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Tonight, I have gained both inspiration and motivation from a party at my brother's house. Or more specifically, the people in it.
Dave and Alex -the track car owning duo- told me about how if I get a job and work my ass off I will be able to afford my Silvia no problem. Whereas I had a long conversation with Sarah about art, writing, and what we could and should be doing with them. While I have been trying to get a job for quite a while, today has given me a bit more motivation to look for something actually halfway decent. But more importantly I haven't written anything for a long time, I think tonight has given me enough inspiration to create something new, and maybe even put a little more effort into my blog to save it from the inane smattering of opinions and events it has endured up to this point.
In the future I would quite like an occupation in journalism or fictional writing, but as I have almost never seriously composed a review or article on anything regarding anime, manga or games I cannot possibly hope to improve, as practice is everything, with the same applying to the sparse completion of any of my short stories. So thus forth I fully intend to provide a significant degree more insight and profundity in my mention of that which occupies my time, and in contrast I shall criticize my own literature with far less severity, because if I keep comparing my own work to those of professional authors I will never finish anything, and therefore never gain any experience, practice or third party criticism. So far perfectionism has been naught but a hindrance, and has completely demotivated me.
Sarah also told me about lulu.com, a very interesting website providing self publication. I might make it my aim to write enough short stories to create my own compilation, if only I could get over this crippling self doubt long enough to ever consider that a remotely achievable goal.

David James

Me, Andrew and Bertie went for our first uni visit today to see Emma over in Middlesex.
After a really short drive we went to the freshers fair to check out all the clubs and the sort, and on the way there we found a box with twenty two orange and passion fruit J2Os, they'd been thrown out because they were a month out of date but you don't say no to that much free drink. In the fair we made sure to grab loads of free pens, bottle openers, bibles, gay fans and 'orange soda' favored condoms, we certainly managed to get quite a good haul of crazy stuff. I put my name down for the Hockey team as David James, the first generic name I could think of, and as I walked away I heard someone shouting from the table 'David... David... David!' It took me a few seconds to realize he was talking to me. When I walked back he told me that his first and middle names were David James and that the guy next to him was called David James too, and even showed me his ID to prove it, looks like it was a little too generic.
The whole time I was in the uni I went by the story that I studied Ancient Japanese Art and Literature, which got a lot of respect from the legitimate students.
Me and Bertie (Bertie and I?) were left in the back of Andrew's car to occupy ourselves for a while after that. First as Andrew and Emma did some shopping in Asda, Bertie hooked up his synth to the car's ridiculous sound system and sat making up songs for a while. And then as we sat outside Emma's place waiting to go we put on some really loud dance tunes, and we just happened to be parked right down the road from a primary school exactly as the kids were coming out, so we had quite a few little dudes and ladies getting down to the beat as they passed, which was cool.
It really makes me look forward to all the other uni visits. Today was only for a day and is about a 20 minute drive away, but the rest of them are going to be pretty long journeys where we'll have to crash out overnight on sofas and the such, which is going to be absolutely awesome.

Actual Arbiter

I went to a job interview at the Ocado warehouse yesterday, it looks like a far more tasking job than the Argos warehouse and the commute is an hour either way, but the pay is far better and it's full time.
It's only a shame that if they do offer me a position training will clash terribly with MCM and the holiday in Cuba, just have to see how they want to play it.
But if they do offer me a job I think I'll probably buy a car, as it will cut the commute time drastically, be more cost efficient, and I'll be able to afford it with the pay I'll be on.

Started playing Halo 3 yesterday, I wasn't even sure if I was going to get it at all as I'm really not a Halo fan. But because I would be playing it almost entirely for the multiplayer aspect I figured it was something I'd have to own from the beginning, as this is when most of the people I know will be playing it the hardest.
Pretty good so far, the single player's nothing special but a nice challenge and the multiplayer's great fun, if only hampered by a needlessly complex navigation system.
It was tragic going to the midnight launch with all the chavs acting like it was the second coming of Christ, I'll be saving that attitude for Episode Two.

I also got some more points so I could buy Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, otaku arcade brilliance, I just need some people to play it against.

And I randomly stumbled across a link to this on my travels, hats off to Pirelli for making the most mentally awesome tyre advert ever.

