Current Ramblings
Friday, October 31, 2003
This article on CNN.com is the best thing ever.
So it's Halloween. I love Halloween. It's, like, my favorite holiday in the world. I like the idea of Christmas and its related trappings, and I love getting presents for people, but I can only really appreciate it when I seperate everything I like about it from the childhood angst I have surrounding it. Well, more teen angst - my parents didn't get to the "We don't care what you want, we'll get you whatever makes us feel like we're good parents" stage until my teen years. Halloween is just great and wonderful. The down side is that I forgot to ask for the night off of work, so I have to close tonight, naturally. Leaving it up to chance that I should be able to have an early shift today was apparently foolish. I suppose it only matters so much, because our apartment doesn't actually get trick-or-treaters. Nobody in the building has children, and no children from the neighborhood nearby want to come all the way over here and, in my case, up three floors for candy that's probably not even as good as the candy in the way-too-nice houses in their own neighborhood. So I wouldn't get to give out candy anyway, but I won't get to have Halloween fun with Graham. I'm dressing up a little for work, though. I was thinking I wanted to do a Zaranna costume this year, but at work that'd probably get a little unwieldy, and nobody would know who I was anyway. I kinda wanted to get a Cobra shirt to wear as part of it, so I wouldn't just look like a generic pink-haired punk, but Hot Topic didn't have any. Bleh. So I got some cat ears and a new tail to wear with my normal clothes at work. At least I'll be dressed up.
posted@1:53 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, October 26, 2003
I had to come home from work to take my cat to the vet today. She's been acting weird all week - lots of using the bathroom where she isn't supposed to, which has never been a problem before. I mean, she's old and senile and she kinda misses on occasion, which is why I keep her box in the bathroom on the tile floor, but we're talking not even in the same room. And today I had been at work for less than an hour when Graham calls me to tell me she's started pissing blood. Scared me shitless. And on a Sunday, who's open? Fortunately, the OSU vet department has an emergency clinic. So I came home, we took her in, and after a few hours in the waiting room we find out that she's likely just got a urinary tract infection. It was an emergency, what with the blood and uncontrollable pissing and all, but fortunately it doesn't seem to be anything life-threatening. The vet also said that she has a heart murmur and lung fibrosis, which is bad, but not unusual in a cat her age. I don't know if I want to worry about having her treated for the heart murmur, not at her age. I love her, but I care more about the quality of her life than the quantity, and I don't want her to live two years longer if those two years have to be spent recovering from painful surgeries and treatments. If she were young it would be different, but she's had a long life and that's just the sort of thing that makes for a quiet, natural death. But it's still not completely over. The vet also found some cells in her urine from the tissue that makes up the bladder walls. Well, more of the cells than normal. He said this could just be the result of the tissue sloughing off because of the infection, but there's a chance she could have a tumor there. And that would be bad. It could be cancerous, and that definitely falls into the category of things I don't want her to have to suffer through. Something like that would definitely mean a choice, and soon, between putting her to sleep and painful therapy. I really hope it's jsut the infection.
So that's my day for you. How was yours? ;)
posted@10:09 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Friday, October 24, 2003
And one more thing! My friend Jeff sent this to me as I was finishing up the last entry. Hee hee.
posted@12:31 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
I finally found some of these Bubble Twist candy-with-a-little-toy things at Toys R Us today. I am a big fan of the candy toy. I will occasionally embarass myself by being the only gaijin the in Japanese grocery just so I can find and purchase tiny rubber Pokemon and Gundams that come with highly questionable candy that tastes not unlike an unholy mint/lemon hybrid. So I figured these Bubble Twist things would be cool. And they are pretty cool, though my Blind-Packed Toy Karma failed to get Walky the Hot Shot he so dearly wanted. But one thing hurts my head: I'm looking at the label, and it says, "Gum made and packaged in Spain. Toy made and packaged in China." That's all well and good, except...THEY'RE IN THE SAME PACKAGE! Gyah.
I've started reading some of my Titan TF collections. I haven't really bothered with reading them as I got them, because it's all stuff I've read so many times that I just know it. But I've decided that it's been too long. I was actually reading "Primal Scream" and "Matrix Quest" on the flight back from Alabama. I need to rewatch TF:TM, too, because it's been way too long since I sat down and watched that, and for the same reason. I hijacked Walky's DVD player to watch "Key to Vector Sigma" today. I love the Aerialbots.
posted@12:20 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
I want to sleep.
