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Jul 2, 2014 - 12:40 PM |
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Hey Garr hey buddy~ here's my pile of words |
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 Response to:
Self-improvement by Garr "Pulchritudinous" Mondo, PhD
Started this off as a comment in Garr's journal but it got so big I figure nah I might as well make my own tl;dr entry too.
Garr, you are fantastic. I can relate to wanting to get fit and being too lazy to do much. Especially after doing so and then going back slob mode (and just getting fat again). I'm probably going to go back to juicing and actually making an effort to work out a little this time. Lost 50 lbs doing jack shit but juicing last time but like I need to do some exercise to mold this pile of meat into something decent.
There's plenty of crap I'd love to do too. And like I won't pretend I don't put on a face for my normal every day life and one for meet and Internet. I like to have fun at the meet and all but most of the year I'm fairly quiet and tend to stick to myself. I wish sometimes I was more outgoing like Hyde, sprout, and Deni. I wish I was an eighth as good a story-teller as them too. But hey I recognize that I also just really enjoy listening to people too. And then there are times when somehow I manage to talk someone's ear off. Did that last week when going up to Nutty/Mo0's and had Mo0 outside in the street by my clown car while he was barefooted for like what felt like and hour while we talked about meet stuff and other things.
Back to things I'd love to do. I'd love to know a foreign language or two or three but like that requires a lot of time and work. My problem is I haven't even tried the easy way with like Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone. I've even pirated older copies of them shits and still haven't done anything with them. But yeah I studied Spanish for 3 or 4 years in junior high and high school. Don't really recall too much but it was a good opener for feeling through another language. Took a year of German after that. Enjoyed the crap out of that because I took it with my best friend who was a grade ahead of me and we NEVER had any classes together because of that situation but it was simply the best - he's a linguist by the way. Took a year or two of Japanese in college and got the jist of hiragana and a little this and that but eh... it didn't really stick too well. And basically I shrugged off French b/c of Freedom Fries and other stupid bullshit until I realized oh fuck France can be fucking awesome at stuff - basically animation mecca these days. So yeah I'd love to be fluent in Spanish, German, Japanese, and French. Would make my hobbies more enjoyable and hey would be cool to visit and enjoy the culture of the places where these languages are spoken too one day. Maybe I should torrent some fucking Muzzy.
I've enjoyed the crap out of playing games with you guys and our Skype talks. Only problem is I can't really play much unless a) nobody is around b) it's late at night because nobody is around. I'd love to stream more regularly because I have a shit ton of games to play and I enjoy streaming for you guys. I still feel guilty about not finishing Vanquish or Skyward Sword. I've been eyeballing a C985 Live Gamer HD capture card and other associated stuff to work with it (because Sony is a bitch about HDMI and the PS3) and hell even getting a modded 3DS that has the ability to be captured. But the cashdollars so expensive (says the guys who wasted so much on Steam sales). Anyway, I've been digging Twitch and certainly would enjoy doing it more often is all. I'd also like to take some time to get good at Street Fighter IV. I don't mean good like oh I'm going to beat you guys all the time good (it'll never happen). I just mean competent. I know how to play Smash Bros. I know how to mess around in it. I don't win a lot in it but I have a lot of fun just messing with folks. I'm not exactly sure how you mess with folks in SFIV yet but I'd at the very least like to be competent enough to move my character, understand spacing and how to execute moves, actually execute moves that I want to do and not accidentally pull things out of nowhere, and heck maybe win a few matches where it doesn't feel like I'm being toyed with because of being so terrible at the game. Don't get me wrong I do appreciate that you guys aren't being brutal with me in the game but yeah...
