I Ain't Even Mad

When you have a name like "Flirting with Pretension" you're not allowed to be angry at them when they do indeed turn out to be pretentious. What'd you expect?
Also, the elephant in the room: yes, you have to agree at the start and at every post that you're 14 years or older. Because, you know, posts about how pretentious you are and how delicious noodles are is really shit for the mature audience.

I'm going to write a paragraph now. I'm keenly aware how pretentious and presumptuous this paragraph will be, and it is somewhat embarrassing.

"I am already aware how bad this paragraph will be and yet I will continue to write it and post it for all to see."

Like three-fourths of middle class America, I want to be a writer. That is to say I AM a writer--as the tens of thousands of written pages will attest to--but I would love to be published and paid for my work.

I write a lot : I am a writer :: I own a roll of stamps : I am a stamp collector.
See what I mean when you sound like an idiot?

I am a senior in a Creative Writing/English major, and I'm planning on grad school.

Yes, because truly creative, marketable ideas come from the creative vortex that is college. If ever there was a place where good ideas go to die, it is college. It's like a black hole. Sucks all the mass right out of whatever you have going in.

If I've added you to my friend-list, it means I enjoy reading what you write, find you interesting, want to subscribe to your newsletter, whatever.

I see we've come to understand how the friend list works. Also why mine is empty.

I maintain several filters, but I manage most of them. If and when I trust someone enough that they could be on a sensitive filter, I will ask them if they want to be.

A highly complex system of filters ensures your reading experience is tailored to your skill level. Is this like Oblivion where I use magic and blunt weaponry in the tutorial so the guy at the end says "by the looks of you, you must be a skilled witch hunter, am I right?" and it's really cool to see the AI is that advanced.
Then you realize it's literally only advanced for that one little section of the game and the rest of the game is clones talking about how much they enjoy buying items from the shop owned by their clone.
Anyway, back to the system of filters.

Sometimes (though less and less lately) I post something that might be controversial. I WELCOME debate in these matters,

And this was posted in 2025, so I guess we have some time before this happens.
... I feel like I've written that before.
Now we have the writer's block of the day question. Are you excited yet?
Well you better get that way:

How do you think personal relationships would change if people could read minds?

I think absolutely nothing would be different.
>Implying most people are paying attention to anyone but themselves
>implying implications

Yeah, I don't have writers block. I haven't had writer's block in ten years thanks to Dorthea Brande. However one of my friends puts these up regularly and today's struck me. Not the question really, but her answer made me think about other things.

Great. So?

Because I think this touches on something that actually isn't totally speculative and IS changing within our culture. As the internet and social media sites basically erode our ability to compartmentalize our lives--a trend that shows acceleration if anything--we face a new lack of privacy between the spheres of our existence.

No one is making you use Twitter, asshole.

When our boss can check out our politics and look through our drunken weekend photos and our grandparents know what we're up to, times are a-changing.

Unless you, you know, don't post those pictures to Facebook.
Am I the only one with common sense anymore?
Am I going insane?

I catch people in lies. Pretty much everyone I know I've caught in a few lies. I have a really good memory--far better than most people realize or give me credit for. (There's a reason I can read the textbook once and ace a test.)

Oh, so what do you call people like me who never read the textbook and ace the test?
I guess we're just psychic is the thing.

The point is, I very quickly adjusted my view of lying as a big bad and adopted a much more world-as-I-actually-experienced-it view of integrity, morality, trustworthiness, etc... My social contract changed.

What does any of this have to do with the question asked? Also: can you believe Pokemon Black and White hasn't been leaked yet?
Here's an in-depth review of Neuromancer, one of the titans of science fiction.

Despite evidence to the contrary in the opening paragraphs, this is a very informal review of Neruomancer.

I don't really-- I think we're in for some shit.

Slowly but surely, against the current of books I must read for school not to mention this horrific development I've discovered where they surround the ENTIRE New Yorker short fiction work with these totally interesting articles like that's why anyone would buy it--I mean seriously they're okay, but they're not great; I'm going to read this one about Afghanistan before I read the short fiction, which is really the only reason I bought it and then I'm.....damn, this is actual quality journalism here.

Which is more than I can say for whatever you call this word-diarrhea-on-a-page.

And other than having a real highbrow, prescriptive tack on grammar, they're pretty cool. Seriously though, you really CAN use myriad as a noun these days; I promise....

Oh um....where was I...?

Doesn't the phrase "where was I" imply you were somewhere to begin with? You just start vomiting words out at me and no one knows what's happening. Maybe you should start again?

