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Canama

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Blog Entries posted by Canama

  1. Canama

    ???

    By Canama,


    Life
    I just got accepted into graduate school. My dream program. I feel excited, and I also feel guilty for feeling excited because I'm also still mourning. None of this makes sense.
  3. Canama
    "He is only a dog", but he is human enough to be a great comfort.
    As I type, my best and oldest friend lies in my lap, drifting in and out of consciousness. He has not eaten in more than a day, nor has he drank anything in that period except a small amount of water administered by syringe. He can barely move, though he keeps trying. It has been eighteen years since he entered my life and I am not ready for him to leave it. He's one of the few remnants of my childhood, which is perhaps why I felt the urge to write this here, on this site I used to haunt in my elementary-school days. Perhaps I will clean this up, post it somewhere else, somewhere other than the ruins of Web 2.0, somewhere where it might get more attention, but this version, typed in the BZP blog submission box at five-thirty in the morning, is the original. I joined BZPower in 2005; I adopted Nacho later the same year.
    But only barely the same year. He was a belated Christmas present; we picked him up on New Years' Eve. Actually, there was another dog there too, and we had our choice of which to take. The other puppy was let out first; he was small and so very sweet. He walked up to nine-year-old me ever so calmly and politely, introduced himself in the most dignified way a four-month-old Shih Tzu could. Then the-dog-who-would-become-Nacho was released. He immediately charged my six-year-old brother, leapt into the air, slammed into him with all the power his seven-pound body could muster. My brother was actually knocked backwards.
    We could tell he didn't mean any harm by it. To the contrary, he loved being there, loved to meet new people, loved to be alive. He wanted to share that with us, even if he didn't know any way to do it beyond throwing himself full-force into the nearest kindergartner.
    ---
    I "made" a spritesheet for him, back in those days when the Comics board (I believe it was called Artwork III back then, having been split off from Artwork I because the people who actually knew how to draw were tired of being overshadowed by Dark709) was the hottest place on the site. Of course by "made" I mean I took a preexisting sprite sheet (actually, it might have been by Dark709, though I no longer recall), recolored the spot on the dog's back, and was off to the races. The entire process probably took me about sixty seconds, which was the limits of my patience at the time. He only ever made one appearance in a comic I was a co-author for; why someone would let me, with my complete lack of artistic or comedic talent, touch their strip, I can only wonder. I'm glad that Brickshelf has archived my achievement in the field of bad BZPower sprite comics. Man, I was such a kid.
    ---
    I wanted to name him "Wicket," after the Ewok from Star Wars. My younger brother wanted Nacho. He was inspired by a cute MOC he had recently seen, here on BZP, that had the same name; that build is probably lost to time now. I was a little sore about losing out, but in retrospect, he definitely chose the right name.
    It's funny how much of that dog comes back to this website.
    ---
    I haven't done much of anything today besides sit and worry. Every now and then I try to see if a miracle has happened, if his appetite has returned, if his body has decided not to shut itself off after all, and every now and then I am disappointed. I have my laptop, but I don't want to play or watch anything, nor do I want to read the book I have left sitting on the coffee table. I have marked my life through fiction, and I know that anything I read or watch or play now will be the thing I was reading/watching/playing when Nacho died, indelibly linked to him in my mind. I don't want to ruin a perfectly good anime series that way. Nor do I want him to be permanently associated with a bad one. Instead, I mostly scroll Twitter.
    The one other bit of entertainment I afford myself is playing randomly-generated Picross puzzles. Actually, it's kind of boring, but it appeals to me. The canvas is a rigid grid, its solution locked away in the numbers, and all I have to do is put things in their place. Either I get one that's easily solvable, or else I get one where there are at least two valid solutions and it comes down to chance which one the computer thinks is right. I think I have a winning record at guessing, though.
    I suppose writing is now the third interesting thing I've done.
    ---
    My brother and mother (yes, I still live with my parents at twenty-seven) have gone about their days in as ordinary a fashion as possible (given the severe winter weather we're now experiencing). How can they act like the world isn't ending?
    ---
    In a way, the Nacho I met all those years ago has already gone. It's been many years since he could run and jump and force his joie de vivre on the most proximate elementary-schooler. Then, when he went blind a couple years back, whatever energy he still had vanished. These last few months he's had difficulty walking, and sometimes even difficulty standing. Two days ago, I was already never going to take him on another walk again. But even two days ago, he wasn't skin and bones like he is right now. Where did the mass go?
    As long as he's alive, there was--is--always that irrational hope beyond hope that he would somehow get better, that his eyes would regain their form and function, that his energy would come back, that his telomeres would re-lengthen. When he dies that will be it. He will stop being is and become was.
    ---
    I remember how he would greet me when I returned home from school. He was always so excited, like it was the first time we'd seen each other in years. I remember how much he used to love broccoli; I've never really heard of a dog who liked broccoli, but he always went crazy for the stuff. Whenever we had it with dinner we'd save some for him. I remember how he used to love to play with plastic water bottles, more than any actual dog toy. I remember how excited he got at so much as a glimpse of the leash. I want to keep those moments frozen, forever, as if in amber. It's not even that I didn't/don't want to grow up; I just always wished, wish, for the ability to grow down, to return to these comforting events in a format more perfect and real than memory, to reclaim my innocence, to revive the mosquito in the amber of the past.
    My best friend is dying. My life can never be the same.
  4. Canama

