paradise~

Wow. Today was just downright awesome, save for a few small things. So much happened that I won't even try to recap before this post.

Yesterday afternoon, Mari stopped by right as I was waking up from a nap. We ended up planning our Anime Expo trip. Yep. That totally happened. James, Mari, Hunter, and I are all going to AX together~! I am so excited for everything, the con itself, the road trip, the hotel shenanigans, the beach, our cosplays, playing LoL together (which I am going to start learning how to play today!) and just everything. Damn. We've found a hotel that looks great and is a short distance form the convention center, and we're going to all reserve our badges soon. It's so exciting! I've only been to Anime Vegas and Anime Los Angeles, this will be like enormously huge and amazing. I'm so happy! I thought we weren't going to be able to go!

But yeah, we pretty much sat around planning our trip. Bri tried to make macaroons but the forgot the grease the pans, so we stood around trying to pry the cookies from the pans without completely destroying them. They're actually pretty delicious. Really sweet, but delicious.

We stayed up pretty much all night watching Power Rangers on Netflix in the living room with everyone and playing that new SCP game while trying to catch marshmallows in our mouthes. I feel like they're kinda behind on the times, I've had that picture of the wood baby thing saved on my computer for like at least three years, and they're just now making a game based around it. Then, at the crack of dawn, we walked to McDonald's for breakfast. But we also walked up there the night before at like 10 PM. So we were there when they closed, and when they opened. Either way, we ate delicious fast food and had our usual McDonald's fun.

James and I went to Savers to try to pick me up a pair of shorts for the race this weekend, which I actually found. For six bucks. And I got a unicorn pin for free because I brought them a donation. We were in the neighborhood I grew up in, so I showed him around Trop Aquarium, which is the greatest fish store in history. We walked to Paradise Park from there, the park where most of my childhood memories were made, so that we could sleep like hobos under a tree because we were both really tired. There are a lot of homeless in that area now, and I felt bad because we passed a whole bunch of them on the way to the park. I had change in my back pocket and I wanted to give it to one of them, but then I would feel bad because I wouldn't be able to give the next guy we passed any change. Later that day I went back to the house and got like a pound of change to give out to everyone we saw, but that was after all this.

So we napped around Paradise Park until we met up with my mom and aunt, who wanted to buy my aunt an iPhone. We went to a car wash (during which we lost James in the commotion and found him again on the opposite side of the car wash) and I taught my aunt how to use iPhones. We ate lunch at Panda Express and got frozen yogurt at a place that let me put rainbow mochi in my mine! Then we sat around at AT&T and headed home to pick up Brina and Mari, then back to Paradise Park for the EKA reunion.

It's stuff like this that reminds me why I consider EKA to be my home. Most of my close friends, the people who've had an impact on my life, they all went to EKA. Even if I didn't know them that well back then and we've only become close friends after they left, even if they didn't actually go to the school, even if i don't talk to them every day, they're still the people who I ate lunch with and made a lot guitars and experiments and sung happy birthday with since I was twelve. Mr. Long was there (former principal and teacher from the first three years of the school) along with lots of other people form first year, who all have kids now. They were graduating when I was in 6th grade, sitting behind a computer screen playing horse games and drawing bad anime art to pin up on my desk. I saw Ann for the first time in more than a year and she has her hair all red and curled super cute now! I wish I could pull off a color like that. She's at LVH now. Mara came too, and she's a senior as well! Both of them are so pretty, ahaha. We made plans to get together and go shopping sometime. Then, out of the blue, Guam showed up! With Kelli, Isha, and a guy that my sister met years ago playing Team Fortress 2! I feel like he's a brother to me, he and Brina were talking about the time they dressed the same and people used to confuse them for eachother all the time.

It was just so fun. We sat in the grass and made a "shelter", talked about My Immortal and old times, ate pizza, played with babies, and people-watched at the park. I took lots of pictures and it was just so fun, catching up. I was so sad that we couldn't give Mari a lift home because Mike got dropped at the park and we didn't have any seats. We were going to go back to the aquarium, but it closed. Either way, it was just fun. I'm so glad we went~!

And, since I started writing this yesterday and I am now finishing it the following day, I also have two more bettas (as I treat Alfred for fin rot) in my room. My friend's sister lef them outside, and since I am the go-to-guy for unwanted fish, they ended up with me. I'm not sure what sort of names they'll have. I think they're both crowntails, or their fins are just really damaged. :C

Next week I will do another huge picture post, but for now, just yay. Reunion was fun. Fish are fun. Updated Endless Forest where I can actually SEE everyone is fun. Bye-bye~!

i'm finally doing this.

