Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: How to find the A-Team
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On Thursday, March 10, 2005 at 08:07 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Two stories I overheard at college that I will one day use in a novel, short story, or fanfic.

Story 1:

I was riding on the bus when I overheard this story. It was a long day and I was going to be on the bus for awhile in order to get back to my apartment. I went to a University known for its engineering and computer science programs. The two guys in question were both computer science majors. They were having a discussion about how companies were putting keyboards and processors on everything. Even things that really didn't need processors or keyboards.

"One day I'm going to publish this paper. I did these incredibly complex calculations modeling the formation of black holes on the IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer. However, I perfected the algorithm on my Toshiba blender."

Story 2:

I swear I actually overheard this. It was late during exam week. A lot of people had already moved out, but I was still there since I had an exam on the last day. I was in the computer lab checking my email when a guy came into the lab to talk to his room mate.

"Hey man, you ready for exams to be over?"
"Yeah, I can't wait."
"Me neither. Anyway, I was wondering where your copy of FFVII was. I wanted to get some game time in."
"Oh. I sold it."
"You sold it? WTF? Why?"
"I needed some beer money."

Guy hesitates for a moment and then, in the most serious voice ever, says "Dude, beer and chicks may come and go, but video games last forever."

The end.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Romance Novel Covers: REDONE!
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On Monday, March 7, 2005 at 08:25 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

What time is it? Why it's time for another edition of "Those Crazy Referrers!" (It's also time for me to archive this page, which I will do for the next post). Ready? Let's see what the great and magical tracking page has in store for us.

toasty toaster wetter: Generally, it's not a good idea to get a toaster wetter. Especially a toasty toaster. After all, it worked so hard to get all warm. Why are you going to go cooling it off again?

SHIT! I want, cards to print about love!: I don't know what amuses me more about this hit. The expletive at the begining (complete with exclamation mark) or the random comma in the middle. Dude, I wish I had cards about love for you to print.

power rangers nude cosplay: Okay... I know everyone who is reading this has the exact same question I have. How the heck do you cosplay as the Power Rangers while nude? I mean, WTF? Do you just wear the helmet?

exciting yaoi stories with cursing words: May I suggest the Harry Potter fandom?

gremlins yaoi slash: *clutches her head* AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH! My brain! MY BRAIN!

LJ seme: But what journal service would uke? Greatestjournal? Yeah, Greatestjournal would so bottom for LJ. Then again, LJ and GJ would both be topped if Blogger got into the scene.

blowjob battles yahoo group: And yet, I can't help but wonder what the rules for the competition would be. And I can't help but picture something like Battle Bots.

Sora gets eaten and digested by Kairi: Boy, talk about specific. I guess they never did find what they were looking for considering I'm the only result for the search.

duo tries to help heero live without war angst death: No! Don't tear Heero away from his war angst death! And in my head "war angst death" is slurred together into one word. Kind of like the "murder/death/kill" crime in Demolition Man.

william +nunnery +graphite: I don't even know where to start.

"little debbie" size reduction: You want to make them smaller? Are you insane? Reduce the portions of everything else if you must, but leave my snack foods out of it!

Touya sleeping+bloody: "In this latest fic on FF.Net Touya goes to sleep a boy and wakes up a girl. To make thins worse, he's started his period! Hilarity ensues."

smell socks gay: You're guess is as good as mine.

hot uterus pictures: Okay, here's someone who didn't pass anatomy class or even stay awake during sex ed. The uterus is the part inside a woman. It is neither hot nor sexy. If you try to draw it along with the rest of the female reproductive system in "Win, Lose or Draw" everyone will mistake it for a cow. Don't ask. If you are still confused, I suggest you pick up a Biology book. Or, type search for the word "uterus" in Google Images. (Warning: Do not actually do this if you have a weak stomach).

PICTURES !!!OF THE DIGIDESTINED 1950's VERSION!!!: PICTURES!!! Now someone just needs to inform this person that Digimon was not around in the 50's.

I am 30 years old, and English does simply usually. My hobby: I don't know what your hobby actually is, but it should be using English grammar.

dealership sluts: I couldn't help it honey. I didn't mean to give all that money to that little red sports car. It just... it seduced me. There was nothing I could do. I'm so sorry.

flushing accident three dead: I can only imagine what kind of toilet accident was so great that flushing killed three people.

Last but not least, How to tell your boyfriend you are pregnant: I'm engaged to my long time girlfriend and will never have to confront this situation. Yet, I'm the number one hit for this. The irony. Oh the irony.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: A Flock of Lawn Flamingos
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On Tuesday, March 1, 2005 at 06:55 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Last night my car had very little gas. I mean very little gas. I had about an 1/8th of a tank and I drove from Chapel Hill to Raleigh on it. Why was I in Chapel Hill you ask? Whole other story and it doesn't bear much on this one except that it forced me to drive from Chapel Hill. Anyway, this morning I got into my car knowing that I was in desperate need of gas. No problem! For evern though there are very, very few (read: none) on my route to work, there is one just a little out of the way near my house. I've been there several times. It's kind of shady, but not so shady that it needs bars on the windoes. That's where I headed this morning.

The first thing you need to know about this morning was that it was cold. Very cold. With a strong wind that ripped away your body heat every time you stepped outside. So I wanted to pump my gas as quickly as possible. I pulled up to a pump, got out, mashed buttons to let them know that I a) wanted to pay inside and b) wanted the type of gas that would cause me to pay as little as possible inside. Then I waited for the guy inside to let me pump. And waited.

And waited.

I was seriously wondering if anyone was working the station or if I needed to honk my horn when the pump told me I could pump. I shivered while the gas went into my car. I filled it up, put the nozzle back on the hook, and headed inside. There was no one else at the counter which meant I could pay and get on to work rather quickly. Or so I thought.

My first indication that things would not move quickly was when the guy behind the counter didn't even look up when the bell rang as I opened the door. He was too busy looking at something. I walked to the counter and waited. He didn't so much as glance at me. Now I'm curious as to what would hold this guy's absolute attention. So I lean over to see what he's looking at. It was a magazine. A magazine featuring a full page shot of Jennifer Lopez and her tits.

Now I could understand if J. Lo's tits were bared, but no. This is just J. Lo in an "outfit" (if it could be called that) that emphasizes the fact that she is, in fact, female. I'm being completely ignored in favor of J. Lo's completely covered tits. I think not. I clear my throat loudly in order to let the guy know "Hey, jackass, you have a customer." That at least gets him to look at me long enough to listen to what pump number I'm on. Then his head is turned back to J. Lo's tits as he holds his hand out for me to pay him. I put my debit card in his hand. He swipes it through the machine, says "Debit or credit" and puts the card down on the table.

