April 16th, The Ancient Curses

It is the middle of the month and anxiety is running high where I live. We have a month and a half to move which sounds like a lot of time. However I feel like I’m still up in the air. The potential of everything falling through and not being able to find a place to live is not something I’ve had to deal with for quite some time. We have a place all of my housmates have agreed upon. The next step is to actually get the place in writing. I really hope it all works out.
I’ve found that I have been taking on too many projects to keep my self active. All of which I don’t really consider being active. So, I have this writing thing that I’m doing right now that has two sub-projects attached to it. Then I have the Wednesday night game designing meetings with a few friends. I was going to fill in on bass for my old friends band. So far I have only practiced with him once. I’m not sure If I can go on with that one considering he lives 90 miles away. I have a book that I was writing that I’ve put on hold for a while that I want to get started again.  Just yesterday, I was talking to my girlfriend about producing and writing a puppet show that she can make the characters for. This is all totally insane. What the fuck was I thinking taking all of this on.  I suppose its not all of that much but I know there is something else that I’m forgetting. What I’m doing is taking on more than I want to all at once. The good thing is none of these things are really vital to my survival in life. Its just something to do, outside of wasting countless hours playing videogames. If I were a greater man I would see all of these things to there conclusion. But I have a curse that rarely sees any of my ambitions reach finality. One of these days I will be lifted from it.

Ung, I’m done with this shitty post.

April 13th, Another wave of Change / Challenge 8

What a long weekend, I feel like a lot has happened. Friday I went to a baseball game with a bunch of work friends and the girl I met at the con. So, that was an interesting combination  of date/work event. It seemed to work out to where everyone had a good time. It was the Mariners v. The Los Angeles Angels of Anihiem. It was a really fun game. The Mariners won  8 to 5. Usually I think that baseball is really boring. Most of the time I’m right. It is a game where it could go on infinitely where nothing happens. We managed to have a great time. We started the wave and everything.

After the game was over I wanted to take the girl to my place while everyone else wanted to go to a crowded karaoke bar and get even more smashed then they already were. So I did, I showed her my house and introduced her to my roommates. They were all busy watching anime (about baseball strangely enough). Then I showed her my room. From that point forward I decided to officially refer to her as my girlfriend. She really wanted to call me her boyfriend while I was still kind of on the fence about the whole having a girlfriend thing considering how well that worked out for me last time. However she made a very convincing argument without saying a word that night.

Anyway, the next morning I drove her to school. I’m not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier post but she is doing costume design at a very highly regarded school in the area. Later on that day I came to a very strange realization. I was waiting in line at my friend’s wedding with my mother. I was describing this newly found girlfriend to my mother when the connection hit me. She has the same name as my fathers last wife. She is going to school in the same place as my fathers last wife. She is also in the same field of study almost. However, I feel that it is merely a coincidence and not something subliminal. There personality’s are totally different. Still, I’m a bit creeped out.

BTW, this wedding was on a boat of all places. I was a gorgeous setting too. The sun had finally come out for a day. It was something like 80 degree’s which is very comfortable for this area at this time of year. I wore the same suit that I wore for my Job interview a while back. Still fits like a glove. My sister was one of the bridesmaids. After the ceremony I promptly hit up the bar for some delicious red wine. And was one of the first in line for the buffet. Smoked salmon and BBQ…so good. After that I got a call from my new girlfriend. She was playing DDR with some friends and wanted me to come hang out. I fucking love DDR. It had been a really long time since I’ve played. So I quickly made my exit after another glass of wine. Lucky for me I had a change of cloths that I had brought with me just in case I wanted to do something more casual after the wedding.

I spent the rest of my night watching anime and playing DDR with her friend who was very inquisitive about my career choices. Once again I spent the night with her than drove her to school. She fucking goes to school more that I work sometimes. Its on the border of true dedication and total insanity. I understand though what it is to be passionate about what you want to do with your life. I can think of more than a handful occasions where I dropped everything to work because I enjoy it so fucking much. I like supporting someone who has that same kind of tireless drive to do whatever it takes to succeed in what it is that they truly enjoy.

Challenge 8: (Holy shit I’ve got a long way to go on these.) Letter to myself, delivered ten years ago.