    somnnostalgia

    By Canama,


    Life
    i recently had an Actual Nightmare where I got banned from bzpower. like the kind where you wake up and have to check just to reassure yourself that it's not real. it's funny--it's not like i really come on here very much anymore. it's not like anyone comes on here very much anymore. if my account were to actually be banned it would make no difference in my life.
    when i joined bzpower, i was eight; now i find myself uncomfortably close to thirty. thirty still seems so old to me. i could never--not as a kid or a teenager, not even in my early twenties--conceive of being thirty. i still can't. and yet the calendar insists that there are just a few years left.
    as i get older, i find myself trying to hold onto tchotchkes of my childhood--things that have no functional value to me now except in the conveyance of memories. sometimes they appear in my dreams; bzpower is not unique in this regard. i want to remember who i was, where i came from, to keep from finding myself unmoored in time. when i was a teenager, i was glad that bzpower lost the old forums database and majhost went down and spared me the humiliation of knowing my awful attempts at a sprite comic or my execrable fanfictions were still out there somewhere. now i find myself saddened by their loss. no one else will mourn them, of course. (nor, frankly, should they.) none of these things had value to anyone but me.
    the banning of this account would represent a final foreclosure on that past, an admittance that it's over and done. realistically, that past is gone forever anyways and there is no going back--but while it exists i can pretend, if only for a moment, that it is still 2005, still 2008, still 2012, can step back into my old selves and see the world through their eyes.
    at least this blog remains, in its entirety. its first entry (actually, its first four entries) was posted the very day blogs were made available on this site. the things i wrote as a child survive, even with their atrocious spelling (faveorite???) and utterly vapid content (i was, in retrospect, not a particularly smart kid). by my teenage years i had mostly moved on from bzpower, but you can see bits and pieces of my adolescent struggle for self-actualization posted here. none of this will mean anything to any of you. this very post is nothing more than an exercise in self-indulgence. but it means something to me.
    i'm glad i'm not banned.
  7. Canama

    Infusion

    By Canama,

    I had an infusion today. They got some medicine into my bloodstream that will hopfully help me get over Chron's. It took a long time.
     
    -Canama
  8. Canama

    SPOILER

    By Canama,

    The new Bonkles storyline, should it be a reboot, will be massively hated by just about everyone
     
    Should it not be a reboot, there will still be a strong contingent of people who dislike it and refuse to accept it as canon
     
    BZP will be overwhelmed by the fighting over whether the old or new stuff is better
     
    YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
  9. Canama
    "Elizabeth? Why is your mother a ghost?"
     
    (Made 1000 times better by Booker's tone of voice while he says it)
     
    Honorable mention goes to "Well, I want a puppy, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get one!" from the same game.
     
    (And if you don't know what game I'm referring to, we can't be friends.)
  10. Canama
    Originally posted this on reddit, where it unfortunately collected a total of zero tears had only one person address it. It has been edited for profanity but otherwise unchanged.
     
    DISCLAIMER: This wasn't originally intended to be a rant, even though it turned into one. Just know that, despite everything I am about to say, I loved Bioshock: Infinite. It's just that I hated most of it.
     
    I thought Booker and Elizabeth's interactions were the best part of the game. The combat was lackluster and detracted from the narrative (there were only a few bits of it that were narratively justified, per se, like the bit with the police at the beginning or the bit at the ticket booth where Elizabeth is first confronted with the dark nature of the world). The rest was just the boring stuff I tried to finish ASAP. The combat was generic; it was better and more engaging than Bioshock 1's, but seeing as punching yourself in the face repeatedly is also better and more engaging combat than Bioshock 1's that's not much of a compliment. (Disclaimer: I loved Bioshock 1, up to the halfway point anyways (after that it was kinda boring) and pretty much every aspect of that game that wasn't combat or related to Frank Fontaine was phenomenal.) The combat was the boring bits between the interesting bits; I can't remember anything about it, honestly (other than that shotgun + carbine was enough to get through almost the entire game, even barely using vigors), and I've played this game within the last few weeks.
     
