Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Rettich's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, November 12th, 2009
2:42 am	GodDAMN this cat is all up in my grill and sleeping in my lap. Usually he couldn't care less about me, but my mom gave him his flea medicine today (the gooey crap you spread on the back of their head) so she's a persona non gratis, and as a result I get the overflow cat-love. This would be sweeter if the fuzzy little kitty head that's rubbing all over me wasn't covered in stanking ass flea medicine, but hey, you take what you can get in life. I just finished watching Coraline. Oddly, considering how amazingly amped I was on it when I first saw footage and trailers for it, my enthusiasm wasn't enough to actually propel me into a theater to see it. Hell, lately NOTHING has been enough to get me to actually sit through a movie at home, let alone going out to a theater. There have been a lot of movies that I await expectantly, only to not see them until 14 months after their release. Hell, I saw Wall-E for the first time about 4 months ago. It was a really cool movie, though most of my friends were warm to lukewarm about it. Vanessa accused the movie of operating on videogame logic, which I agree with, to an extent. The whole scavenger hunt part with the three eyes to find was totally videogame-inspired, though it worked in that it gave her a reason to explore the dream universe as it falls apart- in videogames a scavenger hunt is usually just used to fill time. A few of the character concepts really looked like stuff from Psychonauts, and if you told me they shared staff artists I wouldn't be surprised, though a lot of those designs also look like Corpse Bride, and Nightmare Before Christmas, and any number of other things where people are parodied artistically but not necessarily favorably. My only real complaint was that everything seemed pretty oddly paced. The general curve of action is intact and nothing kills the momentum, but there's a lot of short mini-climaxes that stack up near the end. The first act is a little dull (but it's the setup, so it should be), the second act starts to really pick up as things start happening, and then the third act is a conflagration of stuff all at once. Even once the main climax has passed, there are easily two more mini-climaxes, and then an ending wrap-up scene that introduces a new character and is just long enough to feel like something else is coming next. Even with that little meh I was still 100% satisfied with it. The story was equal parts fun, inspiring, and actiony, and the stop-motion is incredible. Some of the scenes where people are walking from a distance really do look like they filmed a person walking and just screwed with it in photoshop to make it look a little more stop-motiony. Stop-motion and really high end computer animation (pixar stuff) do have a sort of problem that I've noticed over time. I imagine this is also the case in regular drawn animation too, but I'd imagine to much less an extent. These sort of films REALLY need an editor with icewater for blood and an iron heart. Honestly, the ending bits of the movie could have probably stood to lose a few scenes (or at least parts of them) to make a more satisfying full ending, but in a stop-motion movie where even 15 seconds that could be cut represent a month of filming, the tendency is to use the whole buffalo and keep in as much as possible. This can make a movie bloated and plodding, and even a concerted effort to change direction can be difficult. The deleted scenes in Wall-E are a perfect example- there was one massive change to a few major scenes in the third act, and even though it was decided when the animation was still not far along, it represented a HUGE hassle. Pixar is pretty good about being willing to work for a good finished product, but not everybody has that kind of money to spend on every step of the process. Anyway, the cat calls me to bed now. Also having to work and not wanting to stay up all night does that too. We officially start wearing our holiday shirts tomorrow, and the christmas trees are up. Bleh. The whole holiday season insanity has struck me as extremely arbitrary lately. Probably mostly because as a non-religious person, the season really IS all about just buying crap for people I know. Despite never actually going outside to enjoy it, I really like the summer. Hell, you'd have to be one seriously screwy person to find something to hate about summer in southern california in comparison to the other seasons. It's warm and sunny for 80% of the year, but not as hot or as cold as the extremes in the rest of the nation. I guess that's why we're all still here despite the pollution, the state being bankrupt, housing prices being overinflated by millions even after being "deflated" by the housing crisis, and the ricockulous cost of living. [ Share the love! ]
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
