Last night, I had some weird dreams. I can't even remember their order since they're little vignettes and not episodes proper. I'm just gonna record them here, k? Feel free to share your own in the comments.

In the first, I was a contestant on American Idol. The girls had their own stage, while the guys (that's me) had to perform in my aunt's kitchen. The theme was apparently "Roz 'n' Roll," whatever that means. Lil Rounds or someone who looks like her was naked on all fours for half of her song, which I can't remember. It was some jazzy number, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was. I was behind her the whole time, so I was staring at her naked butt. Lovely. The other half was spent spooning with Simon Cowell who fortunately realized how positively ridiculous this whole thing was and laughed through the performance. I should probably mention that she was on top and the stage was rotating.

Cut to my aunt's kitchen. This part is in the first-person perspective. It's dark and lit only by a couple of candles I'm bent over the sink, trying to remember my song, when my parents, who are apparently the judges now, tell me that whatever song I picked doesn't work with the theme. I grasp desperately for a song and finally come up with Accidentally in Love by the Counting Crows. I sing it, I can feel my vocal cords vibrating and my throat moving as I completely kick ASS at that song. It was very realistic and sounded completely awesome and I forgot I was dreaming and convinced myself that I was actually singing Accidentally in Love into my aunt's kitchen sink on American Idol. The Judgeparents say that it wasn't very good and I didn't do enough to get into the next round :(

Afterwards, they ask me who the other two contestants are.  I tell them it's a Mexican bald guy with dents in his head and an emo with either yellow (not blonde, canary yellow) or green hair. Apparently they accept this and that's where that dream ends.

In my other dream, I have my friend D, my friend A, and A's imaginary girlfriend over. We're chilling out in my room when A gets horny and tells us to leave. We accept this and relocate to my brother's room. About ten minutes later, I knock on the door and A's girlfriend answers. D's already there in wet boxers, A and his girlfriend are in their underwear and I just noticed that not only am I in my underwear but also my room is next to a major highway and this trucker guy is checking me out. He drives off and the dream ends with us playing Left 4 Dead.

That's about it.

I have gaping holes in my video-game-playing career and I'm gonna fill those in right now. I need suggestions because I don't know what's considered a "must-play" game anymore. I've been in a rut lately and I need to know what to play :(

One game that everyone and their grandma has played that I haven't is OoT. I recognize that this is a problem, so I "legally acquired" it and am playing it right now.
By the way, there will be SPOILERS so if you don't want this game's super-deep Pulitzer-level plot spoiled you should stop reading.

The opening sequence is pretty good, but it looks like the writers aren't big fans of "show, don't
tell." Why does Navi not know about this big evil if she's been living in this forest her entire life? Oh
well, the underwhelming exposition is like .5% of the entire game anyway.

A brief bit of exploring later, and I find rocks that can turn at will and my SWORD, MOTHERFUCKER!!! This
will make getting the 40 rupees for the shield a bit easier. Stupid Mido won't let me through without
them.

Okay. 46 rupees later, I finally buy the shield and talk to that blowhard Mido. He runs out of excuses for why I can't make it through and grudgingly allows me to visit the Great Deku Tree. The tree tells us that bad juju is going down and giving people nightmares and we need to break the curse, so we enter his mouth.

Oddly enough, the biting flower things inside seem to be stronger than the ones outside. They take two hits to kill.

You know, it's no wonder the Deku Tree is in failing health. Someone hollowed him out and planted a bunch of Satan flowers and spiders and ladders and stuff. That can't be good for any plant.

BORING, BLAND SECTION STARTS HERE, BUT FEEL FREE TO READ IT ANYWAY

I get the map, "fight" a plant (if you can call reflecting a Deku Nut with my shield fighting), and get the slingshot. It starts off fully loaded with 30 ammo, but I have to waste one to knock down the ladder to the exit. That's disappointing.With my slingshot I kill the spiders that are hanging onto the wall and then climb up it.

I come across a room that locks behind me. I'm so glad I've seen this game before, because the torch puzzle would've been hard to figure out otherwise. How was I supposed to know that I needed to light a Deku Stick on the left torch and bring it to the right one? I don't know. I get to kill a Gold Skulltulla and get the compass, though. That's exciting.

