Osaka shinkansen station is far out of the city itself, we returned to Tokyo and looked in Ueno instead.
Maybe we just picked the wrong prefecture, but those hotels were boring and expensive- nothing like the quirky “themed rooms” you always hear about. Perhaps those were the utilitarian Love Hotels meant for the oodles of hookers we saw.

Dec 6th: More on Love Hotels- for those of you who don’t know, these are rooms that are rented by the hour, much like seedy motels back home. The difference is these are legit establishments that are clean, comfortable, and not just meant for hookers. MOST of them are aimed at married couples who want some romantic time away from their crowded, tiny houses.
The way you sign in is to select the room of your choice from a series of on-screen pictures in the lobby. You pay either automatically or by cash to a clerk behind a shaded window (so they can’t see you and you can’t see them).
The rooms are equipped with the usual amenities, and most are very plain. You can order sexy things in some establishments, though many are just come-and-go. Some of the cooler ones let you order up sex toys and costumes, but those are more flippant.
The really high-end/popular ones serve food as well, and are much like a regular hotel.
Generally, they come in two varieties: utilitarian for banging the escort you bought, and romantic for making sweet romantic love to the wife you bought.
-
So last night we perused the low-end Love Hotels, and ended up disappointed. Today we did online research (like the fabulous nerds that we are) and found the “best” ones are in Shibuya.
HOURS of wandering around the Love Hotel block (I shit you not, there’s a sector JUST for them), we failed to find anything kooky at all. In fact, earlier in the day, any of them had old ladies in full view, who would chase us out because they were still cleaning.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same old women designed the rooms- floral patterns and padded head boards were par for the course. The only out of the ordinary things we saw were two “mild S&M” rooms, a few Disney Princess themed rooms (nothing huge, just pictures of the characters on the wall), and strangest of all, one place that had free popcorn in the lobby.
I don’t care how classy it is, I am not eating the Love Hotel popcorn.
The most impressive hotel (though not crazy in any sense) was a definite romantically intended one, as the lobby was jammed FULL of fresh cut flowers.
That was a general theme, really- fantastical lobbies with archways or futuristic themes, or massive fountains full of real plants, but with a selection of the most boring rooms imaginable.
WHERE ARE THE CRAZY RACECAR BED LOVE HOTELS?
Osaka, apparently.

Dec 7th: We returned to Akiba this morning to visit the anime museum.

It was much smaller than I expected –more of an anime room- but very interesting nonetheless. They had a load of anime mannequins (Eva, Chobits, etc) in the entrance, and the main floor had examples of the first anime, cels from Detective Conan, concept art from Lupin, and everything from Astro Boy you could ever want.
Once through the technical demonstrations of the stages of production, the rear of the store had a gift shop with some rare “making of” books and many other trinkets.
Sadly, a lot of it was really over-priced, but the visit was definitely worth it (well, it was free, but the TIME was worth it).
As luck would have it, right as we exited, we found Café Mailish, a maid café that’s gaijin friendly. Eager for the coveted geek experience of the maid café, Jaime and I went in.

They greeted us with “welcome home, lord and lady” (in Japanese), seated us, and offered us bilingual menus of their tea and cake selections. The English on the menu is the only thing that makes it gaijin-friendly, though. You do need a bit of Japanese to order, especially if you want some of their other fares like massage or ear cleaning (haha, I shit you not, this is common maid café service).
The quirky aspect was pretty entertaining- each of the maids had a caricature up on the wall and you could buy paraphernalia of her. They also had a video, which was tempting, but way too overpriced (plus, I suspect it was just shots of them serving people, as maid cafes aren’t ever for pay-sex).
While the ultra-respectful speech and curtseying was cute, it wasn’t really “high class” as for the food itself (bag tea, fake china, creamers instead of milk), and was extremely expensive (14$ for two teas and one slice of cake!).
This would only be worth it for really lonely otaku, who don’t know what proper English tea is, and don’t mind that the girls don’t know how to REALLY curtsey or serve.