2:14 pm	Arg, my internet is being all dumb. It arbitrarily decides to tack on five to ten seconds of doing absolutely nothing before making a connection and loading things. I'm 80% sure the problem is due in some way to Snow Leopard, since this wasn't an issue before I upgraded, but there's got to be an element of it which is my ISP's deal. I have my machine bootcamped, and my XP drive connects to the internet just fine without any 10-second contemplations. :| EDIT: WOW. JUST WOW. I've been putting up with this slowness for MONTHS now, and finally took a more detailed look at the broadband gateway they use to configure your internet access with sbcglobal- apparently I've been using the wrong DNS server? I'm not sure how this might have changed with Snow Leopard, but I put the correct primary and secondary DNS servers in the prefs, and everything is running perfectly. I'm guessing the address I was using was old and having to be rerouted to the right one, which accounted for the slowness. Now, it's entirely possible that this is going to immediately stop working again in five minutes, but hey, it'll be a nice five minutes. [ Share the love! ]
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
5:26 pm	*drool Clearly it's a good thing I gave up weed a few years ago- I don't need it. I just spent 20 minutes imagining buying a store-bought graham cracker or oreo pie crust and filling it with ice cream for easy ice cream pie. Oh goooooooood... Ice cream piiiiiiiie. I drooled on myself. Yeah, it doesn't hurt that I haven't eaten all day. [ Share the love! ]
Monday, November 9th, 2009
2:12 pm	Holy crap, it's been over a month since I've updated. Oops. Honestly, nothing of note has really been going on, other than just putting crap off that I've wanted to write down. I'm still dating Vanessa, though honestly it's more like we're living together, since she spends nearly every night at my place. It's actually quite nice, which is odd- usually I hate having people all up in my personal space. My only worry is that I'm too dull. She's usually content to hang around and not do too much, but I hate to test that with stuff like video game marathons. I HAVE been giving my DS more love lately, speaking of the vidya. Vanessa and I spend a lot of time chilling at a local coffee shop that a friend of ours now owns. She'll pop up her cases of jewelry making stuff and I'll bust out a video game or crossword for a while. It's given me a chance to play some older stuff that I probably would have skipped. Right now I'm switching back and forth between the Final Fantasy 3 remake and Viewtiful Joe Double Trouble. I actually really liked FF3, but I'm right at the end, and I want to do the secret stuff before I beat the game. There's special weapons and armor you can get by sending other people with the game messages using the nintendo wi-fi, but I have yet to do it. Viewtiful Joe is pretty neat, but I haven't played any of the other games in the series, so it was a tough first few times playing. I think I'm pretty near the end in that one too, since I'm refighting previous level bosses. I also gave Torchlight a bit of a try. It's really proof of how TF2 has changed the way I think about video games- Torchlight is a really cool game, but it's pretty simple too. There's only 3 classes and the skill choice feels pretty shallow. My first character is a caster, but for the first 20 levels he did plenty of damage just hitting people with physical attacks, and now that he's leveled up more I could just buy spells that make him a more able fighter than the melee warrior. It's only $20, and chances are when they release the MMO they're basing in the Torchlight universe, people who play the standalone game will get fabulous prizes, but the idea of paying only $20 for a game that is probably going to be static and not change too terribly much in the future seems kinda silly. I bought the Orange Box for $65 when I got it two years ago, and I'm still playing tf2, probably entirely because the developers keep infusing new content and new life into it. I played for 2 days basically solid to enjoy the halloween content they pulled out that actually gave the entire game a backstory. To pull that out after two years is kinda nuts. It also doesn't help that since they sold it for $2.50 for a few days, there's a crapload of new players who I can demolish, instead of playing against the same old people who have had the game for years and kick my ass. [ Share the love! ]
Friday, September 25th, 2009
3:00 am	Encinitas and Leucadia smell like diesel fire or something. I wonder what the hell is going on? Thick fog tonight too... hope it isn't smoke [ Share the love! ]
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
4:05 pm	based on the amount of swearing and thumping around from the other room, I'm going to guess that either the Giants are playing right now and losing, or my roommate's mom died. [ Share the love! ]