He hasn't looked at me since that one time through this entire process. I'm giving him the evil look as I say "Debit." He mashes a button. I enter my pin. We wait for the the reciept. No acknowledgement at all. Finally the reciept prints. And we go back to the waiting game. I finally have to tell this guy I'd like my receipt. He pulls it off, still not looking at me, and hands it over. I'm about to grab in and leave when the guy realizes that one of those copies is his. Add another minute or so of fumbling as this guy just can't seem to drag himself away from J. Lo's tits long enough to look at the receipt and seperate the white copy from the yellow one. Finally, finally, he looks away and seperates the receipts. I grab mine and bolt, feeling sorry for the poor schmucks (now a whole five that have had to wait while we go through this painful process) behind me.

The moral of the story? Obviously the only way for me to compete with J. Lo's covered tits and get service is to strip off my shirt, undo my bra, and hope to get the clerk's attention. Given the way this guy was staring at J. Lo, I doubt even that would work.

And now, I have to check on my girlfriend who went to bed about 20 minutes ago and has already asked me to bring a trashcan to the bed. I'm so glad we cancelled our dinner plans with Jag.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Color Scheme Generator
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On Thursday, February 24, 2005 at 07:29 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I love the link of the day. Not only does it do monochromatic webpage color schemes, but it also does contrasting, triad, tetrad, and analogic color schemes. It also has options so you can see what your color scheme would look like to people suffering from various forms of color-blindness. I wish I had this sucker available during my GIS classes when we had to make maps. It would have been useful.

Miome pointed out, in response to my previous entry, that even though I bitter complain about fanfiction, I will read some of the absolute dregs of publishing when it comes to books. Specifically, romance novels. Not only will I read them, I will make myself read as much of them as I can as a kind of self-torture. When they get so bad that even I am fed up with the crap, I hurl them across the room. The pages make interesting flapping noises until the whole thing hits with a satisfying thunk against the wall.

Of course, being who I am, I immediately go and make sure the book is unharmed. Then I fob it off on either my Mom or Shoi (who I have found will read anything). But there's something immensely satisfying about knowing that if the books gets bad enough, I can chunk it across the room. I can't do that with fanfiction. I love my laptop too much.

So Miome suggested that I set a key on my computer to make a flushing noise whenever I need to vent at a fanfic. That's not good enough. A flushing noise is not going to replace the satisfaction that comes from physically hurling something across a room. Now if I had a key that was set to say "What is this crap?" and then a flushing noise, I'd seriously consider reading more fanfiction. Until that time, I shall do with out.

Oh woe. Oh woe. Whatever shall I do? I will have to suffer through life avoiding bad fanfiction.

In other news, there is a lawsuit that's going on that almost caused me to burst into hysterical laughter today at work. I'll talk about it this weekend since I'm trying to keep each entry on one subject and not fifty billion like I sometimes do. Until then.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Posting and You
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On Tuesday, February 22, 2005 at 08:02 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

When I was in Elementary School, in fifth grade, the band from the Middle School we were going to go to came and played for us. It filled the whole auditorium with music, rang down through the air to hang in crystal perfect notes. And I thought some day I shall play like that. The next year we were given choices about what we could do with our free period. We could participate in any two of the following: band , chorus or art. For one year I tried chorus. Two others I did art. I went to band all three years I was in Middle School.

One of the first things we had to do was pick an instruments. Flutes had the purest sound, but all the girls wanted to play them. Clarinets were richer, smooth and sultry, but again all the girls wanted to play them. Saxophones were strong and creative. They couldn't quite decide whether they were wind or brass and so had carved out their own defiant niche, but they weren't for me. The drums brought order from chaos, but I didn't like how loud or rambuncious the sounds could be. Trombones were deep and strident, like the baying of hounds, but I took one look and knew I'd never get the positions of the slides right. There was one lone tuba player (sousaphone actually) but to be honest I don't think he actually made it past the first year. Trombones were our only bass.

I chose the trumpet: sharp and brassy and in your face. It only had three keys, seemed fairly straightforward, and there were no other girls playing it. It took my two months to get a sound out of it. I played it incorrectly, play it incorrectly to this day, but I learned to compensate for it. So much so that I can keep my instrument in tune better than most other that do it the "correct" way. I was stubborn and defiant and refused to give up when others told me to. I played my trumpet for seven years, and I regret was that I wasn't able to continue to play it in college.

But as I learned how to read the music, how to play the notes, how to interpret the difference "staccato" and "legato" and "allegro", something happened. The more I learned and understood about music, the more I could hear the flaws when I listened to it. Before all it took was a Middle School band playing to make me happy. After awhile, the Middle School band sounded childish and it took a High School band to impress me. Before too long, only the absolute best High School bands sounded good. Now I can watch parades and tell you if the trumpets are blasting, if the trombones are being overshadowed, or if the clarinets are sharp.

I learned a tremendous amount about music in the seven years I played trumpet. At the same time, I lost my ability to enjoy music that wasn't performed by professionals (or at least, damn good amatuers). There are times when I'm not sure the sacrifice was worth it. I enjoyed the wide variety of styles of music played by marching bands. You simply don't find a whole lot of professionally trained musicians who play that much variety, or at least you don't find them in an easily accessible form. The closest is classical stations, but there's only so much Vivaldi and Tschaikovski I can take before I yearn for something different. But now if the people who are playing aren't good, I just can't stand to listen.

Something similar has been slowly happening in fanfiction. Use to be I would read anything yaoi I could get my hands on. Then it was anything yaoi for certain fandoms. I've been writing fanfiction for seven years, and reading it for long, and now I find myself demanding a higher standard. Even things that I love a few years ago make me want to stab my eyes out with a pencil. I'm no longer happy with "Yeah! Pretty boys doing things!" I demand things like plot and characterization and justification.

What that means is that I have a much harder time just going out and finding stuff. I feel like I'm limiting myself because I demand something that requires thought, effort and skill. I can't just read anything in a fandom because I find myself going "Why didn't the author do this? They could have constructed a much tighter plot if they'd left out this whole scene. And what was up with the random spoon part? It could have been handled much better."

I miss being able to approach fanfiction like I approach trashy romance novels. Glutting myself on them and laughing because they are just that bad, and then moving on to the next rush. Like crack candy for the soul. I just can't do that any more with fanfiction. I know too much about what can be done with it and what good fanfiction is. The crap just doesn't cut it any more.

Sigh...

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Serious and silly HP fanart
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On Saturday, February 12, 2005 at 07:09 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Gah, I'm tired. I'll be so glad when I stop having my period so my hormones will stop playing with my emotions. I cried more today than I'm comfortable with for stupid reasons. I only volunteered for an hour at the museum instead of the 2 hours I meant to because I someone else was working with the material and I didn't want to screw up what they were doing. I'm going to email the collections guy and find out what is going on.

So last night we went over to Shoiryu's place last night and were watching her play Guilty Gear X2. Her room mate came home and said "Hi." Then she went upstairs. We didn't really pay her any attention because she didn't come into the living room. About ten minutes later we start hearing this noise. It sounds like someone is nailing a picture to the wall. Strange, but okay. This goes on and off for like twenty minute. Shoi finishes the part of the game she was playing and the music stops. It's quieter in the living room except for the thumping sound. Suddenly, we hear loud cries from above.

