Geez. Three months posting nothing but journals, and now this last ep of ILM! has garnered me something like seven watches in three days. c.c Dayamn!

So I just wanted to say hi, welcome aboard, thanks for taking interest. :D I have plans to get going on more podcasts, so do feel free to listen to the older ones in the meantime. Changes are underway that will hopefully lead to me being able to update more regularly. Especially if I stay home from work again tomorrow. D: (I hope I can work, but this damned winter storm thing is fucking everything up.)

As for my writing, uhh... Totally haven't done any of that in a while. Hoping to change that real soon, as well. I've been pondering the next chapter of OAR; I'm also working on a super-secret side project that will hopefully be both fun and lucrative. :3 That's all the more I will say on that subject, however.

So, uh, please don't worry about the large volume of journals recently. I swear that's not the norm around here. c.c

And this is infinitely entertaining: http://www.toplessrobot.com/2011/01.....men_around.php

Relevant to the two of you who are still really into Star Fox. :B

UPDATE: It seems to have fixed itself while I was playing Rock Band, of all things. c.c So, uh, disregard?

So I finally got around to watching the last three weeks' worth of Bleach (there was only one non-filler episode, so that didn't take long), and as my reward, my monitor is now displaying multiple shadows, mostly on text. I have no idea why, and I can't seem to figure out how to fix it, after going through all my monitor and video card and display settings. I even tried just flat-out restarting, nothing.

Help? ._.

http://obliviousally.dreamchaos.net.....usionfurry.pdf

 obliviousally was nice enough to put it up. My part occurs at the bottom of page 6. :B It's not very impressive.

I came home today with a copy of Fusion, my university's LGBT magazine. I'm in it. I'm mentioned precisely once (well, once by name and once by species), but I'm there, wondering about pickles and crayons.

Oh yeah, the article was about furries on campus. Specifically one guy, but a friend of mine had a couple paragraphs about her, and me and two other guys were mentioned from a meeting with a reporter who showed up unannounced at a furmeet. I think the guy from the main article was there too, but I don't really know if it was him.

Anyway, I'm just doing my part to represent the fandom in a positive light. :V It was a pretty good article, and I didn't make us look like freaks, so yay. I'll check back in a month or so and see if they put it up on their website, because it's not there now.

Article in this journal.

First, a little context maybe. My best friend Max has become severely obsessed with collecting Transformers, and I, being a lifelong fan, have been swept up in it. Thankfully, I don't have the money to blow like he does, but I am apparently get my TF on in other ways...

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I really am in love with the creative process, which is why I like sharing stupid shit like this.

Today I was over at Max's place, watching him mess around with his Transformers. I think it was Universe (??) Galvatron (?), whose transformation is particularly involved, that led him to mention about "this front chunk". I immediately said, "Frontchunk would be a great Transformer name."

We then proceeded to laugh a lot and Frontchunk was born. He's an Autobot, a bridge-laying tank, somewhat like this. He has one very specific purpose in life -- laying that bridge -- which is completely useless, because everyone can fly. He's the kind of guy they'd leave behind while going out on a mission, and then they return and all the Energon (or whatever) is gone, and they just see him laying on a pile of empty cubes, bloated and belching loudly and moaning. Everyone laughs, fade out.

So because his bridge -- which he insists on referring to by its name, Camelia -- is useless, he tries to be useful in other ways, such as, oh, offering it as a ladder so someone can reach something high. Of course, even in robot form, the thing is twice his size when it's folded up, so it still remains useless. It's also his only weapon; he doesn't have any guns or anything, he just swings the bridge around. Also, he's not particularly brave, and in times of duress he has been known to hold conversations with Camelia.

But yeah. Now I have a Transformers fan character. Why do these things happen to me? XD Oh Frontchunk, what have you done to me?

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Right before I woke up, my mind dreamed this up:

"The five Phoenicons: icy guardians whose purpose is to return the world to the primordial fires that spawned it." (Following this was a discussion of why they should not be called "Phoenissons", but that is not important.)

Since then, I've filled in who and what these guys are and what they do.

