Hey guys, books are real nifty!

I'm an avid reader. I always have been, I always will be. It is extremely rare that I'm not reading at least two books at any given time. It's even rarer that I do not have a book on hand at all times. Consequently, I can burn through a book series in almost no time at all. As an example, I just finished reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series. Admittedly, they were written with young adults in mind, but that doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed by something with a few more years. There are five books in the series, each one about 350 pages on average, or thereabouts. The author's name is Rick Riordan, and his website can be found here. I highly recommend his work. Anyway, there are five in total and I managed to finish the lot of them in five days total. In other words, I read a full size novel in one day for five days straight. I do a lot of reading...

About a week ago I started reading a series of books called the Leviathan Trilogy. It's another series designed for young adults, but again, that doesn't really matter. It's about an alternate take on World War I. Except as opposed to some sort of alternate history, it's Steampunk themed. Also, there are weird mutated animal beasties. It's pretty fucking awesome. All the world powers have been labeled as either Clankers, or Darwinists. The former adhereing pretty strongly to the steampunk influences, while the Darwinists are what would happen if Charles Darwin has found out how to cross breed anything and everything, creating some pretty weird "animals."

All the books are illustrated by Keith Thompson, and it's his art, arguably, that makes the books truly special. I know that I wouldn't have such a high opinion of them if they didn't have his illustrations in them. I can't count the amount of time I've spend staring at his artwork on his website, attempting to soak up eveyr single little detail. It's fantastic. He's also the one who drew my current avatar image. It's one of the main fabricated animals from the books, posing with a false mustache. It's called a Perspicacious Loris. I want one. A lot. Anyway, I read through those puppies in about a week. They are very good. I can't recommend them enough.

As soon as I finished those, I immediately started on a series I'd been recommended by a few friends. Apparently they're something of a big deal, although I'd never heard of them. In fact, just this Christmas, my mother purchased me the first three books in the series. I have no idea how she heard about it. So, they've been sitting on my shelf for awhile, and in my desperation for something to read, I grabbed the first one. Now, this is quite rare. I hardly ever just "grab" a book to read. I almost always have several books lined up, each one awaiting my attentive eye. However, on this occasion, my list had failed me, and I was wondering what to read. After about an hour and half wandering around the local library, I went home slightly dejected by my failure. It was then, as I was poring over my shelves of books, I noticed those. I grabbed the first one out of curiosity, and started reading. These books are in a series called The Tale of the Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock. The one I had picked up out of desperation was the first in a series of compilations called the Omnibus editions, and as far as I can tell, they are simply a series of stories, of varying length, all revolving this weird place that Moorcock has dubbed the Multiverse. In it, universe upon universe is layered upon one another, creating an infinite amount of worlds, and plenty excuses for any sort of story the author may wish to write.

I haven't read enough to find out whether this is merely an interesting little contrivance, or whether this will have some integral part of the story all together. So far though, I have come across no major continuity between the various stories. Aside from the fact that apparently every single protagonist is the same person. Sort of. I haven't quite figured it out myself. Apparently he is infinite in his existence, and lives life after life, somewhere in this Multiverse, essentially making him immortal. It's as yet unclear whether he retains all the memories of his past life in each new reincarnation. It's a little convoluted, although I'm hoping that I'll be able to sort it all out in time.

Well, regardless of the peculiarities of the storytelling, there can be no denying the skillfulness that the author uses to weave all these stories together, and make you care about every single protagonist, even if it is the person after all. The first story in volume one is something of a whopper, all by it's lonesome. I would have been content just with that, but I can't explain just how happy I am that there are so many more stories for me to read. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to it.

Visual novels are slowly consuming my soul and my sleep...

As stated in my previous blog, I started reading visual novels. A lot... I've read almost fifteen since I last posted my other blog. And not short ones. I'm talking about stuff like Fate/Stay Night, Clannad, and Ever17. Loooong stuff... It's fantastic. I'm completely addicted. Let me put it this way. During the day time during my spare time I read physical books. However, as soon as I get home I boot up my computer, feed my cats, check GB, then boot up whatever VN I happen to be working on at the time. I then proceed to play/read it until about two or three in the morning, at which point I head to bed. Oh, did I mention I have to get up at six the next morning? So yeah, there's that too.