Dear Me,

You are fifteen and really stupid. Stop smoking so much weed. Quit before it gets you in trouble. You can still hang out in that crazy punk crowd of yours but seriously chill it out a bit. Never quit skateboarding. Your skateboard is still your best adventuring tool. It will take you exactly where you want to go. This isn’t an issue yet but, don’t ever smoke…ever. If you have a girlfriend who smokes, break up with her as soon as possible, there is better fish in the sea.
I’m gonna keep berating you with advice ok.
So never feel guilty for playing so many videogames. Trust me it will pay off someday. Keep playing music. No matter how bad at it you think you are, its a life time endeavor. You will be in bands though out your life. Don’t worry about playing shows. The point is that you are playing music at that moment. So never forget to do exactly what it is that you want to do at that moment. Do what it is that will give you the best position in life. You probably don’t know a great opportunity when you see it. Prepare yourself for a variety of challenges. Realize that you will never be as prepared as you should be for hard times. They will happen. Don’t forget that you are indeed immortal. Do everything in your being to keep it that way. Also, no one will think you are cool unless you think they are cool first.  Find interesting people and learn from them as much as possible. If there is ever a shred of doubt in your mind that something isn’t right, most likely it isn’t. Don’t buy into it. Don’t trust anyone with the last name Archie. Stay away from that person as much as possible.

Don’t be afraid to talk shit to a persons face. Make sure it’s true first. If someone can’t handle the hard truth about themselves you don’t want to be around them, at all. Conversely, if someone calls you on your own shit, take it like a man. This is the best mirror of yourself that you will ever get. Make sure its true first. Never stop writing, its  one of your greatest gifts. As hard as it may seem keep that skill of yours sharp. It will get you places. Stop thinking it all sucks. You never really appreciate your own work but don’t judge your own. Just create for the sake of creating.
Shit, I know this is a lot to take in but, whatever I’m trying to create a time paradox based solely on hints of regret.
Get mad. When someone fucks you over. Get mad. Show them that you are a force to be reckoned with. Even if you aren’t. Get mad.
Learn as much about computers as you possibly can. Life will never be hard ever again.
Assume that you will never be famous. It’s a shitty thing to be anyway. Just be famous in your own eyes. Be nice to everyone that you meet. Even if they seem like assholes. You don’t need to be everyones friend, just be nice and you will have very few problems. I know I don’t need to tell you this but don’t let anyone that you need to pick a carrier when they say you need to pick one. It is not important. What is more important is that you are happy with whatever it is that you are doing. When some one forces you to decide, tell them that doing whatever is your decition. Or that you don’t know yet and there is no time limit on deciding what it is that you want to do with your life. Maybe you want to just drift through life trying to figure it out. Also, don’t expect anyone to understand that way of living. There is no correct way to live really. Just ones that are more preferable than others.
Imagine a world with no laws. Are you the kind of person that would go around fucking everyone over? No, not a chance. Live that way. Live as if you have the potential to do anything or nothing. Just don’t pick nothing or you will get very bored. People will start making decisions for you and no matter what you won’t like them.
Whew, I guess that’s all I can prescribe without getting any direct questions from you who is myself. Have a good life.
ME

April 7th, My core is in crisis / New Idea!! Sunday Holidays / Challenge 7

My god, I’ve played 30 hours in to Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. How on earth did this happen. It’s 1) A Final Fantasy game (most of them I deplore) and 2) it’s on a hand held system (PSP). The last time I put that much time into a hand held game was in my Megaman Battle Network phase where I neurotically tried to get every chip and triple S rank every enemy in the game. This time I am trying to finish all 500+ side missions that the game has to offer then master every materia…again. I don’t want to sound like a fucktarded game journalist (because all of them have nothing but vomit coursing though there veins save for Yahtzee ) but it is exactly the way I wished Final Fantasy would work all this time. It has the exact same battle system basis that all of the other FF’s do but they sped it up a whole lot and added movement into the equation. Oh, and you only have one party member to deal with, period. The random level ups and summons I could do without except for it stops the player from exploiting the fuck out of areas to grind there way to becoming an ultimate badass by fighting the same shit over and over and over.  No, instead they have a shit ton of missions for you do that in instead. Then you actually have something to show for it. Unfortunately, the only way to get through the game with ease is to do this type of monotonous grinding. I guess that’s the way it goes. It does say Final Fantasy on the box so I guess I’ve come to expect that kind of thing.

Shit I just reviewed a game.

