lifestyles (of the lazy and fat)

Life moves on. My motivation, however, is not moving with it. I've learned that working and schooling simultaneously is a very viable reason to allow whining/bitching/sadfacing. When the weekend finally rises on the horizons, I am so facking tired that I don't even feel like going out, let alone sitting on my ass to write in a blog about nothing. And you will probably hear these complaints coming out of my sorry ass for an entire year to come.

I was about to write something nasty about my classmates, but I'll save that for another time. But for a chuckle, I guess I could let you know that for my speech class a guy decided to talk about how his online dating experience wasn't working so well. This is a lesson: don't homeschool your kids.

Burnt Toast: Guilty Gear Accent Core!

So two Saturdays ago, Black Chris (aka RaZyRbYrN or however the fuck you spell it) hosted our first ever SoCal Burnt Toast tourney in Walnut. For those who are unenlightened, the name Burnt Toast pays homage to the original West Toast, which was hosted years ago at the Family Fun Arcade. I don't really practice Guilty Gear like I used to, but I still try to watch some videos to see some of the new techniques and matchup nuances that happen over in Japan. The same can be said about most of SoCal though - none of us really play the game consistently anymore and we are all sloppy as hell now. It doesn't help that Blazblue really ruined a lot of players' strict habits that they had honed through Guilty Gear, where holding UP is not an option. Regardless, it was time to see how much I had improved over the past two years.

Round 1: Brett (The Sadder) playing Johnny

Brett is severely out of practice, so I sorta just do my thing and he doesn't really find a way in. In all honesty, I think Brett could be a pretty good GG player if he kept at it. His knowledge of the cast is pretty well-informed, so he has at least that in his side. During casuals later he sorta figured out how to play against Venom.

Round 2: Black Chris (RazyrByrn) playing Zappa

I think Chris and I have played this matchup a lot more than I've played ANY match in SoCal. We both know what we want to go for, but I usually come up on top because Chris isn't as aggressive as he should be in this matchup (IMO). He manages to take the first game thanks to tight play on his part, but I end up taking the next two after playing a bit more patiently. Reckless ball summoning is what'll get you killed here (or in any matchup really), but two mistakes and you're going to have Raou on your ass. What's weird is that Chris has a real hard time against me, yet in Japan they rate Zappa as being greatly favored against Venom. Weird.

Round 3: Mike Z playing Potemkin

Mike Z is out of practice, but that doesn't mean he's a pushover. As a person who is so technically immersed in all of the games that he plays, you can expect a lot of that knowledge and experience to re-seize his control systems. The matches were close, and in all honesty, I should have been able to beat him. Mike Z likes to do things on wakeup. It isn't a very good strategy, but it works for him, and this is America. To punish this, I like to set up very meaty ball formations to try and hit him out of his backdashes. Where I fail is in three places vs Mike: not remembering the Pot matchup, the inability to read his mixup, and missing my air-to-ground links. These three things combined give Potemkin enough leverage to kill me. It came down to the very last round where I threw it away by iad j.H into Pot's fat hitbox and landed short of my blockstring. Being close to Potemkin is a bad thing.

Round 4: Andrew (Dr. Stormlocke) playing Robo-Ky

Strom has always been good at this game. There isn't much to say. My win ratio vs Storm is probably 30% because he understands Guilty Gear habits well and punishes me accordingly. Some furious matches, and I will say that a few rounds we played I locked him out pretty hard. It all came down to me not blocking Robo-Ky's 5D though. Americaaa.

I ended up getting 5th place. Meh. Better than before, but I know I can do better.

Magic the Gathering: Elder Dragon Highlander!

I'm all for fun and retarded formats. This time around, I'm playing in a format that has been growing at a rapid pace.

Just a little blurb about EDH - it is a 100-card format much like Highlander. You pick a legendary creature to be your general and you may only play cards of your general's colors in your deck. You may also only have one of each card, barring basic lands. The interesting part of the format is that your general begins in the command zone; you may play your general from there at any time in the game, and return it to the command zone when it dies. That said, you want to build a strategy around your general or use a general that compliments a strategy, which creates a lot of fun interactions and cool combos.

Due to the nature of Highlander formats, games can be ended unpredictably and swiftly. A timely Armageddon or Warp World can really shake things up. But hey, that's what makes the format wild and fun. Politics are more important than how good your deck is to win, but honestly, winning isn't even that important. It's more about having a good time!

My current three generals are:

Xiahou Dun is my favorite (and subsequently a fully pimped-out deck). The deck is decent in 1v1 and pretty strong in multiplayer. By abusing recursion effects, you can constantly "witness" back cards to wrath the board, tutor for mana acceleration, and ultimately drain everyone's life totals.

