Danimal’s? More like Dickimal’s.

Dear Danimal’s:

You guys are losers. “Crush Cups”? Seriously? Of course, you could always do something like that with regular yogurt or pudding cups, but you have to go out of your way to actually design a cup that it specifically made to be crushed, just to make it seem like a totally new idea to make money off of. I can see it now, a scene between mother and son at the grocery store:

“But Mom! That’s not a Crush Cup! I want the Crush Cups!”
“Jimmy, you can do that with these cups. You can still squeeze them, and they’re cheaper.”
“BUT THEY’RE NOT CRUSH CUPS!”

Come on.

Sincerely,
Isaiah Olson

 

I am annoyed.

I like my history class, Minorities in America, because the professor is kind of a cool dude, and he really seems to know what he’s talking about. He kind of reminds me of myself sometimes, but at the same time I realize that that worries me a bit; I hope I’m not too much like him. Anyway, this really isn’t about him. This is about how he sucks at teaching this course.

I have my third exam in this class tomorrow, and of course I’m not doing some last-minute studying. He has, in the syllabus, a nice list of all of the terms we should know for each chapter. They are terms that we may be required to define in the exam, and they are more or less the key points to each chapter. So whenever I study for one of his exams, I just make sure that I’m relatively well-informed on the key terms. However, finding the information regarding them is more of a hassle than it really ought to be.

I just went through the slideshows for the chapters this exam is going to be on, searching for any sign of any of the key terms so that I can make flashcards to study from. The slideshows provide very little information in this regard, and are so incoherently organized and presented that they are practically useless without the accompanying lecture that he gives as we go through the slides in class. I look at them now, and I have no idea what points he’s trying to illustrate with some of these graphs and pictures that don’t have any relevant information next to them.

We were also required to purchase a textbook for the class–one which he has very rarely refered to thus far into the semester. However, one could theoretically read along through the textbook at the pace of the class in their free time and get more or less the same information, though I think I recall him mentioning that the book doesn’t really follow exactly along with his lecture. So, since the slideshow is more or less useless for my studying purposes at this point in time, I turn to the textbook and look up the key terms in the index. However, I find myself irritated when half of them don’t appear in the index at all, and therefore would be quite possibly impossible to locate at all within the reading.

So the question on my mind right now is, why exactly are we being tested on material that is not accessible by way of the class slideshows and the required text–the only two class-related sources of information we’re given?

So, yes, I’m very annoyed right now. Because I know I’m probably not going to do so great on this exam. Because we’re not being taught or given information in an effecient manner. Ugh.

 

I may survive.

I think that things are going to start looking up again. As it turns out, I’m not that terrible at college. Until very recently, I’ve been keeping up with the Little Dorrit readings for my english class. Except now I’m 100 pages behind, and if I don’t get moving, I’ll be 200 pages behind on Thursday. I’m just thankful that it’s almost over, and we’ll be able to move onto other texts.

That eBook and paper assignment I was talking about last week went pretty well. I read a majority of the book and wrote my three page paper in a matter of a couple of hours, which I was feeling pretty good about. The only thing that sucks is that I got my grade, and I received a B-. I don’t think it was specifically that I didn’t write a good paper. I can write awesome papers. But I missed the part on the syllabus where it stated that papers were to be written strictly in third person, and without the use of contractions. Also, I think that the point I was trying to illustrate with my paper wasn’t as straightforward as he would’ve liked. I’ll definitely be able to do better on the next one, though, realizing this now. I’m not letting this grade get to me.

I’m not sure how I feel about my geology exam. I’ll have to see if they were graded yet later. I took my philosophy exam tonight, which I’m also unsure of. I think I did pretty well, though. I at least aced the two extra credit questions. Now we’re going to be moving onto theology, which I’m kind of interested in, but also dreading. I really don’t feel like getting into a class-wide theological debate, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it happened.

I finally went into Biolife Plasma today to set up an appointment for a physical, which is going to be mid-April. Then I’ll be hopefully back on that twice a week, pulling in an extra fifty bones per week. It’ll definitely be nice to have the extra cash.

Stuff will hopefully be getting straightened out with my snack booth at my dad’s workplace. It seemed for a while now that we’re making less money than we should. I buy snacks in bulk, then sell them individually. The money I make there not only goes into my bank account to buy more snacks when our stock runs out, but a portion of it goes to my dad, who uses that money to pay for my car insurance. But lately, the portion he’s been taking has been leaving less and less money for the purchase of more stock. Turns out that the price of the bulk quantities has gone up, and we never adjusted our prices at the snack booth to show that. But I’ll be doing that this week, and hopefully everything will begin to balance out again. With any luck, we’ll eventually make a bit of an extra profit so that we’ve got some padding there so this doesn’t happen again (I’ve had to pay out-of-pocket with my own money to buy snacks before… something I wasn’t too pleased about).