Yeah, picture post! Because I finally decided to just get on with it instead of hoarding all these pictures and not doing anything with them, and I even did it without Chrys bluescreening! BD

So stuff has happened since the last time I made an entry so here's a REALLY SHORT recap before I start screaming about NAB: I got stuff in the mail, I did really well on my 3rd exams, we made a new LVAC spot, I finished a notebook (which is a landmark achievement but I'll talk about it later,) I looked through lots of hilarious old documents, I tried one of those Dorito tacos from Taco Bell, there is an EKA reunion at Paradise Park next Saturday, and I almost saw a guy get hit by a Bugatti. And look: flowers have bloomed!

But that's not my point. This week I spent a lot of time at NAB Show! That above is just a TEENY section of the photography / lighting hall. It's only my second year going so I still get like really overwhelmed at all the exhibits and products. There are so many people from so many countries and it really is just amazing. Picture the biggest convention you've ever been to, I'll compare this to Anime Expo, actually. Picture AX, but each of the dealers has a huge elaborate professional display area the size of more ordinary con dealers halls. It's just gigantic. I didn't even get to poke my head into one of the halls.

So as soon as we walk in, the Grass Valley area is right there. I use Edius at work, and it was literally like the first thing we ran into. There was Australian guy named Matthew who was an expert on it, and he taught demos on all sorts of things. I am now totally capable of playing around with masks and the curves tool (which I thought was a photoshop thing specifically, I had no idea Edius even had that tool) and many other things. After a while everyone else kinda left and my dad and I asked him questions and he showed us how to get sound effects and stuff! It was really cool and I learned a whole lot just from sitting there watching him use the program!

It's such a great experience, even if you don't work in photos or satellites or editing or anything even remotely related to those things, it's still just wow. I think everyone should see it. It's very informative and multicultural. Here are some more photos from NAB Show. :3c

At the Canon booth~

More from the middle of the Grass Valley booth.

Arri Alexa! What a beautiful camera~ I'm sad that I didn't get a closer shot, but there were lots of people who wanted to see it.

A presentation at the Adobe booth (it was more like a palace, though.)

Small cameras at the Polecam booth!

This was a robot that would follow you around with the camera. It was super cute, and there was a smaller one right next to him.

My dad was messing with this camera. There were lots of models all around so that you could test the cameras and they were all very nice. A guy gave me a hand-squisher ball thing, I think it's called a stress ball? It was promotion for an all-terrain camera.

And, a few more pictures from around the house and such, since I haven't posted any in a long time.
Yeah this picture is really bad, but I just wanted to tell everyone that the light piping on Megs is AMAZING in this toy! I'm going to take him somewhere with awesome light to take pictures of him!Bri photobombing Mari while Mari makes a tower out of model horses. These things have become more like everyday occurrences...

And I'll end with my AMAZING "fanart" because I'm getting really excited, we might get to drive out to Arizona to pick up my new copy of Rule of Rose soon! So in my excitement, I drew Josh and Jennifer and a super quality Brown, probably the best dog I've ever drawn. And a really ugly face. And now I'm done. c:

yep.

/FLIES INTO BLOGGER~

HI I'M JUST HERE TO TELL YOU ALL THAT I'M WORKING ON A POST AND ALSO:

...THE NEXT CHAPTER OF AUF WIEDERSEHEN, SWEETHEART IS GOING TO BE THE LAST ONE. THE. LAST. ONE.

I'M GOING TO DIE INSIDE. implying i haven't been dead inside since chapter six or so.


/ROLLS AWAY

shopping + quiz.

I have out-shopped myself today. I didn't actually mean to spend a lot of money, but I kept going back to mbok and looking at all the cheap brand and being like... fuck! Too many good offers to pass up! So I have three jumperskirts and a fuckload of accessories from various offbrand stores all over the place (most notably those cute tights from Sweetie Cakes Shop that I've been wanting to coord with my RTBU jacket) and... yeah. Several hundred dollars down the hole IN THE NAME OF SUPER KAWAII DESU CLOTHES. When I say it like that, it sounds like I'm doing it for a reason other than just me wanting to prance around like a unicorn princess. =u=

I really, really, super duper totally want to post pictures on here, but I don't want to mess with Chrys tonight because it's very cold in here and I feel like I'd disturb him. So maybe tomorrow or the day after. Tomorrow I am making a pilgrimage taking a trip to the Fashion Show Mall to find some nice clothes to wear to NAB show, which I am going to be at all work-week! I will definitely have pictures to post from that!