Ages-old, they are tasked with rooting out worlds that need to be cleansed by fire and pretty much destroying them wholesale. Their alt-modes are all winged animals, more or less, probably less obviously Earth-creatures than anything, which they use for interstellar travel. They are:

Blazon: The Seeker (hippogryph)
The youngest, the fastest, the weakest link. He's the one who puts everything in motion, searching the cosmos for worlds that require the aforementioned Biblical cleanser. When he finds a place that he thinks might require cleansing, he sends the data to Infernulus, who actually makes the decision. However, Blazon is where the buck really stops, as he basically has the power to prevent any given world from meeting the wrath of the Phoenicons. Given his constant silent company (see Tormentor), he is easily swayed by kind words and deeds. He's essentially the naive "good guy" in a group of douchebags.

Tormentor: The Silent Executioner (winged lion)
Tormentor has one task: to protect the Seeker at all costs. He accompanies Blazon throughout all his travels and makes sure nothing happens to him. Those who would trifle with the Seeker or attempt to stop him usually meet a swift death at the hands of his sweet winged battleaxe. (Notably, Tormentor is the only one who does not have wings in robot mode.) As his name suggests, he does not speak, which pretty much means Blazon is starved for actual companionship. Tormentor takes his job seriously, but he also knows his limits: if he attacks a would-be interloper, and said interloper is able to flee, he will not pursue. However, he does not give second chances.

Infernulus: The Burning Judge (winged serpent)
Infernulus is the insufferable one, the de facto "leader", the oldest, and the one you really don't want to piss off. His task is simply to decide whether or not a given world selected by Blazon is worthy of cleansing. (Spoiler: The answer is always 'yes'.) He doesn't do anything else besides sitting on his ass, pretty much, and he tends to be cranky. And given that his weapons are named Armagor and Ragnarion, you don't want to get on his bad side at all. He's the one who sends them forth to do what they do best.

Armagor: The Incendiary (phoenix)
Okay, when I say "phoenix", I really mean that as a visual descriptor. This guy is HUGE. If these guys were more buddy-buddy with each other, they would ride around on Armagor. Armagor's job is simple: he gets to start the fire. It will always be burning while the world keeps turning. That's it. He usually does the orbital bombardment thing, hitting a planet in a dozen or more locations across its surface with large fireballs that expand outward and annihilate everything in their paths. Once everything is nicely on fire, he goes home, simple as that.

Ragnarion: The World Eater (dragon)
Ragnarion is the fun one, the berzerker. His job is similar to Tormentor's: make sure no one fucks with the Incendiary. Only Ragnarion likes to take a more proactive approach. No one can fuck with your guy when they're all dead, right? So he tends to make planetfall on the other side of the world while Armagor is doing his thing, and proceeds to HULK SMASH the living fuck out of everything. He'll kill sentients, as well as destroying large structures that might survive the upcoming holocaust. He has a particular aversion to walls, as they can sometimes block Armagor's fire. Suffice to say, if not for the fact that your world was about to be burned to a cinder, Ragnarion's arrival by itself would mean that you were fucked.

Fun bunch, eh? Mostly just writing this here so I have some kind of record of it.

They've finally done it. They made a Pokemon that I can't come up with a better name for. Check it out: http://pokebeach.com/2011/01/potent.....-pokemon-names

The mushrooms are about two-thirds of the way down (or just search for "Tamagetake", the Japanese name).

FOONGUS

AMOONGUS

I can't beat that. That is the best name ever for those things. Of course, it doesn't make up for some of the godawful shit they named the other things (Sawsbuck? Klink? For crying out loud, SAWK???)

But well played, Nintendo. Well played.

I shouldn't be giving any kind of review yet, as I've only played all the songs with guitar so far, but I've played all the songs, some multiple times, and I have opinions that must be shared. :V I am, of course, still a release behind.