Despite this fact, I persist in my reading. They are simply too good not to read. I can barely believe that I haven't gotten into them before now. So far, the stories, (and on occasion, the gameplay) have not disappointed me, making me very glad that I stay up all night reading them. Currently, I'm working on my first play-through of Sengoku Rance. It's pretty fucking good. Go play it. Do it, right now. It's like all my favorite games rolled up into one awesome bundle! It's got the dialogue and item management of Fire Emblem, the game board of Risk and Civilization, as well as the "gotta catch 'em all" feeling of Pokemon when it comes to the commanders and the battles. It's so good... The funny thing is, I don't even completely understand the damn game yet! I still have to rely heavily on the wiki. That thing is my crutch, and without it, I would have given up a long time ago.

Also, as I write this, I have Edelweiss downloading in the background, and I'm about to hop into that as soon as I'm done with Rance. I've heard lots of good things about it, and I'm eagerly awaiting my chance to play it. Actually, I've had something of a time finding good downloads for most of the VN's I've read. In fact, I spent almost an hour this afternoon just trying to find a good torrent for Edelweiss. Apparently, there's a very popular song by the same name, so I had to worm my way through all that nonsense before I could get to what I actually wanted. I think that doing all that work has helped me learn how to better navigate the internet, and make Google pull up what I actually want from it...

So, in conclusion, I read a lot, I've learned a bit about finding obscure shit on the internet, and Perspicacious Lorises are fucking awesome. Yeah. That seems right. Oh, and Rance is awesome. Can't forget that.

The Part About Piracy

It's incredibly ironic that almost as soon as SOPA and PIPA are shot down I start pirating. Now, I'm not some sort of asshole who never pays for anything online. I have too much respect for developers to do that. So far the only thing that I've actually pirated are Microsoft Office Suite and Photoshop, and only that because I'm poor. I have no qualms about actually paying for software, it's just that my cash influx leaves me little room for expensive shit like that. Also, I needed to use those programs really badly at the time, and pirating them was my only truly viable option.

I've tried pirating before in the past actually, when I was younger and didn't understand the internet and computers as well as I do now. When I think back on it I realize that the only reason I didn't become a chronic pirate is that I didn't understand how torrents worked and I was too lazy to figure it out. It was easier just to pay for whatever it is that I want. And so the internet was saved from the greatest pirate the world had ever known because he was a lazy teenage prick. At least, that's how I like to think about it. Obviously that's something of a massive exaggeration, but still. In my zeal for pirating I would destroyed my computer a hundred times over from viruses I would have unwittingly downloaded, and my mother would have flayed me for it...

Actually, the more and more I think about it, I'm really glad I was a lazy asshole. As I've gotten older I've become far more appreciative of the work that developers do to get their product out there, primarily in the video game field, although of course that's not restricted to that only. Actually, about a year ago I pirated Plants vs. Zombeis. It left a horrible taste in my mouth. I deleted it from my hard drive the next day, and promptly bought it myself. It made me feel better, but I've never forgotten who guilty it made me feel, and since then I try not to let myself pirate, unless, in this case, my school career is on the line. Also, it makes me feel better knowing that had I actually bought the software, it would have set me back about the amount of money I make in an entire year.

Well, when I sat down to write about pirating, in my mind I saw page after page about my experiences with pirating, but that has yet to materialize. I doubt it ever will. Still, it feels good to get my thoughts down in writing (okay, fine, typing). Anyway, that's my own personal battle with piracy. I'm not trying to influence anyone, but if I do, I won't count it as a loss.