Right now I feel like doing a quiz, so I sort of stole this from tumblr. It was one of the fandom-related ones where you ask your followers to give you numbers, but I hate doing that because either everyone that I know hates me or no-one is online at 2 AM to give me questions. So I'm just going to do it on blogger because I'm in a super fandom-ey mood today. :3


1. Current OTP? Ah gosh I am that person who has the one single "i-will-ship-it-in-the-afterlife" pairing and that's blurr/bee, but right now I'm in this hella asakiku mood because THEY'RE FUCKING GETTING MARRIED IN MY SIMS GAME SIDFJAKLJ FUCK

2. Pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind: Yep that's asakiku. I actually hated that pairing because my sister and I both shipped giripan and Iggy was my least favorite Hetalia character. I know. What.

3. A pairing you have never liked and probably never will: USUK. I hate fucking USUK. And G1 Starscream and Skyfire. But mostly because I just don't like Skyfire alltogether. :|

4. A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t: Honestly there is so so so much beautiful USUK art out there, and FrUK artwork out there too. I wish I could get past pairings for the gorgeous art, but nope.

5. Have you added anything stupid/cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what: In all honesty... shh, I used to do LOTS of kink meme fills back when I finished stuff. Mostly for Hetalia and TF stuff. Some were cracky, I guess.

6. What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom: Uh, guhh... I'm not sure what to say for this. TF since '07, and it's been my longest running "main" fandom since then I guess. Even though I didn't get active in the fandom itself (in writing for it) until 2009.

7. Do you remember your first OTP, if so who was in it: Okay are you ready for this? ITASASU. My sister and I super shipped the shit out of them when I was getting into high school! It was because of a fanfic called The Never Played Symphonies, which I haven't read in years. =w=

8. Do you prefer characters from real action series or anime series: Honestly, real person fiction scares the shit out of me. Dunno why, probably just because I've been in the animated and drawn side of things for years and years and I didn't even know that shows with real people had extensive fandoms. I didn't know the scale of it until I joined tumblr, like the Sherlock and Supernatural fandoms? They're huuuuge. And scary. I don't like real people.

9. Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why: Uh, well number one would be Homestuck. I haven't even read the comic (I got like six pages in and I was so confused and bored already that I just gave up) but the fandom is terrifying. I know APH had a bad rep but it's nothing like hate-spamming and sending death threats and filming yourselves spitting in buckets and all that other weird stuff that they do.

10. Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over tumblr: I don't really think there are any. Tumblr hasn't introduced me to anything yet. That's because I stay in the Transformers-related parts of it 75% of the time. It's just introduced me to the massive-ness and awful-ness of several fandoms I'm not involved in.

11. How do you feel about the other people in your current fandom: We are seriously the best. More like, THEY are seriously the best. The TF fandom is filled with amazing writers and artists and roleplayers who have been nothing but friendly and hilarious to me since the start. They're seriously what keeps the fandom alive. And not just on tumblr, all over the internet.

12. Your favorite fanartist/author gives you one request, what do you ask for: Decepticons go to Disneyland. Just think about that for a moment.

13. Your favorite fanart or fanartist: I can't pick. Seriously I have folder upon folder of amazing fanartists and it's just not possible.

14.Your favorite fanfiction or fanauthor: razordragonfly's Five Million Years. It is my favorite piece of fanfiction ever written. That and (a close second) Auf Weidersehen, Sweetheart, but that goes without saying.

15. Choose a song at random, which OTP does it remind you of: I put my library on shuffle and got the fucking theme song from Flight of the Navigator. What. OH WAIT. OK FUCK. OK OK OK. I SO TOTALLY LEGIT SHIP MAX FROM FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR AND AUTO FROM WALL-E. I totally forgot about that. Yes. I ship it. Sentient autopilot circular machine things that hang from the ceiling. They are obviously star-crossed lovers. Someone kill me please.

16. Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas): I really do not want to come up with a whole AU right now. :I

17. A ship you’ve abandoned and why: Giripan. Because Asakiku. Here we go with The Sims 3 again, deciding my ships for me.