Back in the game

Shakugan no Shana is not the most amazing anime ever. It's very heavy with the paranormal fantasy and loads you up with plenty of crazy named characters and dramatic fates from the word go, and it looks like it's got plenty of the usual crappy combat that goes with these sort of titles lined up. The art's pretty good and I want to stick with it for the possibility of relationship developments and the such, but trawling through something I don't particularly want to watch is exactly what I said I'd avoid, and I don't know if I can hold with it for 24 episodes.
Although, due to the absolutely epic intro music I'm willing to give it another episode or two to impress me.

Watched the last episode of Ergo Proxy, and what a crazy series it is. It has so much philosophical subtext and references to famous philosophers that even with the added explanations at the end of each episode I couldn't keep up with it.
Individually most of the episodes were really brilliant, but overall the story was a little over my head. I was expecting to find a synopsis on Wikipedia, but it seems I need to leave it a little longer before anyone else understands it enough to write a thorough analysis of the story.

I've found my next title in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
4chan have been parading Yoko around as the next Konata, and I liked her design so I thought I'd give it a look. While doing my research I found the other characters designs to be very lack luster, but in watching the first episode I saw that this is entirely made up for in the very high quality animation. The comedy is absolutely brilliant, much like Samurai Champloo but more surreal. All the characters seem to have very defined personalities, Kamina especially being an absolute legend, and I can instantly see why so many people have been recreating his over-the-top one piece sunglasses.
The series has absolutely grabbed me and I'll be watching it with fervor.

Speaking of Konata, I've checked out Lucky Star for myself and have been converted.
The first episode was a bit slow, but the second had me lol-ing a lot. It's very much like Azumanga Daioh, but far cuter and with plenty of references to popular media throughout.
I'll definitely be sticking with this and Gurren Lagann, and with these two really good titles I think I have all the more reason to drop Shakugan no Shana, but we'll see.

Memories aren't an escape

Today I watched Otomo Katsuhiro's Memories, three short films based on separate manga.
The first called 'Magnetic Rose' is absolutely brilliant. An archetypal science fiction story with brilliant early 90s artwork, all backed by music from the outstanding Yoko Kanno. It really is a great display of how good anime can be, and has seriously made me want to watch Akira again.
The second, named 'Stink Bomb', is a comedic number with a jazz soundtrack, sort of feels like it was a bit ahead of its time.
And the third and last is a highly stylized short called 'Cannon Fodder'. It tells a steampunk story of an entire city covered in artillery, and every day the populace of the city go to work manning these weapons, firing at a distant unseen enemy. They hint towards the possibility that the enemy has been fabricated in order to keep the economy running, much a parody of the modern war efforts of certain nations, and very reminiscent of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Memories reminds me of the brilliance of directors that don't make films with the sole purpose of making money or attracting audiences, they did both of these things as a side effect of simply creating an amazing piece of artwork and storytelling. It's just such a shame how hard you have to look to find these things.

