GREETINGS CHEESE POPSICLE

tsukikoushi @ 2009-07-04T14:09:00

2009-07-04T21:17:30Z

And a happy America Fuck Yeah! Day to you all! Now if only the fireworks fucktards would knock it the hell off--they've been shooting off fireworks since Wednesday, and if last year is any indication, I'll be hearing them for a week to come.

Yesterday was Boyfriend's birthday, so we celebrated by going downtown and hitting up the Brooklyn Oyster Bar--it was so good, holy crap. Food-porn levels of good. One of our college friends used to have this rule that she wouldn't eat seafood in any restaurant that wasn't within sight distance of the sea, and I'm happy to report that if you leave the Brooklyn Oyster Bar, turn right, and walk five steps, you can look right down onto Puget Sound.

Tonight we'll be going to a potluck dinner with some friends and then trying to catch the fireworks out over Lake Union from there. My God, I have a social life. Who'd have thought?

tsukikoushi @ 2009-06-19T21:36:00

2009-06-20T04:44:24Z

I would like to offer you a metaphor for my Braid experience.

Imagine, if you will, that one day you decided to build a giant maze out of Impressionist paintings, postmodern novels, and movie soundtracks. Close to the beginning of the maze you dug a pit, and inside that pit you put an iPhone (loaded with all kinds of fascinating little apps) and a single piece of delicious, delicious candy. The rest of the maze you filled with extremely angry rats, bundles of sweating dynamite, and--occasionally--another piece of delicious candy. At the far end of the maze, clearly visible even from the entrance, is an entire box full of that candy.

Then you dumped a toddler onto the ground at the beginning of the maze, told him to have fun, and left to get yourself a triple latte.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-06-17T23:03:00

2009-06-18T06:12:55Z

And then I discovered that Greenhouse Games has released Braid for the Macintosh, so I bought it and promptly lost my fucking mind.

It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, and it has all the hallmarks of being an Important game. It's also clever, absorbing, thought-provoking, semi-deep, fun to play, challenging without being painfully so, etc. etc., but some of the gameplay mechanics are capable of breaking my brain for hours at a time. As in, I put the game down and spend the next three or four hours hallucinating; I can see the world rewinding around me. This... is not a problem I've ever had before.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-06-16T16:00:00

2009-06-16T23:29:05Z

Boyfriend won DSRK2 at approximately the same time that I limped over the finish line of SO1. The first Star Ocean game was fun, I guess, although all the fun came from the awesome dungeons and game systems and not the terse, perfunctory afterthought of a plot. (Fun fact: the credits of SO1 make it clear that it was based on a Japanese novel. That lame-ass plot was not original to the game--it was the motivating influence behind it! Why, therefore, must it suck?!)

Now, of course, I'm certainly not playing Animal Crossing: City Folk. I mean, I bought the original GameCube Animal Crossing and the DS Animal Crossing, why on earth would I buy yet another version for the W--
NAME: Cheri
TOWN: Moonton
CODE: 2793 8152 4105
--whoops, crap.

So yeah, I'm about a year late for that party, but I don't care, because FISHING BUG-HUNTING AND MORTGAGE-PAYING.

is dat sum googlebomb

2009-06-09T20:29:23Z

I've been watching the Mijn Schatje art-theft expose' with some interest (and disgust) for a while now. This isn't just some teenager on dA posting other people's artwork as her own in hopes of buttpats, although that, too, is obnoxious and dishonest; Mijn Schatje is an up-and-coming 'fine artist', has been featured in several art magazines and Taschen artbooks, has had gallery shows in several countries, has sold out multiple runs of prints of her work for over a thousand dollars per piece, has a new deal to produce a line of clothing based on her art, has produced advertising work for the Playstation--and has been producing all her work by secretly vector-tracing over other people's photography and artwork, including over copyrighted, commercially-produced photographs she stole from corporate websites.

