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-Driving in heavy fog at night on the highway is both very creepy and very nerve-wracking, because the visibility is so bad.

-Industrial sprawl in NJ is a very freaky place to get lost.

-I am not cut out for road trips - nine hours with a two and a half hour break in the middle of it = way too long.

However, my brother enjoyed Video Games Live!, and I enjoyed seeing them again, so in the end it was worth it.

Because I am kind of drunk right now (brother came home and his girlfriend is over, and we had a few while chatting after dinner), and Jon linked me to this thread, which is bringing out the epic eyerolling and ranting in me. And hey, I haven't bitched a bout cosplay for a while XD

This thread fails on many levels:

1) 'Asians are the most awesome perfect cosplayers ever!' - not actually outright said, but all but one of the 'good' cosplayers they link is Asian (I'm pretty sure that Ivy is Caucasian, but with all the make-up and wig, I can't make a 100% call). This is an attitude I am really sick of seeing in fandom and in the cosplay communities. Yeah, there are some fucking awesome Asian cosplayers. There are also some fucking awesome Western cosplayers too. And related, there are terribad Western cosplayers, and terribad Asian ones as well. Asians do not have a mystical cosplay gene that makes them automatically better at it. I know a lot of it is the weeaboo/Japanophile bullshit that is one of the reasons I've kind of fallen out of anime fandoms - if it comes from Japan, it must be better! (NB: I actually think most of the 'good' cosplayers linked are in fact amazing, it just tripped my pet peeve born of people on Cosplay.com actually outright saying 'Japanese cosplayers are the best evar omg')

2) 'Cosplay is only okay if it's done by hot chicks' - 1) up there is a pet peeve of mine, but this makes me want to find the person and give them the finger while shouting 'Go to hell, you sexist pig'. Newsflash, male nerds: this cosplay is not for you. I think it's a fair estimation to say that most cosplayers like it when other people like their costumes. We're human. We like compliments, we like flattery. But a lot of us? Costume for ourselves, for fun. Your like or dislike of our costume does not somehow validate or invalidate the work we put into it. We are not there for the sole purpose of your sexual gratification. You do not get to decide who cosplays and who doesn't. And you know, this goes for the female nerds too - anyone who says shit like 'ugh, he/she is so fat/ugly/pimply/etc, they should be banned from cosplay for life'.

3) 'I think all the cosplayers I see at cons are losers with no social lives' - I'm not sure whether I should laugh and laugh and laugh or just roll my eyes until they come out of their sockets. Please. You bought a con pass, do not judge the nerdiness of others. Besides, at least cosplay requires creativity. And for all the 'but cosplay is so expensive!' - so are video games, and TCGs, and RPG books (oh god yes T.T) and golf, and going to the movies all the time, and cooking (the net worth of my cooking appliances/utensils/supplies is def worth more than all the cosplays I've done), and, well, most hobbies. It's just that nobody rags one someone for spending hundreds of dollars on golf clubs because it's considered socially acceptable, while making your own really cool clothing and fake weapons and shit is super-nerdy and worthy of mocking.

And I will end this by admitting that yeah, I am hypercritical about cosplay - both my own and others. I'm hypercritical about a lot of things in life (riding public transit a lot really makes me hate humanity), and I know full-well that a lot of it is because I have self-esteem problems. I belittle others to feel better about myself. But you know what? At least I keep all my bitchy criticisms to myself - I don't walk up to the person, or their friends and be like 'you are a godawful cosplayers, now GTFO'. Hell, I don't even post it on the internet. Honestly, this is in part the reason I stopped entering competitions - it made me even more of a massive hypercritical bitch, and I hated that part of me. Judging, on the other hand, actually made me remember why I love cosplaying - talking to people, new and old cosplayers alike, who were just so enthusiastic and excited to be there, and be cosplaying, was really uplifting. Even the discussions among the judges afterwards managed to be constructive in their criticisms - a lot of 'this part was really awesome, but I think if they had done this, it would have made the costume a lot better', which for craftsmanship judging (which is what this is) is the right attitude to have.