As for the game itself, I like the fact that you can make an entire band and have your characters be the fill-ins when you're just playing by yourself. Of course, replacing solo tour with band mode has its ups and downs, most notably that every song is actually a venue on its own, and so I could technically go through, pass everything on bass (assuming the last few songs aren't godawful, which I'm sure they are), and win the game, despite bass being easy mode for the most part. I like being able to hammer on chords, it makes some of the older songs far easier. I of course like being able to tour with bass as an option in the first place. :V There are a couple things I hate, but I forget what they are.

My band, fyi, is called Grease Witherspoon. It consists of Greasy Withers (female, singer, punk), Valtr (HUGE black leather-clad guitarist, metal), Depressio (emo hipster, bassist, goth), and the return of my original drummer from RB1, Li'l Susie (homicidal Scottish dwarf, drums, rock). I like having a variety. :3

To read reviews of all the songs, click here.

Overall, I think Rock Band 1 had a much stronger setlist. I may change my mind after a few months of really getting to know these songs, but for now, I'm just glad we were able to export the old songs. Although I miss Enter Sandman. ;_;

So I've decided I'm going to start cross-posting things from Livejournal here. I'll take and put a little [lj] in the title so that in case you're already watching me on LJ you don't have to read it twice. (Didn't do it for this one because the title is too long). This will mostly be for things like reviews, that I'd like people to actually read. :P

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ARGH THAT MOVIE WAS STUPID

Of course, I knew it was going to be, since the day I saw the name "Seth Rogen" tied to it. Little did I know that along with starring in it, he also wrote it. This is undeniably why it sucked.

Before I go any further, this review is going to be spoiler-heavy, but as my thesis is "This movie is a waste of time and no one should see it", you probably don't have to worry about that.

So I'll start by referencing MovieBob: the 'second act' was the worst part. The opening was okay, if fast paced, and the ending was actually pretty damn awesome, but nothing could make up for the travesties that took place in the middle of that movie. To wit: the fight scene between Britt Reid and Kato. The audience was laughing during it, but I was sitting there going, "This isn't funny; this is sad!" It served no purpose. It was embarrassing to watch. We get to find out Kato's "weakness" at the end, which seems completely unrealistic given how amazing he is at everything else. The tension between the characters might have been necessary for them to ultimately become a true team, but it was handled in the most hamfisted way imaginable.

That is by far my biggest gripe; everything else is minor in comparison. So let's talk about some things that went right. All the action scenes were great, as was the car, hot damn. The humor is actually not too bad; it certainly could have been far more juvenile, which was what I was expecting. Despite the fact that we see most of it in the trailer, the gas gun scene is by far the most hilarious happening. However, a lot of the humor was misplaced, most notably a tense, extremely awkward scene about sexual harrassment.

Okay, let's talk characters now. Cameron Diaz's 'love interest' was completely superfluous. She didn't fit into the movie at all. She pretty much just made things worse for the main characters, mostly from being poorly written; she was like gas on Britt Reid's douchebag fire. Britt Reid. What a shit. This guy is completely unlikeable from the moment he stops being a six year old being tormented by his asshole father. He's also such a remarkably useless screwup; he's got no business being the Green Hornet. I mean, yeah, Kato's kind of supposed to be the badass, but the Hornet should at least be competent at something. And the "oh his friend is in danger so he develops Kato-vision" at the end was bullshit. There's no way he was able to do any of that. The only thing he did right in the entire movie was ejector seats.

And then there's Kato. Oh man. Let's talk about the character for a minute. He's played by Chinese R&B singer Jay Chou (a favorite of mine), but a quick look at the Wikipedia page shows that he's supposed to be Japanese. Case in point: his name would have to be spelled "Kei Tou" to actually be Chinese. A further glance at the Wikipedia page shows that he's been every ethnicity from Korean to Filipino; so I guess there's no way to cast him 'wrong' so long as he's Asian, which is kind of sad. That said, Jay Chou was a great straight man, and he could have been even better if the writing hadn't held him back so much. I thought Kato went along with Britt's crap way too easily. I hope this doesn't ruin Jay Chou's chances at having a career in the US.