The Real Reason I'm Writing This

I just finished Katawa Shoujo. It was possibly the most powerful thing I've ever read before in my life. Let me put that in a bit of perspective. I have been reading since I was old enough to comprehend language. I have no clue how many books I've read in total, but I'm never far from something to read, and I constantly have as least three books sitting on my desk waiting to be read. So, for a Japanese visual novel written by a group of (supposed) twenty-somethings to affect me so profoundly, it has to be pretty fucking fantastic.

I had never heard about it until a few days ago, and that was caused by my own boredom as I waited for my Photoshop torrent to finish downloading (see first section). I had been puttering around on GB for a few minutes before I stumbled upon the main page for the Katawa Shoujo. I'm not going to lie, when I saw the word eroge in the description I became somewhat excited, and promptly started downloading it. I'm not ashamed to say that the reason I started reading this masterpiece was because I was horny. I had not read any of the blog or forum posts about it, and had no prior knowledge of how good it was, and I maintain that it was thanks to this that it had such an effect on me.

I started reading, and was impressed by the artwork and the music, but only half payed attention to the actually dialogue, expecting the already mentioned eroge elements to kick in immediately. I was quickly disappointed, but as I became bored, I started to actually pay attention to the writing itself. As I slowly realized what I had been missing I jumped out of that game, and started again fresh, not wanting to deprive myself of any of the skillfully written dialogue. The more and more I read, the more I wanted to see. I spent a approximately four hours reading before my hubris got the better of me. I was so confident in my computer (or something), I had been neglecting to save regularly, and because I have my computer set to restart on that night, it shut off on me. For a few seconds I stared at the blank monitor that had held my attention so raptly not a moment before. It was then that I screamed. It was a sound of anguish and misery, one which I had never heard issued from my throat before. It took every ounce of my not inconsiderable willpower to keep myself from putting my head through the screen.

As I waited for my PC to reboot I realized how invested I had become in the story. I was shocked that something I had picked up for a very different reason had come to mean so much to me that the loss of it had caused me to scream out in anguish. When my computer started back up and I was looking at the main menu for the game that realized my true folly. It wasn't until then that I had realized I had completely neglected to save my game. It was with immense frustration and sadness that I clicked on New Game, and hit the Auto Skip option on the pause menu. Now, it really only took me about ten minutes to get back to the part at which I was at, but simply the fact that I was interrupted while reading this beautiful story bothered me greatly. It was with difficulty that I forced myself back into the story, but it wasn't long before I had completely blocked out the world around me once again. With renewed fervor I dove into the story.

Now, before reading on, keep this in mind: I do not cry. I have not truly broken down and cried in years. I am an extremely stoic person (or so I like to think). I have always thought that crying about something was pointless, and not worth the loss of liquid. I'm something of a heartless asshole in some respects. Anyway, I don't cry. Keep that in mind.

On my first play through of the game I had been going with Lilly's story-line, since her character appealed to me much more than any of the others, except for maybe Hanako. Also, I have a thing for blondes. So, I was pretty far along in her story, and it had been very touching, and I had long since started to really care about the characters. However, the most poignant moment in the game, emotionally at least, was when she is about to go home. It was then that I, confronted with the loss of a character I had come to care about, and almost love, began to sob. I was so invested in the story that I began to cry as the scene played out. As it concluded I felt like I had lost a piece of my heart. I realized I had stepped into the shoes of the main character so completely that I too felt his plight, and I daresay it affected me even more than it had affected him.

Although despite this shocking development I continued along in the game, refusing to accept that ending, hoping against hope that it was all a big trick, and the bliss that had been would be restored. As the main character chased her, I could feel my own heart beating in anticipation of what was to come, and when it did, I almost screamed aloud again. However, when the real resolution was finally achieved I once again began to cry, although this time not out of sadness, but a powerful sense of happiness, knowing that the choices I had made had led to what I had been hoping for. I'd gotten a truly happy ending.

