Sailor Sushi to A4!

Those who've followed my various "blogs" will have already noticed that with the long and (for once,) good entries, I've sort of brought back my old blog titling habits. It's a confusing metaphorical menagerie of wordplay that summarizes the contents of the entry and paradoxically leaves the reader in the dark at the same time.

Anyway, before your brain suffers an aneurysm, here's why this entry's named the way it is:

• chess
• food (namely: sushi)
• Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon*
• writing

And in case you still don't see it, "A4" refers to chess (both the grid and the "What the deuce?" opening move**) and A4 paper (please tell me you can see the relation between writers and paper...).



* = A good 83% of you are probably giving this entry some kind of "WTF!?" look upon reading that. 83% of the initial 83% realize what it is and are probably wondering if they should revoke my man card for even referencing this. 83% of that secondary 83% have now realized that these statistics are fictional. Finally, 83% of that tertiary 83% probably don't know that this footnote was a How I Met Your Mother reference.

** = Seriously... if you should be playing chess against someone and they do "1.a4," then I hope to God that you win. Why bother wasting time by "blitzing" the queenside rook out to an awkward location when you can gain tempo and fight for control of the center?





CURRENT MUSIC:
Robert Summers - "Moon Crystal Power"
Sailor Moon: The Full Moon Collection

Yeah. You're still reading this correctly. Music from Sailor Moon - and the dubbed version, of all things? *nods* Now, if you have a problem, just shaddap and skip the rest of the music section. =P

Everyone around my age who's seen the well-known magical girl anime when they were a child knows this. Okay, maybe only the girls, but those of us guys out there who either had nothing better to watch before Dragon Ball Z or lived in a house with girls who watched Sailor Moon probably know this, too. In the event that you don't know (which is probably true for just about everyone in my "fan base"), "Moon Crystal Power" is known as the theme music for Serena/Usagi Tsukino's transformation sequence into the title character. While a majority of the English adaptation barely holds a candle to the original Japanese audio, I have to admit that I believe this is one of the better music themes for a transformation sequence.

What amazed me about this piece was that despite the obvious attachment for magical girls, I was able to place it as suitable background music for other characters and scenarios - particularly that "last-second rescue by a cavalry-esque squad" scene in not-so-dark war-based TV shows... and for some reason, opening credits for a sports show.

In the event that nobody's done this (or anything else) using this piece: I CALL DIBS.


Nobuo Uematsu - "Shuffle or Boogie"
Final Fantasy VIII Original Soundtrack

Every main entry in the Final Fantasy series has had some kind of minigame, be it an Easter egg or something that actually helps benefit the storyline by strengthening your party. In the case of Final Fantasy VIII, that game would be Triple Triad, a card game played throughout the in-game world.

"Shuffle of Boogie" is the theme that plays whenever you engage in a Triple Triad game, and its lightheartedness complements the fun the game provides while creating that aura that just says, "Think about strategy while you're listening to me!" Obviously, this wouldn't sit well with a full-scale battlefield scenario, but for something like Triple Triad or any other children's card game, it works wonders.



"The chessboard is limited to an eight-by-eight grid. There is nothing beyond this little universe. No ninth rank. No green pieces that suddenly sweep onto the board to attack both black and white. ... [A pawn] doesn't suddenly blossom into a queen by its own volition. No, chess is nothing like war, which is one of the reasons I play it. It's so much simpler than real life."
- Arcturus Mengsk
(StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade)

I haven't read this book in ages. Loved it when I was younger (I was a bigger StarCraft nerd back then as compared to now), and now that I recently found the copy I had since 2002, I'm thinking of going through it again.

Anyway, Mengsk has a point. Maybe that's why everyone's so drawn to the game - unlike reality, the game's simplicity and complexities are much easier to handle and control.





Evening, readers. I honestly think it's about time to post a good entry for once. Fortunately, that's what y'all will be getting tonight, so celebrate.

Oh, and just for you skimmers: no TL;DR will be present for you. Please proceed to bludgeon yourself in the face with a sharpened shovel.