I hate sinus headache medicine. All that stuff that says "Non-Drowsy" is a total lie. I've used Tylenol Sinus Daytime Formula as sleeping pills before. I think at this point I'm mostly blogging to keep myself awake.
I really like the G1 episode "Dark Awakening". It seems to be a big topic of discussion on ATT right now, probably because it's on the most recently-released Rhino DVD set. I need to pick up that set, but since it's the week just before I get paid, I'm broke. That tends to happen. We get paid every other week, and one of my co-workers asked on an off week whether it was payday or not. Justin and I instantly replied that it wasn't; if you ever wanna know if it's payday, ask the people who spend way too much money on shit like video games and are therefore always broke. So as I was saying, I really love that episode. It's one of the few episodes that I still remembered clearly after the show had been off the air a few years. (Hey, when I was 8 I didn't quite have the memory for that stuff I do now.) I always, always thought Prime was the greatest thing ever, and it was wrenching to see him like that - brought back to life, used as a puppet to hurt his own troops, and then torn apart in the end. And when it first aired you didn't get that "Prime is okay, kids! Tune in next week for Beast Wars Second!" bullshit. He was DEAD, having sacrificed himself to save his own Autobots. Maybe it's like Walky said way back in one of his comic collections about "Titanic" being when he realized it was interesting to hurt your characters in order to get an emotional response from your readers. I think "Dark Awakening" did that for me a decade earlier. I don't fault Marv Wolfman or anybody else involved for bringing him back and negating some of that. If you believe the urban legends, it was public opinion that made the decision. I would go so far as to say there wasn't much choice, because kids really weren't ready for that. I fully admit I was a morbid, depressive little child, and where I was facinated by the angst I felt at watching all that and having Prime die in the first place, I'm sure it probably legitimately upset some kids.
I was going to write another paragraph about something, but I don't remember what it was now. Damn medicine. Maybe it was my pants.
Oh, I remember. I guess it's still on the subject. All this fuss over Anniversary Prime and his removable mouthplate has inspired me. At first I thought it was kinda scary and wanted to keep the thing on, but now I realize what I'd really love to do is customize an Extreme Battle Damage Prime. A Dremel tool, an airbrush, and a bunch of random wires and I could do a seriously neat custom. I could melt half his mouthplate, maybe have one of his arms torn off with wires hanging out of the stump, a couple big torso gashes, maybe even one through his chest that would show the Matrix inside. Not a dead Prime, an Ass-Kicked-But-Still-Fighting Prime. It's a pity it'd run me $75 just for an extra toy to do it to, but if I got some spare cash I'd definitely give it a shot. I really wanna do this now.
Snippet of #wiigii! goodness for today:
posted@8:51 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
FLCL is so interesting. On the surface it's like the end result of spending two weeks without sleep reading Tank Girl comics while listening to J-punk. It's strange and makes a point of being nonsensical, and then it's got these very earnest elements. It's far too much like being 13 again. It's achingly reminiscent of that age when you want to be as un-innocent as possible and nothing actually makes sense. It makes a point of reminding you of how horribly stupid and ordinary things seemed, even when they weren't. I don't think I could watch the whole series straight. It would give me a headache and a killer sense of guilt.
posted@12:39 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, October 20, 2003
While Mike Allred's art does not exactly evoke Rob Zomble for me, I can't help but get a chuckle when "Living Dead Girl" comes on the radio.
Today was my first day at work after the vacation (I say "the vacation" in the same way one would say "the loss", as though to distance myself from some great tragedy. I don't know why I do this.), and I was immediately reminded of my love for my job when I was greeted by not only an excellent Brave Series art/story/guidebook thing of the sort that tend to accompany anime series, but also a set of GI Joe young adult novels that included the one written by popular sell-out R.L. Stine. Any author who would write not one, but two books about an actual roller coaster presumably entirely because the owners of the theme park paid him to is quality kitch by my standards. He also wrote the immensely popular for two weeks "Goosebumps" series, for those who have never worked at a book shop, and an impressive number of exactly the sort of young adult horror novels that I skipped over entirely in favor of Stephen King. I was thrilled to death, especially with the Brave book. I spent most of the day giddy over the character sheets for my beloved Ryujin, who I swear I will someday make into the Autobot soldiers they deserve to be.
posted@7:46 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Saturday, October 18, 2003
I'm back.
