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Sumiki

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Blog Entries posted by Sumiki

  4. Sumiki
    You know how, a while back, I asked if people would read a comedy featuring my dad in the BIONICLE universe?
     
    It has begun.






    (that's a link)






    Features Sumiki's Dad (of course), as well as a few members of Team Farm Animals in the beginnings of a gripping adventure.
  6. Sumiki

    Into the Dalek

    By Sumiki,

    That's probably the first (non-50th-special) episode of Doctor Who that I've legitimately enjoyed since Asylum of the Daleks.
     
    The new intro is horrid, though. The music sounds like a compressed tinny mid-90s MIDI bandbox and no one can tell me otherwise. Murray Gold still does good incidental music but good grief get Danny Elfman on the intro.
  7. Sumiki

    Teeth Pt. 2

    By Sumiki,

    A consultation with the oral surgeon this morning ended with us being informed that our insurance didn't cover anything in "pediatric dentistry." Never mind that I'm eighteen and that this operation was covered literally yesterday when we called to check.
     
    Fortunately the latest X-ray shows that my second and third molars have managed to lodge themselves in such a way that they'll stay in their current positions indefinitely. I'll have to wait at least a year to get the teeth out.
  8. Sumiki

    Wisdom (Teeth)

    By Sumiki,

    So, like many other people, I have a mouth, and it's pretty handy. Aside from brushing and using it to eat I haven't really given it much thought since I got my braces out about four years ago.
     
    Until a few days ago. There wasn't as much of what I'd call pain in as much as a consistent throb for the better part of the day.
     
    This brought back into focus a really strange bit of my anatomy: stubborn teeth. My baby teeth didn't fall out until much later than they should have - some of them still had roots and needed to be pulled to make way from the permanent ones that were blasting through the gum line.
     
    However, things pretty much stopped there. The so-called "twelve-year molars" - molars which are supposed to appear at the age of twelve - never really came in. One of them is twisted towards the rest of my teeth, but none of that was a problem unless they start to move.
     
    Six years later, they're finally starting to move, which means I'll be having the first surgery of my life on this upcoming Thursday. While I'm under, it's hoped that the oral surgeon will be able to go up in there and extract my wisdom teeth, which, as of my last panoramic X-ray, are still tooth buds. I was only half-joking when I told my dentist that, if left to their own devices, I'd get my wisdom teeth at around the age of forty.
     
    As I mentioned, this is my first surgery, and it will be the first time I'll be knocked out by an anesthesiologist. I'm not scared of the process by any means - practically everyone goes through this rite of passage into adulthood, after all - but I'm kind of curious as to what the stuff will actually do to me. My family medical history when it comes to anesthesia is weird and hilarious.
     
    My grandmother - whose favorite movie is Kill Bill and has a picture of the "brushie brushie brushie" bat framed in her guest bedroom - has undergone a couple of surgeries in her 73 years of life. When my dad was in high school, he witnessed her as she was waking up from anesthesia, singing a semi-lewd variation of "Do Your Ears Hang Low." Her sister was horrified, but that didn't keep her from laughing her head off (or bringing it up at family reunions, much to my grandmother's chagrin).
     
    When it was time for my dad to get put under, they gave him a dose of anesthesia and then told him to count backwards from ten in order to see if he'd been knocked out. He did so without falling asleep. They doubled the dose and again he counted backwards from ten without any trouble. After a third dose, they told him to count back from 100 and he got to about 15 before finally passing out. He woke up about ten hours later.
     
    With these stories on my paternal side, I can only hope I take after the maternal side and react to being under like a normal person.
  9. Sumiki

    Up With a Bang

    By Sumiki,

    A grocery store near where I live had a massive fireworks sale many years ago. Of course, in North Carolina you can't just go and buy real fireworks - although many people make a trek south to bring back the goods for their Fourth of July and New Year's parties. Thus, the grocery-brand stuff was nearly always on sale and went on a huge clearance. Fortunately, we stocked up, since we never saw them for sale again.
     
    We shot all of the small ones off. At most, they shot sparks and colors up about ten feet, with some occasional sounds. It's great fun when you're twelve but more of a dud at eighteen.
     