Dec 8th: This morning we went up the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, 45 stories up, and enjoyed the view of the cityscape for a bit. We then attempted to get to the Ghibli museum, but boarded the subway in the wrong direction for hours (mainly due to fatigue), and once we managed to get back, just went home.
It wasn’t bad, though. It was a hoot to people watch as the train went through all variety of neighborhoods.
What DID suck today was the huge group of new tourists that checked in. Apparently, they have no knowledge of either official language, so they kept us up for hours as they couldn’t understand the “no chatting in the halls after 10pm” signs or the instructions from the management.
Who comes to a country without even a LITTLE effort to learn the language?? And I don’t mean they had a “bit” of trouble, they were fucking retarded. One guy actually came up to me, pointed at the loo, and was like “ba-th-room??”.
Not only is it written in English, Japanese, AND says “restroom” for those who learned their English from a 1950’s Gentlemen’s Guide, but there is a PICTURE of a TOILET on the sign.
WHERE ARE YOU FROM!

Dec 9th: Since it was so fun last Sunday, we went back to Yoyogi Park today. It was so nice, with the same variety of performers and gorgeous fall colors. We stayed until dark, then went to Lala Terrance (the local mall) for Japanese pizza.
We didn’t try anything too wacky, so it was pretty normal, save for being very thinly crusted.
On our way home, we saw a stand selling fresh made onigiri- and they were working the rice churn right out front. Very cool (though, ah, I don’t like onigiri, so we just stood awkwardly for a few minutes before scarpering).
Once back at the room, we did much less spectacular things, and watched Bad Boys II in Japanese. L to the O to the L at Will Smith’s Japanese voice actor.
I think it’s the guy who does Vegeta.

Dec 10th: The perks of coming here in the off season are many: great weather (in comparison to Canada), beautiful foliage, not too many other tourists, and best of all, today we just walked right into the Ghibli museum without a two-month-prior reservation.

10$ buys you entrance to explore and see one movie. Unfortunately, no photos are allowed (but you can BUY photos for like 50$, also, they’ll rape you in the butt for free).
The place itself is 1/3 magical world of hidden paths and charming detail (stained glass of the characters, Totoros carved everywhere), 1/3 screaming children, and 1/3 animation class.
I’m a bit too jaded for the “wonder” portion of the tour, but I got quite a thrill flipping through ACTUAL roughs from Spirited Away, handling painted cels from Howl’s Moving Castle, and being able to work the multi-plane camera to see shots from Porco Rosso.

All these examples were housed in a perfectly chaotic replica of Miyazaki’s studio. It was so well done and housed so much of his stuff (EVERY animation book, ftw) that Jaime and I theorize that he actually works there.
For good measure, I touched the sugar in the tea cabinet, so the next Miyazaki feature will HAVE A PIECE OF ME INSIDE IT.
::Crazy stare::
We wrapped up the exploration of the museum with a viewing of a short- which was in Japanese so I can’t recall the name, but it was the usual Miyazaki fare of ~finding one’s self through WHIMSY~ which generally makes me want to puke, but I withstood my hatred for Jaime’s sake, as he was full of glee the whole time and the tiny piece of my heart that isn’t a shriveled husk was warmed by it.
Once outside, we snapped some covert shots, and then tried to board the official catbus back to the station.
Now, what they don’t tell you is that this shuttle is NOT included in the price of the ticket, and they will laugh at you if you suggest it. Oh, I’m sorry for misunderstanding the intention of the CATBUS in the GHIBLI MUSEUM.
At any rate, despite my notorious deathwish for all things Ghibli, this was an experience that will stay with me for a long time- maybe it was living vicariously through Jaime, but maybe I feel a little wonderment.

Dec 11th: So, thing are winding down and we’re running out of money, so Jaime and I haven’t been doing anything too spectacular- mainly just using the JR Passes to travel about, and eating a lot of 1.80$ ramen.
So, I’ll take this lull to go into more detail about the two places I invariably go everyday.

