Naginata

And the seasons, go round and round...

The Diablo 2 1.10 patch is out, sparking off what I'm sure will be another ~week long frenzy of me playing the game, then deciding once again that its trash and silently vowing never to pick it up again.

So simple, is the mind of nagi, to understand.

The Genie of the Web

All praise be to Allah for his link to the Gender Genie.

Also, ghani had the same link, but Allah happened to come up first today. So, props to the englander AND the God of radical Islam.

Anyway, a sampling of my previous posts were fed through the genie, and the genie has come back confirming that I am a man, by a ratio of 3-5 to 1. Was there ever any doubt, kufr?

A Poem

In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

-- Chiyono

.....

And here's a high-quality koan to keep you company.

Provided he makes and wins an argument about Buddhism with those who live there, any wondering monk can remain in a Zen temple. If he is defeated, he has to move on.

In a temple in the northern part of Japan two brother monks were dwelling together. The elder one was learned, but the younger one was stupid and had but one eye.

A wandering monk came and asked for lodging, properly challenging them to a debate about the sublime teachings. The elder brother, tired that day from much studying, told the younger one to take his place. "Go and request the dialogue in silence," he cautioned.

So the young monk and the stranger went to the shrine and sat down.

Shortly afterwards the traveler rose and went in to the elder brother and said: "Your young brother is a wonderful fellow. He defeated me."

"Relate the dialogue to me," said the elder one.

"Well," explained the traveler, "first I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers, representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers, living the harmonious life. Then he shook his clenched fist in my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus he won and so I have no right to remain here." With this, the traveler left.

"Where is that fellow?" asked the younger one, running in to his elder brother.

"I understand you won the debate."

"Won nothing. I'm going to beat him up."

"Tell me the subject of the debate," asked the elder one.

"Why, the minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by insinuating that I have only one eye. Since he was a stranger I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers, congratulating him that he has two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, suggesting that between us we only have three eyes. So I got mad and started to punch him, but he ran out and that ended it!"

Dors Venabili

The title, you'll note, is in keeping with "the theme" of some recent posts on the subject of drinks at corporation_01. I'd link them, but I'm a lazy sot, and hopefully this post will be short anyway.

Lemonade has returned. The Tiger Woman has struck a blow for justice. Or something.

Also, DVPepsi is back as well. At this point, all they need to do is replace 1 row of grape grog with "power" flavor of sobe, and all will be perfect.

Elar-Monay Death 2

So, the giant drink machine of doom has light sweet crude priced to move at $1.50, (was $2). While this doesn't remove my antipathy for whomever decided to cancel our lemonade order, it does somewhat change my opinion of the beverage situation.

Was: Kill everyone.
Now: Get some coffee. Then kill everyone.

Also, DVPepsi is now gone as well. Soon the only drinks they'll have will be battery acid, liquid soap, and diet sprite.

Three Things

0) We, the hearty crew of the HMS Natedogg, have now passed the 300 comment mark. Good work crew!

1)
Congratulations! You're a black velvet!


What Drink Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

2) WTF is a Black Velvet?

Uncomfortonomicron

You're gallivanting through the enchanted forest just west of nagitopia, when you encounter a rocky ridge approximately 10 meters high, and maybe thrice that measure in length. Feeling particularly fit, you decide to scale the ridge, walk the short distance across the top, and then slide down the other side. Just on the other side, you find a cave, creeping back into the ridge, but veering steeply downward for the first several meters, under the forest proper. The ceiling is low, so low that soon you're crawling on hands and knees through the cave, in icy water a few inches deep, with tree roots slapping you in the face every few feet. Soon your knees and hands are raw from the constant biting of gravel as you leave the light of the forest behind.