    Nine of these fireworks remained in a paper bag in the garage, stuck up on a shelf and left behind various detritus for a great long time. Some of them must be at least six years old. We'd been saving them for some big occasions, but many big occasions had come and left without us even thinking of touching that bag.
     
    Earlier today, my dad and I went outside with paper plates, the fireworks, and some long tools, and spent the better part of half an hour coercing the black powder out of the innards of these fireworks. We dumped the powder through a broken funnel and into a cleaned, dried-out lemonade container. It came up to about a fifth of the way up the container, which had held around a gallon of lemonade when it was purchased.
     
    After dinner and significant time in the pool, we headed back outside because we wanted to light this thing on fire.
     
    Don't try this. I never have before and I never will again, and I will describe exactly why.
     
    After thoroughly dousing the entire area with water, we began the process of setting our contraption off. To light it, we wadded up a massive amount of paper towels into a gigantic fuse and lit it. The paper towels melted a little bit of the plastic container, but would not keep aflame past a certain point. Take two was a relight of the existing nub, but even that proved impossible.
     
    Night had fallen and we were fast becoming frustrated. I retrieved three sparklers from the basement in an attempt to figure out what was going on, and they indeed elucidated the issue: there wasn't enough air in the container to keep the flame going long enough for it to hit the powder at the bottom.
     
    On our final try, a paper bag was retrieved, doused in citronella fluid, put underneath the half-melted lemonade container and set on fire. It burned slowly, then gained traction as it advanced on the powder.
     
    At first, nothing happened. My first thought was that it wouldn't be hot enough to melt out the bottom of the container and ignite the powder.
     
    Then it began to pop. It did so once at first, enough to make me think that the entire thing was nothing but a dud. Then the flames grew wider, and wider still, as powder that had been dormant so long finally came into contact with the very flame that had so eluded it.
     
    A massive tower of fire, three feet wide and easily twenty feet high, shot up into the night sky, carrying along a gigantic plume of smoke. The sparklers disintegrated and were carried up, crackling up along with the colors that had been imbued in its constituent fireworks so long ago.
     
    As soon as it had shot up, it died down again, leaving the remains of what appeared from a distance to be a small campfire - albeit one that crackled and popped quite more than the usual.
     
    It was at this point that my mom opened the kitchen window and yelled "YOU TWO ARE NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN!"
  10. Sumiki

    The New Word Filter

    By Sumiki,

    I sincerely congratulate -Windrider- and the rest of the gang for knocking out something that was long overdue. (Come to think of it, Takuma is probably much happier than I am.)
     
    Over the years, I've heard many people discuss changing the word filter. Heck, I knew people were kicking around that idea when I joined nearly eight years ago; Taka-Tahu-Nuva mentioned to me that discussions were going on back when I sent him updates to the BBCC History topic. It was full of what were, objectively, bizarre and silly holdovers from the past, as vestigial as the policies that have been culled from the rules in recent months. "Jerk" and "idiot" were two that always really bugged me, because they're pretty tame words. Filtering the former out only made it look worse and the "cool dude" of the latter lived in infamy.
     
    I'm mainly going to talk about the latter filter, because I hated that thing.
     
    However, there are a lot of folks on the member rolls, active and inactive, that liked it. Its actual purpose was to prevent members from spamming forums by calling each other idiots, and it long outlived that function. It was a fad. I never understood the explanation of keeping it around because its reason for implementation might once again rear its noobish head, and I certainly didn't understand excusing its continued presence by claiming that it was somehow an integral part of BZPower.
     
    I certainly understand the viewpoint that those folks come from. "Cool dude" is as much of BZPower history as the Secret Stomach Message. Yet BZPower has survived without connor's infamous message, as it was deleted along with the rest of the Archives. Yet it is preserved in a great many ways: through screenshots, the Wayback Machine, and - perhaps most importantly - through BZPower's culture.
     
    We no longer need to filter the word idiot, because "cool dude" is part of our culture. It's part of BZP lore and tradition. Call me crazy for saying that a web site has a culture, but how else can you explain the memes that have perpetuated themselves on BZP and could not make the jump elsewhere? I only need to point to the Secret Stomach Message as an example of this.
     
