They're... communicating with a patient who only speaks Spanish by means of a translation website.

I love my job, and I love the Information Age.

Me, to a group of people fanning each other: "You're making it rain in Tokyo. You should all be ashamed."

Pause.

Me, in my head: I am such a goddamn geek.


But a drug company brought good Chinese food and pens for everyone. Sometimes life is good.

Background:

Megas XLR is an American anime made for Cartoon Network and currently airing on the weekends. It's a giant robot anime, and if you heard a basic summary of the plot you'd think it was nothing special -- giant robot ends up in hands of person who modifies it so that only he can fly it and now must defend the Earth. Of course, you know it's not that simple, right?

M.E.G.A.S., the giant robot in question, was stolen from alien invaders -- the Glorft -- far in the future, by the last remnants of the Earth's forces. Desperate to win, they send it back in time so it will be present at a crucial battle -- and the time transfer is interrupted, sending it to "The Present Day."

Our hero, Coop, is the one who ends up with it. Coop, unlike most robot pilots, is not pasty-white and thin, teenaged, and angsty. In fact he's... well, overweight, shallow, not too swift, and has wasted his life on things such as wrestling, video games, and car mechanics. And he's the only one who can pilot M.E.G.A.S.... because when the time transfer botched, the robot lost its head, and Coop replaced it with -- a sports car. And completely overhauled the entire system so that the robot only works with video game controllers, buttons, gear-shifts... you get the idea.

It is a funny, funny, DAMN funny show. And the reason I'm writing this is the episode I saw today. It is the absolute *funniest*, and *coolest* thing, I have seen in *forever*.

The basic plot is simple enough -- an indestructible robot lands on Earth, repeatedly foiling Coop's attempts to get a slushie and thereby driving him insane with anger. But it's not the plot that makes the show. It's Michael Dorn. Yes, the actor most famous for Worf is back into voice acting, and as the REGIS Mark 5 he's a comic *genius*. The REGIS Mark 5 has some of the strangest lines imaginable, and they're all delivered in an utterly straight, menacing, ominous tone of voice that makes me want to *cry* it's so funny

"Your primitive and non-fuel-efficient modes of transporation are no match for the REGIS Mark 5."
"I am invincible. No weapon crafted by such a pathetic civilization can harm the REGIS Mark 5, which is invincible."
"Stand aside or be destroyed." (To a fire hydrant.)

Adding to the sheer cool factor of this robot is the background music, which is of the most epic sort, loud and ominous with people singing incoherently in, presumably, Latin, every time it's on screen. But it'd be nothing without Dorn, whose delivery of every line -- I can't imagine how it could possibly be funnier. I can't wait till this series comes out on DVD, so I can show people it.

AAAAAAAIGH!!!!!

WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR BRAIN, UTENA TENJOU!

MY LIFE IS RUINED! RUINED!

Hugs to everyone.

I will write something deep and meaningful about space travel. Later.

At times like this all I can think about is watching Star Trek: The Next Generation at my grandparents' house when I was a kid.

So it turns out virtually every battle quote in the game has a disturbing component of innuendo. Say, siliconrose, or anyone else who hasn't played the game -- avoid this. It contains spoilers (for both the game and innocence...)

( What Does Square Have In Mind Next? )

Unicron: Welcome, Smeagol.

Smeagol: Who...who says that?

Unicron: I have summoned you here for a purpose.

Smeagol: Nobody summons us but the precious!

Unicron: Then it pleases me to be the second.

Smeagol: What does it wants of us?! What does it wants?!

Unicron: This is my command. You are to destroy the Ring of Power. It is the One Ring, the ONLY ring, that can stand in my way!

Smeagol: You has nothing to fear... the Baggins, it takes the precious to the dark place! To the fires! The precious is already gone!

Unicron: You exaggerate.

Smeagol: The tricksy hobbitses is dead, and the precious gone with them!

Unicron: The Smeagol will be dead if it doesn't listen. The Ring has been intercepted by a leader of Gondor: Faramir. Destroy it for me.

Smeagol: Why?! Why shoulds we?!

Unicron: Your bargaining posture is highly dubious, but very well. I will give you a new name, and a new croaking noise in your throat.

Smeagol: Ands?

Unicron: ANDS NOTHING!... You belong to me.

Smeagol: We belongs to no one!

Unicron: Perhaps I misjudged you. Proceed... on your way to oblivion.

Smeagol: Aaaaaiee! No! NO! We accepts your terms... we accepts!

Unicron: Excellent. Behold... GOLLUM!

Gollum: We shall gets the precious, master... we shall gets it, gollum.

You win this round, Look to the Sky, but I'm only four steps away from winning the war!

