I can feel this coming break shaping up to be fucking awesome.

School's a drag, lonely, etc etc. Thank god I have Planescape:Torment (it's a blast, outside of my computer being strangely incapable of rendering simple spell animations) and The History of the Siege of Lisbon to keep me sane and entertained. Good god, I can't wait to get back in town, see everyone again, put things that have gone so wrong in my absence to rights. To see the family again, to feel welcome somewhere if only a week. Oh, also:

Yeah,it's coming out Friday,but I'm saving it for the ride back Thursday on the 15th, after I get off at 9:30 AM. Word has it that the effort is a solid one, real classic Sparrer, not some pseudo-evolution. Consider me officially stoked as hell, at the risk of sounding lame.
When I first posted this, I thought that picture was, well, just some workers, not them; turns out it's them. Good lord, but that just goes to show you what age can do to a man.

More proof that your average gamer is a doofus

Somehow, someway, this brilliant little gem went unrecognized by just about everyone, everyone except for Matt. All right, so some people recognized it, but they didn't, snooty as it sounds, get it; even I didn't bother with it when I first touched it, too short on attention span and lazy as I was at the time. Critics hated God Hand because, well, they're videogame critics, which means they're obligated to enjoy garbage like Kingdom Hearts 2. While that game represented everything wrong with the "evolution" of beat-em-ups, God Hand represents everything that's right. A storyline that KNOWS it's just an excuse, a FUN combat system, CHALLENGE? Good lord, impossible! But no, no, God Hand says that it is indeed quite possible and demonstrates it beautifully, reaffirming that Clover's closing was completely inappropriate and that the gaming populace hasn't earned anything more than the bland, dull sequels that they demand. So, maybe I'll write an appropriate review later, maybe I won't. I just had to get this blurb out before I hauled off and punched my still sleeping roommate, who wasn't too big a fan of the game. He laughed when I played it, but that's because he laughs at everything, especially when he's high.

Angry, pissed, simply tired of the bullshit.

This is going to be a short update, so don't worry about slogging through madness. I realized what I really, truly am tired of not five seconds ago: bullshit. Unbridled, hypocritical self-righteous bullshit. Reading my roommate/former friend's paper for school, which he saved to my computer for whatever reason, observing how full of masturbatory quoting and adolescent self-indulgence it is, after dealing with his whining and narcissism this past weekend, I realized that I'm just simply fed up. He and so many others like him have such a hard on for themselves, these sort who wear "self-expressive" bullshit shirts bearing pseudo-intellectual business such as "Think: It's not Illegal Yet" give me fits. If he truly acted on it, if he went out of his way to work for a better world, I could except it. Instead all he does is whine and quote the same four books he's read in his lifetime, criticizing absolutely everyone else then performing the very acts he's so angry at them for. Of course, he never admits to being such a bastard; he has an excuse for everything and a story of victimization to paint him as the misunderstood outsider hated by everyone. Fuck him, fuck him and his self-pitying masturbation, his "attack" against the system that's really nothing more than poorly thought out adolescent rebellion left over from his high-school days.

It's the same from everyone else, though; that, or hopeless resignation in some form or another. The more I question the more I do not think any solution for this world lies in the immediate physical acts of man. I have to believe that there's another source out there, another method greater than all of this dross, all of our petty arguments, our social revolutions and even the attempted "cultural" revolutions, should such a thing even exist. The only true method that sounds believable to me is a change in mindset for everyone, no one should be exempt at all, but that's impossible, or so absurdly difficult to achieve as to be so. If it is such, then maybe the only method is some beyond human experience, what everyone in their mother has referred to as "magic". But I don't mean Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons bullshit. What I'm focused on is school that Aleister Crowley and his ilk, what Grant Morrison and Allan Moore dabble in. Maybe there's an answer there, a way to bend this world, to melt it down and reshape it. Ugh; or maybe I'll just be Son of Sam and devolve mentally to the point that I believe myself a holy angel and simply start murdering those deemed "unworthy". That would put me in the self-righteous monster category, though, and I really, really don't want to touch that.

Look at me, all nihilistic again

I really think something may be wrong with me here on a fundamental level. It's not the work in college, which there is a lot of but it's easy, that gets me, nor is it people; I had a fantastic weekend that only reaffirmed my love of friends and family. Rather, it's wondering why I'm here and what I'm to do with myself. For the life of me, I don't know; though it is an old thought and a recurring one at that, it has relevance and timeliness because of what reawakened this train of thought,

English requires the reading of one Edwin Rolfe's collected poems and the attached notes about his life. Reading over one hundred pages of this today, of this man's struggles for the working class and against the bourgeois, what inspired him to write a number of tomes praising communism, Marx, the revolution and the poor, that's what got me. Because, though I may not agree with his idol-worship of the poor, making them into heroes when there is nothing particularly noble about such unfortunate circumstances, I do agree with his goal to a point, his idealistic struggle for a world wherein there is some sort of universal community wherein all are united in perfect solidarity. And now, here we are, some 50 odd years after his death and what changes, by all of his impassioned work, has he spawned?