What I'm getting at is that I can see the relevance of what Gibson creates. I actually did post-structuralist homework, and I know a bit about the work and why it is considered so important.

I guess this is why we're different, you and I, Dice_Dork (great). You see "post-structuralist" and roll with it and use it in your writings, meanwhile I try to do everything to forget the term exists.
Somehow, in trying to avoid filling my brain of fuck my brain is filled with even more fuck.
What he writes after here I have no idea about but I certainly wouldn't call this a "review" of a book entitled "Neuromancer" by a man named "William Gibson".

There's a bit of my friendslist doing the take-a-picture-of-yourself-right-now meme. I sort of wish I knew how to work my camera and upload photos and stuff.

Yeah the Livejournal interface is so hopelessly complex. Why, you might even have to Google something!

By the by, peeps, I'm not even going to TRY to catch up on LJ, so if there's something you want me to see from the last five days, please let me know specifically.

Too much shit going on in the vast world of Livejournal? That'd be the first time in ever.

The pains taken to make her look soft and supple though she was actually hard as steel struck me as a metaphorical chiasmus to femininity.

What? I actually had to stop and reread what you wrote. I am in awe at how much of a cunt you are, currently. If ever there was an anti-cool equation, you just discovered it.

A lot could be said about how the gender roles of women expect them to be be soft in their exterior and hide any hardness, but I'll save my amateur artistic critiquing for things at least tangentially related to writing--studying humanities doesn't mean I'm fit to speak intellectually about any artistic discipline without sounding like a pretentious fop.

He even knows how much of a complete fag he is and yet he persists in writing anyway. I'd say he's an asshole but I can only dream of having this much self-confidence. If I wrote like this I'd be looking to bore nails into my brain so I could forget how to write entirely.

It's like playing an MMORPG. If you play one of those games for long enough, you start to overlay game priorities onto your life as if they're real priorities.

Well it's not like you have any friends and school is such a clusterfuck of nonsense you just transpose whatever nonsense in a game you can into your real life because at least it's something you understand and can see the end result of.

You wake up and you think "what do I have to do today?" And if your "list" is "Level fishing. Get gear. Grind faction," those feel REAL to you.

Well they are real goals. Just because they aren't good goals doesn't make them any less valid as goals.

MMORPG's aren't the only things that can create a false sense of importance, and project an entire reality worth of goals and objectives that require your attention but aren't real.

Well you'd certainly know about a false sense of importance, wouldn't you?

They want to be happy, and make themselves miserable in that pursuit.

Deeeeeeep. Tool.

Dear Scott,

Ur a n00b.

Dear Scott,

Fuck you.
Fucking hell, man. It's like you're trying to piss me (specifically me) off and you're succeeding.
Oh wait, you're not Scott. You're Chris.
Well fuck you too, Chris.

She's smart, well-educated, has an epic smile, is fun, likes video games, is homygod hawt,

She's also probably stone cold fuck nuts, what're you gonna do? If you like her so much why don't you date her?

Your pal who totally pwned you in finishing Zelda 2nd quest without using Nintendo Power as a guide,

Chris

My goal in life is to punch you right in the fucking mouth, Chris.
It'll be one of those punches where "personal safety" doesn't even register. I don't care how much it fucks up my own knuckles, your mouth is destroyed.

There's so much going on that no matter how much I want it, routine is just impossible. I'm trying to get settled into classes I'm taking, classes I'm teaching, buy books,

OR HOW ABOUT TRYING TO TAKE TWO CLASSES OUT OF ORDER AND GETTING AN EMAIL THREE WEEKS AFTER YOU CLEARED IT WITH EVERYONE ON THE PLANET ABOUT HOW SURPRISED THEY ARE YOU'RE TALKING THESE CLASSES TOGETHER AND YOU'RE JUST SURE YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO DROP ONE AND IF I HAVE TO BE HERE ANOTHER SEMESTER I'M GOING TO GO CRAZY--
Sorry I'm off topic, proceed.

I really just hate this time of year.

Well, Chris, I must say: you are a cunt.
You are everything wrong and fucked up about not only writing but the internet. And life.
Anyway I gotta go.

Rev your engines

FANFICTION. Can't you idiots just be a fan of something without "joining the fandom"? What a dumbass concept. "It's not enough to just like something, you have to join creepy internet communities and make an ass of yourself to show you really like something."
No, of course not. Here we are.

So I'm sitting here MSUing...what exactly is MSU? It stands for Making Shit Up. It's a term created by my work only "they" use the G version.