(Semi-related hint - cosplay on the internet is all about photography. Crappy construction will look great with a a good photographer, and amazing construction will look lousy with a bad one.)

Dear Money,

Go die in a fire

-Me

So, after figuring out how much money I owe people, and then factoring in the lousy exchange rate, I realized I have $150 left to 1) buy food for the next week and 2) finish buying Christmas presents.

I also discovered my credit card won't authorize any more - I'm guessing it's a combo of Vanoc running the full amount of the Olympic tickets I requested for my Dad plus my mom putting a bunch of stuff on one of the linked cards.

I also want to play DDS2 more, but don't really want to spend $50 on a game I already own, and have tossed another $20 and a year and a half trying to get back into my possession (I'm not bitter at all, no). I know I can probably buy it again with Christmas money, but I'd really rather buy something I don't have already.

I'm angry and bitter and can't sleep, and nobody else is on for me to bitch to. Argh.

EDIT: I should note that this is not 'oh noez I am broke and going to starve' - I have money for food and rent for January (and already paid up this month). I was just hoping to have some left over after presents to buy some books or something for myself.

Oh Arts, how I love you ♥

I had these two papers I was really worried about the marks on - a paper for a third-year science lab (the one I was wailing about a few weeks ago), and a paper about portrayals of anarchism in The Secret Agent and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a fourth year English class. Both were super-bullshitty, and I felt like they were both C/D papers - not strong work at all.

I don't have the science paper back yet, although with 40% and 60% as my two previous paper grades, not looking good. The English paper? 78%. I laugh and laugh and laugh. And then cry a little, because there's no way I got 78% on my stats final this morning.

So hey, I haven't posted much lately >.> Mostly because I feel like I don't have any particularly insightful commentary to offer here, which, well, is the way I've been feeling most of the time lately - I'm a lurker on the message boards of life.

Part of this is the fact that depression has reared it's ugly head again, and while I know that I am not intrinsically worthless as a human being/my friends do not all secretly hate me (or do you >.>)/etc, it's still left me wanting to spend most of my free time either just surfing the internet, or curled up in bed asleep, both of which are somewhat counter-productive to getting things done, and makes me rather unfun to be around. Hopefully things'll get better after exams are all done.

Some random assorted thoughts, opinions and notes:

-WotLK is basically amazing. Northrend is beautiful, there's a lot of innovation in the new quests (less FedEx, more harpoon surfing!). The Death Knight starting quest chain is fucking awesome, and while I know like 75% of the DKs out there are all basically huntard2.0, I've been having a lot of fun leveling mine - she's Frost-tank specc'ed, so I've been making Olvia teach me the joys of tanking (ilu Olv <3)

-FFX-2 should really be subtitled 'strippers go on an adventure!', because seriously, while I roll my eyes at WoW's plate bras, if you've got a shirt on, most outfits are actually pretty covering, and nobody wears heels. C'mon Yuna, you're too smart to run around climbing ancient ruins in stilettos, really. It's actually pretty fun if I think of the game as a crack AU, rather than a genuine sequel, although I got two hours in and then remembered why I stopped playing Squeenix games - running in circles for twenty minutes trying to click on everything and everyone to get what the game wants me to do to actually advance the plot gets really annoying.

-My SR campaign looks like it's going to be ending a mission and a half in - we're probably losing the hacker, and possibly losing the street sam, come second term, and people are too frustrated with the rules to go through the trouble of resorting everyone's skills and stats to cover the empty spots. Quote of the game - 'his little squirrel paws move faster than the speed of sound!'. I'm going to try my hand at running Earthdawn, which I love as a system, and which is less reliant on having a particular group composition, but which is also a lot more plot-heavy (plot, my one weakness! *hides*)

-The Gamers: Dorkness Rising manages to be even more awesome and hilarious than the original. I highly, highly recommend it to all my tabletop-gaming buddies.

Having the inside of your nose anesthesized is a deeply strange feeling - having a fiber optic cable snaked through it afterwards, doubly so.