Shoi's room mate is having sex. Loud sex. Hard enough to cause her bed to pound the wall.

Holy cow. I now know why they use the euphenism "nailed." Miome and I immediately decide we need to go. NOW. As always Shoi has to use the bathroom first. The room mate is still going at it. We are making horrible comments. Finally Shoi gets out of the bathroom and flee apartment. We are laughing hysetically because oh my lord... While we are trying to figure out what to do now that we are out of Shoi's apartment, Miome and I are informed that this happens all the time. In fact, Shoi tells us that her room mate has woken the entire apartment up with her loud sex. She's aware that her bed bangs the wall.

And her response to this? To act embarrassed and do it some more. That takes a special kind of inconsiderate or perhaps denial. All it takes is a $2 piece of padding! Hell, if you can't afford that, use a roll up shirt. A sweater. ANYTHING. People do not need to know you are doing the nasty with your boyfriend unless you are into group sex. Or something.

One of the good things about today was that I got to rewatch the Saint. I love that movie. I had forgotten all the little things about it. The inside jokes, the interesting characters, and Val Kilmer's chest. Mmmm... definitely worth seeing again. Makes me want to write.

Speaking of writing, I seem to be on a Hikaru no Go kick. I've started and written more Hikaru no Go in the last week than I have in the year preceding it. When I'm not working on Hikaru no Go, I am working on the Ritter story. I have the next part done. I just need to put it up. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Oh well. I'll get it done sometime this weekend. Hopefully. In between getting ready for Valentine's Day.

Finally, I ordered a friend birthday gifts last week from Amazon. Her birthday is today. When did Amazon decide to ship her gifts? Yesterday. Bloody wankers. I need to at least call, email, or send her an e-card to prove that I did indeed remember her birthday. Unlike the last three years -_-. And I also need to get Shoi a present since her birthday is on the 17th. Heh. When it rains it pours.

And now, Teen Titans is on. Bye!

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: AU Inuyasha Rant with graphs and pictures
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On Thursday, February 10, 2005 at 06:45 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

So several things have been going on at work. One of my co-workers got fired a couple of weeks ago. I can't say I am too surprised. He was consistently coming in late, leaving early for one reason or another and took personal calls a lot. I noticed this when I started, but I was the newest person at the company and lowest rung too. So I didn't say anything. He was good at doing his job. Or at least part of his job. Since he's been gone I've been going through a two foot tall stack of papers that were on his desk. My job now is to double-check and make sure all of this is in the database.

Holy cow, my former co-worker could not keep files. About 1/4 of the stuff I'm going through is either duplicate stuff or not in the database. Which means he wasted a whole lot of paper and didn't do half of what he was supposed to. Sigh...

My company is looking to hire a replacement and an additional person. There have been lots of interviews going on with people. Today they hired one of them: a cute Asian guy. A very cute Asian guy. I'm kind of glad they hired him, not just because the eye candy factor in my office increase by 100%, but because it was obvious he was very nervous for the interview. That didn't stop him from shaking my hand, introducing himself, and asking my name. Big brownie points and I made sure I told my boss about it.

Someone once told me that the absolute best way to get a job was to be nice to the receptionist. That when you send out thank you notes after the interview, to make sure you've taken note of the receptionist/assistant's name and thank them as well. It can't hurt.

I feel really sorry for one of the people who I had to put in the database. His last name? Slutz. I can only imagine the amount of torment he went through as a child.

And now, for somethig completely different.

I was filling out one of those on-line quiz things about blogging habits the other day. One of the questions was "Do you tell about everything that goes on in your life in your LJ/blog?" I was about to mark yes when I realized... no. I don't. I don't talk about the fact that I have been in a relationship for several years. It just never really comes up. Well, that's not true. It does come up when I have to explain to some one that I'm sorry, but I'm not single and I'm not looking. Which happens more than I ever expected to and winds up making feel vaguely sorry for the person who got up enough courage to ask only to find out that it wasn't going to happen.

I've always been kind of private about things like that. My mother didn't know I was dating a someone my freshman year of college until almost a year later. In fact, we broke up only a few months after my mom found out. It wasn't that I was hiding anything, I just didn't bring it up and display it for all to see. I'd say something if asked. The only people who really needed to know about what was going on in the relationship was me and the person I was with. Why did anyone else really care what goes on beyond "I'm happy"?

I'm not quite as bad as that now, but I still prefer to keep my private life mostly private. So there is a great chunk of my life I don't talk about much on my LJ or here on my pitas.

I have no idea why I felt the need to share that. Oh well.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: When Porn Stars Attack
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On Tuesday, February 1, 2005 at 08:14 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Last night I did something that I haven't done in years. I went on the web... and looked for fanfics. That's right. I didn't go through someone's recommendations. I didn't wait for someone on my friend's list to write a story. I didn't go to one of a dozen author's sites whose work I can stand and reread what they have up. I went looking for fanfics on my own, fanfics I hadn't read, fanfics by authors I don't know.

I had to find a method for my madness though. I didn't want to just type "yaoi Hikaru no Go" into Google and click on whatever came up. If I did that I would get every "Hikaru/Touya R IN LURVVVVV!" fic out there. No thank you. I'd rather take my own eyes out with a melon baller. It use to be that there were archives that would encompass entire fandoms (like the Shrine to the Chicken of Doom that had every Fushigi Yuugi fic in creation). Now everything is broken down by pairing (Relena/Wufei? WTF?).I like most pairings, so I having to hunt for variety doesn't appeal to me. Sometimes the archives are basedthe archiver's own personal tastes. After reading most of the stories in one Gundam Wing archive I now know more about the archiver's own personal kinks than I ever wanted to. And sometime, the archiver will archive anything and I'd have as much luck with Google.

So I archives were out and Google was out. That left me two options. LJ interests and following the links of people's pages. For LJ interests I would pick one of my own (say writing yaoi) and look at people's profiles who had the same interest. If they had webpages, I'd go to them. After doing this a few times, I can across a lot of journal that hadn't been updated in a year, had no webpage listed, or if they had a webpage didn't have any fanfics. That left the following the links of people's webpages.

Now the reasoning behind following links is simple. If an author has a decent grasp grammar, spelling, plot, characterization, etc., then its a pretty good guess that they look for much the same in fanfics they like. Not always. I've seen some great authors like and recommend some really crappy fanfics. However, in general I can count on that not being the case.

You ever heard of the game six degrees of seperation from Kevin Bacon? Well there's something similar going on in the yaoi fanfic world. Only instead of Kevin Bacon, sites link back to Bishounenink. I swear, the chains weren't even 6 links long and I'd wind up back there. Everyone and their brother links to the Bishounenink.

I'm a little bit strange about what I'll read too, which doesn't help me any when it comes to finding fics. For one thing, I don't read fanfics for TV series. I just don't. Not unless it's done by an author I know and trust. I'll read anything by them. but just some random shmoo I don't know? I don't care if they were recommended. No. I also won't read for certain fandoms. Weiss and Saiyuki are two of the big ones. That cuts it down even more.

