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I take it for granted that for the past three years I've lived in a place where drugs are accessible and their use isn't exactly out of the ordinary. Drug use is generally recreational rather than addictive, and both house management and members are pretty vigilant about making sure that it is safe and controlled.

At my weekly meeting of Toastmasters (an international organization for practicing public speaking), a friend of mine gave a speech on how he experienced firsthand his roommate's drug abuse, which forced his roommate to drop out of school. For him it reaffirmed his inclination to not do drugs and those slogans about not doing them.

While I was in a convenience store with some people from the Berkeley Undergraduate Sociology Association, I remarked that "I like Coke," as someone was buying one. Someone jokingly interpreted that as cocaine, which actually resulted in a conversation where I disclosed that I had done such drugs as cocaine, MDMA and acid before. The club president (who is gay and I think likes me) was noticeably surprised.

Strangely enough, I walked out into the common space of my 150 student house today, and saw about six or seven of my housemates filling out statements for something. I asked around, and apparently one of the house dealers, who I have bought marijuana and MDMA from, OD'ed. A floormate went into his room just to say hi and found him. I'm not sure how he's doing so far, but I hope he's okay. He's a good guy.

Mood: Contemplative

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There's this girl in my house who I liked. She's blonde and pretty and has an interesting way of talking.

About three weeks ago I asked if she wanted to go out for a run since it came up in conversation that it was one of her activities. I chose this because it's pretty casual, it's something we have in common, and since it's something she already does, presumably she wouldn't need to make extra time for it. At the time, she said yes, gave me a time frame ("maybe Thursday, otherwise the weekend"), and even said "you're going to see a totally different side of me." It sounded very promising.

Friday of that same week I ran into her and asked if she was up for a run on Saturday, but she said she was really busy. I then said "how about Sunday?" and she said she had a midterm and was booked. I didn't expect this contingency and was pretty disappointed. I also couldn't help the paranoia that maybe she just didn't want to run with me but wouldn't say so, and I had no way of knowing for sure.

From then until now I only ran into her a few times and just made very brief small talk. I ran into her last night, and asked, "hey, when are we going to go running?" At this point I wasn't expecting an affirmative response, but what I got was even weirder than what I expected. She said something like:

"To be honest, I don't think I like running with people. I blow my nose and burp and breathe really heavily while I'm running. It's really embarrassing. It would probably change your perspective on me."

My response was basically, "Okay, well if you change your mind, let me know."

At this point I'm basically going to leave it at that. I don't think I'm going to make any extra effort to talk to her beyond when we happen to run into each other, and I'm certainly not going to press the issue about running.

I'm also feeling more certain about my original paranoid feelings. I told this story to a friend and said that it kind of sounds like bullshit. His response was:

"Kind of? You mean it didn't smell like bullshit?"

It originally seemed kind of pointless to me to keep trying to ask girls out in my last semester of college. I eventually saw it as an opportunity to work on my skills while being relatively detached from the results.

I have a new prospect, someone younger who I know even less. I was planning to talk to her and ask her out at these weekly student organization meetings, but as it turned out, there happened to not be a meeting this week! So I have to try next week, which is right before Spring Break, which means even less time. Oh well, I already know not to expect much under the circumstances.

Game of the Day: Wild Arms 3
Song of the Day: AVATAR THEME SONG (I SEE YOU)

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Not totally surprised Avatar didn't win best picture. As much as I liked the movie, I will concede that the acting and the writing are not so spectacular. I mentioned in a previous blog that a lot of the reason I liked it was the particular fairy tale story it uses, which is practically designed to fill you with lots of strong emotions as long as it's executed well enough, which Avatar was.

I saw Hurt Locker, the winner, and while the acting is certainly better than Avatar, I don't think it deserved to win. My reaction to Hurt Locker was that it was a movie with a lot of potential that never really reaches it. The acting is great despite being filled with nobodies, but it's poorly paced, has no real plot, and ultimately doesn't amount to much beyond the hackneyed "war is hell" motif.

I think District 9 deserved it. Highly original, action-packed, but also very intelligent, loaded with meaning, and much more nuanced than both Avatar and Hurt Locker. I didn't know what to expect when I started watching that movie, but I think there's pretty much nothing else like it.

I didn't see the other two movies.

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Blah. I always find myself writing under limited time conditions that make it impossible to produce something that really reflects my abilities. I'm definitely gonna have to go back to this one some time, since it still screams first draft.

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The more I see of this game, the more I find myself wanting it. At this point I think I actually want it more than Darksiders, Bayonetta, or God of War III. It looks absolutely incredible. I watched a video of a Cerberus boss that looked like it was inspired by something out of Berserk.

I feel this way even though the reviews so far have been pretty mixed. Most of the complaints I've heard in them sound like they could be easily directed at God of War as well though.

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Chloe's eyes are fucking stupid.

