Katana Etiquette

In ninja/samurai battles, it is considered polite to wait after every attack for the trees around you to slowly slide apart and fall down? Everybody seems to do it.

Regarding the situation with Lynsey, as bizarre as it is, I honestly had very little to do with it. If you're looking for people to blame, however...

Only 8 days of school left, and only 2 of actual class. This semester has been something of an academic nightmare for me for a variety of reasons, and I will be very glad to leave it all behind. Granted, there are a few things that I will miss from UP: games of Starcraft and Splinter Cell, a bunch of the people that I live with, and a few professors. Overall, however, I will be perfectly satisfied if the next time I set foot on this campus after this semester is Becky's graduation in 2005.

PAX

Does this not look awesome?

Resident Life
To those of you who live in college dorms, I pose a question. Do you often have people talking on the phone in the hallways, and it's obvious that the conversation is not going well? I ask because there are two or three people who live near me who apparently have relationship problems or something. He'll be on the phone outside my door, and they'll be speaking in guarded tones, then all of a sudden, "What? Are you laughing? Do you think this is funny? It's not funny, damn it! What the fuck! (slams his fist into the wall outside my door, causing the mirror to rattle) Fuck you!" And so on for a minute or two, then he'll hang up angrily and go back to his room. Is this uncommon?

Easter + Catholics = weird
Easter used to be a fairly straightforward holiday, both in concept and execution. However, when Catholics enter the equation, things get weird. As with many things, actually. It's ironic that spending so much time in close proximity to them lowers my opinion of Catholics in general (not necessarily Catholicism, however). They're just incredibly devout and pious about the most obscure things and they slack off on the most common things. Am I the only one who notices this pattern?

Actually, Easter was fun. I was home all weekend (we got Good Friday off), so today me and the family took off to my aunt's house in senic Camas, Washington. To be honest, I don't like Washington much. Even though I've been doing it for years, I still hate driving around Vancouver and the surrounding area. The roads are twisty and irregular, and there's not really a direct way to get anywhere from anywhere else. I feel the same way about the west side of Portland, too. Growing up in the east side probably spoiled me; the nice square blocks and informative house numbers are just not a system most cities feel like executing.

I blew through Clan of the Cave Bear's 400 pages in about four days. The book was really good, and it was obvious that Jean Auel knew what she was talking about. It was especially noticable when she was discussing medicine and herbs, a topic which came up a lot considering the main character's status as "medicine woman." There was a bit of a feminist tone to a few sections of the book, but it wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. I planned to go on to Borderlands of Science next, but turns out that it's not really a book to read through cover to cover. Rather, it's most interesting to go to the particular sections that interest you: spaceflight, chemisty, relativity, whatever. Instead, Hart's Hope. We'll see.

Wartime Emergency Powers Act
I wish I had one of those. Despite my lack of such emergency powers, however, I found this link quite interesting. Even though I'm depressed that Star Trek has become so dumb, a lot of the old-school stuff is still quite enjoyable. This particular bit of backstory is something that wasn't ever really discussed, so it's cool to see such an obscure area of the canon given such detailed, and qualified, attention.

Easter is coming up, which I know means just everything to most of you out in readerland. However, one of the advantages in attending a Catholic school is that they feel it's necessary to give us Good Friday off (even if Labor Day wasn't quite "good" enough for them). That means that I get an extra day to relax before putting the final burst of effort out to get me through the end of the semester. Yay.

I think quite possibly the only good thing about cybersex is that we occasionally get little tasty morsels like this .

I was recently discussing the Xbox with a friend when another guy I thought I knew pretty well comes up and says, "Dude, you have an Xbox? We need to get Linux on that!" I just about gagged on my Dr. Pepper. I knew those people existed, but I was quite disturbed to learn that I had been close to their polluting essence for almost a year! It's disgusting. Naturally, he didn't find this Penny Arcade comic too humorous. Man, I've got to be more careful who I'm talking to. Background checks or something, I don't know.

Strike Attack!
Yeah, it's been awhile. I'm gonna try to post at least three times a week from now on; this "whenver-I-feel-like-it" timing just isn't working out for me.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is an awesome, awesome game, both single and multiplayer. Solo gaming hasn't really changed a whole lot from the original, with the exception of things like half split jumps, SWAT turns, and whistling. Multiplayer, though, is elysium. Even though it's only 2 v 2, the extreme detail of the maps and the myriad special abilities of both spy and mercenary make every game a tension-filled adrenaline rush that normal deathmatch can't even touch. I've played in some 4 player LAN matches, which is doubly awesome. The game is so worth the $39.99 it sickens me.

Since Andy's Werewolf game has sort of run its course, I think I'm gonna start up my own campaign using the SpyCraft rules in my own setting. I've had those books for over a year, and I really want to get around to using them at some point. Buying $70 worth of gaming material and never using it is not cool, not at all. Even though SpyCraft is d20, and most of you know my ambivalence toward that system has been fairly pronounced recently. Still, the game manages to simultaneously promote the ambience of James Bond, Tom Clancy, and Deus Ex, combining them together into a complete-feeling whole. I look forward to giving it a try.

Last weekend was "Weekend on the Bluff," where the helpless and blase' pre-freshmen come to check out campus, and spend the night in their host dorm (a duty I scarcely remember shrugging off, I think I was playing StarCraft). Though I have little to say about the pre-frosh, I do think it's downright hilarious how badly our school misrepresented itself when they were here. Saturday was nice and warm, so there were people out on the quad playing football and frisbee, lots of girls were out sunbathing, we had a concert with a picnic dinner, and things like that. You never see stuff like that during the average week here. Even though my attitude about this place has gotten a lot better these past few weeks, its still quite obvious to me that our school is never that fun.