I didn't post much from Alabama not because I never had time, but because I was informed after the first day that my father's cheap-ass step-father who owns the lakehouse we were staying at had the phone set up to charge by the minute, because then he got a cheaper base rate. So I didn't get to use the internet much, even though I had a good bit of down-time. I'm glad I went, though. The lakehouse was a 45-minute drive from town, so I spent a lot of time in the back of X-Brawn spending quality time with my GBASP. But all told, I'm really glad I went. It wasn't as bad as I feared. There was a lot of family drama, primarily revolving around my aforementioned cousin, but we all got along really well. I felt like the crazy aunt to all my cousins' children - I'm the only one from that generation who doesn't have any, I think. I guess the problem was that living in Michigan's U.P. gave me a really bad impression of people. I was used to people who had children early using it as an excuse to just live off the government the rest of their lives, like so many of the people up there seemed to do. It was just kind of disgusting, how many people you'd see who hadn't bathed for days spending as much on beer as they were on the stuff their food stamps covered. But Alabama wasn't like that. You got yourself a job and some land and a house and just had a family, no matter what age you started it at. I'm happy to see how well my cousin Bubba's doing, considering his immediate family was pretty screwed up. His sister is the one with the horrid husband, but unlike her he realized at some point that his immediate family wasn't normal and proceeded to do things the way he thought was right. He's got a great family and drives a logging truck, which I'm sure pays more than what I'm doing right now and, much like what I'm doing right now, gives him experience to do something better down the line. And he just seems really happy. He sees the problems his parents had growing up and sees them AS problems. There are a whole lot of people in this world who don't have the sense to do that, and I think that just goes back to my old rant on self-help books. He's really got his shit together. Hopefully his sister can get her own shit together, since she's looking to my mother a lot these days. I think I feel a lot better in a way I didn't realize by going down there and seeing everybody again. And it was fun being the crazy aunt to all my cousins' kids. Every kid needs a crazy aunt.
I'm gonna go hit some Wal-Marts now. I had a fun trip to the zoo today that was cut tragically short by a major sinus headache, so I need to get some fresh air again. Whee!
posted@11:44 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
My parents bought X-Brawn, complete with the chrome grill guard and sideboards. *sob*
So here I am, in the South. I wrote a big long thing in my notebook while I was sitting around Port Columbus airport waiting for the flight I arrived way too early for, but I don't have it in me to type it up. I did get to spend a good couple hours of my evening in the emergency room, because on the way to pick me up in Atlanta my mother developed a bad allergic reaction to something, possibly something in the seat material of her new X-BRAWN. By the time we got back to Opelika she was feeling really awful, so we took her to the hospital. I guess it was probably for the best, since our original plans had involved having dinner with a group of relatives that might have included my cousin's horrid wife-beating almost-ex husband, who she has apparently decided to make amends with despite the fact that he kicked her in the head in front of her toddler son. When I was a teenager, I used to fantasize about becoming some kind of feminist vigilante. If it had been out at the time, I would have probably just wanted to be Astro City's Winged Victory. This definitely makes me want to revisit those thoughts.
I love airports. I found myself spending far too much time as I was travelling thinking about myself, who I was now compared to who I was as a child or who I was compared to my sister. I'm really hard to pin down now. I even have trouble describing me. I think maybe there's a big difference between who I am and who I, for some reason, want to be, so I end up acting both the way I really am and the way I think I should be, and sometimes they conflict. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Change is good. But this is supposed to be a vacation, not a time to get all weird and introspective. Travelling alone just gives me way too much time to think.
I want Alternators Smokescreen to come out already.
posted@1:31 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, October 12, 2003
Ugh... Tummy hurts... Too much...pizza...