Nothing. Nothing at all. He has a small collection of books in print that are bought a bit, bandied about and discussed by students, professors and just the poetry enthusiast, and that's all. His high-minded quest to change the world, his beautiful word play and obsessions have wrought a nominal change; the plight of the worker is no better than it was, is arguably worse. And his much lauded Marxist turn, what was the result? Repercussions without end, repercussions only the mad could be happy with. This man didn't even simply write about what he believed should be done, he in fact lived it, and for what? Changes that are temporary in the extreme, that lead nowhere for a race that has no ultimate destination. Good lord, but why?

If everything I'm going to do and love and know turns to nothing one day, why should I do anything besides simply jump off a bridge and end the delayed reaction? My writing, should it ever amount to anything, will only give those with the correct insight a warning that no one is really worth much of anything, that even at his best and most noble man is a ludicrous creature elevating himself to something special, making always his history into tragedy. But how can anything that happens to man be a tragedy whenever other animals have experienced worse a billion times over? Good lord, ants die in the billions every day, cows and other livestock in the millions; and why are their deaths any less important than men's? Because of a random meaning we've slapped unto everything and anything, because of our logic which is just our race's silly way of interpreting the ink-blot that is reality? Everyone just spews out the same canned phrases and messages and maxims, everyone is so full of the same hate and self-righteousness, everyone has themselves convinced that something about their existence is inherently meaningful and I... well, I just don't see it.

I can't prove it, but then, neither can anyone else prove their thesis. They can argue, can make a brilliant temple from their logic with an unparalleled framework of meshing logic, reason and a million rhetorical devices, but in the end, nothing in the universe says they have any more validity than me. Because that's just it, the universe is, if observation has told me anything, completely neutral. It doesn't strive to fix injustice, it doesn't work diligently to enact some karmic law. It simply... is, just a big blob of matter and anti-matter, just something floating out in the middle of the even greater multi-verse, which in turn is nothing. Good lord, all of this almost makes me wish that Lovecraft's Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are the true powers of the universe, to expose it for the mad, deranged, unorganized mess it seems to be, to prove me right. And yet I want something else; I want purpose, reason, and not the sort Camus and Sartre proposed, a reason made by yourself. It's simply stating what already is: people already do pick a reason they believe best to guide their lives and accept it as ultimate truth; whether or not they realize it's a choice made from a search is irrelevant. But in the case of the absurdists and the exetentialists, what they said made even less sense: accept that the universe has no meaning, then assign it whatever meaning you want even though you know it has none. So, everything is just an inkblot, then?

At this time, everything I do seems so fucking pointless, just useless. I can't go a day without questioning the why or even the who of myself and it makes me sick. It's not even deep thinking, just self-defeating wars of reason with myself and what little I've read that almost always leads back to a voice screaming at me of my insignificance. And it may be right, which is more than I can bare. I'll go off to Greenland,then, and bury my head in the snow. People say that's irresponsible, but then, isn't everything irresponsible? They say that if I join their cause, that if everyone did, then we could save the world. If everyone was on the same side, then who or what would there be to fight? Nothing, because of the definition of such actions. So my stance of head-hiding would, were everyone to adopt, save the world in its way. But we say this as if the world needs saving; please, we humans have concern only for our continued existence. Even should we nuke this world and wipe out the vast majority of life on the planet, it seems evident to me that it would recover, slowly but surely, marching right over man's nasty little foot prints and stamping them out with something much grander in scale, or hell, even simply filling in those foot prints with a new equivalent to mankind.

Maybe I just need to take some anti-depressants, or something. Or maybe Camus was right when he said that all of this deep-seeded philosophical whining would disappear with sexual relief. Fuck if I know. I'm an idiot.

Today's word is disappointment

Oh yes, friends, disappointment all around. The exhibits are many and varied, they are, and just all around disheartening. No, it's not about school this time; I'm fine with school, content with being lazy and getting B's in order to keep my scholarship and the illusion of intelligence. Personally, I'm not too crazy about the educational system in this world at all, and kinda wish I was a self-motivated genius like Shigesato Itoi, dropping out of school to go my own way and eventually establish myself as some sort of genius, but I doubt I'm a talent like that. And I'm a coward, much too afraid to drop out of school for the brief snatching promise of a chance, not content to accept the secure path but resigned to it. But enough about life, I'm here to whine and moan about things that were created for our entertainment that I have only the most basic (read: monetary) connection to, though my rights are my own and my voice much the same! And now!