"they" use the G version. What--

What am I MSUing? I'm sitting here pondering what my friends on here actually look like. I've been corresponding with a few people for a year now. Shit, has it been that long? Anyhew,

>anyhew
Wow we need to talk.

So I thought I'd share with you my everlasting love for Fringe.

Here's me giving a fuck.
What's going on with FFXIV?
No patch today, huh.

So I've found out I have a freaking food allergy.

How bizarre is that?

That is so bizarre! Who has food allergies? No one but you, that's who!

I've never been allergic to ANYTHING besides dust, grass, mold. You know the usuals. I've never been allergic to FOOD.

"I mean I've eaten my way through several buffet-style lunches before, so you'd think if I had a food allergy I would have learned about it before now."

Apparently I have some sort of wheat allergy.

Oh. They call that Celiac Disease (or Coeliac Disease if you're British. And stupid). I don't think this is nearly as common as people would have you believe. I mean grains make up a pretty huge part of the diet and you'd think anyone with a serious allergy to gluten (what you're actually allergic to in wheat) would have been bred out of our glorious species before now.
I mean it's strange, isn't it? You never see Asian people with Celiac and they'd logically be the ones most likely to have it because gluten isn't present in rice and that's their primary grain crop.

The reason I found this out was while on vacation I cut out pretty much all wheat products and my severe heartburn and I mean SEVERE (Zantac wouldn't touch it) went away and I felt clear headed and was able to sleep through the night.

Scientific.
How do you know your heartburn was diet related and not, say, stress related?
How do you know your vacation in general didn't fix the problem?

Two nights ago I made a HUGE mistake. I had a Blue Moon beer. How was I to know it was a Wietbier made from fermented wheat?!?!?!

Considering most beer is fermented barley (which also has gluten) beer is pretty much out of your diet in general, what?
Oh I guess she only claims to be allergic to wheat.
Yeah, you know, all the hypo-allergens in wheat certainly can catch up to you.
Goddamn people who post on Livejournal are mentally ill.

Hey everyone! *waves*

How is your Sunday treating you?

Just shut up and do your post.

I can't believe what a doofus I am. I decided last night to post a personal ad on Craigslist. Now I remember exactly why I don't post ads on Craigslist.

I've actually debated doing a Craigslist post on Edie Finds a Corpse. It is pretty entertaining.

It causes weirdoes to come out of the woodwork.

Weirdos, on the internet?
Let me adjust my sarcastic shocked face.
:V

There's always that ONE guy that feels the need to critique your ad and point out the flaws as if being sardonic and mean is the way to a woman's heart.

Well it has been proven in two entire studies that men who don't look at the camera get more responses than men who do when taking a picture for their dating profile, so I can kind of see where he was headed with that.

Really asshole? Might I quoth "Goodfellas" when I say "GO FUCK YOURSELF!"

All right when you try to sound smart by saying "quoth" and then you use it incorrectly you just look like an idiot. "Quoth" is past tense. It's the same as saying "quoted".
That's why The Raven is written in past tense?
Fuck.

Next is the guy who likes hitting on younger women.

How strange.

Did I mention he's 56 and I'm in my 30's?

Okay you're in your 30s making Craigslist ads. You are clearly no prize, let's just be honest with ourselves.

So I'm sitting here weeding through replies and some actually sound normal. I'll see. Last time I did this I ended up going out on three dates with a closet Nazi.

Three dates so at least he was a charming Nazi.

When life get's me down I tend to turn to comedies for relief.

Especially anything that makes me laugh.

As opposed to all the comedies that don't make you laugh, what? Well I guess there are a lot of unfunny comedies but why would you even mention those?

Shit!

Fuck!

Son of a Bitch!

FFXIV just went down?

I've fallen into yet another FANDOM!!

Christ Almighty...

Say, aren't you a little too old to be doing this kind of thing?
Now here she's having a "Midlife crisis" which let's just suppose when she says she's "in her 30's (apostrophes don't work that way)" she means she's 39, because that's the only way she's technically in the middle of her life, although of course for most people that's something that happens in your 40s, but whatever.
Maybe she's like Dante and going by the Biblical midlife in which case she's exactly 30.

I finally figured it out what I want to be when I grow up.

I want to be a Human Rights Activist.

You're someone who has admitted to several thousand dollars in credit card debt and you're trapped in a dead-end job you hate with no relationships with other people. I think you've grown up.
But, hey, at least you're not in a self-imposed exile to the Dark Land, huh?

I'm pretty much obsessed with World War II. Specifically Easy Company and the 101st Airborne.