18. A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships: VICTOR AND YES MAN FROM NEW VEGAS. I am legitimately the only person on this earth who ships them. BUT IT'S SO OBVIOUS. DUH. THEY WERE LIKE MADE FOR EACHOTHER. James has explained why they are made for eachother with graphic, abstract descriptions of their awkward Securitron sex. That's the entire reason I ship them. I'm not even kidding you.

19. Show us an example of your personal headcanon: Thundercracker actually hates Maury as much as the next person. He just keeps it on to disgust himself with it. Just like everyone else who has ever seen an episode of Maury. He does not enjoy Maury, though.

20. If you mostly have homoships, do you have any heteroships: I have lots of both. The heteroships are just so tame and quaint compared to the homoships that I often don't talk about them.

21. If you mostly have heteroships, do you have any homoships: I have lots of both. The homoships are just so obnoxious and popular compared to the heteroships that I often scream about them all the time.

22. Are you one of those fans who can’t watch anything without shipping?: Pretty much. At first when I got into the TF fandom I was like "...what" but then yeah. Transformers.

23. 5 favorite characters from 5 different fandoms: Shit. I hate these. I hate picking favorites. Okay, TFA Shockwave from Transformers, Russia from Hetalia, Ky from Guilty Gear, (he was in my dream last night! And so was Dizzy! I was consoling her because she felt bad about Iron Man and African children or some shit) Lynne from Strike Witches, Tweek from South Park. Even though my South Park stint was like two months long.

24. 3 OTPs from 3 different fandoms: Blurr/Bee, asakiku, gay goddamn securitron cowboy fuckin shit new vegas god damnit asdasdoa foif sca why do i always end up with these robot ships that no-one else likes aiosd gppdf I'M DONE.

25. A fandom you’re in but have no ships from: Such a fandom doesn't exist.

26. Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! HIMAPAPA PLEASE COME BACK~ we need you!

LONG POOPY POST

Ahuiughiug IT'S BEEN A REALLY LONG TIME SINCE I POSTED HERE. :C

In all honesty I have been a little busy, since the Race for the Cure and female athlete celebration and Kony 2012 and the semester end are all coming up in the near future and I've been trying to divide my attention between those four things and The Helsinki Accords since it's hit me in the face again because of English fucking Russia. That and drawing my 9th anniversary Circus shit. So yeah, I have been a bit busy.

I'm trying to give up soda just because it's horribly unhealthy for your weight. I don't drink that much of it, really, but I'm shooting for my 88 again and I can't really afford to take in that extra sugar if I'm going to lose almost 10 pounds. My diet pretty much consists of rice, baby food, and popsickles now, put with what I eat at work and at school for lunch. I don't think I'm going to lose weight very fast, but I really don't want to be the fatty at the pool or have rolls bulging over my OTKs when it's lolita weather in the spring. :I

And yeeeah... Still no sign of our Nikon D4 showing up at work, but we're hoping we get it in time for the Race for the Cure. Then, maybe I can have the old camera, the other nikon, and my canon, and I will be the triple pimp. Every year I walk around with two or three cameras but I think it would be cool as shit if I got to shoot video this year, even though the still come out cool!

Ah what else has happened? Yesterday I got really bored while playing fallout because I was doing that thing with the fucking Helios One plant with the solar power and all that shit, so I decided to become big and little Yulia.

First of all, I could have cheated my way into hooker outfits, but I didn't. I worked hard for my slut clothes and now I look cool as fuck parading around the wasteland like a giant whore with a party hat.I was very tiny. I didn't get far running around like that.

Then I was really huge. But I kept falling and dying. So I just made myself the same size as the securitrons and ran around as a goliath woman executing NCR soldiers until my game crashed. Good times.

We did absolutely nothing on Easter Sunday. No, actually? We watched a dog show. On LVTV. The bloodhound won. And that was Easter for me. Apparently my father spent the night saving my stepmom from being in the path of a burglar who was breaking into their neighbor's house while on some kind of drugs and was mistaken by police as the burglar (because he was pulling Laurie away from the scene) which I think is both hilarious and scary.

And I'm really trying to nail down what I'm writing for Camp Nanowrimo. It's going to sneak up on me and I know that I'll be like "oh hay i spent the last three months developing plot points and now i don't feel like working on dis storee huuurrrr" and I'll get let 5,000 words in and quit. I really don't want last November to happen again where I drop out halfway through. I want to really use it to develop and finish a fic. Even if I finish it without hitting the word count, I'll feel like it'll be worth it if I can just finish something.