I really like the Big O. It's a good show, and I like smart-ass deadpan androids. The second season is really weird, though. It's not a bad weird. The difference between the first and second seasons is like the difference between the episodes of the X-Files where they're chasing chupacabra through the woods and the episodes where people are taking alien implants out of Scully's head. The first was more fun, but the second was more interesting.
I've been spending the day slowly packing and tidying up the apartment in preparation for my trip to Alabama tomorrow, with a brief break to gorge myself at Pizza Hut. I set up all the Armada Autobots and Mini-Cons on my desk. I have a shitload of Mini-Cons. I mean, dude, that's a lot of Mini-Cons. I wanted to take a picture, but I couldn't get my lame cheap-o camera to work with my new computer. I'm not a big brag-about-my-collection person, but it's a fucking sea of Mini-Cons. I have three Sparkplugs. I've got FOUR of the Air Defense Team. I need the rest of the X-Dimension sets. I need to count these suckers. It's a hell of a lot for someone who's not actually a completist.
On the subject of Armada, I still want to write my own take on it, and now that I have a feedback forum thing I want people to tell me what they think of that while I'm gone. Like I said, I just thought up too much stuff while I was waiting for the canon to sort itself out, and now that I've been considering getting all that on paper I have even more ideas. Just go post me something.
I'll have some computer access while I'm gone, but probably not much, so don't expect me to definitely post. I'm sure I'll have some killer stories when I get back. Woo, ATV riding!
posted@11:49 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Saturday, October 11, 2003
I'll get to the game talk in a moment, but first: Transfandom.com just put up an interview with Simon Furman and (inexplicably) Brad Mick about the upcoming shift from Armada to Energon, go read it here. There's one little thing I wanted to comment on:
TFD: Word on the street is that Energon pays homage to a great deal of characters from previous lines... and with names like Scorponok it is obvious that some notice was paid to older Transformers work. What kind of inspiration are you taking from previous generations of Transformers?
SF: I'm actually looking back at what I've done in the past (on previous TF Generations) and basically throwing out the rulebook for Energon. Previously, there was a maximum damage threshold for planet Earth, a kind of 'that's going too far'. With 10 years' worth of breathing space between Armada and Energon, that no longer seems to apply. The basic status quo is going to be very different, and what happens after that is anyone's guess!
This is coming from a guy who had San Francisco - in what was then the present day, not even this future stuff - completely destroyed not as a major plot point, but as a villian's off-the-cuff demonstration of force. I'm amost afraid to see what he's got planned for Energon.
So portable gaming... I bring this up now because of this week's release of the N-Gage, which any good gamer and/or Penny Arcade reader will have noticed being met with derisive giggling. I myself ran out of Electronics Botique in a giggle-fit when I noticed on my way out that they actually had some demo models. I'll pick on it first both since it's out and since it's an easy target. The first problem is that it's far too ambitious. It's not only a gaming unit, it's also a cell phone, an mp3 player, and an FM radio. The next problem is, at $300, it's more expensive than all four devices put together. In addition, it doesn't even do at least two of those functions particularly well. The phone function requires you to hold the device awkwardly, and to top it off you look like you've been in a horrible frisbee accident. And gaming...I put aside my giggling long enough to fiddle with the demo at Target, and the use of the numerical phone keypad for games was ridiculous. They had the Tomb Raider game loaded up, and each of the number buttons pulled off a seperate action. The hell!? Could it be any more confusing? And if a game only uses a couple of the buttons, how do you remember which ones? It's as counter-intuitive as it could possibly be.