Her real fascination is with those Asian ball-jointed dolls--Dollfies, basically--and it was fans of the dolls who initially noticed the thefts. However, as they continue to look into the issue, they've found photographs of other objects, vector-traced elements from Audrey Kawasaki prints, little Totoro stamps, and most likely other things. I'm starting to wonder if anything Mijn Schatje does isn't traced from something else and assembled into a collage of theft.

It really makes me kind of ill. But don't take my word for it; go to the site, take a look at the examples--particularly the Playstation ad, which I consider to be damning--and decide for yourself.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-06-04T01:59:00

2009-06-04T09:02:26Z

Updated my site--man, I don't get to say that very often any more.

There are a couple of short, pointless Persona 4 fics up on the main site, and two short stories and a whole bunch of artworks over on the Shadow of the Templar side, if you're into that.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-06-02T22:39:00

2009-06-03T05:57:10Z

... so I've been kind of quiet, huh? I haven't really been doing anything interesting. I mean, I'm lackadaisically meandering my way through Star Ocean 1 on the PSP while Boyfriend whales on SMT: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. Some Big Fucking Crickets, and we went to see Up, which we both enjoyed. So... yeah.

(Tangentially: tri-Ace, we all know that I love you, would forgive you almost anything, and may eventually get an Xbox 360 just for you--but my God, you have never been able to plot/characterize worth a shit. Also, fire all your voice actors and start over.)

My mother came for a visit, and my aunt and uncle stopped by to take us to dinner on their way out to take an Alaskan cruise, which was nice. Personally, I find it amusing that getting my mother to come visit us in Ohio basically took a court order, but now that I live in Seattle, she's come twice on her own initiative. She likes Seattle better than Ohio? I can't imagine why!

Healthwise, it's still something of a draw. There's a tiny little nodule on one of my lungs now which may or may not be a wayward spreading tumor; if it is, well, that means I've been upgraded to stage IV thyroid cancer, and life gets even more annoying. Here in the next couple of months I'll be going in for another PET scan--woo hoo, another two bottles of vaguely-grape-flavored liquid semen I mean barium--and we'll know a lot more once we've got the results of that. Seriously, don't get cancer. It's like having a loud houseguest who just won't take the hint and leave.

Yeah, okay, maybe that part's interesting. I don't know. I'm pretty goddamned bored with it, I tell you.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-05-15T13:21:00

2009-05-15T20:28:36Z

So not only has Stiltzkin started pulling over the office trash can once every five minutes, but I came downstairs this morning to discover that someone--probably Alfador--had stolen my tablet stylus. That shit is not on. My tablet may be a seven-year-old first-generation Intuos but it still works just fine and I am not interested in replacing it at this time!

Fortunately, I found the stylus after ten minutes or so of hunting. It was under my computer chair. Two feet from where it belongs. Hidden just well enough under one of the chair's legs that I couldn't spot it without getting down on the floor. So in addition to frustration I got a little dose of embarrassment this morning.

Pulling the plastic wrapper out of the trash can seems to have ended Stiltzkin's fascination with it, too, so all that's left now is an anecdote and a general feeling of 'argh'.

Damn cats.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-05-07T14:05:00

2009-05-07T21:20:19Z

I don't know if it's just me or what, but regular cough syrup does not do shit to alleviate the painful scratch in the back of my throat that makes me cough. While it's true that the thickness of the syrup does soothe the scratch for a couple of minutes, the actual tussin has never seemed to do anything--what good does a couple of minutes of relief do me when I'm only allowed to take a dose every four hours?

And once I start coughing, of course, the cough aggravates the scratchy place, which makes me cough more, and then I have two choices: I can stop whatever I'm doing and go drink water until it subsides--which kind of sucks when I'm trying to get some sleep--or I can keep coughing and eventually throw up. So I'd really like to find a cough syrup that works, you know? And a couple of years ago, finally, I did.

Go to the grocery store and buy a thing of honey. If you can find whipped or creamed honey, the kind with a lot of air whipped in, that works best; regular honey works just fine, though. Don't get the expensive stuff. It'll be wasted.