I woke up today feeling a huge surge of energy that for some reason has to be worked for whenever I'm working (ironic, ain't it?). This can be traced back to a few reasons:


I asked for today off.
Having a personally-scheduled personal day off to just kick back and relax is always a fun thing. Gives you time to recuperate from working your tail off so much and also lets you catch up on much-needed sleep. Plus, you can plan stuff with friends and everything.


Today is my "social sushi" day.
A few years ago my friends and I used to be big on getting sushi. We'd meet once a month, stuff our stomachs to the brim with the marvelous invention called sushi, have lots of talking and laughter shared amongst ourselves and then proceed back to our lives with a fat stomach and the most amazing food coma you can have... ever (until the next "social sushi" day, that is).

As the years have passed, the practice has dropped from most of my friends' schedules. I, however, seem to be a huge stickler for being conservative (in the non-political sense, mind you) and adhering to "tradition," so I revived the idea about ten months ago and have faithfully kept getting sushi with people who were free at that point in time. Nowadays, I'm still doing it (as today's entry will indicate).





So, if you like sushi, live near me, and wanna have a fun time eating, talking and what not, then bookmark every third Friday of the month off (or at least reserve lunch hours from 1200-1600).

Until the 'morrow, everyone!






(AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you fell for that "ending," then shame on you - you don't know me well enough. Like hell I'd cut myself off like that willingly (barring time restrictions, of course.) However, if you saw that this entry was "incomplete" and decided to investigate only to find out that the fake closing I put there WAS supposed to be there: kudos! Get yourself a muffin of your choice (or a gunshot wound to the foot if you don't like muffins) and say it was from me (though it'll be hard to convince the police that I gave you that gunshot wound). I love y'all that much. =D (This, of course, is assuming that you like muffins.))





Moving on... where were we...? *scrolls up to refresh where he was ranting at* Oh.

Let's see. I was telling you why I was filled with energy for today. I already mentioned that today was a day off and my "social sushi" day, but there was one more reason.

Oh, right: writing stuff.



I now have sufficient time to work on some writing projects.
I told myself I'd dedicate a large amount of time this weekend on writing, and lo and behold, I now have it. It also helps having Sunday off (which might end up being another writing day), but that's not the main focus on why this is awesome.

It's awesome because I actually followed through with myself - I told myself a week ago that I'd make this a personal day, and now I'm doing just that.



So after I got out of bed and took a nice shower, I hopped in my car, determined to tackle quite a few errands out of my way to a free day. I won't bore you with the details. Mostly car insurance crap and getting some gasolina.

And then sushi. Good GOD, I could just eat the stuff forever. Lots of fun and randomness, and lots and LOTS of food. (Hint: if you're trying to bribe me with sushi, go for anything involving salmon and/or spice. Or anything with a Philadelphia Roll as the base.) We went for the all-you-can-eat option, which is a pretty fair price considering how expensive sushi can be. Of course, as is typical for these "social sushi" get-togethers I have, some of us end up over-ordering and end up barely able to finish the food. Unfortunately for this month's trek: that happened to be EVERY ONE OF US. I honestly believe it was a miracle that we were able to scarf down everything we all ordered, considering the fact that none of us allowed ourselves to digest and gain some stomach room.

After I got home (I'd say roughly 1530ish), I ended up plopping onto my bed and taking a nice food coma-induced catnap, waking up roughly two hours later. Happy day.



But enough of food. I think I need to get to some other topics before I make myself hungry.. again... ...aw, dammit. *laughs*





Chess - Theorycraft of Theorycraft

I've been studying chess openings like a mad hatter for the past three days in order to prepare for JOSH BLANCO vs. THE WORLD. As the game starts on Sunday at high noon, it would make sense for me to study up on this as if it were some life-altering test (like the bar examination, a high school exit exam or the Canadian citizenship test).

I'll be honest: I've gone a wee bit loopy from thinking about this. There's just so many choices I could use - so many opening theories, interesting gambits and desperado maneuvers, pawn formations and piece deployment locations for me to just narrow down what I want to do.

Fortunately, as I don't want to give away my potential opening strategy, I'll censor myself right now by staying tight-lipped about chess until the 19th. No more chess things to give away my thoughts (though I might have done that already on this entry...). If you honestly want to know what I'm thinking of, wait until the 19th - I guarantee that I'll have something up by then. *snerk*

MOVING ON!