I also read NC-17 or R rated fics first. That sounds weird, but listen to my reasoning. Sex is hard to write well. Period. End of story. So if I read a good NC-17 story then I can rest assured that the author is probably going to be at least decent on a PG-13 or PG level. The reverse is not true. I've read people who did very good PG but couldn't do a sex scene that didn't make me laugh hysterically.

So there I am trying to find fanfics that I haven't read before by authors that I haven't read before that are R/NC-17 and in a fandom I'll read.

Needless to say, I didn't find anything worth reccommending. I knew there was a reason I stopped doing this years ago. -_-

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Burt's Bees
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On Wednesday, January 26, 2005 at 07:02 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

One of the things I promised I would do once all the Christmas stuff was through was go to Burt's Bees and get myself something nice. I've tried their colored lip glosses (I have two of the colors) and I love them. Since I have a problem with a lot of stuff causing my skin to break out, I settled on getting a variety pack. It didn't hurt that I found it on another site for 30% off. I ordered the variety pack and another lip gloss (I ran out). It came in the mail late last week.

I have tubes and little glass tubs of stuff! A lot of it smells really funny like the lettuce toner. Being the tom-boy that I am, I have no idea what toner actually is if you don't stick it in a printer. But I have some and it smells like lettuce! There's also facial cleanser that smells like orange soda, day creme which smells like carrot cake, and cuticle creme which smells like lemons. I loved everything I tried in the pack and nothing had broken me out.

Last night I tried out the coconut foot creme (insert dramatic lightning and scary sound effects).

Coconut is not now nor has it ever been my favorite scent. However, if Burt's Bees can make lettuce smell nifty, I figured I'd give it a go. During the winter I develop pretty rough, dry skin on my feet. This stuff is supposed to help that. Perfect! I sit down on the toilet, manage to break the seal on the tube, and squeeze some out.

For one thing this stuff doesn't look like cream. I expect cream to look... I don't know, creamy. White and thick and... I'm stopping that thought right there before I descended into yaoi land. Anyway, this stuff look like crusty gel. It was trying to be brown and trying to be yellow and not really suceeding at either. Oh well. I start putting it on my foot when I notice this smell. It smells like... ass. Coconut scented ass. Holy shit, it's the stuff I'm putting on my feet. My feet not smell like coconut ass and it is invading my entire bathroom.

The "creme" is like grease. Ew. Ew. Ew. You could take my foot and use it to fry shrimp. Coconut ass shrimp. It could be the latest craze at Red Lobster. The direction say to put socks on once you put the stuff on your feet. I can understand why because if you tried to walk with this stuff on them you'd slip and kill yourself. I hurridly put on the socks that I was wearing today only to remember that they aren't my socks, they are my roomie's. The stuff is now seeping through the fabric of the socks and the smell is aweful.

Note to self: but Miome a new pair of socks.

Well, since I've already done one foot I might as well do the other. I turn on the bathroom fan real quick and do the second foot as quickly as I can. In my head, I am screaming because my feet are now slimey and nasty and oh god they smell like COCONUT ASS. Outside I am as calm as I can be in the situation. I put the cap back on the tube, set in on my sink, and spend the next five minutes scrubbing my hands. The smell lingers even as I type this. The shower this morning didn't even kill it.

About 4:30am last night I woke up. Why? Because my feet were itching. It seems my skin reacts to Coconut Foot (ass) creme. Lovely. I managed to ignore it until this morning where I triumphantly peeled off the socks and scratched my feet like mad. You'd think that after all that my feet would be as smooth as a yaoi boy's butt, right? Nope. I've seen more results with regular hand lotion after one application. So now my entire bathroom smells like fake coconut tanning oil (thank go the ass smell fades over time) and my feet are as rough as ever.

The Coconut Foot Creme gets an F. A BIG OLD F. It doesn't even get an E for effort. I am never getting it, using it again, or recommending it. Steer far, far away from it unless you crave the scent of coconut ass.

And now, I must go scrub my feet some more and hope no one asks me if I've been drinking pina coladas at work.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Jan 24th called the worst day of the year
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On Monday, January 24, 2005 at 08:17 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Okay, who's cornflakes did I piss in? No seriously, I had to have royally hacked off some diety somewhere to have gone through today. That formula that some idiot came up with that spit out that Jan. 24th was the worst day of the year? They weren't messing around.

The suckiness actually started last night. I had a small breakdown last night that basically consisted of me feeling rather worthless and stupid. I cried. A lot. It happens every once in awhile. I get depressed for a day or two, and then everything gets better. Most times it hits during the day, but last night it was right before bed. This meant that it took me a while to get to sleep because of the crying and stuffiness that comes with crying. What sleep I did get wasn't that restful. To top it all off, even though I was exhausted I woke up around 5am and couldn't get back to sleep. Lovely.

So at 6:30am the alarm is going off and I'm trying to convince myself that the room really isn't that cold. Before I am fully convinced, I hear my roomie get into the shower. Usually this is a good thing. Each of our rooms has a seperate shower, but they are on the second floor. If she gets in first her shower pulls hot water through the pipes to the second floor meaning my shower is nice and hot when I get in. However, this morning it meant that the hot water was almost out when I got in the shower and it was lukewarm to cool by the time I was done. So I had a short, slightly chilly shower.

There was an issue with finding clean clothes despite the fact I did laundry yesterday. I'm also spotting which does not please me at all. Then I walked outside. Holy crap, it was cold. Now some of you may remember that my car was having a lot of problems whenever it got cold. Ran absolutely fine when it was warm, but not when it was cold. I was discussing this my Miome and at one point she offered to take me into work. I was real close to taking her up on the offer, but figured everything would be fine. So on the road I went. Sure enough a mile or so down the road and my car starts making those horrible choking noises again. I pull into a townhouse complex and shut off the engine.

It seemed my car learned a new trick. The not starting again when you turn the key kind. Now I'm stuck in a freezing cold car in a strange complex with only a vague idea of how I got in there. I was kind of trying not to have my car die in the middle of Glenwood when I pulled in. I get on my cell phone and call Miome (who thank god had not let the apartment). She says she'll come get me. I babble directions at her while watching my breath frost in the air. Did I mention the heater in my car only works sporadically? This was not one of its good days.

Time goes by. More time goes by. My toes are going numb. Miome calls again. She's not having a good day either and got lost on the way to find me. I babble directions to her some more and then tell her I'll try walking to the main road so she can see me. I get out of my car and walk. She finds me and I get into her nice warm car.

Then I have a spaz fit because I'm late for work, my car is dead, I'm tired as hell, and life sucks. Miome is also going to be really late for work, a fact for which I apologize at least eight time. Luckily, she just lets me get it all out of my system.