Put a decent amount of honey into a little container of some kind and shake in a lot of ground cinnamon. Seriously, a lot. Mix it together and keep adding more cinnamon until what you have is a reddish-brown slurry of cinnamon particles suspended in honey.

Now eat a spoonful.

The thick honey soothes my throat like the syrup component, and AS I LEARNIT ON TH'INNERNET cinnamon is a natural cough suppressant--my tongue feels a little numb after I eat a spoonful, and that's part of it--and while the effects may only last for fifteen minutes or so, I note that that's exponentially longer than actual medicinal cough syrup lasts. And since it's just cinnamon and honey, I don't have to worry about overdosing, so if I need more in half an hour, I can have more. Plus it tastes delicious, and once I'm over my cold I can eat the rest on toast!

Granted, by using this recipe I am ingesting a lot more cinnamon than usual, and I'm sure that eating enormous amounts of cinnamon could have negative consequences, so I don't just wander around eating it all day. Still, four or five spoonfuls of the concoction a day isn't going to hurt me, and goddamn, anything that keeps me from throwing up is good.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-05-06T01:27:00

2009-05-06T08:35:12Z

Hey, folks, heads up: the new, improved, shiny trade paperback versions of the Shadow of the Templar books are now available via Lulu. They're significantly cheaper than the first editions and they look a lot better, in my opinion. Plus they're readable. I can get behind that.

Please note that you do need a Lulu account to purchase books from their storefront.

I'm also eBaying off a brand-new set of all four books in the new edition, which I have signed and dated for some reason. There's also disturbing talk of some kind of secret bonus. Even if you're not interested in my autograph, you might save some money: shipping from me is definitely cheaper than shipping from Lulu (even if it's still assrape for overseas readers) and the opening bid is cheaper than the Lulu cover price. Plus, hey, at this point in time, no other signed copies exist.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-04-29T12:50:00

2009-04-29T19:54:49Z

The official Capcom Miles Edgeworth china teacup and saucer, folks. And it's actually... kind of... lovely? If probably not worth thirty-five smackers to import?

I love Japanese marketing sometimes. I really do.

notes of the day

2009-04-25T09:35:56Z

1. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the nerves in my neck and shoulder are starting to heal. Yesterday while I was absently massaging the scar (as I am supposed to do pretty much non-stop) I experienced the undeniably unique sensation of the entire right side of my neck dissolving into an explosion of static. Once I got finished yowling like a cat whose tail has just been stepped on, I realized that this could only mean one thing: I am a television. No, wait.

The numbness is still present, but the nerves are slowly healing. This is both good and bad news. Good, because it's definite proof that I'll soon be able to feel my shoulder again; bad, because I'm pretty certain that I'm not ready to be able to feel my shoulder again. Ow, ow, motherfucker, ow.

2. That being said, it has never ceased to amuse me that I can feel the front half of my right ear and not the back half. Somewhere in the middle the nerves just cut out like someone turned them off: OK, OK, ##NETWORK ERROR##. It makes wearing headphones feel extremely odd. If I ever wanted a cartilage piercing, now would be the time.

3. Still whacking my way through a second playthrough of Persona 4; actually wrote a snippet of fanfic yesterday for the first time in two years. I'm as surprised as you are.

4. Having really enjoyed the first three Drawn & Quarterly collections of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work, we picked up his massive autobiography, A Drifting Life. Personally, I found it riveting, and I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in classic manga, 20th century Japanese history, or drawing/writing comics.

5. My mother sent me a large compilation of the family recipes, so yesterday I made The Family Meatloaf (with skin-on mashed potatoes and asparagus). It's a pretty basic tomato-sauce-type meatloaf, but it calls for oatmeal instead of breadcrumbs, and I used to love it when I was a kid. It tasted just as excellent as I remember, but since Boyfriend has a black hole for a stomach, there was none left over for cold meatloaf sandwiches. I am saddened. I guess I could make an extra meatloaf next time just for sandwiches, but who am I kidding? He'd just eat that one, too.

6. Actually, because we are both giant nerds, we ended up sharing the meatloaf with Boyfriend's new Transformers Masterpiece Grimlock toy. ME, GRIMLOCK, HUNGRY!