And with summer approaching, I’ll probably put more focus on obtaining my motorcycle lisence. Not only will I be pumped about that, but so will my lady. When I was doing it at the end of last summer, she expressed great interest in going for rides as soon as I could take her with me. So that should be pretty jawesome.

I kind of miss Street Sharks.

 

I am terrible at college.

Right now, I’m reading a book (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass) online as an eBook, because I procrastinated and can’t find a copy at a library around here. I’m reading it because I need to write a paper on it that’s due Thursday. I also have a Geology exam on Thursday, which I haven’t had time to study for just yet, and I’ll probably need to. What’s up with you, rocks?

I’ve got a Philosophy exam probably tonight, and I’m not sure how that’s going to go down. The professor says it isn’t like a traditional exam where we learn things and then regurgitate them onto paper, so I’m not entirely sure what to expect. Plus, I’m reading Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens in my literature class, and that whole book is a pain in the ass. I’m currently 500 pages into this 860-page monstrosity. I hate reading books about (primarily wealthy) people who don’t really do anything but sit around and discuss their social status. It reminds me of The Great Gatsby. Sure, neither this or that were terrible books, but they’re not exactly the most interesting reads.

I’m also in a computer lab, where food and drink aren’t allowed, but I’m probably going to secretly eat my sandwiches in a little bit, because that’s what I always do in here on Tuesdays, since no one else is ever in here. And being here from 9:25am to 9:25pm is a bunch of noise.

At least I’m getting stuff done on time so far, and I haven’t missed or skipped any classes yet. (Though I was actually planning on skipping my history class to take a nap… I didn’t go through with it.) And my grades are still good. We’ll just see how that all still is after these exams.

 

It’s a Long Way (To the Top [If You Wanna Rock and Roll])

Dear Ladies; Dear Gentlemen;

Sorry for leaving you high and dry there for so long, nonexistent readers. But I’m pretty sure that I predicted this would happen in my first entry here. Anyway, I’ll try to keep a bit more up-to-date here. I don’t have much time right at the moment, but I figured I may as well make a new entry while I was thinking about it.

If you don’t already know (and I’m sure that if you found your way here, you do know by now), I’m starting up again with the comics over at Meats & Fishes. The two I posted here are included, and there are two new ones since then, with another currently in the works. I love trying to make a name for myself again on a website that I co-own. Anyway, here’s the link to aforementioned comics, which I have since titled Nuclear Delight.

Also, if it’s your kind of thing, I also started a Twitter account a while back. So I’ve made it considerably easy to stalk me via the interwebs. Have fun with that.

 

It’s getting to be that time of year, part 2.

I think that the second part of my problem is that–and I haven’t been keeping track of this feeling as closely–I occasionally lose interest in video games almost entirely. As someone who considers gaming a large part of his life, it worries me a bit when that happens. I start reflecting on the time and money I’ve wasted on something that I’ve lost interest in. But when it comes right down to it, I’ll look at my library of games (which probably isn’t big enough to justify use of the word “library” there) and simply shrug my shoulders as I try to think of something else to do. It’s starting to get where a game won’t be able to hold my interest much longer than playing through the campaign once, unless there’s a multiplayer aspect to it–and it’s been far, far too long since I’ve played a multiplayer game. Sure, I can keep pumping money out of my wallet and pick up some new games (the most likely of which at this point in time are either Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead [when it comes out], or Mirror’s Edge [which I'm really just considering renting, as I'm still uncertain of the replay value]) to keep me occupied, but at this point in time I can’t realistically see myself feeling as involved in a game after the credits roll.

I’m just getting bored of games, I guess. Even ones like Fable 2 and Crackdown (both of which I would assume to be near the zenith of replayability) just aren’t doing it for me–in fact, I ended up selling my copy of Crackdown earlier this week. And I find little reason to play through games too soon after I’ve beaten them. I’m not sure I could play through Devil May Cry 4 again (Though on second thought maybe I should sooner or later. Loves me some DMC.), and I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to pop The Force Unleashed into my 360 anymore (which is why I sold that, too).

It could be that I need to stop investing so much time in awaiting and looking into new games before they come out, because I’ll just end up disappointing myself. I mean, in both cases of The Force Unleashed and Fable 2, I was pretty excited about both before their releases. I ended up purchasing both on the first day they came out. In the end, neither of them was really worth it. Then again, I was getting excited about DMC4 long before that came out, too, and I still loved it–though that’s probably more due to the DMC-fanboy in me. Still, I think that I would enjoy games more if I didn’t spend so much time looking into them before playing them. They just need to, I don’t know, happen.