Ghost Council is my multiplayer general of choice because he is built around sweeping and token generation. Xiahou Dun's main weakness is dealing with problematic artifacts and enchantments - both of which Ghost Council is adept at. By using enchantment-based token generators, I can wrath the board, save Ghost Council, and still continue my beatdown. Orzhov is definitely my favorite combination of colors.

Captain Sisay is a powerhouse for 1v1. At first I built her cause I thought she'd be a great toolbox deck, but I end up just tutoring for the same things, in the same order, every game. In the end she is a very linear deck with clear answers and an even clearer gameplan. Get Gaddock Teeg, get Hokori, get Gaea's Cradle, get Kamahl, get Crovax, blow up their lands, profit. I usually don't bring her out unless there's someone I really want to destroy. I would consider her on the A-tier of generals, right behind decks like Arcum Daggson, Rofellos, and Vendilion Clique.

I plan on building one more, but I'm not sure what yet. The problem is that all of my favorite colors splash into each other, meaning I'll have a lot of redundant decklists. I love board control, so that automatically means I'm in white or black. I might try a mono-red list like Akroma or Ashling. We'll see :)

Anime 2010: What am I watching?

Nothing spectacular really:

-Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

-Kimi no Todoke

-So Ra No Wo To

-Ladies versus Butlers!

-Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn

Of these, I like So Ra No Wo To and FMA the best. Looking forward to Gundam Unicorn. Also, the Gurren Lagann movies are extremly hype.

Closing Out: Some Pics for You!

Apparently this combo is worth a $40 buyout.

My new awesome Eva 02 Swiss Army Knife!!!

Thanks to pulsr, my life is now complete.

Sorry for the writing delay everyone! And my bad, the formatting on this post is all jacked up - I updated the editor halfway through the post and am too lazy to go into the HTML to fix the problems.

consistency (or lack thereof)

I feel obligated to pay my upkeeps and post on this blog every week. Lately, that willpower has been waning. I hate to sound like a little bitch, but school and work ARE really kicking my ass. So when I'm not actually tired out of my mind, I will post something meaningful here. And next time you're on the freeway asking yourself why the fuck traffic is going so slow and that the ONLY thing that could POSSIBLY cause this kind of slow down is a car on fire...well, be careful what you wish for.

Cheers.

nobody ever really quits crack (big black pimping in magic: the gathering)

Cardboard crack, anyways. I promised a long time ago that I'd tell the story about how a stupid lunch table card game changed the channels of my thought processes and, ultimately, my life, forever. And that day will still not be today. Because I am fucking tired. Because school and work are draining my life away like a hooker drains my wallet. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have back-to-back 7:30AM classes. You guessed it - fml.

Today's random little blurb that has managed to surface itself from the bubbling muck of my brain's swamp-filled crevices - a short on my epic journey #2: to pimp my decks. I've always had this obsession about pimping my storm deck. Why? I don't even know why. The concept of the archetype is just so god damn intriguing like looking down a low-cut shirt. Anyways, my idea of pimp started way back when with TES (or THE EPIC STORM - what a fucking original deck name, Bryant Cook. You're such a fucking lucksack I hope you're not reading this) and I remember getting ripped off by this guy at my card store with plugs so wide that I could put my dick through em. A whole quarter-inch diameter. He sold me a playset of MINT (you can actually smell the leaves off these babies) Japanese Mercadian Masques Brainstorms. Hawt shit. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. For a ridiculous price of *undisclosed*, he sold me a playset of MINT Japanese Time-shifted Gemstone Mines! HOLY FUCK! Back then, that's what I considered amazing pimpness. I was ONE step closer to achieving maximum Asian-ing (azn-ing? asian-ed? a's in ning?) my storm deck. Well, a week or two after that happened Wizards of the Coast R&D decided that Brainstorm was a broke ass card in Vintage and restricted the bitch pointing fingers at her head with yellow balls spinning around, meaning the price immediately went from 10 bucks a Brainstorm to 1 buck a Brainstorm. Well, three years after that happened, I don't even fucking play Gemstone Mines in my deck.

I'm going after the big fish.

Vintage and Legacy are the two prime candidates of the PIMP SLAP. Because of the lasting value of cards and that rarity of them, players are more willing to shell premium dollar to make sure they blind their opponents while playing a game of magical cards. Some cards, however, are immune to the pimp slap because the PIMP SLAP only goes as far back as Urza's Legacy (or for you non-nerd-literate folk, circa 1999). These cards are the money cards, because they are hard to find, expensive, and most of all, immune to the PIMP SLAP. They're all about the BB, the BLACK BORDER. I'm not talking about the Mississippi, I'm talking about the night-colored 10-point stroke that surrounds your magical card. You see, when a card is WHITE BORDERED, it has no protection, it's like it's naked. Disgusting and uncouth. Put on some clothes man, you're gonna give the women nightmares.