First order of business resolves around Jace's debut in the often confusing, almost incessantly perplexing and generally incomprehensible world of entertainment, particularly the unholy realm that is reality television. Jace, buddy, I know you needed the money, that it was an easy wad of cash for very little work, but what in the world were you doing showing up on Doctor Steve-O? Sorry, but it was.... well, the show's embarrassing to watch, even by oneself in private. I can't imagine what appearing on it must have been like. I visibly and noticeably cringed several times throughout, not because of the events, which were really juvenile, but because I felt guilty giving them ratings, guilty to give whatever Nu-Metal band that was playing in the background even the slightest bit of room to spread, upset with myself for not smashing the cable outlet, tossing the set from the window and joining it shortly thereafter. All right, so there's a good deal of hyperbole in my statements, but still, was a piece of your dignity really worth that? Even Paul was upset that he watched it, and Paul enjoys Waterworld, claims it is a legitimately good movie. Have you ever watched that vision of our future wherein a cyclopean Denis Hopper leads a ragtag band of no-good-nicks against mutant fish people for a map of no practical or readable value? I don't think I need to speak any further. Not that I expected it to be good, but watchable, that's what I was hoping for; watchable was not my reward. Oh well; here's hoping your actual debut in the entertainment world is something I can watch joyfully, something I can discuss with a new friend or coworker the next day, wearing a knowing smile as he raves about such and such a character, the grubby one, how well acted he was. Not here; I smiled, sure, mainly at fond memories and excitement about getting to see all of you guys in the near future.


This shit, though, this is inexcusable. What in the world is going on here, Eureka 7? Don't tell me Matt and Ryan were right about you, don't tell me you've been lying this entire time, you deceitful mistress! The last two volumes were stellar additions to the series, hell, to the much maligned and declining world of anime in general. Hell, I rewatched volume 8 three days after finishing it because it was simply that good, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. The pacing was lightning quick, there was no stalling to be done as so often happens when these shows pick up. The plot was finally GOING somewhere and had the momentum to insist that it wasn't stopping anytime soon; we were actually learning things about the overall goals of everyone involved, damn it! Then..... then.... then this thing shows up and throws the brakes. That invasion of the capitol that broadcast as if something truly monumental? Boring. That's right: BORING. Brief, quick, and really, pointless. So Norb is rescued and we find out he knows a thing or two about scub coral, a revelation that changes.... nothing. The team's motivation remains what it was, the goal is no different and neither are the methods, it just confirms a hypothesis that was all they had to go on to begin with. And Dewey is Holland's brother. That's it. It's not even addressed afterwards, no one seems to care; it's thrown in there to provide a hint of development for Holland and just as quickly dropped and ignored.

There's the first episode, already bringing with it crushing disappointment. And the disc is over. Don't tell me there were three more episodes after this, that's nonsense. What's left on the disc is a smattering of random flashbacks, the much dreaded pseudo-philosophy about the "7th dimension of human dreams" and the "10th dimension of the scub corral" which must have been written by a fifth grader in one of his notebooks that he dug out sometime in college and decided was really something special, some representation of unrestricted and unbiased childhood genius, and some sex jokes about the relationship between two fourteen year olds. What is this? Really, what in the world IS this disc? I can't tell you, I don't know. It's a mishmash of emotions, plot threads, stunted pacing, bizarre plot development and.... good lord, I don't know what. It's jarring, the contrast between volume 9 and the two preceding releases. 7 and 8, as I've said, felt as though they came from an entirely different series, almost an entirely different world; they were everything I've wanted anime to be that it hasn't been in so long. Raw, powerfully emotional stories that could have operated just fine as stand alone volumes, paced as such. What you had in those volumes was real drama, almost operatic at times. Tragedy, man. Someone at BONES had a stroke of inspiration, the sort anyone with an imagination gets at times, spurred on by nothing in particular, and decided that it was time to, you know, actually write, not to throw darts at a wall composed of the same twenty five cliches, not like all of the other writers out there, not like the Kubo Tites and Go Nagais and the CLAPMS and all of their ilk. Those eight episodes resonated energy and thought, energy and thought that rubbed off from the man in charge, the script writer, and flowed into the minds of everyone involved in the project. Everything worked, and the result was something powerful, something worth buying, something almost real.

