bloom triggers, screwdriver shots, and EC (aka I didn't really sleep this weekend)

I was planning to get a lot more done during this spring break, honestly. But! my friend here, Mr. Fun, decided that he'd take control and take me for a pretty lol ride. It started Thursday night when I headed over to Hellmonkey's house to hang out with some incoming guests, Jiyuna and Veteru. When I got there, I wasn't surprised to see that Hellmonkey wasn't even home and Ben was taking out the trash. I ended up just chilling there till Xie (James) came over and the three of us mashed on Guilty Gear till Ben had to go pick the two up from John Wayne Airport. When they got back to the apartment, we mashed some more Guilty Gear then went over to In-N-Out, as requested by Jiyuna. I decided to ride solo with Ben, cause honestly my first impressions of them both weren't the greatest lol. Jiyuna was your typical loud, obnoxious white guy from NJ, full-on with his "wudders" and "cahs", and full of himself. Veteru wasn't loud or obnoxious, but something about his mustache irked me. I thought I had seen him before, but what the hell I don't remember a mustache. Either way we went to get In-N-Out and I lol'd pretty hard when Ben was reaching for some soda and the girl next to him was completely shit-faced drunk and she couldn't put the cap on her fountain drink. Hellmonkey was back by the time we made it home and we all mashed even more Guilty Gear. At this point I got to see Veteru's Sol in action, and it's pretty damn fleshed out. I discussed this with JP Ken on the way back today: Veteru has full control of his character and plays it the way he wants to play it. He is extremely versed on frame data and all the gimmicks available at his disposal. At heart, he is just a smart player. Jiyuna, on the other hand, came as a bit of a surprise to me. He doesn't play Guilty Gear (and it really shows), but his yomi level was still higher than mine. He has a greater ability to recognize patterns, abuse minor technical techniques, and had a pretty solid defense overall (he spent A LOT of meter faultless defending). In the end, I still kicked his ass for free because I had the combos and footsies that he didn't. HOWEVER, if he actually put the time into playing the game I think he could be pretty good. Just saying.

So I wake up the next day and get some Pho with everyone. At this point in time, I got to know both Jiyuna and Veteru better, and they're both super chill. Jiyuna, being the retard joker that he is, got peer pressured into buying the avocado shake at that Pho place. We always joke about that shit, but noone ever actually wanted to spend four bucks for something that was probably going to taste nasty as fuck. As soon as he ordered it, the waiter looked back at the kitchen with an "lol" look on his face. I guess they put it on the menu as a joke too? The best part was when Jiyuna stopped the waiter from moving to the next person: "oh yo wait, lemme get some boba in that too". It ended up being pretty good (or so he says). 

avocado fucking smoothie. grats.

We head back and mash on HnK and GG some more while we wait for San Diego to get up to our place with the Blazblue setup. This whole time, Jiyuna kept yelling something about this "shotokan kid" that he was going to pulverize for being late to the gathering. I had no idea who the fuck he was talking about till I finally put two and two together. "Shotokan" was "SHTKN" aka KEVIN from San Diego rofl. I had totally forgotten that his real handle was shotokan and not shitkin, since nobody ever calls him by the correct name anyways. At this point in time, I become super fucking tired and fall asleep on Ben's bed and wake up with San Diego around. I got to see (drunk) Jiyuna mash some emo Ragna and Veteru beast with his. However, when pulsr sat down, I had a feeling that it was going to be over. Man v-13 is fucking stupid lol, I don't think anyone beat Matt for a long time before he decided to give up his throne. At some point half of us decide to go to Ralphs for dinner. Mind you, Jiyuna is drunk as fuck at this point, and we go anyways. He makes a ruckus cause Ben didn't let him use the Ralphs card to save two bucks on his $13.00 bottle of orange Svedka. TGS and I both buy sandwiches and everyone else got chicken (for Black Chris) and frozen pizzas. The rest of the night was pretty awesome and I ended up staying up till 5AM after Hellmonkey had taught me a few Noel Vermillion combos (yes, I am going to be playing Noel) before going to sleep. Everyone else had a long day on Saturday at Aksys to record the tutorial videos for Blazblue. 