Sony's PSP may seem a little more promising at first, but there are some aspects of it that make me seriously question Sony's ability to understand the portable gaming market. To start with, I think the most telling stat here is the size. With a 4.5" screen, the PSP will have to be significantly larger than any Game Boy incarnation. The size of the original Game Boy is considered one of the signs of its obsolescence, and one of the biggest selling points of the Game Boy Advance SP is how compact it is. Backwards compatability is a major feature of both Sony's PS2 and the GBA, but the PSP's new media format won't allow for that. Processing specs like the ones planned for the PSP will guarantee a hefty price tag, at least at first. With a lack of backwards compatability, a high price tag, and a not-quite-portable size, people are likely to get the "portable" PS1 kits that come with a power pack and a screen so they'll at least be able to play all the games already available for that system before they buy a PSP. The inclusion of an analog stick seems like a promise of broken systems, especially from a company that doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to durability. The problem inherent in the PSP is that Sony doesn't understand portable gamers. We want small, and we'll sacrifice graphics to get it. In fact, a lot of Game Boy enthusiasts specifically enjoy old-fashioned side-scrollers and turn-based RPGs. We like substance over style. If Sony puts too much emphasis on style, they're not going to win over Game Boy fans, and Game Boy fans ARE the portable market. I like a game console I can keep in my purse, and I'm more than content with the GBA's graphics capabilities. Golden Sun was a beautiful game, and it didn't need everything to be polygons to pull it off. Pokemon Sapphire spent the effort and memory space they could have used on overly complex graphics on amazingly complex, deep gameplay. And my purse isn't even that big. I predict that the PSP will fare much, much better than the N-Gage because of the Playstation brand's built-in fanbase, but I don't see it toppling the Game Boy Advance.
There. I'm glad I finally got around to getting that out of my system.
posted@10:43 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
I was going to write a long essay about portable gaming and how Nokia and Sony's portables will never succeed because of an inability to understand the portable gamer, but I have a headache and Teen Titans is on. So maybe later tonight.
posted@9:02 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
There. I've created a mirror site for this blog on LiveJournal so I can see if there would be any point to me having a comments function. There's a link to it on the sidebar. So if anything I've written has sparked a desperate need to comment, go on over and leave me a reply. I'll be mirroring this site over there for the time being, until I've decided to either completely move or abandon the idea.
posted@1:27 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Friday, October 10, 2003
I don't really have any big things to say tonight, so I'll just say some little things.
I got Corona Sparkplug today. Yes, and Final Battle Prime, too. I was thinking of putting them off, because Graham says if the big giftset that's coming out is just the same as the normal toys, I could have the one he already got, but it's really hard to tell what the Prime in the giftset will be. And Kaybee's having their "We Got Sued!" sale in addition to a general TF sale, so he was about $26 and tax. I'll likely never see him at that price again, and I didn't want to pass it up on the chance he doesn't end up with a spare. I've been wanting to pick up Corona Sparkplug anyway. He's all gold and chromey and magical. I was already coming up with an origin for him in that Armada project I mentined the other day. I think I may have to go through with it. Ever since I started letting myself think about it as a stand-alone I've just been too inspired. I need to get these ideas out or I'll go crazy.
This article amuses me. So this software company is going to sue this guy because he pointed out that their copy-protection software is easily thwarted? Maybe they should have made software that didn't suck.
I might be moving this to LiveJournal, sad but true. I've kinda been angsting for a Comments function, but I don't think I can manage the coding or hosting to pull it off on my own. I'd be fun for my friends to be able to tell me I'm being angsty and boring before they stop reading entirely.
posted@10:58 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
I want to rewrite Armada.
It's not that I think the existing fiction is terrible and I think I could do so much better. It's just that the concepts behind the series have really inspired me, and I've gotten lots of really neat ideas and explainations into my head that can't be properly absorbed into the existing fiction. Like my dissertation on Leader-1 and Sparkplug from Saturday. It's primarily things I've come up with while waiting for the fiction to get to the real answers, and now they've become solid enough that I want to follow through and write them down. It'd be a huge project, and I'd have to worry, of course, not only about the characters I'm facinated by but also the ones that haven't sparked my imagination as much. But it would be a bit like an exercise in discipline. I'm sure I'll put it on the site, but maybe not with a lot of fanfare. The idea of even doing my own take on a series seems a little presumptuous to me, so I'd feel self-conscious shoving it down everyone's throats. I just want to get it out. I'm sure I'll force it on my friends, though.
I think I'm going to make a mix CD entirely of songs that make me think of Mini-Cons.
posted@11:24 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Ha ha! The N-Gage! *snicker*
posted@12:20 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
I like court shows. They're a lot like talk shows, no doubt thanks to the producers picking really dysfunctional guests, but the host gets to yell at them and tell them they're horrible. Also, I have learned a very important lesson from these shows: Never, under any circumstances, buy anybody a car.