You've been traveling slightly downhill the whole time, the ceiling getting relatively higher and the water getting much deeper. Soon, the water is really too deep to crawl through, but the celing a few feet higher, and you stand and trodge through it, numb from the cold, but ever closer to the glow you've noticed up ahead. The water begins deepening at a much greater rate, soon rising to your waist, then your chest. You begin swimming through this underground pond as the floor drops away from your feet. The glow, it seems, is radiating from an island up ahead. Reaching the island, you struggle to climb up onto the smooth rocky dome, your cold limbs not quite so sure as they were before your journey beneath the earth. Once out of the water, you attempt to rub some life back into your hands and legs.

In the center of the miniscule island, the glow is concentrated, coalesced into a book. On the cracked leather cover, inset silver letters proclaim the title: Uncomfortonomicron. Holding the book overhead, you make your way back across the pond. When floor and celing close the gap to the point where swimming is impossible, you tuck the book inside your shirt and begin the crawl back to daylight, through the maze of roots and loose gravel. A half hour of fumbling in the dark on bloodied limbs, and finally the cave opening presents itself to you again. You move faster, desperate for fresh air and the warm touch of the sun on your face, ignoring the pain in your arms and legs, ignoring the tree roots that set themselves against your progress. Only escape matters.

Reaching the entrance of the cave, you run a few moments, clutching the Book to your chest, feeling the heat and light chase away the numbing cold from your aching limbs. Finally, sitting on a felled tree, you pull out the book again. First, you notice a subtitle you hadn't seen before: How to make Naginata uncomfortable.

You open the book to the table of contents, the thick, yellowed pages practically creaking open from age:

Chapter 1: Discussing your Salary at work: Methods and Techniques.
Chapter 2: Naginata's Lesbian Ex
Chapter 3: Other people are different than us, and deserve to die.
Chapter 4: Religion is stupid, and so is God.
Chapter 5: How to bring up topics you don't want to talk about, but Nagi does.
Chapter 6: Getting Nagi to discuss his feelings, then dismissing them as irrelevant.

...unfortunatley, the rest of the page is empty. Turning toward the end of the book, you find that there are many, many blank pages at the end of the book - at least half of the total thickness of the tome is filled with nothing! For the first time you notice a curious bulge on the back cover. Flipping the book over and opening it, you find a small leather pouch containing two very slim, very modern ink pens - a sharp contrast to the rest of the volume.

Taking a moment to compose your thoughts, you chuckle to yourself as you begin to write...

Lemonade Death

First of all, props to you who get the reference without following this link.

Also, I was 80% done with this post, when I performed a mis-gesture and lost it... so, some of this isn't going to come out quite like I want it to. It's as if, once I type something, its gone, and can never be reproduced in its original form, but I will try, dear reader, to craft a rant as true as possible to the original.

We, the hearty employees of the Corporation_01, have a new pop machine in our primary break room. Actually, we have two. One of them replaces our much-beloved ATM, but that machine is the first Coke machine to appear in the break room, so there is some forgiveness to be had. On the downside, said ATM is now located in the downtown RcMonald's, but c'est la vie, non? At least we have precious coke to soothe us, and we, like all other right-thinking people, have an affinity for coke which verges on the unhealthy.

The second machine is unlike anything I've ever seen. It looks like a snack machine, more than a pop machine - glass front, a plethora of selections, and the ubiquitous row-column selection method. It is nearly perfect in every way, but for 3 obvious and, when combined, rage-inducing flaws.

But first, I must digress. (With apologies to Jorge. You want to write correctly, get your own damn blog.) The new machine contains all 4 vanillas, and here, for the first time in public, is my guide to vanilla cola, in order of preference from "Wonderful" to "Maybe you could clean your toilet with it":

Vanilla Coke
Tastes great. Goes down easy, but has enough flavor that you'll want to drink it slowly, and savor every drop. Vanilla flavor is mild, subdued, just the way we like it.

Diet Vanilla Pepsi
Tastes very good. Excellent vehicle for delivering that mid-afternoon caffeine payload without getting all the corn syrup. Flavor is very pleasing, slight aftertaste, but nothing intolerable. Since I know you, like most people on the planet, haven't tried this one - go find a bottle and try it, you'll be pleasantly suprised.