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
10:48 am	So, in the interest of actually writing something this week, here's what I think about Scribblenauts. It's fun. It has a lot of really interesting moments that make you laugh and is a very rewarding experience. It's extremely frustrating watching Maxwell gleefully plunge to his death over and over when he mistakes your tapping to select an item as a command to move to the click location, but the grr is more than made up for by the good times. 1 ego boosts [ Share the love! ]
Saturday, September 12th, 2009
3:00 am	Psychosemitic would be a pretty good name for a hebrew death metal band I think. 1 ego boosts [ Share the love! ]
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
2:16 pm	Man, a lot of stuff has been going on, but with the girlfriend I haven't really had the time or inclination to write any of it down. I went up to LA last wednesday for an art thing Vanessa was doing. It really ended up being a half-and-half day. The first half of the day we screwed around in hollywood... went to Necromance to look at dead critter parts, went to find the Wound and Wound toy shop (apparently moved now, since we couldn't find it), got a pretty hefty lunch at Milk including a very odd but damn tasty citrus float, went by Meltdown, a pretty big comic book store, and finally swung past Mashti Malone's for one more ice cream. It was pretty fun, and it's nice to have a positive experience in LA, since usually anything I have to do up there is not fun. The art show, on the other hand, sucked. It was down in long beach, and was part of a recurring series of art shows. There were eight or so artists who set up booths with work and crafty things and hung around from 6pm til 11pm on the second floor of a bar and grill (which this particular night was just a bar). The whole upper level was marked off for the art show, but there wasn't anything else going on up there, so the few people that showed up to drink on a wednesday night had no reason to go upstairs to see the stuff. Eventually a few people filtered up but only one of the vendors sold anything. Vanessa had a few of her key necklaces and other jewelry bits that were priced at mostly $10-20, because nobody goes to a bar and buys paintings. Even with the super cheap stuff, she didn't sell a damn thing all night, and only had a few people even hang around and chat. Fortunately I'm a lot chattier with strangers than she is, so I was able to get people talking, but that just means that they had to come up with excuses why they didn't want to buy anything. The worst part was that I didn't have anything to read or do, so I was bored absolutely stiff. They didn't even stamp our hands or anything, so we couldn't really leave to get food without having to go through a big hassle at the door on our way back in. It was a fun day, but kinda a silly waste of money for her. She hardly needs to network with people in Long Beach, and she spent her whole paycheck on getting up there and back and lunch. The paintings she was showing weren't even especially recent. As for getting her stuff in front of people, she probably has better results from the antique mall where she exhibits her jewelry. I keep trying to convince her to just put up an etsy store or something where she could put a selection of her stuff without having to caravan off and spend gas money to exhibit for an invisible crowd. At the very least, it'd probably be good for her to have a place to direct people to besides her deviantart profile. There's been more stuff, but in the interest of keeping this readable, I'm going to pinch it off here and resume later. Current Music: Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened | Powered by Last.fm [ Share the love! ]
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
1:05 am	Just got back from a big fun day in LA... remind me to tell you about it some time when I'm not sleeping so hard. [ Share the love! ]
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
3:06 am	Hooray! The free burritos at Dominion last night DIDN'T kill me! Woo! 2 ego boosts [ Share the love! ]
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
12:56 pm	Well, I finally did it. You're all going to think this is ridiculous, but I finally called Cal Poly to get my diploma sent. I graduated in 2007 under FAR less than ideal circumstances, completely depressed, 100% broke, and generally unable to function like a regular human. My grades had sunk from A's and B's to VERY low, even for a state school. I'd participated in "graduation" six months earlier, but had to finish another class, and it scared me how easy it was to just fall through the cracks. When I finally did finish, there wasn't any official fanfare or anything. I talked to my academic counselor and he said I was finished, but that was it. So I left. I moved back down here, and it really felt like just picking up and moving for no reason