I think pretty much everything comes back to bad writing, and thus to Seth Rogen. When it worked, the humor worked, but otherwise it was awful. Overall, it was unnecessary. The daddy issues plot is made up of bits and pieces most likely gleaned from other, better movies with the same plot. The story of a young man trying to do right by his journalist father's legacy after inheriting the family newspaper is actually compelling. The "let's put on masks and be vigilantes" plot makes no goddamn sense. The villain is a complete joke; they should have just named him Killemov, that's how ludicrous he was.

Bottom line: if there's nothing out right now that interests you and you want to see a movie nonetheless, go watch Tron. I may not have been thrilled by it, but it's lightyears better than this pile of offal, and at least it's worth seeing. I didn't feel like I'd wasted my money after Tron.

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In the interest of not posting a wholedamn lot in a row, if you want to read my review of Tron Legacy, btw, it's here.

I just saw this in an article and thought it was great. The opening of the article was pretty amusing, but the middle was stuff I've heard time and again... until this line. Abridged to get to the good parts:

When we shut ourselves down prematurely, it's as if we came across a child happily playing in the sandbox and asked what she was making, and when she said... "I'm making a castle," we responded, "Oh, a castle. That's original. No one's ever made a castle before." That girl in the sandbox has every right to respond, "I don't know if it's original. I won't know until I've made it." -Jim Shepard in Writer magazine, Feb. 2011 issue

Now repeat that last line to yourself. "I won't know if it's original until I've made it." Say it over and over again until you believe it.

We talk a lot about originality, and worrying about it is where a lot of ideas get killed before they have a chance to take off. If a written piece is unoriginal, let the author know. But if it's just an idea, let it bloom. There's no telling where an individual will take it.

Check out this piece, written by a friend of mine: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5006737/

It's amazing how well this captures the pulp feel. Nazis on Mars? Yes, please!

And here's my first journal. Yay, I'm still awake! :D

My fiancee's blog, A Librarian's Life in Books is once again looking for guest bloggers to post about books they've read recently. So take a look at the blog, read up on what it's all about and give it a shot! Submission info is located on the blog, and you can find my previous journal on the subject here.

The talent's getting scared off by the hacking -- which wasn't all that bad, seriously, unless you're Zaush or someone -- and starting to leave.

Don't do it. Step back and take a breath. It's not that bad, just, I dunno, stop using notes or whatever if you're really paranoid. We don't need a brain drain because of this shit. FA needs talent.

So,  RADYAPAUNIX is making people songs for five dollars.

They are pretty amazing, holy shit.

You need to go experience this right now, because I don't have time to I Love Music about it.

I'm so goddamn behind. My schedule is way off whack, it's changing, and I don't know if I have time to recover. @_@ But, I'm working on a music add, and I wanted to give the list of new furry music that's made it into my collection. Buncha new artists, so do be sure to check them out. I don't have time to go linking to all the songs, unfortunately, but you should be able to find most of them easily enough. List is in the order I added things, so somewhat chronologically. Also wow, you can have a lot more icons in a journal than you could before! :O

 CHICAGO-lollie- I Am the Asshole
 Kendri- Calm Before the Storm
 Akasai- Bad Chemistry, Gunmetal, Meanwhile, Elsewhere..., Hide and Seek (with GraniteTail), V Is For
 DavidN- Soul Eater
 Hanni_the_Liger- Animus, Leopard Night
 Niion- Fucking Jump
 Razzberri- Elstree
 x-volt- Lady in Black, Empty Hallways, Mesmerized
 akkushisu- Charge Man
 2gryphon- Somewhere
 Drellis- Persenfectse, Meltdown, On to Grasstown
 MN XenX- Star Soldier (Power Up Theme Hyper remix)
 nobuyuki- Invasion
 wolf17- Grasstown
 foxamoore- Scarborough Fair (featuring MerinaWish)
 GraniteTail- The Second You Sleep
 Lilyness- She Has No Time, Viva la Vida
 Aurea- Advance and Destroy, Magma Fusion Reactor
 Hydroice- Propane
 Tirith- 3 AM, Eli, the Barrow Boy
Annodam- I See Your Eyes, Love Song (Kyandi remix), Walk on the Sun
Technomancer.- Binary, Procyon Rising, Electronic Warfare (Airzone edit)
Ihsman07- Tranquility
ApolloMerriwether- Lonely Heart
colson- Double Rainbow
DMDOKURO- A Beautiful World (featuring twirl-swirl)
SonicTweaker- Industrial Fluff, Bonus Challenge
TheBurden- Victory Anthem
eutroraccoon- Fliers2
RhubarbCub- The One Mistake
uzumati- How to Save a Life
DesuModnoc- Fireflies
foxcall- The Scientist
jazzypanda- Come Sail Away
ChrisGoodwin- Digital Love (Everytime mix)

God, my journals have been trash lately.

