¡Felíz Cumple!

It's my birthday... well... not yet. My birthday is actually on 'Day of the Dead', November 2nd... but I'm excited as opposed to me being depressed at growing older like last year.

Not only am I turning a whole year older, but I'm also graduating this year in Dec. (if all goes well). I'm also going to New York for Christmas this year. It'll be the first time in about four years for me, but the first time in almost ten years for my mom. Tomorrow, I'm going to Missouri to see a play my brother's in. I think it's called Threepenny Opera... or something. That should be fun!

Also, I bought myself a new mp3 player last night. My old 2GB SanDisk was acting up, and since I can't live without music on the go now, I had to buy another one before it completely died. This new one's an 8GB black Sony Walkman NWZ-E344... kinda cool actually. I named it King Sammer after the unlucky Sammer Kingdom in Super Paper Mario for the Wii. That part almost made me cry... I know... I'm such a dork.

Anyway, I'm feeling good about this birthday... I think this will finally be the year that I become a "responsible adult".... nah, it's so much more fun being an "irresponsable adult"... I think I'll give myself five more years.

 

Shadow At The Water's Edge or SAW...E

Well, I commend HerInteractive on this one! I'm not even done with the game yet but I like it so far. I loved the movie Dark Water, the American version and the original Japanese version (my fave!) and this game immediately reminded me of it. As well as The Ring, which I haven't seen but have heard of, and Saw, which I haven't seen either... actually... I don't even know if it's like Saw at all.

Maybe I'm just easily scared, but so far it's creepy and I can't play it at night. Well, I can play it at night, but I need my lights on. Also some odd sound outside my window while I was playing sort of frayed on my nerves... that and the crash downstairs. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say this... but I didn't go down to check on it... I know what happens in horror movies. I think I'd survive one of those nicely.

The music that starts out all traditional and then becomes sort of... creepy with uneven almost random notes and varying intensity does NOT help ease the spookiness of this game. Every turn you take, you keep thinking, will I see a ghost? Will something spontaneously combust? Will I see those creepy twins from The Shining?

One thing I don't like though, and this is pretty much for all if not just the recent Nancy Drew games, is the fact that she's really nosy and pushy. I honestly think that she could garner at least some information by observing people and not asking insensitive questions... but even after that, the characters she interacted with are still their cheery selves and it's like she never even asked anything. I mean, that's not real at all... but I still LOVE the games. If I were this family, I 'd kick her the hell out! Maybe I should run that by HerInteractive... but then again, I don't want to seem pushy either.

I'm also playing this without a walk-through (except for when I don't want to bother with Sudoku or even *shudder* master Sudoku) mainly because I've been relying on them quite a lot instead of really thinking hard when I would seldom use them earlier on in my adventure gaming experiences... I missed that. Also, I kind of want to savor the game for a bit. I've been waiting far too long for this one and I don't want to finish it so quick.

Also, the whole idea of a ryokan -- traditional Japanese inn -- is sort of spooky. Not even just a ryokan, but even a modern hotel with dim lighting like I once was at in the mid-west. You never really know what happened before you decided to take a trip and stay there. I mean, obviously millions of people would've stayed there. How many of them were murdered or simply died of natural causes? How many were murderers, rapists, electrocuted? Most likely they would have unfinished business. More importantly, would they come back as benevolent ghosts or malevolent ghosts? You never now.

And on that note, I end this post.

Happy Early Halloween my kiddies...

Stress Up To My Eyeballs

This is partly my fault really. We had three or more weeks to do a book in my Digital Design for Artist's Books class, but being the chronic procrastinator that I am, I put it off until the week before it was due... more specifically, it was put off until Saturday and Sunday. I think I did a pretty good job for having done most of the work in two days.

The story was one that I wrote a while ago for a Spanish Creative Writing class last semester. I liked it, however, I had to adapt it to a picture book... which meant I pretty much changed the whole story. I think I like this one better. Maybe I'll post them side to side and have you all decide.

All I have to do now is cut and adhere the cover and then I'm all set. I hate some of the illustrations, but I can't change that now.

For more added stress, I have a quiz in my next class. It pretty much sucks because we had to watch a movie on our own time... who does that? Why not just watch it during class time? Seriously though, I haven't seen it yet and my prof. says that there are some questions about the movie on the quiz... just my luck.