whatsoever (except that I was utterly broke and had to move in with my mom). One of the MANY things I'd neglected to do while moving after my faux graduation was to change my mailing address, and I never received any letter telling me anything about ordering my diploma. For TWO YEARS I've been conflicted about picking up the phone and calling them to order my diploma. It's a big life achievement, for all the mixed memories it brings up, and important to have. I put in the work and the money to earn it, even if it seems to hold less worth to me than most people ascribe to it. Still, Part of me was sure, as soon as the operator looked me up, they'd tell me that I'd missed some other important deadline or paperwork hadn't been filed, and I'd never officially graduated. It seems like a silly fear, but it's entirely possible. When I moved home I could barely get my shoes tied without having to have a big emotional flipout first. Such a large and impenetrable hierarchy isn't conducive to fragility. So, a few minutes ago, I made the call. The woman wasn't especially nice or especially rude, just the clipped functionality of someone who has done a task a thousand times over. I elected to have my middle name printed on the diploma too (why not... makes it look more formal), and she said it would be mailed in 2 weeks, unless the records office has any questions for me, in which case they'll call me directly, probably in a week. I have no idea why today was the day, other than getting an e-mail that my school e-mail address has been deleted, but that hardly makes a difference, since I never used it anyway. Maybe it has something to do with having a girlfriend and feeling more willing to risk the negative outcomes. Maybe it's just that I was bored. So now, we're back where we were. Instead of being the one making the decisions about whether or not anything happens, I'm the one waiting to hear back. I feel a little better, but I won't actually feel any better until the damn thing is in my hands or on the wall. 1 ego boosts [ Share the love! ]
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
11:53 pm	what's REALLY been up Okay, so you may have noticed I haven't updated in like forever and when I did it was just a Comic Con thing that was a week late. I actually (gasp) have a girlfriend. About a month ago I ran into a girl I went to high school with while wandering around downtown. She had been the president of the japanese club when I was the vice president and DEFINITELY made herself memorable... she had a sorta semi-gothy and semi-japanesey style and she did some pretty nifty art. She moved up to LA after high school to go to art school and ended up in animation and later jewelrymaking (once she decided she hated animation). She moved back to the area a few months back after breaking things off with a long-term boyfriend that involved a bit of drama and is an interesting story, but a personal one. We kept running into each other at one of the coffee shops downtown, where I'd try (and fail) to not just blather pointlessly and give her a chance to get a word in edgewise. After a while it got pretty obvious that running into her there was pretty important to my general schedule. I had her over for dinner a time or two (getting culinary never fails to impress) but was my usual completely oblivious self, though I was aware that if I was really just interested in staying single I was doing a really bad job of it. While I have been pretty gun-shy about a new relationship since my last one, those concerns were nowhere to be found when we were actually spending time together. We went to Comic Con together, which pretty much sealed the deal. She was totally willing to drive me down and hang out with me for lunch, knowing that her friends might not be able to get her a pass to get in and she may end up just wasting time in Hillcrest or North Park all day. That's what ended up happening, though I was able to sneak her in with Frank of "tiny kitten teeth" fame's help. Despite being pretty well cashed out on energy from the convention, we went and spent like 6 hours at Lestat's coffee shop in North Park and then went back to my place so I could food it up again. After the requisite five hours of painful awkwardness where I don't want to make any move despite it being pretty goddamn obvious the way things are headed (I seriously have always had this with every girl I've dated except the first one where it was a week) I finally planted one on her, and it became pretty obvious life was going to get more complicated. (Not in a bad way, but having a s.o. requires a lot more planning than just being solo.) So, I've been going around and de-singling myself on all of my various social networking sites. I also deleted my profile on the Onion Personals, which was a complete waste of time anyway since there were only five or ten people on it in my area. She's been a real good time so far. It's sometimes hard