New!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought of something while I was driving back from Yakima as I was trying to avoid a really awkward conversation involving not wanting to see that girl I was seeing about a month ago. So I’ve only had a few hours of sleep but I pitched the idea to my roommate who thought it way cool. Here it is…

Sunday Holidays:
So as an atheist, I don’t get many holidays that do anybody any good. SO I’ve decided to make a bunch of holiday’s up for Sundays. While everyone else is in church I will be doing some good (I think). Each holiday will be stuff like:

1. Give a homeless person $5 day.
2. Inspire a child day.
3. Pretend you are a robot day. (I think this one already exsists and doesn’t do anyone any good.)
4. Meet a total stranger day.
5. Declare your independence day.
6. Ignore all media day.
7. Pretend you have magical powers day. (also Known as Wizardween) * so bad
8. Paint stuff day.
9. Build something out of garbage day.
10. Ghost Writing day. (where you write a letter to someone from a dead person.)

Ok so, some of these are just fun. Not all of them need to be useful. (No pants day?)  So the idea is that I make signs that say what day it is. Then I go hang out at an overpass for a few hours while everyone is commuting to church. After that I go celebrate accordingly. Seriously crazy shit. But I think it would a fun thing to do with a few people over the summer. It will seriously cut into my gaming for sure.

Challenge 7: A letter from me, to myself in the year 2048.

Dear Patrick,

The days of microwaved pizza are gone. Now is the age of feed backpacks issued by the governing authority. Man you have it good, you don’t even know. I’m fucking 65 years old. I never got that cyborg leg you always wanted. Fucking heath care is ridiculous. Don’t get me started. Your legacy at the job you love so dear is nill. It got bought by the one eyed google monster which is the owner of the country. You see after the government went totally bankrupt it went up for auction. Google was the world’s largest economy at the time so they won the bid. They literally own the whole world now. It has been re-named Google Earth.
Anyways, here are your winning lotto numbers 14, 23, 36, 45, 89. Doesn’t matter. Even now that you are reading this is creating a time paradox. Oh well. Remember to buckle you seat belt. I fucking lost an eye while in a car accident. Good thing they made replacement eyes for gamers years ago.

Anyway, you still aren’t married and you never had a chance of having any kids. I’m still trying to write that book I started 50 years ago. luckily I finally traveled a bit on my newest mid-life crisis motorcycle. People are seriously getting stupider by the day. The media is so random and awful. Google can actually read your brain waves now to give you exactly what they think you would want to watch wherever you are.  I still can’t watch television. I can’t believe that it still exists. Its over a hundred years old!!!!

Whatever you do, don’t eat at pizza hut after 2015. There pizza has addictive chemicals in it that people can’t eat anything else. It is the new Marlboro after smoking was completely outlawed everywhere. I don’t know how to tell you this but all of your friends are dead. They all went to the last Nine Inch Nails show ever. They played to a sold out crowd of over 2 billion somewhere in Australia. You already saw the band in there hay day so you didn’t go. What everyone didn’t realize is that the stage was planted on top of the world’s largest uranium deposit. With all of those people walking around it kicked open a huge radioactive gas cloud that killed everyone attending. Some died immediately, for others it took a few weeks or months. Eventually, they all passed on. Sucks to be me.

I’ll be in contact with you over the next 40 years because I am you.

see ya,

patrick
PS- Buy stock in Google.

April 6th, Girl trouble/ Remanisance 1 / Challenge 6: the Return

It has been, few days but I am feeling really good. However after last weekend I find myself in kind of a jam. So it seems. That I won’t be seeing that girl I was seeing about a month ago. I am picking her up from a far off place. She doesn’t know it yet. We still need to talk about some things. I met another…actually I met a few girls last weekend at SakuraCon that I have a lot more in common with. That being they were all total nerds. Which will be too bad because the sex was really fun. Unfortunately, that was about it. The rest was very confusing and hard to deal with. Sort of boring in my eyes. I don’t like feeling bored around people. Hopefully the devastation won’t be too epic.
Cartoonland: Staffing at SakuraCon

Last year a co-worker of mine wanted me to go to this anime convention in Seattle. It didn’t seem like something I would pay for. I barely knew what was happening in the anime world.  My specialty has always been Video Games. He told me not to worry as long as I agreed to work as staff. Staffing isn’t hard really. You just help out with whatever needs to get done at the moment and the rest of the time you can just fuck off and enjoy a free three day pass that would normally cost $40. My obligation was to help run the Console Gaming room. Not a hard task at all considering I would have a base that belonged to us…the gaming elite.