I keep swinging back and forth between what I want to write for camp because every week I look at something new and start getting that OOH I WANNA WORK ON THAT FIC feeling. For the past few days it's been the black hole that is English Russia making me work on Russia's disco house shit thingy, before that it was Angela's Ashes making me work on other shit, before that it was Vancouver, and you can see how these things just lead away from the inspiration for one fic and into the other. I really don't have any idea what I'm doing but I have to get it together soon.

I'm treating Alfred for swim bladder. A few weeks ago I looked at him and thought to myself that he was looking a little bloaty, and I guess I know why now. I'm switching foods for him entirely now, the worms I was feeding him just clouded the water in the tank and I don't think he like them very much. I also gave my hypothetical planet speech and totally fucked up on the entire thing. I literally had too much information, and trying to squeeze like a 45 minute lecture about space into 10 minutes ended up being a complete failure. I also saw Indra for the first time since I was like 12! She works in a cafe not too far from my house, and she's dating a guy who used to go to EKA (who had a baby at 18 and was actually married to his girlfriend that year!) and she was still in contact with people from like first year. I can't believe that. It's such a small world that we all stay connected long after the school has changed and we've all graduated.

Mari and Hunter and Xoli came over a while ago and Mari made a horse stack out of Bri's model horses. It was glorious. They're going to teach me how to play League of Legends sometime, because it seems like one of those games that is super hilarious to play around your friends. That, and it pisses Brina off to no end. I have pictures from that night but I'm typing this from school and I don't have them with me. :c

Tomorrow I'll do a quiz. Today I'll rant about drugs and tooth decay! What a fun topic. If you know me you know that I hate all kinds of drugs and that people always roll their eyes at me for it, but I've seen way too many bad stories and heard way too many awful things to support things like legalizing marijuana. It's one of the few things that James and I disagree on, and like, even though he has presented facts that have shown me that it isn't enormously dangerous, it just makes it the least bad thing out of a lot of bad things. It's still bad for you, really, but I have an emotional conviction (is that the right word?) with it while he's very factual about it.

I know nobody really advocates hard drugs like meth, heroin, and crack, but like... it's the party drugs and "casual" stuff that bothers me. No, you likely won't end up with something as serious as meth mouth if all you do is smoke a joint at your friend's party (though... why any would want to do that is beyond me) but you can still end up with a very unhealthy set of teeth and gums from recreational drug use.

It's not that weed, certain pills, ecstasy, and other "lesser" drugs contribute directly to the decay of the teeth and gums, but it's the habits attributed to them that generally fuck your mouth over. The constant craving for soda and sweet candy generally not thinking of things like brushing your teeth when you're high is what really gets your teeth to rot. Back before sugar was an everyday part of our diet, there were literally like, no cavities. Awful gums were still around, but that was because this was a time was a really long while ago before we really started to care about oral health. But it's the sugar, the candy, the soda, that's what will do you in.

That, and metabolic stimulants cause bruxing. That thing that rats and rabbits do all the time to keep their teeth filed down because they don't stop growing? People teeth do stop growing. And grinding them can really, seriously fuck you up. This paired with the fact that these kinds of drugs usually cause really bad dry mouth as a result of high body temperature, which causes an upset in the balance of bacteria in your saliva and your mouth, which causes sugars to wear down on your teeth even harder.

Not to mention that any kind of tobacco smoking, which includes cigarettes and hookah (don't try to argue that it isn't dangerous because it does contain carcinogens and carbon monoxide even though the water dilutes it a bit, and smoking it will still increase your chances of tobacco-related health complications five-fold, as opposed to just not fucking doing it) puts you at risk for plaque buildup and possible staining. Though cigarettes are much much much worse for your teeth and are more often lead to worse things than just your teeth getting stained (hi my name is cancer how are you today) and hookah and smokeless tobacco are generally less harmful, it doesn't change the fact that it causes plaque buildup and increases the risk of gum disease. This and the fact that hookah hose-inhaler things are usually passed around between several people and cigarettes are sometimes shared between friends, hello oral bacteria being spread around.

Yeah okay, I think I've made my point. I don't think I even need to talk about meth mouth. This has been your weekly report about nasty shit that happens in your mouth from your semi-friendly dental student. :T

Oh yeah, Zack, if you're reading this post (lord help anyone who is reading this shit because it's long as balls and probably really boring,) you have to see this video. It reminds me of the weird stuff we used to send eachother a while ago. But it's like... fucking horrifying.



It's the eyes. Nobody who visits my blog will want a banana after this. :3