I ended up not going to the Aksys thing (since I barely play Blazblue), so I just stayed home and celebrated my mom's birthday dinner. I heard, however, that a lot of crazy shit happened but I guess I can't really say since we're technically not allowed to talk about anything that happened there lol.  ANYWAYS... Around noon the next day, I drove back to Hellmonkey's place and we went to the Pho place (again). Apparently, while I was gone on Saturday, Veteru and Jiyuna went twice again, making this the fourth visit. I guess they don't have any fucking Pho on the East Coast. Hellmonkey, JP Ken, and I were like: "fuck that" and drove to Shin-sen-gumi for some legit ramen. JP Ken ended up eating three bowls. Jesus fucking christ, he's like 6ft and 150 lbs. We head back to the apartment just in time to see pulsr, deci, purrin, and shtkn arrive. After lunch, most of the San Diego crew decided that they wanted to go the Street Fighter 4 bar fights in Pasadena. I was too lazy to drive, and their car was already full. We were all hoping that Kevin would leave the Blazblue setup for us to play, but he was being lazy and took it with him (party pooper!). We were going back and forth trying to decide if we wanted to go to the bar fights or Denjin or even Arcade Infinity. In the end we all just went back to Ralphs while Veteru cooked his 2lb bag of shrimp that he bought earlier (wtf? lol). Jiyuna had a drink or two, so he was already kinda tipsy. At the checkout line, there was this kinda cute girl with braces that kept looking at Jiyuna. Then she's all like: "omg you sound just like my friend Chad". Of course, Jiyuna replies, "oh yea? Well I'm cooler than Chad." lawl. She then tries to make small conversation as Hellmonkey, Ben, and I fought over who would carry the packs of soda back home. We then walk home and start drinking. I'm not sure when it started getting wacky, but damn Hellmonkey was all giddy pretty early on, laughing at like everything ever. Jiyuna was going off on the history of alcohol and something about reading about vodka on wikipedia. Apparently the word "vodka" means "nothingness" in Russian, and the best vodkas are supposed to taste like nothing. We eat some of Gina's pizza (really fucking good) from near the UCI campus and take a few more shots. Yea. Before we noticed, we were like: hey where the fuck is David? When we checked he had already passed out, face-down on his bed. Then Jiyuna starts going off about how he wants to go back to Ralphs to see his girlfriend or to the casino where he plans to win 4000 bucks. Eventually he convinces everyone to go back to Ralphs and he's drunk as fuck as he decides to buy a pack of pot stickers and cigars (he doesn't even smoke). We get back, mash some more Guilty Gear, then before we know it the hand hits 11PM. I had already promised JP Ken that I'd drive him back before midnight, so I wished Jiyuna and Veteru a warm farewell and we departed. By the time I arrived at UCR, the alcohol had already worn off (lol) and I drop JP Ken off. I go to get some gas and this crazy black lady kept talking to me saying that she woke up from a coma and that she was Janet Jackson and the "Janet Jackson" right now was using her name without permission. Whatever, I gave her a dollar and said I was gonna go to the bathroom. As she started to walk away I just turned around and got back in the car then drove the fuck out of the gas station.

The moral of this story is: don't sit on the chairs in Hellmonkey's apartment because they break really easily.

TANGENT GUN -----> PEW PEW ----------------------->

- I got the chance to watch a few episodes of anime between all of this craziness. 

- Queen's Blade for starters is pretty lol. I don't know if I could watch a whole season of this stuff, cause it is literally just like a softcore hentai anime. No real plot, just lots of oppai, panties, big weapons, oppai, and famous voice actors.

- I watched the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009), and I must say that I very much like the direction. Some part of me was a bit shocked at how much humor they put in, but at the same time I feel like it's very appropriate for this series. The animation is great, but the voice actors sort of bother me ONLY because it was like: oh hey that's Lockon Strat- I mean ROY MUSTANG. That's Kati Mannequi- OH I mean ENVY. That's Allelujah- wait! NO! THAT'S KIMBLEE. FUCK lol. Another thing I'd like to comment on is that having seen the other series actually makes this viewing a lot more rich. Behind all those smiles and jokes is a truly sad story, and when I saw Maes Hughes again I, seriously, almost started tearing up. That has got to be one of the saddest character deaths in the history of manga and anime (sorry if I spoiled stuff for people who haven't seen or read the manga). LASTLY, that opera/choir music when Edward got pissed off is hype.

- Other animes coming up: Sengoku BASARA, Basquash!, Guin Saga, Eden of the East, and Senjou no Valkyria.

- I have class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Fridays now, just in case anyone was wondering.

- I am going to play Noel Vermillion in Blazblue. Fuck the 6A > (6C xx BC)xN loop.

More serious and lol articles coming soon. Till then, mash harder!