Well, I'm dirty, sour, and happy. I just came back from my first meeting with Bellegarth (or The medival combat recreation society.) And it was even more fun then I remembered. Now that we have officially become a campus club we have attracted far more members than we had in the last two years. My only regret is that I"m going to be out of here so soon. I am currently resisting my desire to post a detailed analysis of all my awsome kills, let just be said I'm pretty bad-ass.

So, I had a bit of a sweet tooth tonight, so I went to the Nite Owl homepage. Nite Owl is bakery that delevers cookies onto campus with no shipping charges, it's cars are a common site in the evening. As I was making my order online, I noticed a tab Labeled "Other Merchandise." Out of sheer boredom I clicked on it. It was mostly the sort of thing I expected, Nite Owl shirts, cups extra, but one thing stood apart from the others. A condom. That's right, if your planning on getting lucky, and need to get a condom quick, just call the bakery and they will deliver it too your door. Talk about a service industry.

Well, it's been about a week sense I moved back onto campus, and in about ten more weeks I'll be leaving it, forever. It's odd. Some days I think to myself I wont miss it in the slightest, and other days I think to myself "I'll never live in a forest again." I think I'm ready to leave. I've gotten to the point where I don't even see the point in bothering anymore. Because I live in Porter there is always a drum circle, impromptu dance, or pick up game going one outside the apartment, and I consider participating, but then I think to myself, what's the point? I'm never going to see any of these people again. (With the possible exception of Ryan and Marcos.)

I know I haven't posted very often on live journal, and that's because what usually happens is I sit down to make a post, whine for a paragraph, read what I've written, and prompley delete it all. I live in deathly fear of becoming one of those crybabies going on about the emptiness of life. I'm a happy person, I enjoy myself, but I've noticed that whenever I try to get deep or in touch with my innermost feelings, I sound like a sad sad little girl. That's why reflections suck. Self evaluation is for losers. So I've decided on a new course of action. I'm going to try and post more often on this thing, and keep reflections to a minimum.

I've recently taken up a miniatures game called Warmachine, and I've been dedicating many hours to painting them. (When I'm done I'll put some pictures up.) Suffice to say they are going to be some serious badasses. I was chatting with Jessica earlier, and she said that develop attachments to inanimate objects is a sign of loneliness, or something like that. But I've decided that's a load of crap. My figurines are fucking awesome, and I certainly prefer them to the company of most of the student population.

I got from "The Joint Chiefs of Staff" to "Peanut Butter" in 8 clicks on wikipedia. Beat that, bitches!

Welcome to the latest edition of "Sean reviews things you don't give two shits about." Today's topic of discussion in Joss Wheadons Dollhouse. For those of you who don't watch the show, (everyone) it's about a clandestine organization who uses there technological advances to program people with custom built personalities and skills, and then sells there services to eccentric billionaires. I diagnosed the problem with the series five minutes into the pilot. "To many hot girls, not enough plot." I suppose the point of the show is to provide a look at the decadent and sexy lifes of the wealthy, while at the same time providing slight social comedy on how we are never satisfied. Instead of delivering this though, Joss Wheadon delevers... Hot girls." That's it, that's the entire series. The problem is the main character of the series (a hot girl) gets her mind wiped after every episode, so I can't care about what happens to her, because there is no stakes. At any rate, the show is mediocre at best. I'll keep watching it though, unless I spontaneously develop a social life or a work ethic.

All in all Dollhouse was a big letdown that left a who gaping hole in my heart. Fortunately, I was surprised to discover another show, Castle, that filled the void. It stars Nathon (Malcom Renolds) who plays a mystery writer that aids and annoys the female lead, a cop. As boring as the premise sounds, it is well written and well performed, and it cracked me up regularly. I highly recommend it. http://www.megavideo.com/?v=DQ0Y1OGD

Well, I've had a rather invigorating experience. With then of the quarter approaching at an alarming rate, I've been busy as hell. I have a huge project and oral presentation in my marketing class, an inanely complex Calc in 3D assignment, and the bulk of a play to write. I spent most of the weekend working on the play. This Playwriting class has not been like my previous writing classes. It's similar in that it is composed of a small circle of people, and we spend most of our time going through each others work. But unlike my other classes, I'm not confident that I'm the smartest person in the room. In fact I'm sure I'm not.

This was disconcerting to me. I had no problem sharing my work when I knew that it would either be well received, or criticized by morons. But I actually respect these people, and care what they think. As a result, I've been reluctant to volunteer for workshop, especially after the professor said my outline was "arbitrary," and "lacked direction." But with the end of the quarter approaching, I knew I had to bite the bullet and volunteer my script. And it was awesome! I had them laughing from the second line, and they didn't stop. It was so nice to know my jokes were coming across. Several people even came up to me after class to say how much they liked it, including one guy who is probably the best writer in the class. Even the readers were cracking themselves up. This little boost has dramatically improved the quality of my day.