You know, like what all them TV shows and video games focus on.
Oh yeah, I see what you did there.
Here's how she describes her "sense of humor" in six words (I don't need that many words: you have no humor)

Dry, crude, intelligent, dark, easily amused.

>crude
>intelligent
Do these go together?
Anyway I think I'm going to go do something with my life because what follows is FANFIC FANFIC FANFIC LOL xD

Dark times indeed

Today's writer's (possessive) block asks WHICH YEAR OF YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN THE BEST SO FAR?
This question is perplexing to me on several levels. First, who honestly keeps track of what happens to them in an entire year that carefully to be able to answer with a definitive answer? I seriously tried to answer this question but it devolved into a "well this happened this year, I think, or no, did it happen that year?"
Anyway, one thing is clear: the year of our lord 2010 is not anyone's best year. A lot of people said a year from 2005-2009, which is strange because those years have been pretty objectively shit by any standard that matters.
Yoinokaku (no idea what that means either) took this as a chance to run his/her/its fucking yap, though.

Now, I complained dreadfully during my senior year, but it was also the year of my highest achievement (too bad senior GPA doesn't count for college), and it was also the year I got to spend a month in Europe, which I consider one of the traveling highlights of my life so far.

Well la-de-fucking-dah.
Also: why doesn't your senior year GPA count for college? That seems kind of silly and arbitrary to me. I guess a lot of people get lazy their senior year but what if you didn't? That's going to be held against you?
Also it should be held against you, fuck it.
Glad I punched out at noon during my senior year now.

There are many disadvantages to not being sure of one's major. Right now I'm stuck deciding between History and Psychology--both of which I'm interested in; Psychology is less writing-intensive, but I've taken more classes in History already.

Hi, you seem to be making the titanic mistake of "which major is easiest to graduate from?" instead of "which of these gets me work?"
Let me share a bit of wisdom with you: unless you have your doctorate no one cares about a psychology degree.
History, for reasons I have no understanding of, will get you mad money eventually.

plus I want to study abroad the spring semester of my junior year, plus all the courses I need to take for my major, plus if I'm going to major in Psych I need to decide, like, before registration for THIS spring

I've suddenly decided I don't care about this anymore. Next entry.

From wikiHow:

"Create a single, traumatic incident for your villain. It could be as devastating as seeing his parents murdered or as sublime as seeing a prized rosebush destroyed by the whims of nature. The reason for this is to create a turning point in the villain's life."

Is this how to create a good villain? If so, this is bad advice.
You need melodrama, otherwise no one will believe it.
Why do you want your villain to be sympathetic, anyway? You want your readers to like your hero (by whatever means necessary) and hate your villain (by whatever means necessary, no matter how cheap). This isn't hard, people.
Now there's a book review of a book no one has ever heard of before.

I just ate a fish for dinner, and afterward, my mom told me...she found a worm in the fish.

"WHY DID YOU SERVE FISH WITH WORMS IN IT?"

I'm not sure what it is with me and Kay (although my friend has similar opinions, so at least I'm not alone). I picked up Ysabel, which was lavishly praised on the back of Under Heaven and won the World Fantasy Award, apparently.

Oh, the World Fantasy Award. What prestige.

This may sound like false modesty, but I swear I am being sincere to the bottom of my heart: I've performed academically above my own expectations.

>false modesty
>performed above expectations
I don't get how modesty works sometimes. Maybe she was being modest before? Underestimating your abilities is modest, I guess.
Wouldn't modesty be more like "I think I can do this thing and hey, I sure can do it" and wouldn't ego be something like "yeah I'm the best in the whole universe"?

(Yeah, I'm scared by violence in movies...so what??!)

Pussy.
Speaking of a good old spot of ultraviolence, I saw that new Solomon Kane movie. What a bunch of fucking shit that was.
If there's one character that doesn't need an origins story (70 years after the author died, no less) it's Solomon Kane. Here's his story: he kills evil people. There it is. I don't need to hear about how he was a violent and greedy mercenary captain of noble birth who was bound for Hell until he-- yawn.
Here's a picture of her desktop that I'm looking at for some reason.
>Mac
>casual video game background
wow here's a big shocker.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. With colorful cel-shaded graphics and 1:1 swordplay. (And Link finally learns how to run.)

>finally learns to run
>he's been dashing since Link's Awakening
You don't play video games, do you? Also he ran all over the fucking place in the N64 ones but OH THOSE GRAPHICS ARE UGLY SO I SKIPPED THOSE.
Also I was kind of liking the darker graphics of Skyward Sword. It looked like a Zelda game that's actually different from the other ones post-Majora's Mask. I was even thinking about getting that one when it came out, but nope.