Someone must have noted me about something to do a year, because I can't find the info in the original journal I posted on the subject.

So, yeah, decent microphones. Good price. Condenser mics? Snapai said something about them being 'more responsive'. Ideally, I'd like something I could use with my computer, i.e., USB compatible. Dunno if that exists or not. Any help would be appreciated, my fiancee has said she'd get me one for Christmas. :3

With a decent fucking microphone, I could do things like record myself playing guitar and singing, and also singing along with a number of instrumental tracks on FA that I've been saving for, oh, probably a couple of years now. That would be fun. :D

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new.....ally-Get-Named

That is all.

Fuck, this is going to be difficult. D:

Okay, so, I finished my NaNoWriMo novel. It's a putrid, steaming pile of offal, but that's the good news.

The bad news is that it's only 31k words. :V omfgnowai

what do

This has been filling up my mind lately.

It's some of the most fucked-up shit I have ever seen.

It is all  CHICAGO-lollie's fault.

If you like crazy Japanese shit and can take a little sensory overload and a lot of horrible sex jokes, check it out. Only, don't watch the first episode first, it's actually not very good. At least skip to the second half (they're each two mini-episodes).

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/201.....-writers-life/

Am I the only one actually doing NaNo right now? Almost none of my writing buddies has a word count, and those that do don't have much. (MLR, I know you aren't.) What gives?

So, I posted my first status update tonight. :D I'm excite.

What I'm doing differently this year as opposed to last year, when I got wound up and then stopped short of actually doing anything, comes down to choosing what to write. If you pay any attention to me at all, you might remember me saying something about what my take on the Twilight/vampire romance phenomenon would be. That's what I'm writing. It's not going to be good. It's not going to be pretty. Hell, I can't even write this seriously. But the point is, I don't have my heart set on writing a certain way, so I can just let myself go and spew words. If it's crap, I don't care; if I fail, I won't be heartbroken.

Am I certain I can win? No, this plot's pretty damn thin. But I keep telling myself, it's wordage that counts, nothing else, and hey, I came in 200 words over my goal today, so maybe just maybe I'll get this thing done. :3 We'll see.

DanWalker on NaNo if you want to buddy me.

I passed 10k pageviews. :O Thanks, everyone, for looking at my stuff occasionally. :D It's all I ask.

I will not, under any circumstances, consider blocking or removing comments, with one exception: screen stretchers. And then, only if they aren't funny.

I GOT MY EYE ON YOU >:V

A Librarian's Life in Books, my fiancee's blog, needs guest bloggers! Here's the deal:

Do you read? Good! That's step one. Think about a book that you've read recently, or perhaps are reading now. In what ways do the topics of the book relate to your life? Does the overarching theme fit in with your childhood? Is one of the characters eerily reminiscent of a crazy uncle? Is there just something unusual that happens on the side that makes you think of something you've done? That's what ALLiB is all about!

Once you've got your idea in mind, you'll need to go to the blog and use the contact info to get in touch with her. Let her know you're interested in being a guest blogger and give her some idea about what your book and topic are, and any questions you might have. Remember: this isn't a furry blog, and my fiancee retains the right to edit any posts submitted to meet quality standards. Make sure to check out a few posts to get an idea of what goes on there! There's even a handy info section if you're still confused!

Remember, you can write about pretty much anything. I've done posts on fiction, non-fiction, genre fiction, and even graphic novels. Just relate your reading to your life and you'll be on the right track. :) It's a lot of fun, why don't you try it out?