Grimlock comes with a bunch of cool-ass accessories, but the most WTF-inducing had to be the Waiter Mode: white waiter's apron, black bow tie, little tiny tray of little tiny cocktails, all for Grimlock to wear in T-rex mode. Apparently it is an outfit from the G1 episode 'Madman's Paradise', and once we saw a screenshot, we vaguely remembered it. Someone at Takara has a sense of humor, and I appreciate that.

ME, GRIMLOCK, SERVE REFRESHING ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES!

tsukikoushi @ 2009-04-14T21:47:00

2009-04-15T04:48:57Z

Guess whose thyroglobulin levels are so low that she doesn't currently require a second go-round of radiation therapy!

(hint: it's meeeeee)

tsukikoushi @ 2009-04-06T14:59:00

2009-04-06T21:59:59Z

FUCK WIDOWS AND ORPHANS FUCK THEM AAAAAALL

(this message brought to you by the 'No, Not Social Darwinism, Typesetting' Foundation)

notes of the day

2009-04-02T06:04:57Z

1. Well, it seems that somebody brought home a cold from work, just for me. Snuffling, cranky, and exhausted does not a productive cow make.

2. The other day I was at one of the four Starbucks in University Village--I live in Seattle, coffee has a serious Seattle problem--and I noticed that although no fewer than five hip-and-trendy Seattlites received their froofy coffees before I did, I was the first customer to say 'thank you', or indeed to acknowledge the barista's existence at all. Whether this says something about Seattle, or about Starbucks, or about University Village, or even just about me, I have no idea. I'm guessing that the answer is 'some of all of the above'.

3. Speaking of Seattle and coffee, the Burke Museum Of Natural History And Culture currently has a special exhibit... all about coffee. This is a museum that usually deals with indigenous cultures and the like--but once you assume that 'culture' includes 'current popular culture', the coffee exhibit starts to make a lot of sense.

4. Of course, the MOHAI (that's Museum Of History And Industry) is currently hosting an exhibit of Looney Tunes cels and artwork, so I guess I can blame both of the above on 'oh shit economy collapsing PACK SOME PEOPLE IN HERE'. And if you think I'm not going to the Looney Tunes exhibit, you are stark bonkers.

5. Mederma absolutely reeks of roses, to the point where sometimes I get a whiff of myself and jerk around to figure out who's sneaking up behind me. However, according to my surgeon it's a wonder drug, one that promises to calm The World's Angriest Muscle and stretch my scar, and frankly, I'd like to be able to turn my head again. Alas, it's also going to fade the scar. I won't be a badass anime villain for too much longer.

It reeks of roses because it's made from onion extract. I can't imagine it selling too well with its original fragrance.

6. I am so tired of trucking my ass to doctor's offices that I could just puke. Whatever doesn't kill me annoys the shit out of me, I guess.

7. On a lighter note, we've now lived in Seattle for a little over a year! I really do love this city--and its food--even if a fair number of its residents need someone to grab their ears and give them a stern talking-to.

Also, the traffic is for shit. What can you do? At least we're getting some serious light rail in the near future.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-31T22:52:00

2009-04-01T05:55:21Z

Man, there's nothing like discovering a blatant typo that's been extant in the version of Double Down on the SotT minisite for two and a half years. Every time I think I've found them all--!

(Apparently I fixed it for the first print edition and forgot to fix it on the site? I suck!)

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-19T13:24:00

2009-03-19T20:35:53Z

I drew the entire picture and then realized that I'd drawn it backwards, because I'd drawn what I see in the mirror. Oops. I flipped it in Photoshop.

The pale pink bits are the remains of my first surgery, from 2007. There used to be a third one, but it's now part of the mondo scar, which, as you can see, dips over the front of my throat, follows the swoop of the inside of my collarbone, and then climbs up the back of my neck to end in a patch of shaven hair just behind my ear. The yellowish bits are where it's not healing all that well. It was supposed to be a single purplish line, but instead I have wide patches of scar tissue. I'm told that they can revise it later. Whee.