Second half of the Transformers shipment today. Trypticon and Fortress Maximus are the two big winners today! Don't have the batteries to see if Trypticon still works, but I hope he does. Galvatron is mighty shaky, but if you whack him enough, he works. And I'd totally forgotten that 2nd Gen Optimus Prime came with a sound effects pak which has him belting out, "I am OPTIMUS PRIME!"

Hee hee. I'll never get tired of that. I'm definitely going to modify my LARP Mage character's paradigm, since he's a Son of Ether.

Rote: Here's a Hint! Forces 2 Prime 2 -- does serious damage to a machine.

Rote: I Am Optimus Prime! Mind 2 -- makes the enemy so scared they run away. No one fucks with Optimus Prime.

Rote: The Mighty Trypticon -- Forces 3 Matter 3. Trypticon walks to the opponent. When he gets there -- he blows up.

Hung out with cyfis and siliconrose today. They're great friends.

Half my shipment of Transformers came in. Amazingly, Galvatron's battery still has juice in it. This is a 9-volt that's been in storage for eight years, remember. More amazingly, only one casualty. This is *so* cool.

On the downside, a lot of frustrations and angst to deal with. On the upside, chocolate marshmallow ice cream.

This info is for cyfis and siliconrose, pertaining to an earlier discussion, but others might find it interesting too.

Of my LJ friends:
3 are fictional characters
16 are ones I met in online roleplaying forums
6 I met through livejournal itself
4 I met in real life first
6 are communities.

Went out to pick up some bread today. I wandered into a situation where the clerk and the customer were both counting in Geman. My main response? "Whoa, this is way too many people in proximity who can speak German."

So the Great Burger recipe, complied with help from tigerphoenix and rachaelwynter, involves combining meat, bread crumbs, cheese, chopped onion, garlic powder, and barbeque sauce. Now that's a good burger! I need to reduce the BBQ sauce content next time, and perhaps increase the onion and cheese count a little (or better yet, get actual cheese to put on it!), but this is a recipe I'd like to try out on someone else.

My childhood collection of Transformers is on its way to me now. Man, am I looking forward to this. I haven't seen them in... years. I'm guessing around eight years, actually. My grandmother used to play with me; we'd make huge Transformers bases out of poker chips and her exercise machines. Since it was such a nuisance hauling them from Maryland to Utah, we left them in storage at my grandparents' place. Which is where they've been for... forever. But they're coming back now, yay!

Not being constantly online any more (i.e. always-on connection) has thrown a lot of my scheduling for a subtle loop. One effect of this is much less posting on my part -- because once I get online, I have people to talk to, boards to check, webcomics to read, LJ to gloss over -- stuff that would have been spread out over the course of the day is now much more compressed.

But I'm going to try to combat that. So, hope to see more regular posts for me -- and if not, you have my permission to send me threatening messages.

I read the new Dragonlance book (Dragons of a Vanished Moon, Book 3 of the War of Souls trilogy) and I'm impressed by where it ended up. For those of you who don't know, Dragonlance was a popular AD&D campaign world, with a literature that exceeded even the infamous Forgotten Realms banner characters. The main trilogies (Chronicles and Legends) came from Weis and Hickman themselves.

Now, around '96, TSR decided to use Dragonlance as an introduction to their new Saga system of card-based roleplaying. Standard AD&D systems such as magic were scrapped in favor of new magics. Enter Dragons of Summer Flame, the "bridge" novel to the new system, which told the story of what the heck happened (briefly, Chaos nearly destroyed Krynn, but was defeated -- but all the other gods left as well). Subsequent stories told of the Heroes of the Lance, or descendants, discovering the powers of mysticism and "wild magic" or sorcery...

But Saga was a flop, and Dragonlance more or less died. Then a couple of years ago, Weis and Hickman put out "Dragons of a Fallen Sun". This was the first step in the rebirth of the world -- because they'd gotten the rights to Dragonlance, and are planning to publish it again. And oooh, did they change the setting....

Not going to type details here because the book is so recent, but they shifted gears from the Chaos War in a remarkably interesting way... Ah well.

Not necessarily the best post to make on a return, but you got it anyway.

:: how jedi are you? ::

Poor Rydik (nightbane_rydik) -- while the description is utterly utterly true, it still sucks for him:



And Drake (valkonan) is who he should be too:



This is actually in keeping with my arguments as to why Mace Windu is head of the council while Yoda is so obviously better. (Warning: Mage: The Ascension argument!) See, Mace Windu is like a Master -- powerful, skilled, capable, and concerned with the role of the Jedi in the future. Yoda, on the other hand, is an Archmage -- he left the "petty" concerns of factionality behind, so isn't suited to ruling any more...