Writing ANYTHING > Writing NOTHING

Since Operation: DREAM EATER is asking of demanding me to work on my Street Fighter-based fan-fic, Unincorporated, I figured I'd rewrite the first chapter I had placed on the backburner. Whilst doing that, however, I ended up getting bored (I should really check if I have some kind of ADHD... heh.) and so after waking up from my catnap, I started leafing through my other MS Word documents. I ended up finding the timeline I wrote for Unincorporated, listing the planned storylines I was going to subject the characters to. As I kept reading that document, I went through other scrapped and backburned projects, finding some interesting ideas.

Which brings me to my main point of this segment: I ended up writing the start of Unincorporated's second chapter and the latter half of the third. A decent amount of writers out there will agree with me when I say that writing the beginning of a story is one of the most difficult things to do, even when a skeletal outline's already been created. They say that if you start with the ending, the route to get there becomes much easier to map. I subscribe to that theory, and if you don't believe me, ask me to bring my laptop over one day. "Check out the big stories I could've written and completed had I had not forgotten that I subscribed to that theory" (or something simpler) will be uttered by me as you browse through that rather large folder of documents.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know. I know some of you are keeping track of my progress of Operation: DREAM EATER - this part of today's entry was just a little something for you to take notes on.





"In the name of the moon, I will punish you!" - A.K.A.:
The Sailor Moon Segment of Today's Entry

In the rather unlikely event that you're still wondering what I was referring to, then either you lived under a rock that didn't allow Toonami in... or you're that lame. "What's with the Sailor Moon references and what not?" I hear some of you asking.

The answer: I've been watching Sailor Moon recently. Cue the massive "man card, plox, u nub" requests.

I honestly don't know why I'm watching this. Part of me wanted to know what the original Japanese version was like (so far, I think it's superior). A second part of me wanted to branch out for something different (and familiar) than what I'm usually used to watching (Sailor Moon won the coin flip against Vampire Knight). A third part... well, I'll admit: I kinda wanted to watch it so I can say I actually watched it (my knowledge of the franchise is as extended as the fragments I kept picking up when my cousins lived with me when I was younger - and seeing as how that was for a good year or so, it's a pretty large database).

Despite all that, I think it's due to a long-winded "conversation" between me and a friend from work had one night. (I used the quotes because that "conversation" isn't one of those one-timers - it shows up almost every day that she and I work together) We were zoning Target for the night and somehow the topic switched to "(childhood) TV shows" and it was only a matter of time before Sailor Moon became the primary sub-topic (...doesn't that word combination seem oxymoronic?). After a seemingly one-sided conversation (I'm somewhat passive-aggressive when it comes to conversation - assuming I'm not in "shy mode"), I quipped some trivia about the magical girl series - something about the Moonlight Knight being Tuxedo Mask's "alter ego" - and to our mutual surprise we found out that we could actually hold a discussion about the show (much to the annoyance of 83% of our fellow co-workers).

Guess it turns out that I know a lot more about Sailor Moon than I originally thought. 83% more. (Okay, I'll stop with the 83%. But why should I when Barney Stinson uses it in, like, 83% of How I Met Your Mother?)

So now, I've found myself interested in the series - quite an eyebrow-raiser for a lot of you, isn't it? Well, if anything, I've always found myself open-minded to lots of things, and so I figured, "Why not? More fun (and useless) information that I got to know about." (Trivia: if you want to know what caused me to post so damn late, there's an 83% chance that it was due to me wiki-surfing the Sailor Moon franchise for two hours.)

To summarize this segment:

1. Sailor Moon is now on my "to watch" list.
2. Everyone has an embarrassing show they watched and/or loved as a child they don't want anyone else to know about. Everyone.
3. Next year's primary cosplaying goal: TUXEDO MASK. (Challenge accepted.)
4. 83% of people reading this entry want to shoot themselves for knowing some trivial detail about Sailor Moon that they thought they didn't know.

And no, gentlemen: you're not getting my man card. NEVER.





Well, I sure hope that the content here makes up for the fact that I hardly posted anything decent this whole week. Until the 'morrow, everyone! Do svidaniya!