I get into work about 15 minutes late. I hate being late and I am especially paranoid about being late for work. More stress. I explain to my boss what happened and she is the most understanding woman in the world. We then have our morning meeting. Now usually there are eight people in the office. There were only five today. One of the people is out on extended sick leave following surgery. I find out another person is out sick. So where's the third guy?

Turns out, he's leaving the job. We only recently got enough people at the company to get health insurance. Plus, with one person on extended leave, losing another person practically halves the business cash in flow. I don't want this company to go out of business. I like my job. I want health insurance. Add some more worry to the equation. Then today was just a long, long day with little to do at times because so many people in my office were out. I actually zoned at my computer because I was so tired. Then every time someone would walk behind me, I'd jump and try to look busy because I realized that I couldn't remember what I'd been doing for the last five minutes.

About mid-afternoon, I was beginning to get slightly punchy. This was getting ridiculous. I'd seen about seven news stories on how this was the worst day of the year. It was beginning to be kind of funny. I worked a little late to make up for the time I missed this morning. My roomie came and picked me up. Then we drove (in traffic) to the good Italian place down the road for dinner. On the way, I made the comment that it had to get better from there.

At the restraunt was three families eating together. While Miome and I were trying to enjoy a quiet meal, they let their kids run amuck in the restraunt. Good bye quiet meal. I was laughing at this point. Nothing was going to go right today. I was just going to have to accept it.

Things seemed to get better after that. My car started and I was able to drive it to the dealership to get fixed. We'll see if this is a good thing or not when I find out what is wrong and get the bill. Also, the crocuses that I thought were dead in the pot on the table near me have sent up shoots. This means I might get another round of flowers from them. Yeah!

Still tired though. I'm going to bed early. And if one more things go wrong tonight, I'm going to scream.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Sexercising!
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On Saturday, January 8, 2005 at 10:07 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I had forgotten one of the reasons I use to read so many novels when I was younger. I read as much as I do now, only now it's mostly fanfics with an occasional original story by an author I really like. Not that I don't read novels as well. I just don't as much as I use to. But there's something missing when I read fanfiction. Something that just doesn't happen when I read fanfiction.

What I'm talking about is random inspiration for plots. I just don't get them when I read fanfics. Oh I get ideas and insights into characters as other people see them, but I have to work for the plots. When I read some novels... it's like someone just opened my brain and poured in the inspiration. I see everything, know everything. It's not like watching a movie because with a movie you only get pictures and sound. I get feelings and scents and exact words of how the story needs to go when I get inspiration. Everything is crystal and clean lines and it aches to have to hold on to so much as it hits you all at once.

Most times the inspired stories have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm reading. Nothing. Zip. Nada. It's like the story was already in my brain and it was just waiting for something to trigger the flood. I've built entire worlds while reading some of the worse (or best) novels ever. The very act of reading is all I need to create sometimes and I have no idea why.

Today I discovered something even more unusual. I can get inspired by fanfics as long as they are for a series or books with which I have no familiarity whatsoever. I can't even have heard of the characters names. Then it's like reading an original work and it can trigger the same sort of inspiration in my mind. I didn't know this. It's something I have to remember.

I was reading Pru's Macdonald Hall series fanfic On the Road, and I got the beginnings of an idea. It started off with an Earth a little bit farther in the future. There were unicorns who had gone blind but could see and wrong doing no matter how small, and dragons that enforced harsh justice on all criminals. It was a world with almost no crime, but almost no freedom either. Familair and strange all at once. I kept reading.

After every paragraph I would pause and another part of the story would fall in place. The dragons felt guilty about the unicorns going blind, though no one knew why or even why the unicorns themselves had gone blind. Music was pretty much banned in any public place. You could listen to it at home, but only if it couldn't be heard from the outside. The unicorns could go anywhere they wanted to. No one would stop them. They seemed to be able to sense anything alive and some larger structures, but that was it. They walked very slowly, often with their head low to the ground, tentatively feeling their way through the world. No one touched the unicorns, they were treated with reverance and fear, and to go against them was unthinkable. Bloody death at the hands of the dragons waited those who killed a unicorn.

If an unicorn attacked or injured you in any way, the dragons would kill you. It meant that you deserved to be punished. People allowed this because unicorns were thought to never be wrong. When they first came to the world, the unicorns ferretted out all the murderers and drug lords, all the rapists and crime bosses and the dragons killed them. They made the world peaceful and safe and very, very restricted. Dragons often pair with a human partner in a bond that melds their minds together. These partners are part of the police/army that serves to protect the world. There are no countries, and governments are more tradition than power.

By the end of the story, I had a good solid grasp of the world, the characters, and the plot. I don't know if I'll do anything with this idea, but I think I would enjoy exploring this world. It just seems so different from a lot of the other ideas I've had.

But now, I am going to bed. Good night everyone.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Japanese Penguin yaoi!
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On Tuesday, January 4, 2005 at 08:01 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I'm in one of those periods where I want to write, but I can't stick with a story for more than a page. So I'm flitting from story to story adding a paragraph here and a page there. If I make myself work on one story (like the Love/Hate story) it goes incredibly slow. Like three times as slow as usual. It's almost painful to write. Needless to say, not much is getting done except strangely enough on the Iroquois Plitzkin story. Shoi will know exactly what I'm talking about.

I finally clipped my nails back this weekend. Not because they were getting so long that I was injuring myself (something I routinely do by accident when my nails get long). Not because they were looking ragged. My nails were actually quite attractive since I like taking care of them when they get long enough. No. I cut them short because they were beginning to interfere with my typing abilities. I was making more mistakes than normal. Not even shiny fingernails can compete with the urge to write.

I also got a bike this weekend. It's a nice nifty bike that is (unsprisingly) dark blue. I like my bike. I've never had a bike with gears, and having messed around with them, will not have a bike with gears again. The whole purpose of getting a bike is to get exercise while actually getting somewhere. I like using my leg muscles thank you. Besides, it's not like I live in San Francisco. There's no hill in this city that some time and muscle building won't be able to conquer.

The only really noteable thing that's happened today is that we have something of a warm spell going on. The temperature got up to 76 degrees (that's 24.4 degrees C) today breaking the previous record of 75 degrees set in 1950 and tied in 1997. It's four days into January. Yes, NC has mild winters but this is ridiculous.

And now, I'm going to poke at some more stories. Maybe I'll be able to get something resembling progress done on one of them.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Fanimecon - Tasteless humor for the unemployed
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On Friday, December 31, 2004 at 08:08 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

My goal: to see if the second Onmyoji movie had been dubbed yet on IMBD (it hasn't). I was using Google to figure out how to spell "onmyoji" and Google brought up this fanpage: "Omnyoji", hailed as Japan's "Lord of the Rings"... WTF? Did they watch the same movie as I did? I mean, I liked Omnyoji as much as the next person, but it was a far cry from "Lord of the Rings."