    A web site is more than a single filter that is as long and unfunny as a Family Guy episode. Keeping it around to be a part of BZP tradition - when it will continue in perpetuity nestled inside its bubble of bizarre infamy, regardless of whether or not it's in the filter - was, I believe, harmful to BZPower's perception for a couple of reasons.
     
    The first was amongst prospective members. While I doubt anyone has ever not joined (or left) BZPower because of something as small as the word "idiot," filtering it was one of the things that presented BZPower as a site still rooted in the past.
     
    The second was in stories. Be they in the Library, OTC, the Blogs, or anywhere else, words like "idiot" and "jerk" - words many people use, and useful words when it comes to both fiction and in recounting personal stories - were avoided. The only time I've ever seen the word used in the Library before now was in 2006, when bonesiii inserted some carefully placed dots to evade said filter. (I remember reporting it, but I don't believe that anything came of it.)
     
    Ever since then, I've seen a number of instances where flow and realism would be improved by the addition of words such as those, and now writers are free to use them.
     
    Third, "idiotic" has never been (and hopefully never will be) filtered.
     
    Finally (and I haven't seen this point raised anywhere else), we turn to the Comics forum, which I have patrolled since my promotion. Many times, comic makers would make innocent comics which would happen to have a filtered word in them. I always regretting having to report them because I felt like we were handling non-issues.
     
    Comparing those filters to the "first to post" filter is tricky. I haven't seen anyone say "first to post" in a while. Its presence, which I miss only vaguely, was not as obtrusive and it got back at members whose posts would otherwise be annoying. It was a precision strike, unlike the cool dude cluster-bomb.
     
    I will say it before and I'm sure I'll have to say it again in the future: BZPower is resistant to change. Its longstanding members, by and large, have grown so attached to aspects of the site that necessary and overdue changes - such as updating the front page - meet with some manner of resistance every time an issue of its ilk arises. I can count myself in amongst those members; my eight-year BZ-versary is next month and Senior Staffhood is six months out. But I've seen BZP in the old days and the new, and I've had to come to terms with my conclusions.
     
    Fundamentally, what is nostalgic to members of a certain age is the exact opposite of what will sustain BZPower in the coming years, especially if the rumors of BIONICLE's return turn out to be true.
     
    I applaud and urge on the implementations of reform that BZPower still needs. Its overdue makeover may be long in its gestation and yet longer until completion, but things are happening.
     
    And that makes me happy to be a part of this community.
  12. Sumiki
    | |

     
    In addition to my Kongu Mahri, I've picked up a number of Zatths over the years at various BrickFairs. Four of the five I used in this MOC, an homage to everyone's favorite Forum Assistant newbie, The Zatthman.
     
    The red arm represents the gauntlet that he has worn at every BrickFair that I can remember, and the little weapon in his other arm is supposed to be a Star-Lord-esque weapon that he made at this past 'Fair.
     
    #teamfarmanimals
  13. Sumiki

    GALIDOR 2015 CONFIRMED

    By Sumiki,

    SO THIS IS NICK BLUETOOTH. DEFENDER OF THE OUTER DIMENSION AND THE BEST CHARACTER FROM LEGO'S BEST LINE, GALIDOR:
     

     
    AND THIS IS MY DAD:
     

     
    AND THEN I REALIZED WHAT THEY COULD BE.
     
    NAY, WHAT THEY WERE.
     
    BY THE POWER OF MY LIMITED IMAGE MANIPULATION SKILLS COMES THE REBOOT OF GALIDOR:
     
    GALIDAD:
     