Oh Steam. You greedy, delightful little program... I have a love/hate relationship with Steam as of late. Well, perhaps I should start at the beginning, instead of leaving everyone thoroughly confused. I wanted to play Fallout 3. I had read everything on the site about it, watched all the Quick Looks for the DLC, and spent many an hour staring fixedly at screenshots and trailers. Finally, after a few weeks of scrounging, I finally had enough surplus cash to buy it. As I looking at the Steam page, I noticed you could also buy a package containing Fallout 3, Morrowind, and Oblivion. I own Oblivion for my Xbox 360, and had sunk an unreasonable amount of time into it, so it made sense to get it again for the PC. I knew next to nothing about it's predecessor, Morrowind, but it looked like a lot of fun nonetheless. And so, with this reasoning in mind, I promptly bought the package of all three. Now, in the long run, this was probably not a bad idea. In the short term however, I may have made a mistake. 
 
I got all three of them downloading/installing, shut down my computer's monitor, and relaxed with a book to patiently await the download of all three games. After about an hour or so, I got bored, and decided to check up on how it was going. To my mild surprise, one of them had already finished downloading. It was Morrowind, in fact. I booted it up, merely out of impatience, not any true desire to see what it was like. It started up quickly, and I promptly jumped into a new game. Man, I thought Oblivion was a little sparse on the starting exposition. This game just drops you in a town. In the middle of nowhere. With very little clue as to what the hell is even happening... 
 
I always played as a male Nord in Oblivion, so I thought I might as well just continue the tradition. While looking through the various faces and hairstyles for my character, I stumbled across a hairstyle that looked surprisingly similar to the mane that adorns the scalp of a certain Geralt of Rivia. I chose that, if only to say Geralt of Rivia saved the land of Morrowind from an as yet unknown evil. After finishing all the character building business, I emerged into the light, to find a small and remote little fishing village. Since this was the first time I'd been through the game, I knew next to nothing about...well, everything. And in my blissful ignorance, I ignored everyone in the time and proceeded to head down the road towards wherever it was that the quest said I had to go.  
 
I dutifully followed the road. On the way I killed a few slug creatures, picked up a quest about a bandit or some such nonsense, and gotten lost at least three times. As far as I was concerned, I was having a grand old time of it. It wasn't until I got to the rocks that it turned sour... Now, these were not great boulders that one finds strewn about a path. Nor were they very small rocks that floated. No, these were the Great Phallic Rocks of Morrowind. They covered the now grey and barren landscape like a fungus, blocking the beautiful sunlight, imposing themselves upon my mind for the rest of time. It was horrifying. Only moments before I had been happily strolling through a lush landscape, dotted with the occasional giant mushroom. I got the hell away from those awful craggy beasts as fast as I could. 
 
Soon after that I came upon the first proper town I had yet discovered, and quickly forgot about that horrible ordeal, so caught up was I in the doings that this quaint little burg happened to contain. It wasn't long until I had found and done what had to be done, and it was time to depart for bigger and better things. I left town, confident in my hodge-podge of armor and weaponry I had strapped to myself. Soon, I came upon a crossroads. Both directions led to a place that I was required to be. I went to the left, for I took it to be the road to greater fortune and adventure.  Adventure, certainly. Fortune? Well, read on, and see for yourself. 
 
After following the trail for a short amount of time, I came upon a fellow Nord standing by the roadside. He offered me a quest to help him recover his clothes and ax. Apparently a witch had ambushed him and stolen his things. I went along with it. I mean, that's no more peculiar than random phallic rocks protruding from the landscape, right? I set off in the direction he sent me. It wasn't long until I came upon another very rocky area, with cliffs on either side of the path. I continued along, keeping sharp watch for the rocks that had so surprised the first time. After some time, I saw none. I began to relax my guard, when suddenly rearing up in front of me, like a great sea serpent of legend, it appeared. It was by far the largest I had seen yet. It was then that a group of bandits decided to attack me. I was unprepared, and was soon cut down before them like a wheat stalk to the farmer's sickle. And so ended the journey of Geralt of Rivia in the land of Morrowind. 
 
Since then I have played much more of Morrowind, and gotten used to the peculiar rocks that dot the land. In my mind, they have come to be known as the Great Phallic Rocks of Morrowind. I did play Fallout 3 and enjoyed it, but the true winner that came from that purchase Morrowind. May my future purchases be just as fruitful. 
 
I actually had a lot of fun writing this. Maybe I should try my hand at some proper fan fiction of the adventures of Geralt of Rivia in the lands of Morrowind. Hmm... 
Later peoples.

Okay, I have an assignment for my debate class, and it's somewhat imperative that I get a good grade; therefore, I'm going to post it on here, to see if any of you guys can spot any glaring problems, so I can fix them ahead of time. Please and thank you.

  The GameCube was the first proper console that I acquired as a child. I had gotten a GameBoy Advance when I was younger, but I only had a few games, and played it very rarely. My family had an old PC running on Windows 95, so for me, PC gaming was out of the question. One day, as I was sitting on the toilet, I decided I wanted a gaming console.  In this frame of mind, I finished my business, and presented the idea to my mother as she was cooking dinner, so that she was ill prepared to do away with the idea outright. I had planned out my entire speech, and I must say, it would've been hard for anyone to say "no" to it. She was skeptical, as was her wont, but she presented the idea to my father. I knew that if it had gotten that far, it was only a matter of time before I got my console.    

And so, for next five or six months, I dreamed of my console. I had planned out the games I was going to buy if I got an Xbox, likewise for the PlayStation 2. Even at the age of eight I was sure of what I wanted. Heck, I even knew what kind of controller and accessories I wanted. The only problem I could foresee was not having enough 
money for any of this, but this seemed a minor issue at the time. Silly little eight year old me. Money is always an issue.  
 
Anyway, my birthday rolled around, and I was sure that this was when I was going to receive my console. Well, I was right. My birthday is several days before Christmas so all my gifts are set around our Christmas tree, and we usually celebrate it in the same fashion as Christmas proper. I rushed downstairs from my room, and pounced upon my parent's bed, thrashing around quite a bit. In hindsight, this seems a lot like those cheesy Christmas mornings on an ABC Christmas television program. Truly hideous.   

With my parents roused and gathered around the tree, I began to dig into my loot. I can easily recall the exact contents of that particular haul, but it's somewhat irrelevant, so I don't think I'll bother listing it all. Suffice it to say that it took a bit to reach the largest package of all, cleverly hidden behind the majority of the stash. Let it never be said my parents weren't clever. With growing excitement I snatched it up, and quickly removed (i.e. destroyed) the wrapping paper. I was...surprised. It was neither the Xbox, nor the PS2 I was expecting. It was a Nintendo GameCube that sat in front of me. I managed to hide my disappointment from my parents as they explained to me that they had chosen this instead of the more mainstream consoles due to the fact that there are too many more mature titles on the other consoles, and this was much more child friendly. My parents were very conscience of hurting my little mind with violence at the time. A foolish sentiment, but what can you do? 

I also received the games Ty The Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue, Tales of Symphonia, and Mario Kart: Double Dash. None of these were games that I heard of, and even if I had, they wouldn't have been high on my list for purchasing. I was once again surprised by how much I was to enjoy these games for the next few years. I was disappointed to be sure, but I was in too high of spirits to forgo at least trying it. After about 20 minutes of fiddling with the television and the cords, I managed to get it up and running. I put in Double Dash first, as it was multiplayer, and my father wanted to try it pretty badly. Luckily my parents had had the foresight to purchase a second controller, so two people could enjoy it at once as they put it.  

Much to my surprise, I had a lot of fun. I put in the other games after my father and I had finished the first couple races, and found those two to be to my liking as well. It wasn't long until I had beaten Both Ty2, and Symphonia. I finally managed to scrape together enough money to purchase even more games. Soon enough I had a good twenty or so GameCube games at my disposal. So all in all, the console that I thought would be the dullest thing ever, turned into my most prized possession for many years. So I guess the moral to this story is something along lines of don't judge a book by the cover. Or something like. I'm no philosopher. 
  
If you enjoyed this, and want more stories about my life, say so in the comments.
Later peoples.

First of all, I'm not that good at FPS's in general, and I've always had some trouble with Halo: Reach in particular. I was pretty good at Halo 3, but then when Reach came out, my mind shut down, and I proceeded to suck at it for quite some time. Now lately I've been playing Strategy games a lot, so one would think that I would still be bad at Reach. Completely wrong as it turns out. 
I was playing Total War: Rome, and doing well at it, when suddenly I felt the urge to play an FPS. So I finished the battle I was in, saved, and shut down my PC. I turn and look at my video game shelf, trying to find a FPS that sounded good. Borderlands? Too chaotic. Battlefield: Bad Company? Too realistic. Halo 2? Too old. Halo 3? Not enough variety. Halo: Reach? Perfect blend of realism, chaos, and it has lots of variety.  
So I pop it into my 360, and head to Team Slayers, thinking that I may win if my teammates are good. I start the match, expecting to see a K/D ratio of -20, or something like that. I performed past my wildest expectations. I was 5 kills ahead of everyone else in the game, and I was confused as can be. I figured everyone else must have sucked or been drunk. I start up another match, and notice that everyone in the lobby is a good two or three ranks ahead of me, so I think to myself: Alright, this is where I'm gonna fail miserably. 
Wrong again as it so happens. I did well in that match too. I spent a good two or three hours playing that game, fully expecting to suddenly lose my streak of success. It never came. The only thing I can of that happened is that somehow I became better at FPS's by playing Strategy games a lot... I'm still exceptionally confused by that whole affair. Anyway, I just felt that need to share that oddity with the rest of world. 
 
Later peoples.

 I was in the car with my dad recently, and we were listening to NPR. A fine radio program by any means, but frankly, it get's rather dull from time-to-time. So I decided to switch the channel to the local Rock station. This station has everything from Soft Rock to Death Metal. Their range is somewhat astounding to be honest. The first song I heard was Renegades of Funk, by Rage Against the Machine. Now, this band is a kind of mix between Metal, and Rap. I hate Rap. I really, really hate it. Thankfully the song was almost over when I switched stations, so I didn't have to cut my own ears off.  
The next song was Far From Home, by Five Finger Death Punch (FFDP). Now usually I like this band, but lately they've been foraying into some slower songs. This hasn't been going too well in my opinion. They just aren't built for things like that. It seems to me that their songs have more meaning (so to speak), and are just...not boring when they're a bit faster, and angrier. It's just more fun.  
Next was the AC/DC song Shoot to Thrill. It's AC/DC. They've been around for a really long time, been making good music the entire, and generally holds the respect of most rock enthusiasts. So really there's nothing bad about that one. Moving on. 
The next song that played was Haifisch. If you're thinking that doesn't sound like it's English, you'd be right. It's a song from a German Industrial Metal band called Rammstein. Obviously the song is in German, but I don't think it's imperative that one knows what the heck they're saying. In fact, I rather like not knowing what they're talking about. It makes it far more engaging to listen to. I realize that doesn't make sense, but trust me. Just listen to them. They're worth it. Anyway, this song is very nice, because it's exactly what Rammstein is good at, and when they do that, they do it well. So, yeah, needless to say, I enjoyed this one. 
Okay, now right about now we're about to get home, and there's time for one more song or so. I was hoping for something good to top off the drive. No such luck. The resulting disaster made me never want to listen to music again. The song was All Summer Long, by Kid Rock. I'd heard about this guy before, and had purposefully been avoiding his music due to bad reviews. I thought I had a pretty good idea of how bad his music was going to be. It was worse. So much worse. It was derivative, ill written, and just generally bad. The thought of it makes me want to stab something. So, I'm going to stop typing before I start into a really bad rant. Perhaps at a later date. We'll have to see. 
 
Later peoples. Tell your family DarthOniXVIII says hello.

WAZAAAAAAP????!!!!!!