Not quite GMT

I just finished playing the TimeShift demo, and I feel like I should say it's a disappointment because it holds a fair bit of potential, but I never particularly had my hopes up.
It's backed by Sierra, which raised interest a little as they did create Half-Life the best game series this side of Europa, and Homeworld, arguably the greatest science fiction RTS ever conceived. And then I saw it was Developed by Saber, which dipped my expectations back to low orbit, first it lowered my optimism simply because I had never heard of them, but after some research it changed to the fact they made the smashing Will Rock, everyone's childhood hero.
The demo throws you into the game as some sort of time cop, a soldier with a suit that was designed to kick everything Isaac Newton taught us in the balls. Some narration from your suit's sexy sounding AI lets you helpfully know that it's broken and you're going to be left to fend for yourself, enjoy. The first thing you see is two soldiers beating up a couple of unarmed civilians, with no explanation as to anything regarding any story or plot I could only assume that these men had committed the gravest of crimes and completely deserved their punishment, but as I stepped out to add another boot to the face of the pleading man the soldiers began to fire at me. A quick look online revealed no negotiations option, so my only resort was to pick up a very handily discarded rifle and kill the soldiers.
The criminals thanked me and proceeded to open a gate leading to a battle between more of their cohorts and a military force. I dispatched the soldiers which I now had to consider my enemy, only for them to be replaced by a three story high mech which quickly laid waste to pretty much everything around me. I fled into some ruins and tried to cross a walkway to an adjacent building, that being the cue for one of the criminals to shout 'It's firing' and have the whole thing explode and collapse on my head. I load the last checkpoint and try pausing time long enough for me to run across the gantry, that works and I continue onwards.
Now comes my favorite bit. I see a criminal on his knees not far off with a soldier behind him, the criminal sobs 'I don't want to die' before the soldier executes him. I am appalled by this blatant insult to the Geneva Convention and decide to make good use of my time shifting powers, I load the last save and slow down time so I can shoot the soldier before he can execute the man, a cunning plan that I thought would earn me an extra ally for upcoming battles, but the soldier does not die and carries out the execution. Load again, this time I pause time, run up to the soldier and try to use the weapon remove feature I used on previous enemies, but the option does not appear and I end up with John Doe's brains splattered all over my slacks. Load again, and this time I simply pause time, run up the soldier and unload all my shotgun ammo into his face at point blank range, but still the soldier manages to execute the civvie before allowing me to kill him. So it seems the time manipulation ability only really has any affect when the game wants it to, great design.
I move on to fight through some more ruined buildings, enjoying the semi-destructible walls before finding myself at the edge of an electrified pool of water with no visible means to circumvent it. I look around for some sort of puzzle that I'm not doubt supposed to solve to progress, only to have my suit eventually tell me that I have to pause time to cross the water, as I can't be electrocuted without the passage of time. That makes sense, but after crossing the water I'm left feeling completely empty at how it took absolutely no skill whatsoever to solve the puzzle, kind of like when I got an A Level in Critical Thinking.
I move on to more combat, in which I help defend a position from enemy troops for a few moments before realizing that the enemies are being replaced as I kill them, confused I figure that the battle's for show and that I'm meant to merely be passing through the area, but a quick scout of my surroundings reveals no possible path to progress through. So I continue the drudgery of killing more respawning soldiers until a few moments later, when another mech walks past in the distance and stops just long enough to shoot down a fence allowing me to continue. I see the mech has been downgraded a little since our last encounter, as it has gone from decimating entire buildings and laying waste to the battlefield, to knocking down a fence.
I make my way through some more ruins to hear my suit's AI tell me, 'unstable surface detected.' It had been saying things earlier like 'threat detected' and 'heavy ballistics detected', which are fair enough, but unstable surface? I've spent the last 10 minutes running through a war torn city with buildings collapsing and blowing up all around me, but only now during this brief respite from battle does it decide to inform me that there is an unstable surface in close proximity. Of all dangers I am truly glad it has decided to illuminate that one for me.
I find out that this unstable surface is a large concrete pipe which I have to cross to continue, suspended in the air by a crane it becomes a seesaw puzzle, easily solved yet again by the ability to pause time. By this point the breaks in combat had become incredibly unsatisfying, and I almost found myself back on Google to make absolutely sure that there wasn't a diplomacy button I was missing.
I then made my way through a trench system merrily killing soldiers as I go, aided by the fact these unprofessional slobs seem to have zero concept of teamwork, before reaching another rebel base. Here I grab a mounted machine gun and hold ground again against what seem to be infinitely spawning enemies, until another mech plods along and decides to progress the story. At which point my suit tells me that I've achieved whatever the hell I was there to do and that's game over, leaving me to pat myself on that back at a job well done. Whatever the job was.
The whole experience reminded me of reading a typical internet fanfic written by an illiterate twelve year old, it'll have a great set up but only because it's based on an already existing story, and word for word it's going to absolutely suck. The futuristic setting with a rebel uprising trying to overthrow an oppressive regime wanted so desperately to be good, but I just felt as if I was playing a cheap sci-fi channel TV program. And the level layout and scripted events reminded me very vaguely of Half-Life 2, but again it utterly failed at any of the brilliant design that I've come to take for granted from the Half-Life series and the whole affair felt like it had been rushed through.
Collectively Saber Interactive design levels like that 12 year old, and unless you utterly love the concept of it there are better games to spend your money on.

So very dangerous

I watched 28 Weeks Later at Andrew's last night. It was a pretty cool film, nowhere near as G.I. Joe as I thought it would be, but I don't know if it was as good as the original though.
The original was a real survival horror, as all zombie films/games should be, and it was really British, which was awesome. The sequel was diluted with so many Americans that the only British part of it you really felt was the 'I've been there' factor in London, and it swayed more towards the action than the horror, which can work with the running zombies but you don't want to take that route too far in fear of pulling off a Resident Evil.
Also, the flow of the story felt really strange, it's like they couldn't go 10 minutes without killing off a main character. The action and main events were so consistent throughout the whole film that the ending predictably came as a bit of a disappointment, as it had no build up to it at all and was more of a conclusion than a climax.
I was also quite surprised with some of the scenes in it. It wasn't particularly gory in the sense of showing people get eaten and torn apart as they almost always had a zombie standing in the way, but a few other things were pretty cold. Like people running down a street and being engulfed in the flames of an airstrike, and one of the main characters being burned alive by a cleanup squad, very much reminding me of the cremator from Half-Life 2.
In all, I though it was good, and brought something new to the zombie franchise with the old Black Mesa military extermination squad to deal with as well as the mindless zombies.
If you liked 28 Days Later, check this out.