Then the head man at BONES missed a beat. Either his coffee was decaf one evening and he hit the sack before the time he wanted, he missed a train, any number of things. It's not important to consider what knocked his mood out of step, what stole his spark, just to know that something did. Something sabotaged this man's mentality, and it shows. The ninth volume is nothing less than sabotage. Hell, it shows up all throughout the events in this volume, and its really infuriating. It even manifests itself in the plot, in one particularly frustrating scene, a scene that may have possibly hinted at a return to form. For the first time in a while, the action being slowed down as it is, we finally get to visit the normally contemplative, almost implacable Stoner, get to listen to one of those rare monologues of his that, until now, have been gone. They probably went unnoticed, those brief periods of musing that Stoner was so rarely allowed to express, until this scene. The audience remembers now just how important these times have been though, these smoke breaks that he's allowed throughout the series, giving the viewer a break from the action, and it shows especially well here because it's a drastic shift from the break-neck speed up until now. He's musing, as he's been wont to do, about the nature of his business on the ship, his role in the world as a journalist, especially now that those in power have demonstrated they're more than capable of quashing, that even should he get his thoughts out uncensored and at their most eloquent the military can prove him unbelievable in an instant. To boot, he's now just dead weight on the ship, having no merit other than his reporting and editing.

So, he's watching the coverage of national events while Eureka gets into a bit of a fight with Renton, mainly because she reveals a tidbit of information about her relationship with his father. It's an interesting point because it's fundamentally unimportant, for us and for Renton, just a tidbit of her life that could almost have been overlooked, but it adds a bit more depth to their connection. Renton has no real reason to lash out, really he doesn't, but it's also understandable that he does, despite the insignificance of it all, because it sorta makes her yet another sister, a surrogate, which brings up a number of problems, really, Renton having a bit of a family complex. Anyhow, one thing leads to another and, seeking guidance, Eureka stumbles into Stoner. What comes out is a very awkward, almost uncomfortable meeting for the two; there's a palpable sense of unsease and discomfort as we find out just the barest bit of Stoner's history and he tries, really and genuinely, to comfort Eureka without being a sentimental sap, without resorting to the histrionics that their comrades find necessary. It is a simple moment, punctuated by a very slight and sharp piano number, the sort that's so subtle as to be ignored more often than noticed, and just a bit unnerving. It's what I would call nice, the same feeling that's attached to Christmas morning after the hubbub centering around presents is over and done with, when the family hasn't returned to its normal routine and simply sits around, drinking hot chocolate milk, petting the dog and cats, and simply sitting there, quietly, everyone a tad melancholy but also really just happy to be.

For reasons inexplicable Hilda and Gidget show up right then and there, start ranting about Eureka having sex with Renton, accuse Stoner of trying to convince her of doing so, and drag Eureka off. Stoner sighs, wonders what that was all about, and turns back to the news. I stare at the screen, eyes wide with shock, and pause it... what the fuck was that? Was that comic relief? No, that wasn't comic relief, comic relief never carries with it a declaration of war, knowing full well that it's ruined something delicate and beautiful . Imagine the aforementioned Christmas scene; in that circumstance, the dog is your comic relief, the one that does something slightly silly and gets you to notice that you're being slightly silly to, restores self-conscious without shattering the delicacy of the moment. That's comic relief, a misplaced bark, silly yawn, or an attempt to carry away a CD as some sort of dog-frisbee or prize. This shit is the equivalent of a trucker in full trucker regalia walking through the center of events to the bathroom then kindly excusing himself with a flush and a shit eating grin. Unexpected, unfunny, unsettling, no more subtle than a semi-truck. I'm being honest when I say I raged at the screen for about five minutes, I couldn't grasp my head around that. Sabotage, clear and simple, like the creator just hated himself and everyone on the staff and was convinced that they wouldn't be accomplishing anything worthwhile without it streaming from him.

The volume ends shortly thereafter with a spray of gunfire, bloodshed, sound and fury, yada yada yada. It doesn't make any sense, it doesn't mean anything, and I hate it. I feel betrayed to a sickening degree. It's.... ugh, god, I don't know what it is aside from a deliberate attempt to simply confuse and frustrate viewers. It's because of writing like this that anime has the stigma it has, because it seems to just devolve, as it were. Please, please, please, pick up Eureka 7; you've too much talent for this sort of apathetic, self-pitying suicide. Please, Mushi-shi, Le Chevalier d'Eon, don't take this path, stay the course, prove that anime isn't complete tripe like Naruto, Bleach, Angel Sanctuary and all of the other crap want people to believe it is; don't lower yourself to the ranks of Fate/Stay Night and whatever it is the denizens at Gamefaqs are creaming themselves over these days.

So, this is dragging on a bit, I'm hungry, and I have a tad bit of research to do for that FYE nonsense, you know, the mandatory class that most colleges never even had because it's an awful idea. I'll update later on disappointments concerning.... well, I'm not sure what. Maybe I'll actually just go write something meaningful instead.