This year was much better than last. Mostly because I knew what to expect. This was a there day endurance mission.  The Goal:  Sleep as little as possible and do as much as possible. So here I go.
Day 1: I got off work at five to help set up for awhile. I checked games in and out to people who wanted to just chill out for a while. Most people wanted to play Smash Bros. Brawl. Then someone had the bright idea to run a Gulty Gear tournament. They split after they realized that they didn’t know how to run a tournament. So I helped out a bit to get things running until the Seattle Competitive Gaming community showed up to get finish the thing off. Then I watched some AMV’s while I wandered around for a long while. All of my friends were really drunk at this point. I was not. That was the night before which is a whole ‘nother post that will never happen. So it gets to about midnight and I wanted to do something. In the card game room they had a Munchkin tournament. So I sat in there for a while. At the table was a guy in a lab coat. To his right there was a bubbly girl that was into who knows what. To her right was me. To my right, a creepy dude who kept cheating and finally a quiet girl who had never played before. I talk about her later.

Behind us were a couple of game designers from Salt Lake. I started talking with them for a while about how interesting the game industry is. I tried to seem very interested for a while in there business until they asked me what I do. The immediate reaction was surprise followed by a “Man…we hate you.” So we started playing and we realized that the cards were not properly shuffled which made for a very uninteresting game. I left very tired and crashed at home.

Day 2:

This is where the real shit happens. So I show up at like, noonish or something. I then hurry up to the gaming room where everything is in working disarray. The Smash bros. tournament has just begun. I win my first round then get knocked out in the second round due to a major Gannondorf malfunction. For a while I didn’t feel like I fit in well enough so what I did is I went down to the exhibitors hall and bought a silly hat. It was a prinny hat from Disgaea. If you don’t know what anime conventions are like…the people at this thing like to dress like there favorite characters. Just imagine Halloween in the spring time if it was invaded by Japan with a touch of its own creepiness. Once I had my hat, a handful of the gaming staff wanted to get some drinks. We sat in this bar during happy hour to get mildly drunk. Then a challenge was proposed. We were to attend this speed dating thing at the Con and try to get as many phone numbers as possible. I did this. While I was there I met this girl dressed like a character from Final Fantasy 6.  Another girl who makes her own armor and chain mail. As well as the quiet girl at the Munchkin table from the night before.  I left with 6 phone numbers. The other guys had none. I had officially own’d them.

After that I went back up to the gaming room to chill out for a while before the Anime Rave that they throw. This is the dorkyest dance you will ever attend. I needed to track down my French friend because I was supposed to be his wing man so he could finally meet a nice american girl. I found him in some random pannel. I asked him, ” What the hell is this?” to which he replied, ” Just wait.” I looked around. We were the only two men in the panel. It turns out that it was the history of gay anime. So I sat around for awhile because I am not phased by this kind of thing. It got kind of boring actually so I punched him in the shoulder like the totally straight guy that I am and demanded that he go to the dance with me to hit on random girls. So we did. My job as wingman was quickly disintegrated because I met up with the girl that makes her own armor. She was gorgeous. So I danced with her for a few hours only to realize she wasn’t that into me. Plus she wanted to dance until 5 pm. I left starving. I went on an adventure to find food at 1 in the morning. After running around for a while to realize that everything was closed, I remembered that there was a box of  breakfast bars in my car. I grabbed those then got myself an energy drink out of a vending machine. While I was wandering around I went back into the card room from the night before. There she was again, the quiet girl, playing munchkin. I asked her if she would meet me in the 4chan panel.

4chan is when things got a little crazy for a moment. I walk in and the guy at the head of the room with a mic says to me, “Holy shit, you’re staff!” to which I reply “Yeah, what do you care?” he says to me. ” Are you cool?  You aren’t gonna report us or anything right?”
I say, “Why would I do that?”
“Great!” he says, ” Now come up on the stage.” I do what he says. “What do you have in your hand?”
“A box of Nutri-grain Bars and a Full Throttle.” I say.
“Awesome! Do you know what 4chan is?”
I say “No…”
“Hmm…Ok get off the stage and take off your shoe.” I do.
Then another guy walks over and takes his shoe off. We were ordered to trade shoes then throw them across the room to see who could throw the furthest. I lost because I had to throw a fucking huge boot across the room. The host thanked us then had a girl flash her tits at us for participating.
I sat down while other shit went on. They start talking about Cosplay porn. Then the quiet girl shows up and asks what was going on. I say to her ” Just wait…”
They start showing this horribly made porn staring some girl that everyone knows. Lucky for me the quiet girl that I had invited wasn’t phased at all. So we got bored of all of these things and headed down to a classic anime theater where  they were showing some really old Gundam movie. Thankfully it was really boring so I could pass out for an hour or two because at this time it was about 4 in the morning. I woke up and decided that I needed to get home. The girl I was with at the time wanted me to come get lunch with her and her mom the next day. I agreed.

