Site switch is go! The new journals are doubtingdennis (main) and wordfancier (writing), if anyone's on IJ and wants to re-friend me over there.

This journal will stay here for communities and commenting, but I won't be posting in it anymore. Goodbye, LJ, it has been fun and full of capitalism.

So I wasn't getting all that worked up about all this LJ stuff because I'm apathetic by nature and I didn't figure I was the type of user it affected.

But apparently I was completely wrong.

Suffice to say I don't have a Plus account any more. I'm not sure whether I'm going to move to IJ or not but with this on top of censoring and not taking the user-base seriously, I'm rather irritated and will probably only be using this account for communities and commenting.

SPONTANEOUSLY TERRIFYING PORTAL IS TERRIFYING.

If a homicidal computer and a sudden lack of background music are enough to freak me out this much I may have to reconsider whether I'm actually capable of surviving that copy of Silent Hill 2 I just bought. (it's like testchamber 19 is one massive hidden area except i have to go through it this time fdskfklj;f)


I'm going to go read Asimov until I stop shaking.

I know this is Canada and all but a) there should be a law against my basement being this cold, and b) it's MARCH already, can't we get spring yet?


I will now present some conclusive evidence that Phoenix Wright is ruining my life:

• Rafe and Joseph have decided they're Phoenix and Edgeworth. They are providing a lot of strangely compelling evidence concerning the complexities of their personalities and relationship. I suspect I will have to actually find the first game just so I can find something to refute their arguments and make them shut up again. (And Joseph would look horrible in pink.)


• An attempt at convincing Lizzie to do a character meme with me has led her to decide that if she were male she would be Miles Edgeworth, despite all evidence to the contrary. She is currently prancing about in my head in a pink suit that does not go with her hair at all, hitting on random people and making lame "Objection!" jokes. And not helping with my novel revisions in any way.


• ( cut for embarrassing pseudo-soulbonding! (not that the first two points didn't adequately demonstrate my unhealthy devotion to my own fictional characters BUT ANYWAY) )

However I cannot deny that they are pretty awesome games. If a little bit obnoxious in the way that half the time I can figure out what happened but not the specific piece of evidence I need to prove it. (And then of course there is the end of the second game where there are several different items that relate to what I wanted to prove and I had to go through all of them before anyone figured out what I was talking about.) Whatever, though, you have to love anything with gay lawyers and a guy who speaks entirely in coffee metaphors.

Just received an offer of admissions to Queens University, Linguistics department.

POLYGLOTISM HERE I COME WOOOOOH.

Valve fixed my Steam issues, but evidently they had to reset my account details to do so. Uh, thanks? Assholes.

I feel a bit better about Steam now that I've realized that it automatically installs patches for you when they come out. That's probably worth a bit of bother, although I still say they could work on their customer service.


NIN album is also downloading (WOOH). And I spent half an hour making a totally pointless new icon. ALL IS GOOD WITH THE WORLD.

OH MAN.

Only Trent Reznor could get me to instantly give up all my fancy video-game plans and spend $75 on a giant-ass special-edition album. SORRY SILENT HILL AND/OR PORTAL I'LL GET TO YOU EVENTUALLY.

(On the other hand: $10 for a two-disc digipack plus booklet? That's pretty damn generous. I can only assume that $75 is also a steal for deluxe editions.)

My general impression of the twenty minutes of Resident Evil I could be bothered to watch:

Red Queen: Hello and welcome to the Hive. Cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the decontamination. Umbrella Corporation: we do what we must, because we can.


Strangely those twenty minutes have managed to hugely reinforce my need to buy not only Portal but also Silent Hill 2. ZOMBIES ARE BORING, NEEDS MOAR PYRAMID HEAD.

It was nice to hear all that Marilyn Manson score that I'd forgotten about, though. Oh, Marilyn Manson. Somehow you still manage to be awesome.

Evidently James Marsters is playing Piccolo in the horrible travesty of everything that is the upcoming Dragonball live-action film.

This makes me want to either a) bleach my brain out just to stop knowing it or b) go see it.



I also drew a charcoal sketch of something in art class today that actually looked halfway decent, but this doesn't seem quite so important anymore next to the discovery that they've also got Chow Yun-Fat playing Master Roshi. MY CHILDHOOD, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO IT.

Photobucket just got pissed at me because I refused to enter my gender on the sign-up form.

Well, damn. It's dumb enough having to state the nature of my plumbing for driver's licenses, but I think an image-hosting site is pushing it just a little.

This is the day from hell.

1. Philosophy class overwritten by an hour-long MADD presentation.

2. Fire alarm pulled in last two minutes of school time, forced to stand around outside in -20 degree weather with no coat (admittedly because I gave it to a friend).

3. Spontaneous toothache which can only be thwarted by medicine that makes the whole left side of my mouth go numb.

4. An envelope from my bank containing a form that has been positively identified as taxes.



I am probably going to be infiltrating Anime North this year as Richard the Warlock because I honestly can't think of a legitimate anime character I would rather dress up as and pretend to be. This means I will have to obtain contact lenses plus design and create an entire costume by May. BRING IT.