Diet Vanilla Coke
Acceptable Taste. Not nearly so good as vanilla pepsi. Aftertaste is much stronger, flavor is not nearly so good as the leaded version. To be avoided except where ones only alternative is diet sprite.

Vanilla Pepsi
I'll F*&#ing stab you.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand - the machine has 3 flaws.

1. Delivery Chute. The delivery is entertaining to watch, especially when you order something in a glass bottle from a top shelf. The bottle plummets from the top shelf at a velocity just short of terminal. That the bottle avoids breaking is a testament to the fine engineering of the machine. The chute at the bottom is curved, much like the Demon Drop. There are 3 holes at the bottom of the machine, which you can lift a door infront of, and reach inside to get your prize. Except with larger bottles (like Sobe) that don't fall perfectly. You'll reach your hand into the hole, and then begins the Groping. Then the machine starts to sound an unpleasant tone, warning you... of what I'm not sure. I haven't left my arm in there long enough to find out exactly what happens, but it certainly encourages you to find your bottle and get it out of there quickly. The delivery chute needs to take into account that some of us like our drinks 20 oz at a time.

2. False Negatives. I went to get a delcious Sobe Lemonade a few days ago, and the machine told me that it was out. Now, its a glass front machine, there were at least 5 lemonades left inside - I counted them, twice. I made sure I had the selection right. Then I realized that there was NO beverage that was out. Getting a "beverage out" message should have been impossible. Upon closer inspection, the front bottle had moved passed the senor/holder mechanism just enough that it could not close - the machine read this as being "out". I can only imagine what would had happened had the bottle slipped another quarter inch forward - it would have fallen on whatever bottle had been released previously, possibly leading to breakage. The point is, I was unfairly denied the lemonade to which I felt my dollar fifty rightly entitled me.

3. Selection. I mentioned delicious sobe lemonade. I went back thismorning, and we no longer stock delicious sobe lemonade. This is unaccepatble. We have no less than two rows of "Grape Grog" (I've tried it... imagine grape kool aide, with just a pinch of speed, and at least 3 slugs of sugar. Per bottle. I would like to see a suggestion box. I hate to think that lemonade was removed due to lack of demand - I demand lemonade every day at lunch, but I was denied, and now it seems, that denial will extent into the forseeable future. Some sort of suggestion box would definately make me happy... for instance, we could probably do away with the frappuccino, as long as its priced at 2 dollars per 8 ounces. In fact, were they to make me the drink czar, I think they would be well pleased with the selection that would appear.
   

And so, having wasted some more precious time, but having sucessfully awakened the parts of my brain that needed to be roused, I return to work, fueled only by plain old coffee, which is still free if you bring your own mug.

Once anon a time...

I want another blog.

I suppose that I kind of have two already, but I want one where no one knows me. This way, when my head feels like its going to split in two from the various perplexing emotions, invective, and generally offensive thoughts that are the by-product of being alive and me, I'd have someplace to vent.

The problem is that I generally want feedback, especially on things like that. I don't want to post "hey, my new car died, I think X is broken, and I want to kill someone because of it", and not have any readers. (It's a metaphor, *name baleeeted*). But an anonymous blog would have no readers. I suppose I could post up "hey guys, I found this great random blog, you should go read it, and vent there... but you all are too smart for that. Plus, my writing style would shine through, especially since some of you know what would end up there... it would be like this blog, except more personal, and much, much angrier when it comes to politics. I would stop saying things like "hey, I'm angry" and list reasons and names. I would stop saying things like "hey, Wes Clark may be too liberal" and start saying "Attention whackos with guns: if he wins the nomination, send him a bullet and I'll send you a check".

All of which would be bad, read by people who know me. Ok, so maybe not the politics part, but certainly the personal part. The whole idea is pointless if no one reads it, and I guess on some stuff you people are the people I would want reading it in any case... but then, the blog is also ABOUT you people, and it would be really rude to vent my innermost thoughts about you, to the people that we both interact with regularly. And then there's other things that I really want to just hand to 10 random people on the street with some SASEs and say "here, read, comment, mail", and get the opinion of a 100% outsider.