I'd also like to maybe do Drink On or other media streams more often. Like I'm probably never going to ever do archives if I start streaming anime again but I wouldn't mind watching some shows with those that are interested in tuning in. Oh speaking of Drink On I feel that subjugating you guys to weird Youtube shit is fun and all for online Drink On streams but that I probably should cut back on it a bit and cut back entirely (except for maybe a short or two) for the meet. I noticed how well Puck's movies did. Very casual. Very relaxed and fun. He'd just start a movie and people would join in. Helped that he had great wonderbad movies. Also helped that he just did these movies. It was a blast the first few years I did Drink-On events at the meet but I believe that those times are over. From now on if I show movies at the meet they'll just purely be movies back to back with maybe a short as an inbetweener.
Originally my Youtube shit was maybe 2 or 3 of them as way for people to get up, take a bathroom break, grab a snack, and maybe when they get back one or two silly videos will be left and they'll have a quick laugh before the next movie starts. Then it snowballed out of control where I'd collect shit over the year and just have 20 to sometimes 40 videos for inbetween sections. It got way too big and I'm sure people who came for the movies got bored and left and maybe returned in hopes of the next movie or since they never knew when the next movie would start just didn't bother. It just wasn't a good idea. Not unless I got a fucking countdown clock and waiting number system for folks upstairs. And even that would just be adding to the problem. I made it this huge event and felt the need to corral people to come watch all this shit. Maybe they're busy playing boardgames or getting high or some misc. group activity that I'm not a part of because I'm way too focused putting on a marathon of destroying couch cushions with your ass waiting for the fucking movie to start.
I mean it's just this big feedback loop for me. I really really really dig seeing your reactions to this stuff. But that's not what Drink On is really about. It's about getting comfy and enjoying a movie or two or three with a bunch of good buddies and experiencing that together. My mishmash of crap just became some mildly entertaining video-based LET'S ALL GO TO THE LOBBY song that ballooned into a big ol stinking tumor. But I kind of like that silly tumor. In fact it's not really a tumor at all. It's its own thing. It too can be a very casual kind of thing. Hey we're bored and not doing anything and don't feel like watching Sim murder someone again in this game. Also we have short attention spans right now for some reason. YOUTUBE AND OTHER SILLY VIDEOS. QUEUE THEM SHITS UP. 17 videos later: Okay we're done for now. And then hey we can start up where we left off whenever again. Not an event. Just a thing that can be done. Like the odd video can have its place at Drink On. The 7 minute long prank phone call about tickets to see John Cena on Pay Per View made complete sense to play before that Scooby-Doo Wrestling movie. It works there. But did it need 40 or whatever random youtube videos before it? No. I could have fit that and Pang's Bollywood movie if I had just run things the way Drink On should be run at the meet. And to an extent yes I should cut back on this stuff during streamed Drink On's too. If for some reason people are still around at the end and want more silly then I'm sure I could cook up a little extra but the stopping at 4 AM because I did 20 videos between movies needs to stop. Maybe make it 7 max for streaming from now on. That seems tolerable.
So uh... now that I've brought up meet stuff I guess maybe I should talk about the meet a bit. Swagathon went off really well I think. There were very few fuck ups. The big thing was rushing into the start of it without having properly tested and configured everything. I did make a push for starting that particular day so hey I can appreciate Erik getting folks together to get it going but maaaan... we barely were ready for that. I had only configured a single SNES controller for ZSNES. I hadn't even done any testing of the sound yet which is why Mario Paint sounded like absolute ASS. It wasn't until Game of Thrones later that night that we figured out why the receiver wasn't pumping out anything that didn't sound like someone trying to talk through a gimp suit. Anyway not completely blaming you on this Erik. I could have easily said FUCK OFF EVERYONE WE AIN'T DONE WITH THIS SHIT YET. But I didn't. Ah well those first couple rounds that needed sound input from the PC weren't crucial. Everything else that came from the Wii and 360 sounded normal of course due to the nature of the problem. I definitely would have had everyone halt and either wait or come back for a bit if this had happened during Audio Surf. But hey we had that fixed by then.
Besides that we also had the goof up was not configuring the controllers for everyone beforehand for a few games and I had to ask them to press the inputs for ZSNES and MAME. I know I didn't really listen to you all that well but your support was really really really appreciated during MAME, Pang. Thanks!