Upon exiting, I kill a spider, since there's nothing else to do on this floor. Apparently the game wants me to jump down, so I do and end up breaking that spider web. Hell yes!

Once again, I come across a torch. Once again, I am thankful for having seen this level before. I take out a Deku Stick and burn the web covering a door.I enter the door and find another one of those nut-spitting plants. It takes a while to kill, but then I realize I can use Z-targeting to reflect the nut right back at him. He tells me that I must kill his brothers in "2 3 1" order. The door to the next room doesn't open up until I shoot the eye above it with a slingshot.

In this room, there is a platform moving back and forth with a scary rotisserie-spikey rod rotating directly over the path of the platform. Navi tells me I can dive, so I scour the water for interesting things. I find a switch that lowers the water level enough for me to board the platform without getting skewered. Navi tells me how to push blocks, so I do that and then enter the next room.

The door locks behind me. I see yet another torch "puzzle" (at this point, it's no more a puzzle than "jump over the hole in the ground"), so I light the TWO TORCHES which is the big twist this time around and exit the room.

Another burning-the-web puzzle shows up in this room, but more alarming are the scary one-eyed plant things that rain from the ceiling. I burn the webs and kill the Satan flower and crawl through a little hole in the wall.

I end up back in the room with the first burning-the-web puzzle, except this time there is a web in a hole in the ground that I have to burn. I do that and then fall down into a pool of water.

I REMEMBERED HOW TO WRITE WELL HERE, SO PLEASE READ ON

The three brothers the little plant was talking about are chilling, minding their own business, when I decide to crash their party and go all TWO THREE ONE BITCHES on their sorry wooden asses. That's the only way I could make this sound interesting at all. They reveal the secret of Queen Gohma, which is to hit her while she's stunned. Fair enough. I refill my health and go through the door marked with a skull.

I look up and sure enough, there she is! I bust some Deku Nuts on her (in case you couldn't tell, I am making a pun based on a slang term for ejaculation) and then stabbed her with my sword until she died. It wasn't an exciting fight.

We leave after getting a heart piece and the Deku Tree informs us that the red, green, and blue Powerpuff Girls--er--Golden Goddesses created the world and turned into three triangles. That's as many as three ones. The evil man with black armor stole one of these triangles. And that's terrible. The tree dies, Mido accuses us of killing him, we leave the forest, and our friend with green hair gives us an Ocarina and instead of thanking her we run away.

That's it for this section, come back tomorrow for part 2 of ??? in the "You know, I should probably play more video games" series!

The literal translation for that, in case you're wondering, is [1st-person pronoun][plural marker] study universal communicate speech [polite suggestion]

Anyway, the following thread:
http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic/31/if-you-could-be-fluent-at-2-foreign-languages/234737
reminded me that I fell off the Chinese-studying wagon. So I decided that I would blog about my Chinese-learning exploits. The book I'm using, titled Chinese the Easy Way has 17 chapters of actual language learning (the first two are a primer to the tones and sounds of the language), covers multiple grammatical points in each chapter, and will eventually teach me over 600 words and phrases. I am going to be starting from chapter 3 and covering roughly one chapter per day, which means I'll have the book finished in 17 days. What the book does NOT teach is the writing system. They throw in a little token gesture in the last chapter, but the book is really geared toward the student of the spoken language. Fair enough, let's go.

Vocab list:

English     |Pinyin   |Hanzi
---------------------------- 
mouse       |lǎoshǔ   |老鼠
good        |hǎo      |好
I, me       |wǒ       |我
no, not     |bù       |不
to be       |shì      |是
teacher     |lǎoshī   |老师
sorry       |duìbuqǐ  |对不起
you         |nǐ       |你
hello       |nǐ hǎo   |你好
mom         |māma     |妈妈
your mom    |nǐ māma  |你妈妈
s/he        |tā       |他(male), 她(female)
very        |hĕn      |很
dad         |bàba     |爸爸
how about...|phrase+ne|呢
also        |yĕ       |也
busy        |máng     |忙
question wd |ma       |吗
you(formal) |nín      |您
bye         |zàijiàn  |再见

Grammar notes:
Chinese's is Subject-Adverb-Verb-Object.