    Actually if they just took out literally all the bits that weren't Booker and Elizabeth talking, I probably would have liked the game more. (But I'm one of those weirdos who loved Dear Esther, so take this with a grain of salt.) Keep the Luteces too; they were my favorite characters and provided a lot of needed levity. But anyways, I liked the way Booker and Elizabeth evolved - they had legitimate character arcs, with Elizabeth becoming darker, more serious, and more violent as her idealized and childish notions of the world were shattered while Booker became lighter as he learned to care about someone besides himself; coming to worry about Elizabeth in more ways than just "meal ticket", and his quest for money became a quest for penance (in fact, you could make an argument that the game, or at least the bits of the game that I liked, is/are Booker's personal Purgatory). They're fleshed out and well-written, which is not common in the gaming world. I actually cared about them as characters.
     
    Okay, now back to criticism.
     
    Can we talk about the Vox Populi for a second? Mister Levine, do you honestly expect me to agree that killing one kid is equivalent to systemic racism, oppression, and wage (as well as, at least implied, straight-up Old South-style) slavery? Like, for real? I guess he was trying to subvert the whole "hero stumbles upon revolution, somehow winds up leading it to victory" trope, but the way he did it was ridiculously poor. They had spent the whole game up to that point setting up the Vox as sympathetic, and guess what? After that bit, they were still sympathetic. Every time a fight against them came up, my reaction was "If you would kindly stop shooting me, you would notice that I am, in fact, on your side. I think we could get a lot more done by not trying to murder each other." No, Mr. DeWitt, I do not, in fact, believe that "the only difference between Comstock and Fitzroy is how you spell the name."
     
    On an unrelated (and slightly petty; seriously, I doubt anyone else cares) note, what was up with Mrs. Lin? (The original one, that is?) For real, that was straight-up "you no take candle". I managed to block memory of her out after it happened the first time, but the memories resurfaced after I reached the gun shop on my second playthrough and I said "Well, it's getting late. I should go to bed. Besides, I know what's about to happen and I should probably brace myself for the massive levels of garbage that are about to occur." Yeah, that was 20 days ago and I still haven't felt up to playing the game again. For real, could they have made her any more stereotypical?
     
    Okay now commence fanboy raging debate and/or agree with the points I made
  11. Canama

    Opinion vs Identity

    By Canama,

    (All definitions courtesy of Marriam-Webster)
     
    Opinion:
     
     
    1

    a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter
    b : approval, esteem 
     
     
    2

    a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge
    b : a generally held view 
     
     
    3

    a : a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert
     
    b : the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based
     
     
    Identity:
     
     
    1

    a : sameness of essential or generic character in different instances
    b : sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing : oneness 
     
     
    2

    a : the distinguishing character or personality of an individual : individuality
    b : the relation established by psychological identification 
     
     
    3

    : the condition of being the same with something described or asserted <establish the identity of stolen goods> 
     
     
    4

    : an equation that is satisfied for all values of the symbols 
     
     
    5

    : identity element 
     
    I'm not seeing the overlap.
     
    Let me be clear: NO ONE has the right to tell other people who they are. NEVER.
     
    If you disagree, let me put it simply:
     
    You are inarguably WRONG.
  13. Canama

    Halo PC

    By Canama,

    You know, when the leak of Halo 1-3 on the Steam database happened two weeks ago, I was so excited! These games have a bearable control scheme now! I can actually play them! (Well OK, I already play Halo 1 on the PC, and there is a Halo 2 for PC that I've never played. But I digress.)
     
    And then one day later, Microsoft said "lol no we're not putting Halo 3 on PC, or any Halos on Steam why would you think that"
     
    I just want you all to know that I'm still bitter.
     
    (What do you mean, "seriously bro it's just a video game calm down"?)
  16. Canama

    Steam

    By Canama,

    Total worth of all Steam games: $928.12
    Total amount spent: $330.54
    Savings: 64.386%
     
    Sales + Humble Bundles = <3
  18. Canama

    Oh Boy

    By Canama,

    This is it. There are two days until the class trip to Japan. This will be the first time I will have left the US. I will be living with a Japanese family for nine days.
     
    I have never been less confident in my Japanese-speaking abilities; not even when I first started learning the language.
  21. Canama

    Code Geass

    By Canama,

    I'm on episode 12, and I have to say, I like it.
     
    It's kind of interesting, actually - I like how the protagonist is not especially a guy I'd call "good". And the most unambiguously good character I've seen so far is a soldier for the evil empire. I wish I saw more works like that.
     
    -Canama
  22. Canama

    A Question

    By Canama,

    I never liked cartoons as a kid, really. Never watched them. I don't really like them now, either.
     
    Is that why I don't really "get" the MLP love?
     
    -Canama
  25. Canama

    Okay Fine

    By Canama,

    I will try to watch through the entire first episode of MLP:FiM. I've never gotten through much of this show before.
     
    But I will watch the entire episode and see if my opinion changes.
     
    Two minutes in, already miserable.
     
    EDIT: Five minutes in, contemplating suicide.
     
    -Canama
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