I've gotten back to walking again. And by "again", I mean this morning. The seasonal change kind of threw off my schedule; I was walking at night during the summer to avoid the heat and intense sun, but now it's too cold. I had been taking the occasional walk up to Target to make up for it, but now I'm back on my non-summer schedule.
Graham and I went to see 28 Days Later at the cheap theater last night. For those who do not live near one of the miracles that are second-run theaters, they show movies that have been out for a couple months and the tickets are dirt cheap. With the crazy prices of movie tickets around here right now, it's gotta be a pretty impressive movie for us not to wait for it to hit the second-run theater. And it also means we see more movies in general. How many movies aren't worth 50 cents-$1.50 (depending on the time and day of the week)? 28 Days Later was pretty good. It maybe wasn't as scary as it seemed like it would be, but it was still a really good low budget-artsy zombie movie with some very cool directing. I'd recommend it, unless you're some kinda squeamish horror-movie-phobe. Next up will be either Finding Nemo or Freddy vs Jason, both of which just started there.
A friend of mine just relayed to our mailing list that the very excellent Ben Folds has been eschewing his record label in favor of releasing EPs directly from his site (that would be www.benfolds.com. I will definitely have to look into that when I have money again, and I would recommend that others do so as well.
With my recent re-acquisition of a cell phone, I have become facinated with cell phone straps. It's probably for the best that I don't have any money to spend right now, because if I did last night I would have probably blown it all on light-up charms of Mashimaru and Jack Skellington. I'm not entirely certain why these haven't caught on here, since they seem to be popular everywhere else - though mostly Japan. The thing is, I'm not 100% sure my new phone has a loop for one. I guess I'd have to get out the Dremel and make one. And I kinda want one for my Game Boy SP, too.
I like not having to open at work.
posted@12:02 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, October 05, 2003
I will be very happy when this stupid virus has run its course. I'm sick of having all these virus-bearing e-mails clogging up my inbox with their bloated 145-155k selves. I haven't gotten the virus, I'm just sick of the e-mails.
I'm going to Alabama in a week. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I have family down there. Family that I haven't seen, for the most part, for something like 8 years. Y'see, my immediate family lives in Washington, DC. I decided I should probably go visit them sometime soon, because I haven't been there since Graham, Walky and I crashed at their place on the way back from pestering Glen at Wizard World East, and that was just for a night. And they do have a new puppy, a miniature schnauzer named Peaches, who I also want to visit. I am easily lured by offers of puppies, especially ones I don't have to clean up after. So I called and asked my mom when I could come visit in October, and she said that they were going to Alabama for a week, and I could come along, they'd even fly me to Atlanta and pick me up. My knee-jerk reaction was "Hell no!" But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how sick I am of DC, and the more I realized that Alabama could be fun. We'll be staying at my grandfather's lakehouse, my mom's got a laptop so I won't be totally disconnected, and there'll certainly be more to do than hanging out with the one friend I have left in DC. I've been avoiding the place like the plague ever since I was old enough to get my parents to leave me behind when they went, but I think I'm enough of an adult to handle the culture shock. I'm hoping I don't have to fend off too many questions from relatives about why I'm 25 and don't have any kids and haven't even been married once. I guess that's what really bothers me, the idea that they won't know what to make of me. I'm on the fringes of normal society, down there I'd be a total outcast. But I'm sure I'll be okay. I'm determined to go to the restaurant near the lakehouse that serves chocolate fritters.
posted@10:26 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Saturday, October 04, 2003
I don't understand the US Saint Seiya opening. I'm really not the sort of person to whine and nit-pick over anime dubs, but...I mean, why is it just a montage under Bowling For Soup's cover of "I Ran"? What's WRONG with them? It's not that it's an insult to the original whatever, it just doesn't actually make sense. And why is this guy a woman?