You use 是 (be) with nouns only.

subject |adverb|verb|object
你  妈妈 |      |是  |老师
nǐ māma |      |shì |lǎoshī
your mom|      |is  |teacher

In Chinese, adjectives qualify as verbs and MUST be preceded by an adverb. The dummy adverb, if an adjective needs no modification, is hĕn.  For instance, you'd say

subject |adverb|verb|object
你  妈妈 |很    |忙   |
nǐ māma |hĕn   |máng|
your mom|very  |busy|

but not

subject |adverb|verb|object
你  妈妈 |是    |忙  |
nǐ māma |shì   |máng|
your mom|is    |busy|

because "is" is a verb, not an adverb.
When "hĕn" is spoken before an adjective and it doesn't mean "very," it loses its tone. So "Your mom is busy" actually SOUNDS like nǐ māma hen máng

So far, we've only dealt with simple, positive, declarative sentence structures. We still have negation, "also," and questions to deal with.
Just like in English, "not" and "also" are considered adverbs and therefore fill the adverb slot in sentences.

Let's cover negation first.

subject |adverb|verb|object
你  妈妈 |不    |忙   |
nǐ māma |bù    |máng|
your mom|not   |busy|

In front of falling-tone words (such as shì), bù becomes bú as in

subject |adverb|verb|object
你  妈妈 |不    |是  |老师
nǐ māma |bú    |shì |lǎoshī
your mom|not   |is  |teacher

Let's cover yĕ!
yĕ means "also"

subject |adverb  |verb|object
你  妈妈 |也       |是  |老师
nǐ māma |yĕ      |shì |lǎoshī
your mom|also    |is  |teacher

It can also mean "either" as in "Your mom is not a teacher either." It stacks with bù like so:

subject |adverb  |verb|object
你  妈妈 |也  不   |是  |老师
nǐ māma |yĕ bú   |shì |lǎoshī
your mom|also not|is  |teacher

If you're gonna use it with an adjective, you have to stack it with hĕn. For instance, you have to say

subject |adverb   |verb|object
你  妈妈 |也很      |忙  |
nǐ māma |yĕ hĕn   |máng|
your mom|also very|busy|

Finally ma turns any statement into a yes/no question if added onto the end ("Ni mama shi laoshi ma" means "Is your mom a teacher") and "phrase+ne" means "and how about phrase" ("Wo shi laoshi. Ni ne" means "I am a teacher. And how about you")

That about covers it. Feel free to ask questions, after all the times I've studies this exact material I've pretty much got it down pat. Also, tell me if you like this at all, or if you'll be back. I don't want to be talking to myself after all. And if any native speakers want to lend their talents to proofreading or practice, that'd be great too. Thanks everyone!

This is my coming out: I am totally gay for rhythm games. I love everything about them: their music; their scrolling, quarter-note-long colors; the scoring at the end; their easy-to-play-in-short-bursts nature. Whether I'm playing with my hands or with my feet, getting a physical or mental workout, creating or passively receiving music, I'm guaranteed a damn good time.

If any of you know me in real life (which you probably don't) you know I'm ludicrously competitive. The only problem is that I suck at everything. Everything, that is, except rhythm games. By golly, God put me on this earth to stomp on colored panels on the floor really really fast and that's what I'm gonna do! I can robotically sing the FUCK out of heavy metal. I'll push the arrow keys on my keyboard super-accurately as much as I please, thank you very much. For some reason, the makers of these games said "How can we make Hausdog feel really really good about himself?"

If I had to pick an ideal rhythm game, my choice would be Stepmania. I'd go so far as to say its "ideal" classification transcends genre. Imagine DDR. Now imagine that it's completely customizable. The deciding factor in the quality of a rhythm game is its soundtrack. Stepmania has not only the best soundtrack out there, but the best possible soundtrack. It is impossible to beat a soundtrack made up by the player because they get to pick exactly what gets in and what gets cut. You don't like the background video? Change it to something else. Other games have level editors, but Stepmania's has the distinction of being the most simple. Furthermore, if you want to pretend you're playing actual DDR with good music (none of that worthless J-Pop crap), you can buy a USB dance pad. It's one of the few games where the average person can effectively make their own experience because the base mechanic is SO simple.

That's about it, it took me way to long to make this.