I finally have my Christmas presents at my apartment as opposed to sitting at my mom's house. Let me explain what happened. The plan was for me to drive to my house in my little crappy car. Then my roomie would drive down and rescue me from my family pick me up and we'd spend some time with her family since I haven't seen them in quite some time. There wouldn't be much time to see them because I had work on Monday. That was fine by me. Around the holidays I always do better around people in small doses. On Sunday we'd drive back down, stop by my mom's so I could get the car full of prezzies, and drive back to Raleigh. That was the plan.

Everything went fine on Sat. Car loaded with presents and sitting in my mom's yard. My roomie and I loaded up in her car and headtowards her home. Life is good.

Then I wake up on Sunday morning and it's raining. This is bad. Very, very bad. I'm not like a lot of people. I think in terms of geography. It comes from being so interested in geology. I also follow the weather especially since originally they had snow falling on Christmas. Then they took it off. Talking with my meterologist friend I found out that the reason it got taken off was because the air was to dry. As long as it remained dry over NC, there would be no snow. In other words, it didn't take me long to realize rain in EC meant snow farther west.

Sure enough, we got on the internet, and found out up to five inches of snow had already fallen in area that we were going to have to get through to get home and it was still coming down. Now we faced a dilemma. Did we leave right then and hope to avoid more snow/sleet piling up or did we wait and hope the snow would stop, sun would come out and the DOT would get salt/sand on the roads? We decided to wait, leaving after lunch as opposed to mid-morning like we had planned.

It took us 4.5 hours to drive what is normally a 3 hour trip. There were places where it was so bad we were driving in the tire tracks left by other cars and the bottom of the car was scraping snow. Every 100 feet we saw a car in the ditch and watched a few slide off the road in front of us. Including one lovely butthole in a huge fan who raced past us (almost hitting us) and then went down an emankment in a brilliant plume of white. No one was hurt but you could see his wife yelling at him. Revenge.

The main highways were mostly clear (mostly) but the on/off ramps and side roads were impassable. I'm surprised we managed to make it home. I babbled a whole lot (I do that if I'm really nervous. Or laugh a whole lot which is annoying.) Since my mom's house is in the middle of the country, there was no way we were going to attempt to get my car. Miome and I kept right on driving home.

Monday went by, and it was cold. Little or no melting. Tuesday went by and some melting occurred. I had lunch with my mom on Wed. hoping to be told that I can go get my car. Keep in mind Miome has been driving me all around this entire time, including getting up early to make sure I got to work on Monday and Tuesday. What do I hear on Wed? The drivway is still covered in ice and the roads are still bad.

So yesterday was the first day I could go get my car. Now I have all my presents and I am happy. I also have a cat which has laid on me for the last few days. Do you know hard it is to write and/or type up yaoi with a cat laying on you hands or leg or the sheet of paper you are typing from? Very hard.

Oh well. Today shall be spent writing, shopping for a bike, and getting maintanence on my car done. But first, I have a drabble to write.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Toriyama's World: HnG
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On Thursday, December 23, 2004 at 07:07 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

What I have sitting next to me is a stack of Hikaru no Go DJ's, all untranslated. Now I don't speak Japanese. Or read Japanese. Or even remotely understand Japanese. So what I'm going to do for your entertainment? I am going to attempt to tell you what is going on in these DJ's just by looking at the pictures!

This ought to be interesting.

DJ 1: I'll start with the cover. There's a very clueless looking Touya sitting on a park bench while a very sinister looking Hikaru holds a book over his head. I predict Hikaru is the seme. Let's find out. Okay, what's going on. The first few pages are talking. And more talking. And more talking. Let's skip this part since there's no kissing or nakedness. You can tell what I'm interested in.

Then Hikaru and Touya are pirates (wtf?). Hikaru is the captain (there's a doomed ship) and wants Touya, who seems to be a prisoner, to be the cabin boy. I recently got the book Sodomy in the Pirate Tradition. You can bet where my mind went . Now Hikaru and Touya are Go playing pirates and Sai has shown up in his penis hat Heian outfit. Hikaru seems to have won with the help of Sai and then somehow manages to fall upon Touya even though they were both sitting down. Yaoi physics at work. This flusters Touya who is now writing a letter for some reason. There are some meaningful looks traded. Then Hikaru lets Touya go and mopes after him.

Next part is a return to modern day. Hikaru is yelling. Touya is yelling. This is nothing new. Chibis making out (that's different), though I think that is one of Touya's memories. Now they are both life sized and making out on the stairs. I hope they don't lay down since making out on stairs will kill your back. Not that I know anything about that *cough*. Moving along, Hikaru is really aggressive in this. I guessed right about the seme part. Oops. Someone figured out they were together. I guess that was the punchline.

Last part starts off with Hikaru kissing Touya. I approve already. The artwork in this last part is gorgeous. Touya is embarrassed and Hikaru looks like a cat that got into the cream. There's more kissing and hugging. That seems to be the end. Random pictures and artwork including pirate Touya chained up. Then we have the back cover where Touya is looking at a Playboy magazine while Hikaru yells. o_O

DJ 2: Generic cover with typical Hikaru no Go bad taste in fashion. Starts off with Hikaru waiting for Touya. Touya seems surprised by this. There's talking as they walk. Suddenly some chick shows up and hands Touya... what is she handing Touya? Cigarettes? No, I think it's a diary. Hikaru doesn't seem too pleased with that. They wind up at Hikaru's house for some unknown reason. Touya and Hikaru argue, then play Go, and then argue some more.

Touya starts taking off his clothes! Wheee! Oh wait, he's just changing into his PJ's. Damn those teasing writers! There an argument over the diary and Hikaru is being a sulky bastard and wearing his clothes to bed. WTF? I hope he at least took his shoes off. They play more Go, glares o' death are exchanged (It's like flowers and candy! Only not!), and more arguing. Then they go to bed with Touya on the floor. Only neither seems to be sleeping so they talk some more. Hikaru is still being a bastard. Then he gets out of bed and grabs Touya's shoulder. Touya doesn't seem happy with that and there's more yelling. Then Hikaru is hugging... and we have kissing! Hikaru freaks out and Touya takes the initiative. GO TOUYA! More kissing and then it's naked time! Go for the gold Touya! Then it's the next day and I assume they've got things figured out. Though they still argue and Touya is now the one looking sulky. Back cover is same as front in that it's generic as crap.

DJ 3: This is a thick one and appears to be a Heian era DJ since Touya is wearing a penis hat. Child-molester-san Ogata-sensei is there and then a tree explodes, or something. It appears fox looking demons are attacking. Or not because the fox demons morph into two tiny fox Sais that run around. Then omnyoji Touya goes after a demon that is after Hikaru. Hikaru and Touya talk and argue while little fox Sais run around some more. They go to the tree (Izumi is there as well with a bow and arrow, but he doesn't seem to be doing much) where something important appears to be happening, but I have no idea what that might be. Magic is performed. Something is going on with Ogata-sensei.