Wait, wait, here's one I feel comfortable with: Tim was born without emotions. He's got a personality and all, but no real emotions. He's like a robotic thought generator, with motor skills, but I have yet to see him show anything other than "calm" as an emotion.

See, I say that, because Tim's a big walrus, and I know he can take that kind of punishment, but I just don't feel right about saying things like that about just anyone.

Now I know what you're thinking: "Does this mean he's got a big post bottled up about me? Am I the reason he's ranting?!"

Let me assure you, gentle reader, the answer to those questions is no. None of you have particularly pissed me off, and usually if you do piss me off, you find out about it one way or another. This is a more general feeling.

I suppose I could split you into two groups, one half could hear complaints about the other half and the other way around. I hardly think this would work though, because of Rule 1. (Rule 1: Anytime one woman is aware of something, all women are instantly aware of it). If you've never used Rule 1 before, Men, I strongly encourage you to apply it as frequently and liberally as possible. It will save you a lot of trouble.

So where am I going with this? Nowhere. I guess I just needed to vent, and venting that I have no way to vent is close enough to the actual thing to satisfy me a little bit. For now.

To the MAX!

DDR Max2 is out. If you don't like DDR games, just stop reading now. Nothing I say will bring you over to my side, and nothing you say will bring me over to yours.

If you're still reading this, let me say that this game is great! I'll compare to DDRMAX and hope that you know what I'm talking about... my Konamix/USA experience is very limited, but I have explored most of max, and hope you have too.

Oni mode is gone. Long live Oni mode.

The nonstop mode that replaces oni is great. I hear people complaining about it, but I love it - you don't have to be ungodly good to do it. First of all, there's easier courses - the first one is 2 3's and a 4 if I remember right. Second of all, you have the whole dance meter to play with. If you really want oni mode back, just do the hard courses, and try to get an A or AA for the course.

The new FMV backgrounds on some of the songs are distracting, but the videos for In the Navy and Days go by are very entertaining, and worth doing on beginner mode and not paying attention to the arrows just to watch. Especially the Dirty Vegas video - it is AWESOME :)

The system for unlocking is better - you can actually SEE how many unlockables are left, and how far you are from the next one, which is better than Max, in which you unlock a song every once in a while, seemingly at random.

Lastly, the songs. Oh, the songs. Don't get me wrong, I love the song list in Max and Konamix, but so far this song list may be my favorite. I've only danced about half of the song list, so there may be others I'm neglecting... sorry others.

Break Down! - Be for U
Busy Child - The Crystal Method
Conga Feeling - Vivian (its no sana, but its fun and nice and quick)
D2R - Naoki
Days Go By - Dirty Vegas
Dream a Dream - Captain Jack (its "In the hall of the Mountain King")
Get Down Tonight - K.C. & The Sunshine Band
Ghosts (Vincent De Moor Remix) - Tenth Planet (part of the video reminds me of FFIV (FF2 for you snes people). You'll just have to buy it and see which part :))
Heaven - DJ Sammy & Yanou featuring DO (I think its a Bryan Adams song. But unlike Bryan Adams, it doesn't suck ass)
In the Navy '99 (XXL Disaster Remix) - Captain Jack
Love at First Sight - Kylie Minogue
Lovin' You (Rob Searle Club Mix) - Vinyl Baby (Is this what I think it is? I'll find out next time I'm home!)
The Whistle Song (Blow My Whistle Baby) - DJ Aligator Project (so good)
Tsugaru - RevenG vs De-Sire (the song is decent. the dance is awesome)
Will I? - Ian Van Dahl (you will love it!)

All in all, I give this game a rating of 9.5 stars. 10 stars would require the addition of some Juno Reactor to the list (which would also require some time travel, I think).