Happy Canada Day!

The most boring, yet appropriately chilled out, country in the world is celebrating its birthday today! With fireworks that will probably be only red and white. \o/ (I learned that from zero_damage. Charming, isn't it?)

Finally finished all of Death Note!

( My thoughts, expect spoilers. )

Aside from that, have starting playing Kingdom Hearts again. Got through Agrabah, finally. Jafar was amusingly easily. Went on to Monstro, left too soon, didn't finish the entire thing. Now at the near end of Atlantica. I'll admit, I figured Atlantica would just be incredibly frustrating musical mini-games with Ariel and her twenty-eight and a half sisters. I didn't expect Ursula to try and eat Sora. I got close to beating her in a second try of fighting her head, but I guess I stopped paying attention to Sora's life gauge, because she said something like, "I'll show you blah," and then Sora was basically the Kingdom Hearts equivalent of fried fish. I was flabbergasted, and that's when I decided to quit for the day.

Now I'm sleepy. Again.

♥ to anyone who read through my blather.

I now have a dreamwidth (thanks, zero_damage!). I hadn't really intended on it, but it looked so pretty.

Add me (if I haven't added you) - I'm corollary.

Dear New Scientist: I love your magazine, I do. However, since the price to my renew my subscription went from a somewhat modest seventy-four dollars to $182, please assume that you are never getting any money from me ever again. Now stop sending me mail!

Also, while your magazine is usually witty, the letter you sent me is just pretentious. Go away.

In other news, failing at writing again. By failing, I mean that I am pretty much ignoring the requests I promised various people at talesfortreble and got at least two half finished promised drabbles saved... all of it to be not touched at all while I write a) Paper Mario ficlets and b) about Natsuki Moriyama from P3. The first one is well and good, just an itch I had to scratch, and likely never to see the light of day. (By day, I mean it won't be posted.) The second one begs the question, "why?" I liked her well enough, I thought her character development was well done and that she was one of the three girls in Gekkoukan who shortened their skirt (it likely says a lot about my high school that every frelling girl did so. Literally. Even me, when I could be arsed to wear one). But as for what she had to say... no. I have my P3 voices - when did she become one?

The thing is, I likely could take out half of what I've written, do a find+replace where I substitute in Saki for Natsuki, and it could probably hold up just as well. That wouldn't be fair to either girl, though - and the part of me that loves Saki for no apparent reason would protest.

This is the reason I spent about a half-hour on Google yesterday. There are no pictures of Natsuki on the internet, if Google is to be believed. There is however, one on DevArt. It's not coloured.

Today, however, I intend to do a massive house cleaning. Wish me luck!

How are you, f-list?

ETA: Neil Gaiman has made me feel better about the writing thing.

"Some writers need a while to charge their batteries, and then write their books very rapidly. Some writers write a page or so every day, rain or shine. Some writers run out of steam, and need to do whatever it is they happen to do until they're ready to write again. [...] Sometimes it happens like that. You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created."

I only consider myself a writer in that I like to write, and I'm not terrible at it. A while ago, I pretty much realised I would not make it as a published writer because I'm just not good enough, which I'm actually okay with. Maybe someday when I'm in my fifties or sixties and retired, I can sit down and pound out that novel because why not? But for now, I'm happy to focus on fic.

Still, knowing that it's not just me, that it is actually part of the creative process to just be a bucket of fail once in a while... it helps. ♥

Among other things*, I have spent the past two days watching a walkthrough of Donkey Kong Country for the SNES.

My consensus? This game is weird.

After about thirty-eight or so levels of rolling on metal barrels, watching DK sulk whenever Diddy wins a prize, blowing holes in stone cliffs and finding bananas, and being dollowed around by parrots carrying lamps, you end up fighting King K. Rool. Basically, you wait for him to throw his crown at you, and then jump on his head. After about five or so instances, he lies down and you are treated to the Kredits, which are about five lines, attribute game making to guys like Kritter and Krump, and ends with "the end...?" Naturally, it is not the end, and King K. Rool rises on the third day to throw his crown at you some more. Rinse and repeat, and he actually does die this time.

Five seconds later, you are back at Cranky's cabin, and he quickly congratulates you on a job well done... all the while still beating you with his cane, like the senile German grandmother to Yoda he is. I guess the animators were too lazy to put in different animation. In the game I watched, Diddy did pretty much all the work because he was smaller and more agile, so where's his affectionate beating, huh?

Also, there is shark named Enguarde and a froggie named Winky.

*These other things include lying in bed and watching bad Disney shows, speeding through Gilmore Girls and Spaced, typing very poorly, spitting up blood into the toilet in the belief that I'm about to throw up, and vaguely resembling Fred Flinstone in the jawline. I never realised how much I appreciated how sunken in my face actually was until I could no longer see my entire cheekbones. Woe.