Later on, there is drinking and the tree appears again. Maybe it's a magic tree. Who knows? Ogata and Touya talk. More eating and talking, this time between Izumi and Hikaru. Touya can't sleep and goes to look at the tree again while Ogata-sensei looks like the child molester he is and HOLY CRAP HE'S MAKING THE MOVES ON TOUYA. Whoa. Not what I expected to happen. While they are "together" Touya is thinking about Hikaru and tiny fox Sais. More talking between Child-molester-san and Touya. Then it's the next day.

Izumi and Hikaru talking. Touya and Hikaru talking. The absolute cutest image of tiny fox Sai and rice balls. Ogata returns and there is so... much...TALKING. I have no earthly idea what's going on. Magic appears, then Hikaru and Touya are arguing while Child-molester-san is trying not to laugh. More magic and then Hikaru runs into the forest after one of the tiny fox Sais. Two to one something dark and dangerous (maybe a tree?) lurks in the forest. If this were a movie there would be threatening music at this point. Its suddenly nightime and Sai appears. Like full grown human Sai who obviously has a house in the deep, dark woods. Hikaru and Sai talk about something that upsets Hikaru.

Meanwhile, back at Child-molester-san's place, Ogata-sensei and Touya are talking. Then Ogata-sensei is making the moves on Touya again, only this time he doesn't seem to be as enthused about the whole deal. Other tiny fox Sai grabs a Go board and bowls before it goes too far and then starts emitting hearts, which is really, really disturbing. Oh wait! Tiny fox Sai is playing Go with Ogata-sensei. That's cute. Though I'd watch his hands if I were you tiny fox Sai. We've already seen he'll go after people way too young for him. No one is safe.

Back to regular Sai's house where Hikaru is sulking and Sai is playing Go against the other tiny fox Sai. Then stuff gets confusing and I have no idea where anyone is. The whole group winds up together. There is more talking. There's that tree again. Evilness (depicted as swirley screentone) appears. Touya protects Hikaru who is now about to do something stupid. This isn't as OOC as I first thought. Again something about the tree and Child-molester-san and Touya start walking among the branches. More evil swirlies and I think the tree dies. It is no more. It is a dead tree. Then Hikaru looks like he's about to cry and is hugging Touya. Go Hikaru! Hikaru passes out and the next thing we know is he's hungry. While Hikaru is stuffing his face, Touya is planting a new tree. He and Ogata speak for a while and I think Child-molester-san tells him good-bye. That would be sweet if it wasn't so incredibly disturbing. Then Hikaru and the two tiny fox Sais show up and it's the end.

I think that's enough Hikaru no Go DJ descriptions for tonight. I haven't even put a dent in this stack. Expect more at a later date.

I will be away from my computer for several days over the Christmas holidays. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to everyone!

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: It's NAKED TIME!
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On Thursday, December 16, 2004 at 08:12 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

And now, a pictorial review of my lunch break on Wed. It all began when I had to leave work to head down to the store.



Now in order to get into the store I had to make a left turn at an intersection without a stoplight but where people on either side to me had HUGE STOP SIGNS. Below is how things should work if everyone had BRAINS.



As you can imagine, things didn't work out like that. So below is a representation of how the intersection really looked.



Needless to say, I was not pleased by the people who almost hit my car through their sheer stupidity.



While waiting for these morons (who were blocking traffic and keeping me from getting my PAIN KILLERS), I came up with possible ways these twits got their licenses.







However, I do know where they didn't get their licenses from.



And we all know where morons wind up, don't we?



THE END.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Toboggan Run
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On Saturday, December 11, 2004 at 07:42 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Is it just me, or are the spammers on Yahoo!Groups getting smarter?

For those of you who don't know, I run Tsaiko's World over on Yahoo!Groups. It's where I post original stuff that I may publish some day or original stuff I just need comments/criticism on before I continue with it. So basically, it's a feedback list. As you can see, it's very, very low volume. One of the things about this list is that you have to get moderator (that's me!) approval before you get on this list.

I do this for a couple reasons. One, I want the list to be rather low and full of people I know are not going to repost what I put up there around. Two, I want to keep spammers off of the list. At the time of the list's creation there was a bad problem with people joining a list for a few seconds, spamming the crap out of the members, and then getting banned or leaving. There were something like three or four coming in a day on some of the lists I'm on. Worse, you couldn't tell they were SPAM immediately because they were coming from the list. Then spammers started uploading viruses to the group's documents and sending spam to the list instructing people to "download this .zip file." Or someone on the list would get a virus and it would cause their computer to spam the list. Imagine if the computer in question was the moderator and the subject line was "Very important message!" Yeah, badness all around.

Well, now the spammer's have gotten smarter. In particular spammers who are using the ending with this site/. What they do is ask first to be added to your list. Then they SPAM IT. Now I'm as much for understanding and trying to help refugees as the next person. However, this stuff does not belong on my personal writing list. The first time someone using an email from that sight tried to join, I approved it because I thought I recognized the address. Then I promptly removed them when the spammed it. Someone (possibly the same someone) tried to join again. No fucking way. Find some other group of people to preach to.

Anyway, heads up to other owners of other Yahoo!Groups (geez, I almost typed eGroups. I'm showing my age. Yahoo!Groups hasn't been eGroups for years). These people are annoying as sin and sneaky too.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Censorzille: You can't say that on the internet
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On Monday, December 6, 2004 at 07:48 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Alright people. Some time ago I picked up a copy of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. I wasn't able to play it very much before NaNo came and swallowed my life. Sunday I decided to pick it back up and see what kind of game it really was now that I had time and energy to devote to it. There will be SPOILERS FOR THE GAME AHEAD.

In my humble opinion, do not ever, ever, ever get this game. If you feel the need to see just how bad this game can be at times, I recommend getting the cheapest used copy you can find. Do not buy it new. You'll only give these people money and then they'll think turning out games that pay more attention to the graphics than to the game play is a good idea. It's not. This game is proof of that.

To start off with, there's the battle system. Despite sitting through the long and boring explanation of how the battle system works three times I still can't tell you any of the details. It's overly complex and convoluted. There's several guages that you are supposed to keep track of, but really all they do is get in the way of you attempting to keep track of who's dying and needs to be healed. Everything is done in real time. You spend half the battle attacking the enemies and the other half attacking air. Once you've shown the oxygen molecules who's boss, you then have to turn around and actually attack the enemy who you accidentally ran past the first time.

Once your fury guage (or one of the damn guages) gets too full or not full enough, you can't attack any more. So you get the option of running around dodging and mashing the X button until you can attack again. At a certain point enemies block your attacks which is extremely annoying. When you are fighting with other characters it's worse because everyone gets in everyone else's way and I can never be sure if I'm hitting the enemies or my own people. I hope like Hell you can't hit your own people.

Not that it matters much considering two of my three people are dead. I went and bought the little charm things that were supposed to bring them back to life. I gave them to the people and they are still dead. I am completely baffled how to get these people to come back to life. I'm hoping that next time I battle they will magically return to the living, but my hopes aren't too high. It's stupid that people can only be resurrected during battle. Seems like that would usually lead to them getting killed off again rather quickly. However, given how moronic most of the other parts of this game are, I'm betting that is the case.