Day 3:

At this point my brain might as well had been made of Welch’s Grape Jelly due to lack of sleep and frankly all reality. Knowing this my roommates had stayed overnight and had not slept in about 24 hours by the time I had arrived. I went up to the gaming room for a while until I got a call from that quiet girl. She wanted to go get lunch. So I met her at this restaurant and ate lunch with her and her mother. Apparently it was supposed to be a free lunch for her brother but he didn’t show up. So the free meal was gifted over to me. We hung out for a while until I had to break down the gaming room. I told her that I wanted to see her again. Later this week we went on a date, this is the other girl that I am interested in that I had mentioned earlier in the blog. By the time the whole thing was over I sat in the broken down gaming room while I messed around with a label maker. Overall it was really run and I can’t imagine what next year will be like.

Challenge 6: Re-Write a famous speech from history. JFK’s inaugural address

Fellow citizens, I’m your new fucking president. Here we are in the 1960’s. Modern technology is improving at a staggering rate. Fortunately, it is being progressed by the greatest free country in the world. I mean shit. We won the second World War right. Those guys would have been fucked without us.  We didn’t do it because it was some simple shit, we did it because it was hard as hell. Now I say we work harder like the awesome bitches that we are. We could really fuck with those soviet cunts if we landed on the moon and claimed it for america before there bitch asses could. Hold on, I gotta sip on some of this fine scotch that I got last night. >Sip<

Ahh, now that the shit right there. Anyway, yeah so you guys, America, should let every other county know that we’ll be the ones to help out when any other awesome country starts to suck. And we’ll be the ones to kick the shit outta any other assholes that want to shit all over liberty or any other type of freedom we decide is sweet enough to print on money. So to get this shit started we should arm ourselves to the teeth so we never have to fuck with anyone. All them bitches will be to scared to front us or show faces of discontent because we know we will just bomb the shit outta their asses. Trust me, it will totally work.
Anyway, go to school you shits. I went to fucking Harvard and now I’m fucking president! How about that shit right there. Yeah…So shit, thanks for not voting for that Nixon asshole. Peace.

April 3rd, A Quarter Century

Fuck, people are starting to notice this blog and I really wanted to remain inconspicuous. I suppose thats what comes with writing on the internet. I’ve taken 3 weeks off of this thing because I was feeling like there was nothing of importance to write about. That and I’ve gotten very lazy.

Things that have happened in the past 3 weeks categorized numerically and by future/nonexistent title:
1. Professional Hangover – the Passing of the Towel: The house threw another legendary party.
2. Leaping over the wall of a lie: I switched departments at work.
3. The promise of a will:  I had 25th birthday
4. Cartoonville:  I staffed at SakuraCon.

Yeah so that is about it. I still need to do challenge 6 or seven. I forget which. I might do it soon. I told my sister that I would probably stop doing this thing to write my book but that isn’t happening either.

On to today’s current events…one of my favorite people at work got fired this week. I found out today it was because she left work early to take her kid to the hospital. Somehow I don’t think that’s the whole reason considering the behavior of this person. Still, I don’t feel so bad because I think she was burning out. She told me that she will be going somewhere else to make $20k more a year by doing less. Hopefully, that’s true.

I so badly want to tell my SakuraCon story but it is almost one in the morning. Plus. I have to go on a date tomorrow then watch anime with another girl that I met until I pass out. It’s gonna be fun explaining that to the girl I was seeing awhile ago after I pick her up from eastern Washington on Sunday. I’m not sure if she considers me her boyfriend. I like to think that I have no owners of that title or any other title that means that I can’t do whatever I feel like at any given moment without guilt. Unfortunately, most of the time that’s not how things work out mutually. I’d like to think that dating three girls at a time would be acceptable if only people we’re universally aware of the sum of my total apathy. In that scenario, my only obstacle is that there are only 7 days in the week. Anywa, I suppose I should make my intentions, or lack there of, very clear.