I posted something to the Allspark the other day that I really like, so I think I'll repost it here. It was in a thread about the true leader of the Mini-Cons:
"I, being me, have naturally come up with a big theory regarding these guys and leadership of the Mini-Cons. (I'm also doing bios for both of them for a project, which helps.) I see it as a sort of Optimus/Rodimus thing. Leader-1 was their leader back on Cybertron, and he was really well-respected and everybody thought he was great. And he was great. He was a wise, compassionate leader. Which was why Megatron picked him as his personal pet. Sparkplug is just this guy at first (he wasn't actually a leader on Cybertron, he was shown more as, well, just this guy), but through being around Optimus I see him coming to realize he's sort of a "chosen one" (which I think is why he ended up with Optimus in the first place, because of a sort of subconscious recognition of this by both of them). He's a natural leader and has a great deal of concern and compassion for his fellow Mini-Cons, and he really has a lot of Autobot-leader qualities, but since he was always just this guy, he has a lot of self-doubt. I see him as having a heaping dose of good, old-fashioned, Furman-era Matrix Affinity. And I see Corona Sparkplug as being the full realization of this. Meanwhile, Leader-1 has been so twisted and warped by his time as Megatron's favorite slave that he no longer cares about the other Mini-Cons, only about revenge. He's pretty tragic, really.
This is all just my own fanficking BS, though, so don't take any of it as canon unless you really like it."
I like Mini-Cons. A lot.
posted@7:09 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Friday, October 03, 2003
Adulthood is weird. I realize it's in your 20s that you're supposed to start reaching the culmination of all you've worked through your teenage years for, all the interests and hobbies and talents you cultivated. I'm 25, and I both feel like I've wasted a lot and accomplished a great deal. I still work retail, and I don't make a lot of money, but I kinda enjoy retail and I'm working in what's really my ideal store. And honestly, most of the staff is older than me, so it's not like I'm especially pathetic in context or anything. I'm involved in some insane cool stuff as far as Transformers go, and while it boggles my mind sometimes, I realize there's no reason why I shouldn't have accomplished all that at this point. I don't feel like I'm somehow entitled to anything I've gotten, and if I really think about it there's nothing I've done that anybody else couldn't do if they followed my footsteps. But while it's overwhelming sometimes, it feels right. It feels like the sort of thing that being a fan from teenage years into adulthood should eventually lead to. I don't consider myself an ambitious person in any way, but I don't want to stagnate, and I will work for the things I want. I want to keep moving forward so I don't feel like I've been wasting my time, but I don't do it for the sake of a big payoff. I'm nagged occasionally by the feeling that I should be working toward something more important than Transformers, but I think that's just a remnant of the days when nobody gave Fuck #1 about TFs. Now they're a big deal, and it feels a little more worthwhile. It's not a dead-end; I think this fandom and Transformers as a whole have a real future.
That's enough of that. Time for Armada.
posted@5:58 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, October 02, 2003
I was going to post last night, but the phone was tied up.
We got section reassignments at work. Everybody in the store (except the higher management) is assigned three or four sections to maintain, and they're switched out every few months so nobody gets too bored. I've been keeping comics through these changes, but this time I picked up Self-Help and Performing Arts. Since these sections contain shelves on things like relationships, counterculture, and music, I am now responsible for the store's Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.
Personally, I am not a big fan of self-help books in general. The genre can be effectively split into two categories: the ones that just have a bunch of formulaic mumbo-jumbo involving a distinct number of something and catchwords that have been trademarked, and the other ones that are just common sense anyway. The first kind is bullshit, and the second kind is something you shouldn't have to pay somebody else to write down for you. Popular Self-Help Guru Dr. Phil has a weight-loss book out now. Apparently it tells you that to lose weight, you have to...stop eating all the time because you're sad and get out and walk or something. HOLY FUCK! WHO WOULD HAVE IMAGINED THAT!? I'm not going to pay some guy to tell me that. Earlier this year I decided I wanted to drop the ten pounds I had put on since I left high school. So I went out and walked around the block, about 1.3 miles, pretty much every day. After a couple months, bam, back to my high school weight. And look, it stays off if I keep walking every day or two! And I didn't have to pay some guy $30 to tell me how! Then again, being depressed makes me lose my appetite anyway. So running the self-help section is probably going to drive me up a wall. But I guess it could be worse. Business books make self-help seem sane.
Apparently it's already started snowing where I used to live in Michigan's UP. Eek.
posted@6:59 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Why does it cost $5 for a 4-pack of replacement blades for a razor but only $4 for a 4-pack of really nice disposables with the exact same blades?
Woo, comics tomorrow! Or today, depending on your point of view.
posted@12:06 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments