Current mood:	horny and anticipative
Current music:	Savage Garden - I Want You

The Shiny Happy People Hold Me Back...
Today, Neil Gaiman posted an obit-u-post-notice about author Jody Scott, who had this to say about college education and writing:

Ms. Scott attended Daniel Boone grammar school, Senn High, North Park College, Northwestern U. and U.C. Berkeley before crying out in clear, ringing tones: "Enough of this crap. If you wanna be a writer never, NEVER go to college or you'll come out a brainwashed zombie who offends nobody but writes like everyone else or as Monty Python used to say: 'Dull, dull, dull!'--the L's sounding like W's."

Ah, always nice to have those flagging interests get a kick in the groin every once in a while. 'Course, what does she know? She's dead! Can't have been too good, hur hur. Uncertain what she died of, actually... Mysterious.

School is the suck at the moment. I got my Shakespeare mid-term back today, only to find that I got a 75%. One of the problems she cited was that for her question, "Address how setting bolsters a theme in Shakespeare's plays," my choice of "wrongful female subjugation in A Midsummer Night's Dream" was not a theme. In class, discussing the tests after returning them, she seemed to be vaguely aware of what she didn't want without ever pinning down what she was actually LOOKING FOR. Additionally, I've got to do my all my reading-research and typing of a 10 page paper due in that same class next Tuesday. The paper I decided on, which requires at least 5 outside sources, is going to be an analysis of the comic "fool" or "butt-of-the-joke" characters in the plays we've already read, looking for common traits among them, and then using this "model", determine whether or not Shakespeare intended the Jewish banker, Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice to be an antisemitic parody or a demi-tragic figure in an otherwise comedic play. I have no doubt that, even if the paper is written well, I'll end up getting a "C" for my efforts. I'm really starting to loathe school. I'm beginning to feel that there is less and less that they can teach me there... Or that I can learn without experiencing it for myself.

I popped onto Dattebayo to check out the new episode of Naruto that was supposed to air today, only to find that they hadn't done the fan-translations. Instead, they JUST FINISHED TRANSLATING THE DIAMOND DUST REBELLION AND PUT THAT UP FOR DOWNLOAD made a troll fan-sub video of a Japanese broadcast of a White Sox game. Apparently they are, however, releasing Naruto, just later on and in two chunks due to new subbing and encoding software that will (hopefully) make the end-videos nicer... *cough*

Similarly, I recently remembered that the Darkon DVD was supposed to be released some time recently and, as it turns out, already has been. Reviews for the DVD have been mixed, so I'm going to torrent first and check it out and, if it's any good, I'll buy it later. It's only $17-ish on Amazon.com, so it's pretty reasonable.

Today was a great day of deals for the Blake: I started off my post-school wandering at Blockbuster, returning some rentals for my mom and seeing how expensive XBox 360 rentals were ($8). While there, I remembered mom mentioning something about a used game sale and, while rummaging through the rather neatly ordered stacks, lo and behold, a $10 pre-played copy of Psychonauts was on sale ($16 was the lowest I've seen online, which is awesome). Later on this evening, Kurt joked about whether it was my old copy or not. Honestly, I wonder... Anyway, after that I went over to the mall and bought me a copy of Condemned: Criminal Origins for $19, again an excellent deal given the $60 price tag on an average 360 game.

Here's a couple of awesome videos (originally posted by VG Cats):

Anime Convention Duck Hunt Skit (with awesome mass-homicide of annoying anime characters)



DeathSponge NotePants



Evangalion Dance (Someone said it was the Napoleon Dynamite dance, but I don't think it is.)



Here's a website for Starcraft II that details the new units and their special abilities for the upcoming sequel. It's not on the calendar because the release date hasn't been set yet (as far as I know). I first became aware of this because someone (either VG Cats or Linds, I can't recall which) posted the April Fools page on here that listed Tauren among the Terran forces.

I haven't read all of it myself, but here's a SomethingAwful forum for a bedding/cushion fort competition among the goons. Dunno how far they took it or what have you, but might be worth a lark for those of you who are nostalgic for the engineering days of yore.

I was trying to remember: Was it Full Metal Alchemist that had a character getting "crucified" to a large cross-shaped rock that got changed to a plain boulder in the American release, or was that something else? Much obliged.

A reminder of something that everyone has probably already seen once before: The Evil Overlord List (of things NOT to do)

The title of this post is the lyric I thought REM was singing in their song, "Shiny Happy People" up until it came on the radio and Linds sang along, correcting my horribly wrong lyrics. It always made the song take on a darker bent when I listened to it and imagined, either mental ward officials or just hallucinated little pixies, holding back the arms of a guy about to snap and murder a bunch of people.