In other news, I'm dangerously low on clothes, but I'll be damned if I do my own laundry so close to the end of the quarter.

Well, my sleep schedule has officially gone bat shit insane. Seriously, it's to the point where I don't even know if I'm well rested or not. For example yesterday, I got nine hours of sleep, but only through three naps interspersed throughout the day. I no longer associate sleep with night.

But other than that, things have been going pretty well. We're coming up on the end of the quarter, which means that I'm swamped in homework, but for some reason I don't seem to mind. There's something peaceful about just sitting down and getting your shit done. I'm incredibly behind in my play writing class, so I've been focusing a lot of energy on that, and I've pretty much given up on passing my Calc class. Fortunately I'm taking it as a pass-fail, so it shouldn't affect my G.P.A.

Well, I've stalled long enough, time for me to get back to HW!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, after a half hour on Youtube, I've determined the top 3 Disney villain songs in order are:

Be Prepared (Lion King)
Poor Unfortunate Souls (Little Mermaid.)
Kill The Beast (Beauty and the Beast)

And now you know. If you disagree, let me know and I'll explain why you are wrong.

Recently I've been introduced to a new RPG system called 7th Sea. I was dubious at first because it was "Roll and Keep" system,, and I always felt uncomfortable outside my D20 zone. However, after perusing the rule books I've become a convert. The most appealing aspects of the system is the setting and the feel. It's a swashbuckling adventure set in a 17th century fantasy version of Europe. The setting is a unique blend between history and fantasy, and because of it's close ties to historic Europe, you don't even have to spend to much time reading before getting a picture of the entire continent. It is the most complete setting I've ever encountered. The combat system is well built, and allows you to complete such maneuvers as parries and other fencing maneuvers. Also the damage system is well structured. Finally, the character creation system is structured similarly to Firefly, where character attributes, advantages and skills are purchased with "Hero Points." Also you gain different bonuses based on your characters country of orgin. (French characters, for example, get a bonus point to there Panache score.)

I strongly recommend this system to people like me, who already know a good bit about European history, as the hybrid between history and fantasy this system presents is very satisfying. Anyone interested in the system, let me know and I can email it to you.

Well, my sleep schedule has officially gone off it's rocker. I got up early yesterday to watch the inauguration yesterday, and as a result had very little sleep. So last night I went to bed at eight, and woke up at one in the morning. After three hours lying in bed trying to fall asleep, I gave up and got up for the day. Apparently my body has unilaterally decided that five hours of sleep is plenty, and I should be happy it even be allowed that amount. So I'm making do. This was going to be a longer post, but I'm tired and cannot think.

For all those who missed my Facebook Event, I'm hosting a screening of Reefer Madness the musical at my house on Monday, starting at 6. After it's over we'll walk over to Round Table for pizza. Hope you guys can make it.

So, it turns out that i have my last finale on Wednesday morning, but I'm not going home until Friday afternoon. So once again, I'd like to invite all who are able to come up to Santa Cruz to spend the night on December 11th. Unlike last year we actually have living space and a T.V. so I was thinking about maybe doing a movie marathon or something. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Please respond to this post and let me know weather or not you'll be able to come.

Before college, my only primary experience with anime was Pokemon. And even at that age I found it childish and stupid. (Sorry guys.) However from brief conversations, glimpses on T.V. ext. I was able to make some generalities about the genre. Anime consists of stupid characters being depicted by a stupid form of art, was only a couple steps away from porn, and all the characters are whiney, if not outright annoying.

Now that I've come to college, I've had far more opprotunity to learn about the Anime genre, and it has lead me to this conclusion. I was right. Mostly.

My roomate Bradly is into anime in a big (but not creepy) way. Freshmen year he spent a considerable amount of time watching anime's in our year, I would usually watch a single episode and then return to my computer in disgust.

Deathnote was a fluke, really. When someone spends that much time watching animes by the law of large numbers he must stumble upon one that is actually good. Still, watching over his sholder I grew intrigued, and you all know what happened next. The existance of Deathnote did cause me to reconsider how blasely I had written off the entire anime series, but I reassured myself that there was bound to be a single exception to the general rule. I also took delight in the fact that most people I knew who were rabid consumers of anime were not fans of Deathnote.

So I left college contended that I had found an entertaining show, that really had little to do with actual anime.