The Subway

New Koyo

Dec 12th: We checked out, got aboard the Keisei line, and made our way to the airport, where we hung out for many hours because checkout was at 10am, and our flight is at 7:15pm.
Now is the time for ~reflection~

Funny Moments

• We walked into a Denny’s, as Jaime had a craving for some Grand Slam action, and this was our first time seeing the chain since leaving Vancouver.
Japanese Denny’s are as you would expect, general items from the chain with only a few odd “options” (you can order miso soup instead of salad, rice instead of toast, and rather than steak and burgers, there’s curry and tempura) but that’s not what’s funny.
The menu for breakfast had an option that appeared to be brown beans. Excited for a taste of home, Jaime had me order them. I didn’t know the word, and couldn’t read the kanji for them on the menu, so I just pointed and said “this please”.
When they arrived, we discovered, to our horror, that they were not brown beans, but natto, the notoriously heinous fermented beans.
They taste like rotting evil, and even Japan hates them- it’s a so-called “old man” dish, probably the equivalent of olives (but so much worse, people, SO MUCH WORSE). All I can say is, I HAVE NOW TRIED NATTO. It was bad.

• In Asakusa’s market (famous for some of the oldest kitchen ware sellers in the world) we went by a specialty shop with a picture of a whale on its curtain.
“And here’s where you buy whale meat” joked Jaime- but when we looked closer, THAT’S WHAT IT WAS.
They even had diagrams of what parts were most delicious, and the kinds of different whales.
The store was full of tuna-type cans, only these were packed with baby beluga.

• They European Carry-All: it’s the “nice” word for man purse, and everybody here carries one. At first it was just baffling, then, it became hilarious.
While sitting in a MacDonald’s, two rapper-wannabes (complete with Adidas track suits and bling), walked by trying to look tough, all the while clutching purses.
LITERAL purses.
There was no question as to the intended gender of those bags. Think ~glitter~.

• Jaime bought milk to go with some discount Oreos he acquired from the foreign food mart. Now, buying milk was a bit difficult, as it’s not exactly the most common beverage in Japan.
You can buy hot cream corn out of a vending machine and icy bikkle brine, yet milk is a rarity.
At any rate, once we found a grocery mart, it took us quite some time and debate over which cartons were milk, which were soy milk, and which were other strange variants.
We spent nearly an hour desperately trying to sound out the kana in order to avoid the dreaded Calpis water (carbonated milkwater) and Milkteas (which look like milk, but are actually heinous half/half of tea and cream).
Finally, we settled on a small carton that had “milk” written on it in katakana, no other kanji, and a picture of a smiling cow out in a verdant field. Good bet.
Upon returning home, Jaime cracked that sucker open, smelled it, and made a face. “Why does this smell like corn?” he asked.
I smelled it.
Indeed, it looked like milk, but smelled like corn.
We had a few moments of “OH SHIT, we bought some sort of WarmCornTea that Japan seems to think is keen”, before we realized some down home knowledge: cow’s milk will taste different everywhere you go, because its flavor is dependant on what the animals eat.
Awwww, we’re dumb.
But it still tasted like ass.

Random Shit

• Uniforms are EVERYWEHRE- from school children to bathroom attendants to bakery workers. EVERYBODY gets a cute costume for work (note my jealous rage).
In particular, MacDonald’s has three separate ones, all of which are quite classy compared to the man-pants-giant-shirt combo we have back home.
Hottest of al is the McUnoform for the floor worker (greeter/tidier of seating/deliverer of items ordered after customers are seated): a little suspender skirt in McBlue, tailored McStriped shirt, and heels.
Immaculate.
We watched her bend over to pick up discarded fries for hours.

• It’s hard not to be a smoker in Japan.
You can smoke pretty much anywhere, and where it’s banned, there are smoker-friendly rooms (a chain called “Smoker’s Place” with vending machines and seats and newspapers), cigarettes are available from vending machines located everywhere, and the MOST you’ll pay for a pack is 3$.
Damn. And yet they live so long~

• Ear cleaning is HUGE here. They love it. Clean ears are the new small pores.
There are specialty cleaning tools sold everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Even in 7’11. In fact, in anime stores, you can find ear-cleaning sticks with your favorite characters on them.
Maid cafes offer it as a service, hookers offer it, and you can even hire a random girl by the hour to clean your ears just for the sheer thrill.