But, like I said, I don’t really know. Maybe it’s not all games. I’ve finally started putting some time into playing Mother 3, which I’ve been anticipating since news of its release in Japan. In fact, I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about starting a new game of Earthbound alongside it. And with the fact that I get into my previously-described Metroid Mood at this time of year, maybe I’ve just got a subconscious desire to play games that remind me of my childhood. I know I’ve felt this way before, and I’ve obviously come out of it. Maybe it’s just another weird phase that I have to deal with occasionally. I really don’t doubt that, sooner or later, I’ll find myself loving games just as much as I used to. Maybe after satisfying my latent yearning for nostalgia, I’ll be back to my old self. At least, one would hope.

 

It’s getting to be that time of year.

No, I’m not talking about Christmas. Seriously, that’s still over a month away. There’s not even snow around here yet. Put away your decorations and stop playing your holly-jolly music on the radio. It’s annoying. And no, I’m not talking about Thanksgiving, either.

So now you may be wondering “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Isaiah?” Or at least, you might if you’re Gary Coleman. (I apologize Mr. Coleman, as you surely could not have foreseen the lifetime of torement you’d have to endure with that horribly overused joke. Given the circumstances, someone had to take the fall, and that burden just happened to land in your unfortunate hands. You have my sympathy, little one.)

Quite simply, this time of year I find myself with this strange urge to play Metroid. I really can’t explain it, but it’s been this way for maybe five years now. I think it all started back when I first played Metroid Fusion. If I recall correctly, I downloaded the ROM before the game’s actual release, and I was really into it. Then I received the game as a present, and was immediately hooked. Ever since, on an annual basis, I get this strong desire to sit down and blast my way through an army of space pirates.

Dealing with this feeling is kind of a hassle, though. One factor is that the new 3D Metroid games don’t quench this thirst. Call it nostalgia, but they just never successfully capture the atmosphere of the two-dimensional side-scrolling Metroid that I came to know and love. This isn’t so much of a problem, though, since I don’t even have any of the first-person Metroid games, or the consoles that play them. The second problem that comes into play is the fact that the first two Metroid games kind of suck. I attribute this mostly to the fact that every area in both games are practically indistinguishable from every other area, and the fact that neither game utilizes a map. Going through a Metroid game without having a map handy is a neigh impossible task. The final reason why this is kind of an annoying problem for me is due to a combination of the reasons thus far: it really puts limitations on what Metroid games are left. I will list them, because there are three: Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid: Zero Mission. I’ve already played through Fusion and Zero Mission on more than one occasion, and with the exception of, like, a twenty-minute gap that I didn’t play through (I got close to the end on my own game, then finished the game from a friend’s save point once), I’ve played through Super Metroid, too (and started new games countless times). Basically, this urge is annoying because I feel like I’m exhausting my Metroid experience by playing the same games over and over. Yet I still feel that I need to.

Maybe this is all part of something bigger. I think there’s another factor to this mood that I get that’s more overriding than I get the impression that it is. I’ll probably get into this more tomorrow, since it’s getting late, and I’m getting tired.

But I guess in the end I’m just going to have to suck it up again, start another new game of Super Metroid, and hopefully I’ll actually finish it this year before my Metroid Mood wears off again. Wish me luck.

 

The value of language.

Right, so, I kind of fell through on the whole “post per day” thing pretty quickly. But I’ve actually been busy lately with a bunch of other stuff, so I didn’t really have time to sit down and write something here. Actually, I did write an article describing all of the things I don’t like about Fable 2, but it got to be a lot lengthier than I had anticipated, and I didn’t really feel like making my second entry here a giant rant detailing all of my complaints with a certain video game. So I’ll probably just save it for later, or an entirely different occasion altogether. We’ll see.

To make up for the large gap between this entry and my first, however, I’ve got another comic ready. And that’s probably going to be it for today.

Anyway, I’ll be trying to update this thing on a more frequent basis as I originally intended to do.

 

In regards to toothpick stabbings.

After a bit of consideration, I decided that I needed something like this to archive my dumb ramblings and post comic ideas. I was originally going to make this into a sort of comic blog, but I decided not to slap that limitation on myself right off the bat. I expect that I’ll write here frequently for a while, like maybe a post every day or so, and then eventually forget of this place’s existence–or at the very least seem as though I do.

I’m really not expecting anyone to keep tabs on this place. I’m starting this up more for myself than anything else. But, I mean, if what I put here is really that interesting, then by all means stick around and enjoy yourself. I’m just not guaranteeing to generate any sort of entertainment here.

On that note, I’ve finished up a nice little comic. To anyone who has been following my stumbling career (and I use that word as loosely as possible) as a webcomic artist: Yes, another comic. I know, I’ve had, what, four or five failed series of comics? I know. But those just didn’t feel right. I’m branching out once again into something new, and I think it’s going to give me a wider horizon of potential ideas. I’m not sure what to call it just yet, but if it takes off I’ll probably be adding this series to a certain website. Yeah, you know the one. Maybe. Anyway, here it is.