Kirby's Epic Yarn. I didn't even like Kirby games,

How can you not like Kirby games? Do you have no soul, woman?

Epic Mickey is looking very nice.

No it's not.

I was fiddling around with Final Fantasy IV (the DS remake) which has been kind of fun so far, but no matter how much I try not to let my opinions about the story interfere, I can't help it. I know I can't really blame the scenario writers because

Because the game is 19 years old and a "sweeping, epic story" was literally impossible with 1991 technology?
You have to give it credit. Any kind of character development was a new thing back then.

Main character Cecil has to change jobs from Dark Knight to Paladin because clearly being a Dark Knight is tainting his soul and making him unable to defeat evil with evil, but if he becomes a Shining Paladin of Light he can put his Troubled Bloodstained Past behind him and be a Good Person and a True Hero!

Hey that sounds pretty good, actually. That sounds like a classic redemption plot with no ham-fisted romance subplot that drones on for 40 hours. What's wrong with this?

The way I see it, there are only two advantages to Cecil becoming a Paladin: 1) he gets a cool cape, and 2) he becomes a freaking tank.

His stat gains double, he learns healing spells, he can equip weapons and armor that aren't shit-- you never beat the game, did you?

I don't know whether that outweighs the disadvantage of him going from level 25-ish all the way back to level 1

Level 10 paladin is stronger than 25 dark knight so it's no big deal.

Unfortunately, none of the other characters strike me as particularly interesting.

girlsplayingvideogames.png

I was Bootcamping my family's shiny new iMac in order to play Assassin's Creed (which I've been dying to play forever).

Soooo you're using an operating system to emulate an operating system to run a game that I suspect has very steep system requirements. I bet you're amazed it DOESN'T WORK GOOD (sic) (or at all).

I got it to work wonderfully, but then I later ran the Mac's Disk Utility, which gave me a critical error.

Oh, huh.
But I thought Macs JUST WORK.

Nothing worked to fix it, and eventually it progressed to the point where the iMac would shut down while booting up.

In the end, I had to completely wipe the hard drive and reformat it.

Meanwhile in PC land I can play Assassin's Creed or FFXIV to my heart's content.
Sure is good being me~

(Maybe I should give in and buy a PS3 or XBox 360 after all? *shot*)

You own a Mac. It's not like you're part of the glorious PC gaming master race in the first place. Peasant.

Why do people complain when an RPG is Wii-exclusive? Hello? The PS3/XBox360 has a huge library of RPGs already (FFXIII, Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata, White Knight Chronicles, etc. etc.) !!

Only one of these is worth playing, though.
Here's her review of Dante's Inferno (the vidya) wherein she admits she doesn't own it and hasn't played it. Brilliant.

I can't speak as to the originality/lack thereof in the game, considering I can't get it and would never want to play it anyway. My interest stemmed from a curiosity as to how the developers were interpreting the Inferno, which I read (though I preferred Purgatorio better).

>likes the boring chapter of the Divine Comedy better than the part with Satan
I don't even know what the fuck anymore.

I was partly amused and partly horrified at the changes. Instead of a fainting poet, Dante is now a scythe-wielding Crusader who fights his way through the nine circles of Hell.

When you say "scythe-wielding Crusader who fights his way through the nine circles of Hell" like it's a bad thing I'm pretty sure you lose 90% of your audience who was agreeing with you before.
The game wasn't great (it was good enough) but the criticism you're making so far is pretty silly.

I don't even want to think about the horrors of the circle of Lust.

Well as someone who actually bothered to play the game before writing a review, let me tell you what happens: you fight giant, snake-woman Cleopatra up a giant elevator contraption who eventually vomits up Mark Antony, who you then battle to the death. Then Cleopatra implodes for some reason.

Yes, I'm biased against violent games in general, but how about a puzzle-based platformer à la Ico, using Virgil to help Dante get around?

I said it should have been like Pokemon Snap but whatever. Your criticism seems more like "this game is icky and gross and not like my casual Facetube games at all."

Heh, funny that I thought of Ico/Shadow of the Colossus. I've barely seen Ico, though I've watched some gameplay of Shadow of the Colossus, and it creeped the living daylights out of me.

>the game I haven't played should be more like the other game I haven't played
WHAT THE FUCK, MAN.
She then goes on to call FFXIII a good game so I think this review is ending here before I get pissed.
Also here's my official summary of FFXIV:If these are dodos I don't know how they went extinct.
They slap your shit for 300 points of damage and then vomit all over you and you're dead. Keep the fuck away, man.