Then I came back, and that bastard Marcos introduced me to another anime, Code Geass. Unlike Deathnote, Code Geass could not exist in any other genre, it could only exist as an anime, but damn it, I enjoyed the series.

The way it was pitched to me, people said it was like Deathnote, with all kinds of schemes, but applied to the battle field. This is true to a small extent, but it isn't why I enjoyed Code Geass. In fact most of the schemes are trite, and are only a few whiskers away from Deis Ex Machinas. What I found enjoyable was the characters. Make no mistake, Code Geass is on the same scope as Deathnote when it comes epic, world changing events, but unlike Deathnote, a good amount of attention was given to the various characters that populate the series.

At any rate it's a good series, and people should check it out.

My point though is that this development has forced me to take a closer look at the anime genre, and see what it has to offer. A writer can't afford to be closed minded. It has lead me to the following conclusions.

Animes usually consist of good ideas with terrible (sometimes horrendous) execution. Anime's obsession of recycling the same character archeotypes over and over again undermines any originality that is presented.

Anime is heavily populated by copycat writers. People who write stores that are indistinguishable from other animes. I suspect that this is because many anime's are created by people with more interest in drawing that writing.

However, I have found one admirable trend with anime as opposed to other T.V. shows. Because Anime is generally derived from a written work, Animes usually draw themselves to a natural conclusion. The whole arc has a begining, middle, and end. Unlike in T.V. shows, situations will change, characters will evolve, and some of them may die. You usually don't see these kind of things in American T.V. When a series ends, it goes down bighting and kicking for the most part. Series rarely have a satisfying ending, just a sense of continuation, like you are being closed out of the characters world.

So that is one positive thing about that Anime genre. Having identifying that one trait, I now feel more comfortable writing the rest of the genre off.

So I came across this youtube video. It's basically a cross between Carl and Max Lo on crack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZoO8LyizLA

It was so funny, I just had to share.

As I write this my arms ache, my feet our shore and my knees hurt when I walk. I take comfort only in the fact that there are many out there who ache worse than me. You see yesterday was our first meeting of Belligarth this year. For those of you who don't know, Belligarth is a club run by my neighbor, who's sole purpose is to beat each other up with foam weapons. Sounds fun? Well it is. I was exited to note that we had five new members, some of whom brought some rather high quality weapons. I knew this was going to be a good group when we voted for the name of our group, and the winning name was Salmandastron. At any rate, as we continued to play we got a large number of spectators, who eventually elected to try the game out. The result being that we had a battle which was twice as large as any other fight I had ever participated in. It was great because the newcomers were essentially fodder, and their is nothing like mowing through six people to boost your self esteem. At any rate, if this is the price one must pay for an opprotunity to beat people with sticks, so be it.

mood: cheerful

Well last night, at around eleven, it started to rain. For those of you who don’t know, Santa Cruz has an interesting tradition about the “first rain” that started right in my home college of Porter. I’m talking, of course, about the naked run, which is exactly what it sounds like. I obviously did not participate, I simply reacted how any reasonable person in my situation would. I went out to my roofed balcony and watched. The situation was just to weird to ignore. At any rate as I sat out there I began thinking about the absurdity of this tradition. In general ones naked appearance is a very well kept secret. Trusted only to the select few. But here in Porter, once a year, a large portion of the student population chooses to forsake this secret and why? Well, everyone else was doing it. It was an interesting thought so I decided to share it with Rose, my housemate who was standing beside me. To this she replied” That’s an interesting thought, but know what’s more interesting? The fact that while you are standing here watching at least a hundred naked men and women run by your thinking about philosophy.” Well, technically I was thinking about psychology, but I didn’t correct her. She had a point. At any rate this year’s naked run wasn’t nearly as awkward as last years, when a girl who lived two doors down from me locked herself  out naked, and I wound up lending her clothes. Life in Santa Cruz sure is… Strange.

mood: blank

I thought I had kicked the habit. I thought I was in control of my life now, I thought my dependency had ended. I was wrong. I have been clean for almost two years. Sure there were momentary lapses, times when the pressure from classes drove me to the edge, but those were all ways just momentary lapses. All the warning signs are there. I'm losing interest in things that once exited me, like video games and food. I don't hang out with my friends as much, and when I'm not reading, I'm thinking about reading. In the past week I've read four different books, That's twice of many books I read the last school year. I'm hooked. It began innocently enough, with a graphic novel Sam recommended to me. But when I finished it, it wasn't enough, I wanted more, so read my neighbors book "The Blue Sword" in two days, and then Robert Ludlums "Channcellor Manuscript" immediately after that. I need help

mood: aggravated

Hey everyone! My last finale up here in Santa Cruz is Tuesday evening, but due to a schedualing error, I won't be moving out until Thursday. On a related note, my roomate is moving out on Wensday. So I cordeally invite all the Usual Suspects to come up and visit me this Wensday, and those of you who are interested can stay the night! I will only have one unoccupied bed, so bring your own pillows and sleeping bags, and any DVDs or board games you want to play. I think you guys should take two cars up here, one for the people who plan to spend the night, and another for those who have to leave early. As added incentive, whoever drives up here gets priority for the unoccupied bed. At any rate discuss plans amongst yourselves, and post your plans here.