With that said, there are various levels of the BIG BLACK PIMPING:

Regular PIMP SLAP

Alright dude! It's coo, it's coo. Yo PIMP HAND is solid, I'll give you that. But guess what, it's a mothafuckin DREDGE deck. You know what that means? That means I could probably find these cards at WAL-MART. They're fucking everywhere. A real pimp knows that the TRUE GEMS are in the aged wine. Almost cool with those City of Brasses, but nice try.

AZNING PIMP SLAP

This is the LEVEL TWO PIMP SLAP A.K.A. CHING-CHONG-CHOOING. From the motherfuckin far EAST, these cards are hard as FUCK to come by. It takes some serious time and dedication to track these bitches down and shove them into your plastic SLEEVES. When you adorn your most favorite cards in a cryptic language that you can't even read, you're on your way to PIMPDOM.

MEGA PIMP SLAP

OH SHIT HOLD ON! What we got here? CHING-CHONG-CHOOAAAAHHH!! I'M BLIND! This is the MEGA PIMP SLAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When you mix the far EAST with BLING, you will destroy minds. Not only can your opponents NOT read your cards, they get shined in the face when they try to read them. Props mothafucka. Too bad your farmer boys could use some pimpin.

BIG BLACK PIMPING

It might entertain you, or it might scare you, to know that this collection of cards is probably worth more than your car. We have here, foil Japanese fetchlands, signed Guru basic lands, signed Beta dual lands, the complete Beta Power 9, several custom-altered and signed cards (including a full playset of Force of Wills by Terese Nielsen herself), signed and altered playset of Mana Drains, and Japanese foils everywhere else. In Buddhism, they would call this enlightenment. In Magic the Gathering, we call it BIG BLACK PIMPING.

So, Chris, where are you on the scale of the PIMP? In other words, how STRONG is your PIMP HAND? My PIMP HAND is mediocre. I am trying to AZN out my storm deck, and I am nearing completion. All I have left to purchase is a playset of Japanese Lion's Eye Diamonds and I'll be finished. Two years of scrounging around has gotten me all of this, and I am extremely proud of my deck. I'll show it to you guys when I complete the bitch.

If you want to watch a good anime this season, watch So Ra no Wo To. I promise you won't be disappointed even though you have no reason to believe me since I predicted Rideback was going to be good.

it's back to the grinder (new years resolutions and shit)

Well, my three month vacation has finally come to an end. I probably didn't get as much done as I'd like to have, but it was a decent run and had one helluva blast. Thinking about it only makes me want to return to China - oddly enough I feel like I belong there more than I belong here. Is that weird?

Stepping away from forbidden nostalgia, I'd like to talk about some (serious) resolutions I have for the coming year.

- Cleaning up. Seriously. I am a filthy mess. I'm not just talking about my car and room , I'm talking about my overall appearance, tousled hair and sloppy clothing. I actually want to leave a good impression on people, and my hermit clothing is in no way aiding that. The first thing to do is to revamp my wardrobe with some decent dress shirts. The upgrade from the t-shirt to a nice striped button-up is the initial step to looking presentable.

- Living healthily. Staying up late at night is a pretty good way to ruin your natural cycle. Ever notice how sleeping at 4AM and waking up in the afternoon leaves you in a zombie mode? Yea, it's cause your body isn't designed for that kind of abuse. Sleeping properly (and I mean going to bed before or at midnight) allows your body to correctly detox. It's not superstition, it's true!

- Organizing responsibilities. I'm pretty carefree about my education and sometimes even my work. It's pretty sad, because I feel like I am an extremely efficient person WHEN I AM FOCUSED. Most of the time my energy is just wasted doing absolutely nothing. I want to prioritize what's really important to me (work and school), then push them as far as they can go. In this way I am simply just maximizing my time/getting shit done ratio.

- Winning. I'm being a bit vague about this one, but I suppose this word is the best way to describe it. I am often the person who makes the compromise with the happiness of other people on my conscience. And the result is that I never truly win. I really have to reach out and push myself to obtain my goals. I'm not saying that I should kick everyone I know down into the dirt, I'm saying that I should be more aggressive about accomplishing things instead of sitting back and complacently seeing things pass me by. Too many opportunities have been lost with such an attitude. Definitely easier said than done, but I know I am capable of doing so much more. I just have to fucking do it.

- Women. I'm just going to stop right here.