And of course the last screw up was putting the Virtual Boy stand hinge on backwards. I actually have to take the stand apart when storing it in its travel/storage case. I keep the hinge and its two screws in a ziplock bag so I don't lose them but hey it just meant a delayed start of 3 to 4 minutes. Oh and not having the Virtual Boy USB controller plugged directly into the computer instead of through a USB hub was a mistake too. It dropped OP's inputs and cut out entirely like two times during Mario Clash before I figured out what was going on which meant restarting that game each time for both OP and Plarom.
So yeah Swagathon went pretty darn well in pretty much every other respect. The digital setup was spectacular and made for transitioning to different systems a breeze. Our only other flaw was not being too prepared for tie breakers. We basically made that shit up on the fly. We could do well to think up something better but all things considered I thought our tie breakers were pretty fair. Another song in Audio Surf and CLOP worked out well.
I want to thank rasputin, lurks, and FRANS for helping organize, keep track of scores, and come up with some of the most fun game related silliness we've had at the meet ever. I know some thoughts of perhaps adding an qualifying round so more people can try to get into Swagathon without Skills having to tear his hair out trying to figure out how to work the brackets since we needed two more groups of four in order to allow more people in that would have liked to participate. With a qualifying round we could have had the same bracket numbers we had but allowed some more people to participate to get into those brackets. More participation equal better I imagine. This is not my idea by the way. I got it from Mo0 who told me about it from I believe either him or Tritoch talking about this with Skills or something. Anyway I think it has merit. Thumbs up!
So I know my time at the meet was limited this year because of a family wedding and that I missed out on two days but I'm damn sure I didn't use my time as wisely as I should have at the meet. Granted I was busy working Swagathon but that was only two (or was it three?) days. I also spent far too much time downloading Youtube videos and wasting people's time with Drink On. Things I probably could have gotten in on but was way too into whatever unimportant crap I was doing but didn't need to do: telestrations (oh my god that looked like fun), various board games (i did get to play dinosaurs for like 15 minutes before going to pick up Skills from the airport - it was fun i lost teeth), actually setting up the Virtual Boy somewhere for people to play and experience (I robbed you fuckers for not doing this - instead it just sat on the pool table doing nothing), playing some mother fucking Super Monkey Ball (Monkey Target and whatever those blessed GameCube games offered it's all good fucking great great fantastic games), more Mario Kart 8 (would have been fun to DUI that shit), getting people together to do blind Smash (we had wanted to do that again casually and I could have definitely made it happen earlier - I wanted to try it out too), reading more awful books at you (love doing this never stopping), more people at Oceanforce and just going outside in the pool and walking the beach and stuff, just talking to more of you guys in general, and well any number of things really.
Despite simplifying a great many things this year I didn't simplify some core things I bring to the meet back to their origins and as a result I cooped myself up planning for things that honestly didn't matter spending time on things that I probably should have spent doing something else. I was at the meet for a week despite leaving early but it felt like I was with you guys more like 3 days instead. My bad.
Don't get me wrong I still had fun and enjoyed the crap out of what I did with you guys. I don't blame Swagathon. That was a blast. I do blame my poor handling of Drink On that has been a problem for probably the past three years. I blame my ego which always wants to do something bigger and more and more and more for Drink On and other things. Probably want to dial that back a bit for gift giving and celebration stuff but eh... I still really enjoy that and I think most of you guys do too. I like to see you guys being happy because that makes me happy and I don't want to waste anyone's time and I'd like to be a part of experiences where people are happy that I'm merely just there for and not the instigator of. I'm super glad that this year's meet went really well but I think with some changes I can make it better for people who enjoy my silly events but don't wish to be consumed by them. I can thank Puck for being his awesome self and bringing Drink On and just how I should handle things in general back to their origins. Fun, casual experiences very yes. Rigid, forced events very no.
Anyway I think I've probably rambled on enough about this shit. Garr, we like you loads. Never not be you. <3<3<3~
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