  18. Sumiki

    BrickFair Day 4

    By Sumiki,

    BRACE YOURSELVES - THE PUBLIC IS COMING
     
    DAD DAD OR LIFE ON MARS? WE JUST DON'T KNOW
     
    YARD SARD/YALE SALE: $2 BAGS OF BONKLES
     
    HORSE MASK VINES: NUKAYA HORRIFIED, BOSSMANDREW SLAPS
     
    FREE (DISGUSTING) FOOD
     
    STARBURST: FOUR AT ONCE BECAUSE XAERAZ
     
    "That's why I like Sumiki - he's stupid and gullible." - Xaeraz, 2014
     
    LASER TAG: GREEN TEAM THREE-PEAT
     
    VALENDALE CHUGS ICING FOR A MEMBER TITLE
  19. Sumiki

    BrickFair Day 3

    By Sumiki,

    BZTOWER: BREAKING DESPITE SUPPORT COLUMNS
     
    SUMIKI'S DAD HOLDS COURT
     
    NUKAYA'S BENNY PAINTING GOES FOR $2000 AT THE CHARITY AUCTION
     
    BREADSTICK LUNCH? OBVIOUSLY
     
    VENDOR RAIDING: THIRTY BALL JOINTS - MAYBE MORE
     
    WAL-MART RAID FOR BATTERIES AND MIXELS: VALENDALE HATES IT, MY WASP IS NOW DERPING
     
    BRICKEENS GETS FULL SKYPE TOUR
     
    NOT ONE, BUT TWO TARAKAVA-RELATED VINES
     
    MEIKO PRANKED WITH EMPTY NINJAGO BOX (SORRY)
     
    KOPAKA NUVA SMELLS GOOD
     
    BEAN CORE BRICKS ARE BEAN CORE
     
    TAKUMA "M-DIZZLE" NUVA DROPS SOME SICK RHYMES
     
    THE GREAT DULLES PARKING LOT ROAD TRIP (FEAT. TAKUMA NUVA AND AVOHKAH TAMER)
     
    MY FEET HURT
  21. Sumiki
    With four votes: OCTODAD
    "Impersonate Tarakava by punching each other in the face repeatedly."
     
    With three votes: MAKUTA LUROKA
    "Sumiki shouts 'Boinkles' repeatedly, which ends in many people shouting 'Boinkles' at once"
     
    Also with three votes: KITANIA
    "Walk up to a BZP member with your favorite set and exclaim 'I really like this robot!'"
     
    Octodad will have her Vine made tomorrow. Makuta Luroka and Kitania's Vines will also likely be made tomorrow.
     
    Thanks to all who entered - ideas from non-winners may very well be modified and made into more Vines. Stay tuned!
  22. Sumiki

    BrickFair Day 2

    By Sumiki,

    YARD SALE TIME
     
    BREADSTICK STREAK BROKEN
     
    BEAN CORE? BEAN CORE
     
    PABLO'S SEMINAR: MOVED BUT STILL GREAT (I WAS VIDEOGRAPHER)
     
    NICK BLUETOOTH: PABLO PURCHASE, REVIEW MADE
     
    KEK POWERIZER: $5 FROM EVERYONE, REVIEW MADE, PARTS TOMORROW, NUKAYA HORRIFIED AT OUR PURCHASE
     
    #GALIDOR2015: I KISSED A GORM (AND I LIKED IT)
  23. Sumiki
    If you didn't see your entry here, then I disqualified it for not being realistically film-able. My apologies if you are one of the members affected. You can vote for TWO.
     
    1) Shout at all the kids to get off your lawn.
     
    2) Have an older BZPeep yell at all of you to get off his/her lawn.
     
    3) Caramelldansen.
     
    4) Question someone about the whereabouts of a 2x2 lego brick named Samantha.
     
    5) Impersonate Tarakava by punching each other in the face repeatedly.
     
    6) PUSH-UP CONTEST.
     
    7) Sumiki shouts "Boinkles" repeatedly, which ends in many people shouting "Boinkles" at once.
     
    8) Walk up to a BZP member with your favorite set and exclaim "I really like this robot!"
     
    9) Yell "BIONICLES" while showing pictures of sets.
  24. Sumiki

    BrickFair Day 1

    By Sumiki,

    VALENDALE AND TAKUMA NUVA WIN AT BINGO
     
    DUPLO REVIEW: VINE AND FULL VERSIONS
     
    EXPANDING OUR NEWFOUND BEAN CORE AESTHETIC
     
    SPACESHIP SPACESHIP SPACESHIP
     
    VENDOR RAIDS? VENDOR RAIDS
     
    IS IT POSSIBLE TO EAT ALL OF THE BREADSTICKS IN A PIZZA HUT/TACO BELL? YES
     
    MOUSE SALAD WITH GERBILS RETURNS
     
    LATE-NIGHT MINILAND FIG CONSTRUCTION? YES
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