The big dots are where my drains were sewn in; the little dots are the livid remains of the staples they used to hold my neck shut. THE REST IS GRAVY well not real gravy that would be unsanitary.

... as scars go, it's actually pretty dramatic and gracefully swoopy and I think I'll like it, once it's done healing!

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-18T23:33:00

2009-03-19T06:36:23Z

Snitching the link from squidminion: Extreme Sheep LED Art, courtesy of the Baaa-Studs and Samsung.

Am I weak vs. insanely artsy advertising? You betcha.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-16T14:03:00

2009-03-16T21:06:12Z

Currently I'm playing Persona 4 on the PS3 during the evenings and weekends when Boyfriend is home to spectate/kibitz, and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix on the DS whenever I have no audience.

A Megaten game and a Puzzle Quest game, simultaneously. Guess how fucked up my dreams have been lately. Go on, guess.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-15T21:21:00

2009-03-16T04:22:19Z

FF4: The Big Goddamn Sequel on the Wii? Yes, please, thank you!

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-12T00:15:00

2009-03-12T07:25:09Z

A month or so out from my surgery, and I am now possessed of The World's Angriest Muscle (tm).

Seriously. In order to do a full clean-out of that side of my neck, the surgeon had to lift up the muscle that runs from just under my right ear to the pit of my shoulder, flip it over, move it back and forth, scrape lymph nodes off it, and finally put it back into place--and it is so pissed about this treatment. It's been clenched solid ever since, dragging my head down. And when I say 'clenched solid', I invite you to imagine the muscle on the side of my neck squinching up the face it doesn't have, clenching its little nonexistent fists, and throwing a red-faced breath-holding temper tantrum. If a muscle could take a rage shit on its owner, I would be head-to-toe muscle feces.

I'm supposed to be massaging it, to encourage it to loosen up. Most of the time this merely does nothing, but on occasion it forces The World's Angriest Muscle (tm) to retaliate, clutching up until I'm reduced to yowling "Ow, ow, okay, I'm sorry, jeez" while reeling sideways like a punch-drunk sailor.

The doctor tells me that the muscle should start to relax in another month. Until then, I guess I'll have my head permanently cocked to the side. Nothing wrong with looking like a fascinated cockatiel, I guess.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-03T14:19:00

2009-03-03T22:19:25Z

Do you need to be cheered up today?

Do you like kittens?

Cutest Scottish Fold Ever. You're welcome.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-03-02T00:10:00

2009-03-02T08:30:58Z

Boyfriend started playing Deadly Creatures today, and man, it is awesome. It should have been named ARACHNONINJA WARRIOR! or something.

For those of you who are unaware, Deadly Creatures is a Wii game in which you play both a tarantula and a scorpion in alternating chapters, scuttling through your (absolutely amazing) desert environment, fighting insects and other arachnids, eating grubs and crickets, and oh yeah, occasionally overhearing these two humans talking to each other as they struggle through the desert playing out a horrific crime drama. (Said humans are voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper. Yeah. THAT'S WHAT I SAID. OH CRAP SO HOT.) Said crime drama goes over your head both literally and figuratively, though, because you are more concerned with surviving your encounter with a pissed-off black widow spider and eating that grub over there.

The arachnids (and everything in their environment) are exceedingly realistically rendered, but--and this is important--they are just unnatural enough that I do not shudder and itch to look at them. For one thing, I don't think tarantulas growl like dogs, sock their opponents in the jaw with their four tiny, mighty little fists, or spin in circles to knock their opponents away, and I'm really sure that scorpions don't finish off their opponents in gruesome overkill slo-mo God-of-War style. ... more on that later.

Really, the best thing about the game is the incredible environment modeled under the desert floor: both arachnids are able to scuttle up walls and over ceilings, so the concept of 'up' and 'down' have almost no meaning. Therefore, everything in your environment is rendered, because there's a good chance you'll be walking that way; I can't imagine how much work it must have taken to create these tightly-packed environments. (I'm... pretty sure scorpions can't actually walk up walls in real life, WHICH IS A GOOD THING.)