Dec 13th: I have returned, safely, and extremely jet lagged due to a flight that was all turbulence and served fish at every meal.
At one point, I wanted to go to Japan for several months to teach and “really get to know the place”. These two weeks have taught me something important: NO.
Even 14 days was too long. Maybe it was in part due to the shit accommodations, but really, by the end of it, I was itching to go home.
Over the past dozen entries, you’ve heard about the wonder and discovery of Japan. I left out a lot of the things that pissed me off, as I didn’t want to be too biased, but at last, I can vent.
NOW IS THE WINTER OF…

Ten Inconvenient Truths about Tokyo, and Some Half-Assed Solutions

2. Squat toilets SUCK. THEY FUCKING SUCK. They are everywhere, and there’s nothing you can do about it except SUFFER and BRING TOILET PAPER WITH YOU because it DOES NOT EXIST in most of Japan (and if it does, it is LITERALLY paper). If, like me, you don’t want to piss in a hole, you are most likely to find a Western loo in: Starbucks, McDonald’s, large stations (though not a guarantee) and bullet trains. All “handicapped” washrooms are Western. The green button opens the door, the red closes it. DO NOT PUSH THE BEIGE BUTTON BESIDE THE TOILET, it is an alarm. If you can’t find the flush, IT IS ON THE GROUND, hidden from your judging Western eyes.

3. Possibly related to the above, people pee EVERYWHERE. The city stinks like human waste worse than Van. Bring a scented handkerchief and walk around like an English dandy.

4. Everything is a cacophony of music, beeps, fake electronic bird chirps and announcements. From trucks to stores and especially the subway, there are near CONSTANT announcements being called out to you by perky female voices that are only semi-audible over the invariable theme music. BRING ASPIRIN (you will not find it here. EVER).

5. If you go out anywhere after 9pm, hookers will want to knock your junk around. This is a fact. Travel with a friend if you don’t want to be approached. On the plus side, they are not busted in the face, as it’s legal here. You can tell the hookers by their ~sequined evening gowns~ I shit you not. Oh, and that puffy-jacket fellow with all the bling is not her pimp, he is a manhooker. Do not approach him, even if you’re curious. He costs a million dollars.

6. Bring printed maps of EVERYWHERE you want to go, with building references (such as 7’11 here, book store here). You WILL get lost because Japan’s streets are a wandering maze of insanity made to KILL YOU with FRUSTRATION, and nobody knows ADDRESSES, only “oh, it’s near SUNSHINE 60” which is fifteen fucking blocks wide, WHERE- WHERE is it?! Even places you’ve been four or five times are impossible to navigate. Also, bring valium.

7. A pharmacy is LITERALLY a place to buy medication. There are no “Shoppers Drug Mart” type places here. Except in malls- and even then. Buy insoles BEFORE leaving Canada. Also, BRING MONEY, lots of cash money. BRING IT.

8. People will cough in your face. They will hoark right near you and spit on the ground. This is a truth, regardless of age or gender, and it’s fucking GROSS. Now, my female opinion doesn’t count in this case, as I may be a delicate flower, but even Jaime was like WTF, and HE was a fucking CONSTRUCTION WORKER. The spitting/coughing/hoarking in Japan is so out of control, that it disgusts a LABORER. Fuck. Seriously. Least cool thing about Japan.

9. Unless clearly indicated, the top of a map is NOT NECISSARILY North. Logic of up=north does not exist here. In fact, all maps are SHIT. Distance is relative, some are completely wrong, and others omit MAJOR landmarks, so you’ll be like “oh, but where is that HUGE Sony skyscraper on here?”. BRING A COMPASS.

10. There are no rubbish bins, ANYWHERE. You carry that trash with you and you LOVE IT. LOVEEEE ITTTTTTT. They will hang you if you litter.

DONE.

Dec 26th: It’s been a week since my return- and let me be the first to say, the word “jet lag” is bandied about FAR too easily.
I had the mistaken impression that Jet Lag was waking and sleeping according to a completely different time zone, and that people were only tired from it because they weren’t allowed to follow their rhythms from the country they just left.
NO.
Jet Lag is like having a terrible flu.
I surely thought I was going to die- I couldn’t stop sleeping. My first day back, I woke up at 5am, was fine until about noon, when I started feeling really faint and nauseous. I thought it’d be bes