On Friday, when I had all intentions to start my book, I had to do a stupid annotated bibliography... I really don't see the point in them. They don't help me at all... but I understand that some people swear by 'em. That's not me though. I had to finish it by 11:59 and turned it in a 11:52... bad timing... but at least it was done. That's the class where I constantly watch myself because the prof. knows my mom.

I do understand that if I hadn't put off any of this, the feeling of hoplessness wouldn't be that great... but it's a habit that I find is very, very, very, very hard to break.

On another note... the new Nancy Drew game comes out tomorrow. I already pre-ordered the download which I'm regretting not pre-ordering the boxed version so I could have played it during the weekend.. but maybe that was best not to have it on Saturday because of the all the stuff I had to do. I commend my foresight.

Anyway, a good friend of mine already has. She didn't preorder it but bought it at Best Buy... which I think is against the rules, but whatevs. Needless to say, I'm not talking to her until after Tuesday... that's not cool in my book for some reason. :) Just kidding... but not about the ignoring her until Wednesday part.

I think it's safe to say that any homework this week will be put off even further due to the game. I blame HerInteractive and Nancy Drew. It's never my fault!

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To Quote Pink, "I'm Not Dead!"

Man, it seems like forever since I wrote anything here. My life is just so boring right now... even more boring than it usually is... and I can't find it in me to write anything. I've even stopped drawing for a while... that pretty much scares me because I never want to stop doing what I love. I think it's just the stress of school and being tired. I'm not eating right either, that probably has something to do with me being so lethargic to the point that all I want to do is sleep.

Despite all that, the only time I really feel "awake" is at night. This sort of creeps me out because I keep thinking I'm turning into a vampire. And if I were turning into a vampire, it wouldn't be one of those wimpy twilight ones either but the ones that are like, "I'm gonna suck your blood now, and there's nothing you can do about it because I'm the shizz... word".

What the hell... I'm being crazy.

Anyway, despite all that above crap, I've been writing. A long time ago after playing "Tales of Monkey Island" by TellTale Games (which by the way is AWESOME!) I had this idea. I really liked one of the new characters introduced to the story and after the game was through I got to thinking about the unanswered questions, the deciet, etc. So I wrote a story and posted it on some fanfiction site. Think of it what you will, but until I actually think of an original story with original characters, I'll be writing fanfiction.

So, there was a girl on deviantart who actually read my story and liked it. She has the same name as me too... but that has nothing to with anything... just throwing that out. So, since then she's been waiting for a new chapter. I believe I have failed her. She wasn't pushy and understood that I was sort of lacking inspiration, so knowing that sort of makes it less easier to deal with failing someone. My story has been on hiatus for a year now and I haven't gotten the inspiration to write anymore for that story. I think originally I didn't even know what I was writing about... I was probably hopped up on sugar and super exited about having played all episodes of the game.

So, Werita, if you're reading... I have not forgotten about it and I'm actually in the process of brainstorming what will happen next... but I'm not promising anything.

On another note, I saw "Up" yesterday as well as "Old Dogs"  and "Planet 51" the day prior after having discovered our Mediacom On Demand free movies... with subscription of course. "Up" was pretty sad, but Dug the talking dog made me laugh. I especially loved -- and this is a small spoiler if you could call it that -- when Alpha, what I'm guessing is the Alpha dog, had some malfunction on his talking collar and his voice would change from really deep to super squeaky. I cracked up at that everytime.

"Old Dogs" was okay... I just couldn't get past that fact that Kelly Preston, John Travolta's wife, played the part of Robin Williams' 'wife' while John Travolta himself played the part of Robin Williams' best friend. John Travolta's daughter also played the part of Robin Williams' daughter... she's so cute!

I liked "Planet 51". The idea was cute but I wouldn't say it a was great movie. I loved the graphics though. There were points in the movie where I was just awed at how realy buildings and stuff would look.

After that, I went to play Assasin's Creed. I think I'm hooked and have a bit of a nerd crush on Altair... sad right... he's a freaking game character. My dad had it on PC but couldn't play it because he was so exited and didn't look at the system requirements. Same thing happened to my brother and I after buying Prince of Persia in 2005 for our PC... our computer was nowhere near the MINIMUM system requirements but I had heard good things about the game. Luckily we were able to return it, but my dad wasn't so lucky. Now he can't even play the game so I said I'd buy it sometime for PS3. He just looked at me and shook his head. He hates video games... but playing them on computer is pretty much the same thing. His way of thinking is a tad bit odd.