As annoying as the battle system, is the actual game play. For the first part of the game you are given very little chance to explore. Instead, you are led from one little plot point to another like a child being lead by the hand. There are also large chunks of the game where you don't fight anything, and unlike Xenosaga, you aren't even entertained by ridiculously long FMVs. Instead you are forced to repeatedly click the X button through screen after screen of incredibly trite dialogue. I don't know about you, but my idea of fun interaction is not sitting through horribly bad and redundant dialogue that I don't even have the option of skipping.

Let's not even talk about the name dropping. Oh dear God the name dropping. Every four words is in either red or blue that indicating you can look it up in the game's dictionary. Normally this would be fine, but the game creators have decided that not only are people morons, but that they shouldn't be able to figure things out as the game moves a long. Oh no. It should all be explained in the dictionary. So not only to you have such difficult concepts as "copper" and "ore" defined for you, but you also have huge chunks of information that you have no hope of keeping track of explained way before you encounter anything about it in the game.

In fact, reading the dictionary actually spoiled one of the main plot points in the game for me. How? In the game, the evil V-something aliens have attacked an outpost and a ship. I was already speculating that these aliens were specifically after the main character for I am wise in the ways of video games. Sure enough Cliff shows up and there are giant hints that the V-something aliens are after Fayt for the same reason that the leader of some resistance group wants to see him. It's all very mysterious. So I'm reading through the dictionary trying to get a handle on all these random terms the characters have been throwing around when I come across an entry for a name I don't recognize. It's the leader of the resistance group who has barely been hinted at, and in her entry is the exact reason why she wants to see Fayt. Thank you game, you managed to completely suck out all the mystery of the one part that was vaguely interesting in this game.

I was completely not impressed with the characters until Cliff, blonde guy in black leather, showed up. Finally, a character that doesn't annoy the crap out of me (although I do have to admit Fayt gets better as the game moves along (that is when Sophia isn't around)). Then Cliff made the mistake of opening his mouth. Oh no. No. No character should sound like a reject Sylvester Stallone. I feel like I'm watching the screwed up version of Rambo. I was hoping that maybe Cliff would be the strong silent type, but no such luck. This guy will not shut up and it drives me up the wall. Especially when, like most of the characters, he repeats back the bleeding obvious. The game makers must have thought we lack the sense god gave a turnip.

Finally, let us talk about the awful sound quality of the game. I'm talking about the fact that most of the time the background music is just barely softer than the people speaking. The character's voices (with the exception of Cliff) will get softer until suddenly, they get loud again. This happens several times in the game.

I cannot emphasize this enough: do not buy this game. You are wasting your money. The only good thing about this game are the graphics, the dragons, and the pretty guys. Yet the prospect of yaoi isn't enough to save this title for me. Run away from Star Ocean: Till the end of time. RUN FAR, FAR AWAY.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Earth Observatory: Natural Disasters
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On Monday, October 25, 2004 at 08:01 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Do you know what happens in one week? DO YOU? NaNoWriMo starts in one week. That's right. In seven days the insanity shall start again. And you know what? I AM NOT READY! I AM NOT READY AT ALL! OH GOD WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF EVERY YEAR? WHY?!?! WHAT AM I THINKING? AM I EVEN THINKING? NO! OF COURSE NOT! ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGH!

Don't anyone die. I mean it. Nobody die. Nobody get pregnant or pop out a kid. No one get married. No weddings. No engagements. No dumping significant others. Do not plan on visiting me. Do not expect me to visit you (except for Rose who is special) at all. Regularly scheduled dinners? They may or may not happen. For one month my life goes spazzy (and I go absolutely nuts) in order to write a novel. All I ask is for this one month. So nobody do ANYTHING.

Why? Why do I do this?

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Cotton Eye Joe - Flying lawnmower
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On Saturday, October 23, 2004 at 04:23 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

It's time for another edition of... THOSE CRAZY REFERRERS!

sailor moon at hogwarts dress up game:There's a game? It wouldn't surprise me if this was a fanfic. But a game? Who would want to put that much effort into something that sounds so... shitty?

Squall and Rinoa having pleasurable sex: As opposed to all the times they don't have pleasurable sex? No wonder Squall leaves her for his father...

puppy kibble nude: I have no words.

Steve Irwin adult fanfiction: AHHHHHHHH! Go far, far away from my blog. Do not come here no more. EVER.

In Digimon who did Matt have a sex with: Weeeeeeeell. It depends on who's fanfic you're reading. Alas, nothing happens in the actual series no matter how much we may cheer for him and Tai to start going at it right on screen. Of course, maybe you should talk to the person who's looking for Fanfiction of Matt Pregnant by Tai only.

riku sora bladder: WTF? Are they sharing and one needs to pee so they need it back?

dancing smurf blow job and i feel good: There are some strange, sick people out there and they are hitting my webpage. As Shoi says sometimes you have to start wondering not about the people doing these searches but what you've got on your page that are leading these people here.

digimon chocolate kari davis bra: Okay, I'm a little lost here. Are you looking for a chocolate digimon bra for kari? For Davis? Kari wearing a chocolate Davis bra? Davis wearing a chococlate bra of Kari? Davis wearing a bra and eating chocolate? Someone please explain...

is there a fan fiction of riku and sora being yaoi from kingdom hearts?: Oh yea of little faith. I can assure you that there is lots and lots of hot Riku/Sora action. Come to the dark side and see!

Disappearing Acts refrigerator sex scene pics: Okay, the sheer idea of a refrigerator attempting to have sex is enough to make me spaz.

coming of age ceremony turn a gundam sex: Wait, wait, wait. So there was this coming of age ceremony and then the gundam turned... sex? Do you mean gay? Do did the Gundam have sex. Because scarily enough, I've read the Gundam (like the actual machine) having sex. It was enough to guarentee that I am never reading another fic like that again.

More about Sailor Tailmon: Sailor Tailmon? SAILOR TAILMON? Back away from the fanfics and leave the crossovers alone.

national geographic quatre fanfic NC-17: And for some reason I am the only site that comes up. I can't imagine why...

occult goverment owl: See? A search engine hit that celebrates Halloween and the American elections all in one!

quartz cock: I can only assume they mispelled "rock." If they didn't I sure can't help them. What would you do with a quartz cock? Besides the obvious I mean. Maybe use it as a decorative accent piece in your living room? "Don't you just love this new statuette Aunt Bertha? I think it really makes the room."

Digimon; about Adult Digidestined; why is Kari have Babies: Well, I don't usually explain the birds and the bees to people but I will make an exception for you. You see, when someone is female and has a uterus and manage to get a hold of some sperm...

Curse of the were slut doujinshi: Curse of the... were slut? Does this person turn into a slut only during the full moon? Or does this mean that someone is writing about were-beasts being sluts? Because I hate to tell you, but someone has already done it.