At one point near the beginning of the game, you're just scuttling around eating grubs when you suddenly realize that you're inside an ancient, half-rotted coffin, scrabbling over a bare, worn, old skeleton (who is still wearing cowboy boots and spurs). Beautifully creepy, especially when later on you hear the two humans talking about the grave... but the details of that are kind of a spoiler. (There's also a moment when you find an old, faded garden gnome tangled in some roots, and some spiders fall out of a crack in its base to come attack you. Garden gnome! Hilarity abounds.)

It really is like God of War writ small, in some cases. At one point the scorpion pulls its FATALITY move on a gecko, which involves grabbing the gecko in its claws and flipping it over onto its back, then prying open the gecko's jaws with its pincers so that it can stab the gecko in the back of the throat with its stinger, then whipping the gecko over with its pincers and bending it backwards, snapping its spine. What the hell, Scorpio-Kratos. What the hell.

All in all, a great, tense action game, and much less bothersome than I was fearing.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-02-19T22:38:00

2009-02-20T06:55:48Z

Welp, my neck and right shoulder look like something right out of the picture galleries of rotten.com--seriously, I'm sporting large raised ridges of DEAD BLACK FLESH which are, essentially, Advanced Scabs waiting to slough off. It's gross enough to look at in the bathroom mirror, but I'm also supposed to keep them clean and dressed, which means thoroughly cleaning them twice a day with hydrogen peroxide and Polysporin. Touching those things is a whole new world of OH GOD GROSS IT'S A RIDGY DEAD FLESH BALLOON. It'd hurt a lot worse if the nerves in the area hadn't been paralyzed, but it would also be a lot less disgusting. Somehow.

I also discovered--painfully--that one of the side effects of oxycodone is constipation. Yeah, that was a thoroughly unpleasant four hours or so, and I'm still reeling from the horrible butt trauma. (Seriously, why is it that when I have surgery, the worst pain is always something that I didn't expect in a wholly weird location? When I had my tubes tied, my left ankle swelled up like a balloon thanks to escaping gasses from my abdomen; now I've had my neck carved up and it's my ass that suffers. If I ever have foot surgery I expect that my brain will leak from my ears like a stepped-on grape.)

Still, I've now had all but one of the staples out and the drain has been removed. Every day I can sit up for a little longer and use my right arm a little more; my shoulder hurts less and less. If it hadn't been for the butt trauma I'd have been doing better today than yesterday; as it is, I had a little setback, but I'm still largely recovering. Everyone agrees that I'm the best-looking leper in my colony.

tsukikoushi @ 2009-02-15T23:22:00

2009-02-16T07:36:30Z

Okay, being honest: I really am in hella pain here. This surgery ended up being a lot more radical than the last one (although, I am told, a lot more successful as well) and I have an extensive maze of nerve damage that keeps forcing my stapled incision and the muscles around it to cramp up like a giant fist shutting. With the help of oxycodone, I have some pretty lucid hours, although I'm always at least in discomfort, even while dozing. I expect things will get much better on Wednesday, when they take out my drain and all the staples that my body is already rejecting and I can stop fighting them.

Funnily enough, one of the most obvious casualties of my new damage is my typing; I can only type at anything approximating my usual speed and skill level by watching my fingers hit the keys. Otherwise I skip letters, double letters, hit the key to the left or the right by accident, and generally produce a clot of ham-fisted nonsense. (I'm already seeing some improvement there, though, so practice will probably help--still, combined with the pain, it's definitely keeping me off AIM.)

I'm also definitely doing noticeably better every day, even when my pain is worsening again thanks to my body going FUUUUUCK THEM STAPLES. I mean, it's a lot of pain, but I'm pretty Zen about it--I've found a nice place under the pain to chill out in--and pain aside, I'm healing. I'm doing better. I'm sleeping less and eating more. I'm getting about and even getting small, short bursts of awkward exercise. It's all good.

Pain sucks, though. Which is why I'm over here bitching!