I'm talking to Andrew and Bertie about going on holiday to Cuba soon. Like in a month or so soon.
Bertie said he found a three star hotel with all inclusive for £450 for two weeks, being out of season is not only going to bring great prices but get rid of all the other tourists too, so it should be an absolutely epic holiday. He told me when he went the first thing he saw when he landed at the airport was 'SOCIALISM OR DEATH' in giant letters along a wall, and there are men with Kalashnikovs standing all over the place, I seriously don't know how I'll actually be able to withhold myself.
First thing's first though, I need to get myself a passport.

And also:
HEAD ROLL
was dangerous

Desu?

I finally got round to watching the last four episodes of Makai Senki Disgaea today, and I think I'm going to get back into watching anime. It's been so long since I used to sit and watch a good four episodes a day, I think the last thing I watched seriously was Initial D.
I had quite a long list of stuff I was intending to get and over the months that list's just been getting longer as I discover new titles and new stuff gets released, but I got rid of a few things from there that probably weren't going to be that good. If I'm going to start watching stuff again I don't want to get half way through a crap series and then feel like I've got to finish it off just because I've got that far, making it feel like a chore was one of the things that killed it for me last time really.
It's just a bit hard to trawl through the crap I've ended up sitting all the way through to get to the good stuff, but I should persevere, because when it gets good it really is totally worth it.
I'm going to start off with Shakugan no Shana, from one of the creators of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has made a good name for itself on the internets, so shouldn't be too bad.

Also, what is an absolutely epic thought, when I get a nine hour job a single day of work will be able to buy me ten manga books! A weeks wages will get me fifty!
Of course I'll be saving most of it, but every now and then I'll have to sacrifice a day for the good of the cause.
Money pwns.

I'm really going to have to seriously start bugging my Dad about getting me insured on the Focus, or at this rate I won't even have my licence this side of Christmas.
And then how am I supposed to become the next WRC champion?
Huh? How?!

Tovarishchi!

I got World in Conflict yesterday, a day before launch, nice one Play.
It really is great, the single player missions are constantly moving, have a lot of action and can get really tense. As well as having multiple secondary objectives you get medals depending on your performance in the mission, so the replay value's there, and that atmosphere's carried over into the all-important multiplayer very well.
The only problem is that people can't seem to join the games I host, so I can't have one on one battles with the Inquisitor or Haku when he gets the game, and I can't find any information on the problem online. But it's early days yet, and if it isn't fixed in a patch I'm sure solutions will appear on the forums.
Most importantly I think I just need to get better at it, I've had a couple of games at the top of the leader board, but it seems that more often than not clan Hitokiri are at the bottom of the pile. It really is all about using your units to the best of their ability, if you don't know what their strengths and weaknesses are you won't last a second. I'm sure I'll be looking to Haku for help with that when he joins the cause, he's linked me to tactical theory and unit guides before for the game Supreme Commander, and I'm sure he'll be just as eager to become the best on this new battlefield.

I got a call from Ocado about a possible position earlier today. While the commute would be nowhere near as easy, it would still be a much more preferable job to Argos. Word is I'll get another call on Monday or Teusday about going in for further processing.

And this cost money

I went to a hygienist at the dentists today, mostly to get the stuff they cement the braces onto your teeth off because my old orthodontist did a shit job, among other things. But I got more than I bargained for, as well as removing that stuff she knocked out a filling on one of my front teeth that I didn't even realize I had. Now I've got a massive hole in the side of my tooth. It doesn't hurt or anything now, but I know sure as sure it will later, hurt like all goddamn hell, and I'm just going to have to have another dentists appointment to get that replaced.
So I've got plenty of horrific toothache, injections into my gum and drilling to look forward to, and none of it will have had to happen if she just did her job. I know it was a mistake and all that, but it's a mistake that someone else made but is going to cost me dearly.
Happy fucking days.