There is something severely wrong with the school board when yesterday's three inches of snow is considered grounds for canceling the buses and yet today's GIANT HEAPS OF SNOW EVERYWHERE isn't. The sidewalk plow hadn't come yet so I had to wade through snowbanks just to get to school. Goddamn Canadian winters.

But due to all that there were very few people here in the morning, so my drama class watched West Side Story instead of actually working. And somehow I had the misfortune to think of Silent Hill just when they're having one of those scenes where everyone's yelling "Maria!" left and right so now everything is horribly jumbled in my head. Apparently James and Maria are trying to escape the horrible oppression of Silent Hill and find a land where people and their psychotic hallucinations can live in peace, but Pyramid Head won't let them because he's JEALOUS and then all the monsters have a giant dance fight for the finale. I don't even want to think about where "I Feel Pretty" factors into all of this.

IN SUMMARY: Alan should not be allowed to watch Sondheim while tired and bored.



I still need to actually buy Silent Hill and the Orange Box. And also save enough money to go to Anime North this year. I guess I'm just going to have to go for really low-budget costumes or something.

For my Writer's Craft final assignment, we have to compose a portfolio of our best works over the course of the semester and a couple of new ones built around a Theme of some sort.

So far mine looks something like this:

- one short story about a lich.
- two short stories about zombies, one of which mentions various limbs being torn off and one of which involves someone committing suicide by throwing themselves off a bridge.
- one descriptive exercise about a club that employs exotic dancers.
- two pieces concerning a little girl and her giant monster bodyguard that kills things, one of which has an extended sequence in which the giant monster bodyguard kills, dismembers, and eats another monster.

I wonder how long it will take me to get sent down to student services over this.



Also, I've just gotten the PSE information for Queen's, and evidently you need to be some kind of hyperactive megalomaniac with no free time in order to go to university. Who knew?

Accomplishment of the day: In Writer's Craft I managed to write a complete, accurate, and not ridiculously stupid-sounding tanka about Silent Hill.

Emboldened by my success, I then attempted to do a limerick about Pyramid Head, but I only managed a few false starts before I ran out of rhymes completely.



It still doesn't beat the found poetry a friend of mine made out of phrases from Pokemon and Phoenix Wright, but I'm still pretty happy with myself, overall. I may just survive this unit after all.

Stolen from Ursula Vernon's livejournal:

Reversal Of Alzheimer's Symptoms Within Minutes In Human Study




...and this mainly makes me happy because of the whole Terry Pratchett thing. I am not sure whether this makes me a bad person or not but, you know, potential cures for horrible diseases. Always a good thing.

Just found this gem in Wikipedia:

Nevertheless, many reviewers were dissatisfied with later episodes [of Excel Saga], and some censured the series for frequent references to obscure aspects of Japanese culture.

Yes. Because it is apparently unforgivable for a Japanese show to reference its own culture.

Not to mention HOW CAN YOU BE DISSATISFIED WITH THE END OF EXCEL SAGA. EPIC PLOT IS EPIC. EPIIIIIIC. I mean you could probably be dissatisfied with the terrifying extras episode but ARRRRGH.



Also, a small note to ADV: Yes, I know everyone is very excited about the twenty-sixth episode, so obscene they couldn't play it on TV, blah blah blah. But was it really necessary to make the menus twenty-sixth-episode-themed?

I have to show this to my little brother, you know. It isn't very considerate of you.

http://101reasonstostopwriting.com/

So apparently the way to improve the publishing market and stop having to bitch about all the horrible crap that gets on the shelves is to... convince everyone, everywhere, even apparently the good ones, to stop writing.

Maybe Sean would be interested in my own website. It's called How About You Stop Buying Shitty Books, Mr Lindsay.

I'm just sayin'.

MERRY SOLSTICE PRESENT-GIVING WORK-FREE DAY EVERYONE!



My parents got me Shadow of the Colossus and it's kicking my ass like nobody's business. First I couldn't actually mount my damn horse properly, then the first Colossus killed me three times before I finally figured out I was supposed to grab onto its leg, then the second Colossus shook me off its head with only one more stab to go before I killed it and I had to climb all the way back while swearing profusely at Wander for refusing to do what I told him. WHATEVER, THOUGH, IT'S PRETTY and that's really all I ask for in a game.

Now I have to go color my half-assed Christmas picture and finish FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO FOR my brother's fanfic-present. Whee!

HELL YEAH CHRISTMAS BREAK.

Maybe now I can actually get through a day without wanting to punch someone!


Also concerning today's holiday show at school, I'm all for giving aspiring drama students a chance to perform FOR REALZ, but I also think you shouldn't let a bunch of nervous grade nines on stage in public until you've actually taught them what "humor" is. As in, "no matter how hilarious it seems to you, if it doesn't make sense to anyone besides you and a small group of your close friends then it is not goddamn funny."

You also shouldn't do the whole "perform scene and then re-do with a different emotion" schtick outside of drama class unless you are actually competent at improv. Even though the "flirtatious" one was actually hilarious. It doesn't make up for the "speedy, and by speedy we mean we're talking about 20% faster and someone falls over".