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Just found out about it from GameTrailer's list of most anticipated games from 2010, and I'm strangely excited about a Castlevania game for the first time in my life. Anyone else interested in it?

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My initial reaction was that I liked it "quite a bit." I was hesitant to say that I liked it "a lot," but felt that it deserved more than a simple "I liked it." Hope that's not too confusing. The more I think about it though, the more I like it.

I looked the movie up on wikipedia and saw something strange:

"Many have reported experiencing psychological depression and suicidal thoughts upon the realization that the lush and verdant world presented in the movie does not exist."

At first I thought this was ridiculous, and section to which this sentence belonged (titled "health effects") has been removed entirely between the time I checked the article last night and the time of the writing of this blog entry, less than 24 hours later.

Psychological depression and suicidal thoughts are probably exaggerations, but I would say that I felt a little sad, and that was indeed one of the reasons. I think the main reason I felt sad though actually had more to do with the plot formula the movie uses, which goes something like this: a character has a mediocre, unexciting and unsatisfying life; the character is, by circumstance or by providence, thrust into an entirely different life; this new life makes the character truly happy, which in turn makes the viewer/reader/player happy for the duration of the story; finally, this life is threatened by an outside force and must be fought for.

It's a really good formula, because when executed well enough, it can make you really invested in the characters, it appeals to many of our own desires to leave behind mediocre lives for more exciting ones, and because it can, at least temporarily, make us feel incredibly happy. Avatar certainly isn't the only work of fiction that uses this formula. Without thinking too hard about it, Harry Potter fits the formula too, and I'm sure there are plenty of other works of fiction that do as well.

On an entirely different matter, I just watched this trailer and am for some reason now very excited about FFXIII:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/international-trailer-final-fantasy/60729

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When I was young, my parents took me to see Santa Claus at a local mall. I must have been pretty young, because it was before I decided that I was an atheist, and before video games became my primary mode of play. Another reason I must have been pretty young was that I spent several days prior to seeing Santa Claus looking through toy catalogues, writing up very long lists of everything I wanted. Since I was not yet into video games as much as I would be a few years later, the list was predominated by different lego sets. There are at least two different years in which I did this, and each list literally contained several dozen items. I didn't expect Santa to get me everything on the list; I just wanted to give him a wide range of choices. Considering how religiously I did this, I must have actually believed at the time that Santa was the one who got me presents too, instead of my parents.

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Just curious to see what you guys think of certain upcoming games. At this point I think I'm mainly interested in hearing what anyone here would have to say about Darksiders, Bayonetta or Dante's Inferno.

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Baten Kaitos

After writing this review, I look at it and think, "man, this is a fantastic first draft, I wish I had started much earlier." It was a rush job, I wrote about 90% of it on the day of the deadline, though it seems I'm not alone in this regard. I'm a little disappointed with the turnout for this contest, but I know very well that shit happens. I just barely showed up myself.

Game of the Day: Not Baten Kaitos
Song of the Day: To the end of the Journey of Glittering Stars

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2009 was the first year since 2005 that I submitted a review to HonestGamers. In the interim I submitted some screenshots, some cover art, and even a guide or two.

I submitted only three reviews in 2009, and for 2010 I plan to uh, at least triple that. In absolute terms this is a pretty modest goal, but considering my habits I think it's a reasonable bar to set without being too ambitious. It will start with my Alpha review in about a week, but I think most of my writing will probably occur after I graduate in May. It's too difficult to write during the school year, but hopefully post-graduation life will give me a little more time to write.

My contribution plan is primarily writing oriented, and within that context it will primarily be review oriented. I have submitted screenshots and cover art in the past, and they're comparatively easy to do, but I want to focus on writing now. Back at GameFAQs, before I discovered the community, I mostly mass produced reviews in a very mechanical manner, basically writing sectioned reviews without section headers. I had a relatively high output during this period.

After I began learning about writing from reading RotD's I slowed down dramatically and became very interested in actually learning about the craft and process of writing, instead of just doing it mechanically. I learned and developed too much in this time for it all to disappear from four years of disuse, but I do feel a little hazy and unsure about how to structure and organize things, and what information to include and exclude. Technically, I did write papers during my five years at college, and that may have helped somewhat, but I went about them in a mechanical manner similiar to the one I originally approached reviews with.

Unfortunately, I can't yet afford a current gen console, and even when I do I don't know that I'll be spending $60 on new games. I've always been about buying games later so that I can pay $10 for them, and few games have compelled me to pay the original price at or around the time of release. This means I likely won't cover the newest games, and will mostly do semi-retro coverage (mostly one or two generations behind).

Jason showed me a site statistics page though, which says that only 12% of the games in the database have reviews written for them. I hope to review a few uncovered games even if they aren't especially recent ones. I do expect to write a guide or two, but I mostly intend to write reviews, both to help this site and for my personal development.

Game of the Day: Alphabetolympics - B

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Car keys

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