I was right, yesterday was the worst of it. Today I’m starting to feel better. By tomorrow I’ll be pointing at people who are getting sick and laughing. Looking forward to that.
Whew.
Yesterday’s posts were kina wierd. I think high fevers and drugs do not make for interesting posts.
The Machine Overlords have a new design, which is nice. If they’re going to be running the place, the least they could do is run an attractive blog.
Dang robots. I don’t know why the scientists make them.
So here I am nursing some serious day five symptoms and I decide to watch disc 5 of Sugar, A Little Snow Fairy. In the first episode, Saga gets sick. As far as I can make out, her symptoms are:
Judging by how people keep looking at me, I’m pretty sure I have something different.
Fledgling otaku saw the kawaii post from a few days ago and has responded in kind. Posting may be light over the next few days as the movie in question has utterly destroyed my mind.
Usually I’d embed the video here or post framegrabs, but in this case I won’t. I don’t think it would be right to play the video without first issuing a declaration of war.
The Japanese have translated madness itself into digital form and then televised it. I’m telling you: No good can come of this.
Day 1: I think I might be getting sick. Maybe. Feel funny.
Day 2: Dang. I’m sick. Bah. This isn’t so bad. I can take it.
Day 3: This is it. I’m going to die. I’m going to be one of those guys who snuffs it before reaching middle age. I wonder what my funeral will be like?
Day 4: I lament that I was ever brought into this world, for it is now my lot to endure these dark horrors. Life is a vast and joyless expanse of misery and suffering without meaning or merit.
Day 5: I am infected to the very soul. Each breath is an ordeal. Each moment a punishment. My heart may continue to beat, but it does so against my will.
Day 6: I think I’m on the mend. Whew. That was nasty.
Day 7: You’re getting sick? Tough break. Well, suck it up. Don’t be such a baby.
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One of the girls in Ai Yori Aoshi is Tina Foster, an American expatriate who is now living in Japan. She goes to school with Kaoru and lives in the mansion next door to him. On the rare occasions when the story isn’t focused on Aoi and Kaoru, it’s usually focused on Tina.
Tina is a classic American stereotype: very loud, inappropriate, a party animal and an eating machine. She’s often a catalyst for the sort of mayhem that gets Kaoru into trouble. She can usually be counted on to introduce booze or wild behavior to a situation where everyone would otherwise behave sensibly.
Tina also has this thing for grabbing the breasts of other girls. The series is very clear that she’s not a lesbian, so this was hard to understand at first. I mean, what the heck? At first I reacted as though they were trying to portray American behavior and getting it wrong. My thought was, “Hey! Americans don’t do that!”
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Azarel is an American teaching English to students in Japan, and he has many bizzare stories about the “pranks” the school kids play on teachers. They say and do things that would result in a life sentence of sensitivity training if done in this country. I won’t even repeat them here, but you can visit his site if you want all the strange and icky details.
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Looking back on American movies I’ve seen, I can think of several where a foreign exchange student was some sort of freak, pervert, or lunatic. It was funny at the time, and now I can see that gimmick from the other side. Very interesting.
When you knock someone out in the game, it’s generally a bad idea to just leave the victim’s body laying where they fell. Odds are someone will come along and discover your work.
 Slumber party in the middle ages. |
It’s common to just haul them into a dark corner where other characters won’t trip over them, but if you’re paranoid like me you can pick one reasonably safe room where there isn’t any traffic and pile everyone there.
It takes a while to accomplish this, though. You move slowly when carrying people, you can’t use your hands, and you can’t lean or peek around corners. It’s also quite difficult to fade into the shadows with a limp body draped over your shoulders.
 Lord Winchester, I do believe this is the worst party I’ve ever attended. The wine was poor, the food was worse, and the after-dinner blow to the head and subsequent stacking was simply a bore. |
If you’re diligent you can eventually knock out just about everyone in the building. (Sometimes this isn’t always the wisest move. If several people are in a well-lit room together, it’s nearly impossible to pick them off without being spotted.) It can be dangerous and difficult, but once you have your big heap of concussed people stacked up you can take pride in a job well done. Pointless, yes. But well done.
It’s also amusing to imagine what will happen after you leave. Sooner or later the nobles, guards, and serving staff are going to wake up and have to figure out why they are all snuggling together. I can only imagine there will be some very akward moments and mumbled apologies before everyone runs off and dumps all the booze down the drain.
Sometimes in-game secrets are fun and sometimes they're lame. Here's why.
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
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