to get her to make a choice on what she wants to do, but she enjoys just hanging around as much as going out to see shows and such. She doesn't have a lot of spare cash at the moment, so she's very willing to have pretty low-key nights. We spent the night at a club in San Diego last night until far too late (I had work in the morning, but I hated to make her leave super early) and had a good time, despite the venue being damn near microscopic. She's not really into the whole japanese thing anymore stylistically, she mostly just goths it up which is fine by me. On that first night we made out she was wearing a corset and garter belt completely by chance... so yeah. Definite plus there. She makes some pretty fancy costumes for when she goes out, and I may put up some photos at some point. It's been a little strange because she's definitely part of a pattern. She's a LOT like most of the girls I've dated. She's an artist, dresses a little strangely, has dyed hair, had a weird childhood that she's mostly grown out of, a little on the bigger side (partially due to the breakup though she's been working pretty hard on exercising a lot, and I've noticed a difference just in the last month). I guess it's not that uncommon, but it's still a bit unnerving. I guess I just know what I like. Well anyway, enough of that. I'm probably not going to be super verbose for a while, though I may be more depending on moods. I guess we'll see. [ Share the love! ]
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
8:22 pm	Comic Con wrapup and general life stuff I guess I don't really have any amazing insights into comic con this year, but what the hell. Last year was a HELL of a lot of fun, so this one was pretty well guaranteed to be somewhat of a step down. Generally I guess working this year has really given me a different set of priorities- I really have hardly been keeping up with any comics besides webcomics, so there wasn't really anything I wanted to see on the floor. There were a few artists around I like, but I already have sketchbooks full of sketches from previous years by people I like, and it turns out they end up just sitting in the sketchbook. Last year I tried to go to any panel I was even the least bit interested in, since wandering around the floor can get a little tiring and a little old. This year there really seemed to be less stuff on the schedule that I had any interest in, which was a definite surprise. Friday and Saturday were mostly big-name events that you have to stand in line for a long time to see, whereas little silly things like the premiere of the Car Talk cartoon from last year seemed to be left off. Instead I spent more time than usual in the anime rooms watching episodes from series I don't know much about. Zach and his bros and broettes had a really sweet booth this year so I hung out a bit and watched them do awesome sketches for people, though I didn't want to hang out too much, since they were alongside some webcomic booths that drew some pretty massive crowds, plus they don't need their real estate taken up by people who aren't spending any money. Budget Man played pretty well, but I really wasn't feeling crazy enthusiastic about getting into it. I wore different headwear this year which I think looked pretty good. I actually ended up in a slideshow for the LA Weekly or something but I hardly broke out the booming superhero voice. It's gotten to the point where the costume doesn't seem especially funny to me anymore, so unless something changes in the next 11 months I may be retiring Budget Man. People seem to like it and it's easy to throw together, and it's fun being in costume but if I end up just feeling frustrated all the time, I might need to rethink. I guess the issue was that I didn't have a set idea of what I was going to try to see this year. I'm not into superhero comics, not into cosplay, and am not currently doing any art, and wasn't looking to spend any money, so when I was looking to kill some time I didn't have a set thing to do. Maybe going to the con by myself is biting me in the ass. [ Share the love! ]
Friday, July 24th, 2009
2:07 am	Okay, one small quibble about the 'con. Why so many Dr. Horrible and Scout from TF2 costumes? Dr. Horrible's Sing along is hardly new, but I've seen MORE of them this year than last, and the TF2 stuff is pretty much right out of left field. 3 ego boosts [ Share the love! ]