mood: bouncy

There's nothing like two 'o clock  in the morning to bring out the poet in you. Last night rather than going to bed like a rational man I stayed up for half an hour and scribbled this inside one of my notebooks. I guess it's as close as I'm going to get to a drug induced poem. I like how it turned out, but I don't know how to end it. I would actually like to continue it, but have no idea where it should go next. I guess I'll work on it when I feel like skipping sleep again.

I had a dream between worlds that have and have not been
And I will tell you of all I have not seen
in the land between, in the home of the homeless king.
It lied betwixt heaven and hell.
Where God could meet with The Angel Who Fell.
Here is where the beggar king managed the affairs of man
In this hot crowded, and infested land.
The King directs all that can and can not be,
in the early hours of night and latest hours of morning he labors and crafts man's destiny.
It is not pretty work. He sweats and smells. His clothes are ragged and gray.
He needs a shave, but he never stops, not a single day.
I tried to speak to him, but he would not look away.
He had infinite work before him, and nothing to say.

So I left the hall of the beggar king,
And came across a crowded dank den,
within which waited over a million half-men.
Each was eager to be made whole
by conjoining there soul with their body waiting below.
I saw that they were waiting in a semblance of a line,
before a great table, polished and fine,
One by one each went, according to their time.
Before the table, where sat the kings servants,
great men of booze and vice,
who determined the fate of the man before him with the roll of three dice.
One to determine the man's wealth.
Another for his position,
The third, his length of life.

For the king was busy, he couldn't tend to all.
His ears could not heed, even the most desperate call.
So he left his servants in his place.
To tend to the lesser mans future with care and grace.
But his servants were lazy, and could not keep pace.
And allowed entry to life to be a gamble made with haste.

I was sickened I could not take any more of this place.

So, that's what I was doing last night, and I had a morning class today too. I think I''m starting to lose my mind. At any rate, any comments would be appreciated. I'll probably come back to this poem at some point and continue it. But that's it for now.
 

location: Santa Cruz mood: pensive music: Dog Problems

Remy and I have done it again! I bring to you Ladris. The modern fantasy based around the excavation of an ancient city.

Capitalism: an undeniable force that drives man to package and sell anything that can be packaged and sold. And magic is no exception. For decades Sadhi and Mattaki corporations kept dominated the magical markets. For years it seemed like no one could break the stranglehold the two corporations held. But then someone discovered Ladris. Ladris, an ancient city said to be the home of the world’s most powerful sorcerers, priests, and spirits of its time. Power radiated from its desolate location, and it was said once even the gods themselves strode down its baron streets. No sooner was it discovered then the two corporations raced to uncover the city from the sand. And they were not the only ones. Dozens of lesser corporations and hundreds of treasure hunters descended on the city as well. All in search of ancient treasures and magical wonders the city once contained. Now, six years later, the city remains wild and untamed. Rights to property only extend to one’s ability to defend it. Many men are just as content to steal the treasures of others rather than find their own. In light of these dangerous time’s Ladris has given birth to a new mercenary class, men you can hire to protect. Or to kill. The winds of fate seem to enjoy a complex dance within this city bestowing incredible wealth to some, and crushing others. What will the city do to you?

http://z15.invisionfree.com/Ladris/index.php?act=idx

And now for a sophisticated review of the site by a sophisticated man!

Die Schildkroten: This is a God damned fantastic site.

mood: excited music: Chariots of Fire

So, as I took a shower this morning I started writing a livejournal entry in my head, enumerating why my life sucked in general, and this week specifically. By the time I was done, it was an impressive list. Maybe I've just gone to long without singing angry songs at the top of my lungs, (I've had a bad soar throate) But I seemed to be filled with excess bile and malevolance that I couldn't discharge. But then someone invited me to a Belogarth meeting, which involves hitting people really hard with foam weapons, and after a half-hour I was feeling more cheerful. This feeling persisted as I went downtown and bought myself delicious snacks to consume this week, and by the time I came back on campus and sat down to write this article I feel much better.

mood: calm music: Easy Street