Also, CA, I'm disappointed in you. AZ and FL too, but I kind of expect this sort of bullshit from there.

A belated happy Halloween to everyone \o/ I dressed up as a zombie hunter (read: wore two-thirds of Leon), and went out to Rosie/Julie/Justin's Halloween party and got rather drunk and had a wonderful time. Also went to see Video Games Live on Wednesday, which was great fun - we went out for some excellent Italian before hand, and the music was amazing, although I felt it needed more Chrono Trigger and less random blathering from the host. The music was a nice mix of genres and ages - there was the typical Zelda/Mario/Squeenix properties, but also Halo, MGC, an oldschool arcade medley, Warcraft and Starcraft, Metroid, Castlvania, and a surprisingly beautiful piece from Civ IV.

In Warcraft news, my guild is now 3/5 in Mt Hyjal (which is hella fun as a mage, although it makes my graphics card cry), and we're heading into SSC tomorrow. I've also started playing Warcraft III, which is surprisingly fun, even if Arthas is basically the ultimate retnub, and all of the humans other than Uther and Jaina are total idiots. Lordaeron deserves a kingdom-wide Darwin Award, because their fall really is their fault.

Also, I've started digging around in Warcraft fanfic, because apparently I hate myself. Illidan/Kael is really deeply fucked up, but also interesting and pretty hot >.> I'm ashamed to admit that yes, I ship it. And kind of Thrall/Jaina, because it's sweet and a little silly, and they're both made of epic win, even if Thrall likes leeroying, as Olv so eloquently put it XD

...Although I'm remembering now why I don't go to FF.net any more - I just found these little gems:

Arthas and Thrall: Homosexual Lovers by

After years of having a loving relationship with Thrall, Arthas feels he needs to end it.

Tamed

A young Blood Elf male Hunter goes to Ashenvale to catch himself one of the elusive Elder Ashenvale Bears, but when he finds a rare, purplish bear, the young Blood Elf gets much more than he bargained for. Yaoi, MM, Slash, PwP.

...And, of course, assorted other self-inserts, as they are very, very easy in an MMO-verse.

Posting this here, as I don't want to actually get involved in the wankfest, but aaaaargh must say something somewhere *froth* Basically, WoWInsider posted a short interview with a GBLT-positive guild on US-Proudmoore. There were a surprisingly large number of positive comments, but of course the inevitable internet wankfest occured (complete with Godwin!), and in among the back and forth, there was a special little comment that got looked over in the general melee, and made me seethe with rage.

( internet stupidity and my unposted reply to it )

....There, that feels a little better now. I almost want to go roll and alt on Proudmoore, because that guild sounds full of win and awesome, but I have too many alts, and I don't think I could leave my awesome DotA gals ♥

1) The PS3 can play AVIs off of data DVDs. No more hunching over my little laptop screen!
2) My tv remote works on both televisions (likely because they're the same brand)

This makes up for dealing with arguably the club's biggest asshole - not J (surprisingly!) but George. He doesn't come by much, but he came for the icebreaker tonight, and Christ, I don't have the words to describe how much of an asshole he is. He gets his kicks fucking over as many people as possible.

Man, I kinda want to punch whoever set up the club's hosting plan (I think I know who it was, and I won't _actually_ punch him, but it's tempting). I know my host for T-T.org here can be problematic sometimes (usually about billing - never had tech problems), but seriously, I'm getting roughly ten times the features for the same price the club pays. I was trying to install Gallery, so we can have some online photo albums of events, and discovered that I couldn't install Gallery2, because trying to add a second MySQL database (the first is used for the forums) failed because "The total cost of the resources you are trying to purchase exceeds your credit". So I went back to Gallery1 (less awesome than 2, but still awesome), and then discovered I had to install an image processing library myself, because the host has no image processing libraries installed - I don't think it has any Perl modules installed at all.

I did finally get it all working, though, and it has reminded me of two things - 1) I have gotten really rusty at webstuff and 2) despite that, I still enjoy working on webstuff, and the satisfaction that comes from fixing all the problems with something.