1:09 am	I'm WAY dang tired but I have to write this down before I lose steam, and my kettle is dangerously light. I got up at 7 to get down to comic con, spent 2 hours in line to get in, spent a pretty cool day wandering around, and then watched anime in the movie-rooms to kill time until 9:30pm, when the Starlight Mints (who i heart muchly) were playing down at the casbah. I can't raise much of a fuss about the 'con. The 2 hour line was bullshit, but not unexpected. It seems like every year they get the line moving faster and faster, but so many more people are attending that it's still slow. This year they weren't selling ANY passes at the actual convention, so they actually were able to completely focus on just registering, but it still seemed to take forever. I can only imagine what it'll look like on saturday. What REALLY got me cranked was the show. I LOVE the Starlight Mints, and was really impressed with them. Just watching them set up their gear was cool- there weren't more than 2 or 3 people on stage at a time, and once the show started they just hopped up and launched in without the agonizing last 10 minutes where the whole band is on stage waiting for one more thing to get done. The set they played was really tight and they sounded fantastic (though they scared some people off by starting out pretty loud). If you only saw the stage, you'd think it was amazing, but everything off the stage was lame city. It was a pretty small show, which I would probably love if I was seeing them in LA or New York, but when I see a band I like in San Diego, I like to see a good turnout. We're hardly a destination for most bands who'd usually just go straight to LA and skip the driving. The other problem was the crowd itself. I'm probably spoiled from Dan Deacon shows where everyone in the crowd is really having a good time, but the Casbah seriously feels so un-fun it's kinda painful. Nobody was dancing, and only one or two people were even bobbing along with the music at all. I guess they all paid their $12 to come in and look cool. Personally, I spent it to enjoy myself but hey, I'm just another color in the rainbow. I'm used to a bunch of sticks in the mud... this IS southern california after all, but when the front row at your concert is two dudes on cellphones, the ubiquitous "holding on to each other for dear life" couple, and three dudes standing completely still, it's gonna set a bad tone for everyone else. I tried my best to enthuse, but to no avail. I guess I missed the point where it got to be ok to stand front and center at a small venue concert and spend 20 minutes text messaging and otherwise screwing around on your phone. I want to see the Starlight Mints, not your incandescent bluish glow of dickery. Is it possible you missed the five people playing instruments five feet in front of you?? A bit of that isn't totally the crowd's fault... with such a tight show that feels like it's barreling along it kinda puts the crowd in the passenger seat. There was a line or two of "how are you guys feeling tonight woo" but that was about it, and for the first few songs the volume was up pretty high even for live music at the casbah, which scared a few people back off to the patio- (wusses). The real bummer was that they didn't play "San Diego." I mean come ON, you're IN San Diego, you'd think that'd be a no-brainer. Still, their songs use a lot of computer input, and it'd be lame to have to set up the cues for a song you're only playing in one location. So yeah, I have a lot more stuff to mention about the actual convention, but as I said, I am WAY too tired right now. ZZZ. [ Share the love! ]
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
1:01 am	Just got back from seeing Harry Potter. True, I've never read the books, but I really guess I missed the point where the series became all about beer and sloppy hot makeouts. [ Share the love! ]
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
1:49 pm	Ballad of the comfortable pants They're black as the night but not so cold Just broken in but not too old Comfy Pants Comfy Pants Thirty long and thirty wide Gonna be a good day with my legs inside Comfy Pants Comfy PAAAAAAANTS Need a little boost on a so-so day? With your gams in these slacks it'll be okay Tight enough you don't need a belt The best damn britches your junk's ever felt. Comfy PAAAAAAAANTS COMFY PAAAAAAAANTS! [ Share the love! ]
Friday, July 10th, 2009
2:10 pm	Bleh need something to doooooooooooo. 2 ego boosts [ Share the love! ]
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
10:38 pm	Yo look at that chump, see the way that he struts? Don't kick him in the rump go nuts on his nuts. Just pop a squat, start letting off the shots like "knock knock knock" just cold cock his cock. To all the cock knockers, nut crackers, ball breakers, peter beaters, keep on boxing your baby makers. With a sock to the jock, better make that a double. Just a couple of rounds of knuckles beneath the buckle and he'll buckle. If you're in trouble, give him some urine trouble Hand him his balls and tell him better learn to juggle. Turn his pebbles into rubble. Make him wonder what might've been. Make it so the South will never rise again. Now every man claims to be the toughest and the meanest Watch your crocks, because soon the losers will be the weiners. And the winners in all the gladiator arenas Are always the ones that go straight for the penis. Current Music: Punch 'em in the Dick - Juicy Karkass [ Share the love! ]