Lastly, I have to end this post with a bang: Bayonetta. I can see why Famitsu would reward this game a 40 out of 40, as there are only a few very minor quirks about the game that I have to complain about. While I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a "perfect 10/10" game, I would still put it in the realm between a 9 and a 10. The action is really breathtaking and the over-the-top style is both humorous and exotic. People have put a lot of time into this game, and players have been rewarded with a sexy outcome. Don't believe me? Check this out:

Well, that's it for this week folks. Thanks for reading my bullshit for as long as you guys have!

human willpower (evangelion 2.0 - you can (not) advance)

The title of this post not only refers to the glue that holds the human race together in the face of Armageddon, using angelic abominations to combat a prophecy set eons ago; it refers to the fact that I could not wait three more months for the DVD release of the Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance.

You always hear me talk about movies and how they're so amazing and whatnot, but I will tell you right now: the Rebuild of Evangelion series so far has really set the bar for Japanese animated movies of the coming decade. The cutting is succinct and powerful; the rendering is awe-inspiring and flawless. Everything that needs to be said is said, and the omitted purposefully omitted for collateral effect. Unlike many previous anime movies I've watched, nothing covers the bases as well as these movies have. It would take VERY much to surpass this level of amazingness.

Because I did not write a review for the first Rebuild of Evangelion, I will begin with a small blurb I wrote for a review site about You Are (Not) Alone for those of you who are unfamiliar with the series (doubt it):

"Neon Genesis Evangelion was, and still is, beloved by the anime community for not only bringing forth exceptional animation and a compelling story, but for completely revitalizing anime in its slump during the early 90's. Amazing as the original was, fans were sorely disappointed with the ambiguity and elusiveness of the series' conclusion. Some people say the director was crazy; others say that the budget ran too low; and a few also claimed that the movie "End of Evangelion", was Hideaki Anno's stab at the fans for the hate he received for the original ending. Whatever the case may be, nearly a decade later, Anno returns to "rebuild" and re-imagine one of the most successful franchises in the history of Japanese animation. Without spoiling anything: to those who have never seen the original Evangelion, this movie is a perfectly fine way to get into the swing of things, as the biblical allusions and psychological tantrums are shrink-wrapped into a very understandable shell. For those who have already seen the original, you will be pleasantly surprised. Witness all of your favorite characters and moments, re-mastered, re-animated, and re-defeating angels in the final battle for humanity. The story has been abbreviated, cutting out all unnecessary fat, and highlights the most intense moments from the source anime. And while this anime to some may be nothing more than a rehash, Anno has promised the fans that the coming three movies will deviate greatly from Neon Genesis Evangelion."

Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance

SYNOPSIS

It's almost daily life at NERV headquarters for Ikari Shinji, going to school and battling angels, till the pilot of EVA 02, Asuka Langley Shikinami, arrives. Obsessed with the need to prove herself as the most independently capable pilot, Asuka pushes herself against angel attacks but begins to realize that she will need the aid of friends in times of need. Shinji and Rei begin grow closer to each other, and Rei finds an opportunity to try and reunite Shinji with his father through a family dinner. All seems to be going well until the 9th angel appears on that very day.

(Please excuse the terribad screencaps. They're from a cam rip so I had to crop out the hair from the guy sitting in front of the camera.)

REVIEW (no spoilers)

As promised by Anno, 2.0 delivers a completely revamped and revitalized story. No longer overly concerned with its Judeo-Christian lore, Rebuild instead pushes the emphasis onto the tribulations of humanity. Stepping away from rampant negative emotions and Shinji's constant self-loathing, 2.0 re-weaves the story to create previously unseen, dynamic interactions between the entire cast. The movie ran the spectrum of themes with a much greater focus on comraderie and affection - two elements weakly explored during the TV series. Anno's new effort and planning is clearly visible as he rearranges key plot points to not only accommodate a 2-hour feature length film, but to greaten their impact. No longer is this only about a story of a young boy, faced with all the troubles of the earth, drowning in remorse and self-pity; this movie introduces all the colors of the human soul.

The one word to describe Rebuild is "growth". The series learned from its mistakes of the past. The new movies do not reinforce the cryptic messages and shadowy tones of the TV series, but have instead changed to cover all of the things that the original had shied away from. Now backed by an aura of overwhelming grandeur, Rebuild of Evangelion manages to redefine anime greatness.

The DVD for Evangelion 2.0 will be out sometime in the Spring. Look forward to extremely high-quality epicness. Next, wish me luck this weekend at the SCG 5K! And finally, HAPPY BIRTHDAY VANILLA SALT! IT'S BEEN ONE WHOLE YEAR OF MY RANDOM MUSINGS!