Dream of Waking

where my last post went! I started uploading the song before I fell asleep last night, figuring I’d remember to rename the file (necessary evil) and post it. Well I didn’t. Then this afternoon I remembered to rename the file. Then a minute ago I remembered to put up the post to go with the file. Whoops.

Back to Scotty, watched Euro Trip again. It’s still hilarious and dumb and it still has a very cornball ending.

Within the next 24 hours I begin the process of coming home. I have to go from my base to another and stay there for a couple days but once I’m there, all responsibilities are thrown right out the window. I won’t have to do anything but sit around and wait for that plane taking me home. I’ve done my pre-packing so I know everything will fit and I’m totally ready to leave.

Yahoo Music of all things lead me to Brand New. I never even heard of them before. Yahoo suggested it because I rated everything I listened to and I listen to a lot of Alkaline Trio. Brand New is no Alkaline Trio but they are very good. Their two albums “Your Favorite Weapon” and “Deja Entendu” are rather different. While “Your Favorite Weapon” sounds like your typical pop punk variety, “Deja Entendu” is very moody.”Soco Amaretto Lime” is easily the best song on “Your Favorite Weapon”. It reminds me of summers spent at the Asylum and the friends I made there because the way Brand New sounds on “Your Favorite Weapon” could’ve easily been any of the ridiculous number of small touring bands that came through the Asylum every week. It also has triple overlapping vocals which just make me crazy. There’s so much to listen to packed in such a small song. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I can listen to it over and over and pick out different lyrics every time.

Brand New – Soco Amaretto Lime

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You’d think by now writing entries would be like an automatic thing but it’s not. The automatic thing is get out of my uniform, start-up some Seinfeld on DVD, and check my email.

Less than a week, hurray! I’m so close to gone I can taste it. It tastes like candy and ice cream. I’m still not packed but I’m not bringing a lot. A change of t-shirt, socks, and underwear, my laptop, gameboy, mp3 player, book. Enough entertainment to get me home.

So yeah. That’s all.

That’s okay, it’s contentless.

Another counted day. A new patch and a Rocket Area 4 beta (which isn’t compatible with the new patch, ha ha funny) drives me to finish my second run through Quake 4. I’ve been stroggofied for the second time and it’s just as painful to watch. I’m almost dreading my return to the waste disposal facility. The Strogg make living and dead marines into their monsters, their engines, their computers, everything. Everything has that biomechanical look. The “waste” is the leftovers and botched creations. To say that it’s gross is an understatement. It’s like the guys at Raven Software got around the old drawing board and asked just how visceral could they make a game when they designed the stroggofication process then they got together a week later and asked “Was that really the best we can do to wrench guts and gross players out? Let’s kick it up a notch!” Bam. The waste disposal facility. It’s magnificent.

I have this TV/DVD player combo that was left behind from the last base I was at. Since I didn’t have one, it’s become mine for as long as I’m here. To say that’s it’s functional would almost be an overstatement of it’s condition. The TV works flawlessly, the DVD player has much to be desired. Now it was understandable when I was watching bootleg Star Trek due to the heavy use of compression to fit 9 hour-long episodes on each disc but I’m trying to watch my Seinfeld DVDs (not bootlegs!) and they’re skipping and not starting and all kinds of crap. It’s not the discs, they’re brand new and they work in my computer. It sucks. We have a CD/DVD drive cleaning disc and I think it improved it but it’s still not perfect.

I’m halfway through with Mega Man Zero 4. It’s much nicer to have the EX skills gained by slightly increasing the difficulty than getting through the whole level at record times with minimal damage to get a high ranking and then beat the next level to get the EX skill.

I’m so incredibly tired. We played basketball after work today. I cannot play sports. I suck at sports. And all my efforts went only to wearing me out.

I must not be busy enough. The last two days have gone by so freaking slow. It’s warming up here too. I sweat from the heat today. That sucks. It’s still February and I’m sweating.

I’m trying to find new music to get excited about because I have lots of time to listen to it but all I have out here is the CDs I ripped before I left (which is a lot but it’s all stuff I’ve already heard) and what I can download. I’m trying out some “alternative hip hop” which is what rap that doesn’t involve busting caps or drinking forties or shaking laffy taffy is commonly known as. I can’t say whether I really enjoy it or not but it’s infinitely better than the radio crap the people in my shop like to listen to and they don’t hate it when I’m listening to it so I guess it’s a good compromise. For the curious, I got Danger Doom “The Mouse & The Mask” because it was getting pimped pretty hard on Adult Swim before I left, Black Star’s self-titled because I liked Mos Def’s performances on Chappelle’s Show (and he was hilarious in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”), and a Talib Kweli double CD because he’s involved with both of those groups.

I have a headache and it sucks.

I have gameboy claw. I’ve been playing Mega Man Zero 4. My hands have that clutched-to-the-gameboy feeling. When I was at Ft. Polk and I was playing Konami Arcade Classics, I got gameboy thumb from playing too much Time Pilot. I think I had one layer of skin left. That game really needed a dial rather than a directional pad.

I don’t know what else to say. A mid-game boss kicked my ass.

My site died. It died because the NIC went bad on the server I’m hosted on. I never noticed how much I rely on my website and email (run through my website) to keep me entertained at work.

So to entertain myself yesterday I downloaded all 75 issues of Sandman. It’s ridiculously good. I read ten issues at work and another five after work. It keeps me occupied without looking like I’m not doing anything. And it keeps me entertained.

So I didn’t do a whole lot today. Did more sitting around. Played some GridWars which is a clone of Geometry Wars 2 which is a modern remake of Robotron 2084. I played some Starsiege at work. The cybrids, they get me everytime. The first cybrid mission, I always fail. I don’t think I’ve ever finished that mission. They get me everytime or I start the thumpers too early and end up destroying my own convoy.

I’m still in the sim mood, hence the Starsiege. I downloaded Earthsiege 2 also, the prequel. And I’m playing Battlezone 2. There’s really not a lot to say about today. Oh, except that some guy in my unit who I know sent Johnson penis pictures over yahoo messenger. Except that Johnson wasn’t behind the computer, it was our First Sergeant and his underlings. I wasn’t there so I didn’t see them but everyone had a good laugh at that. Who has keeps pictures of their penis on a computer?

I’m listening to this song now. It’s painfully good. I have to apologize beforehand for size of all the MP3s I post. They’re big because I’m willing to sacrifice disk space for sound quality and every CD I ripped from my personal collection was ripped with EAC and encoded with LAME at 192kbps bitrate.
Nine Inch Nails – Right Where It Belongs

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I came up with something. It hit me like a brick. A simple description of what’s been driving me for the last couple years. It was like I realized exactly what I’ve been trying to do for so long.

I will fix what others have broken.

It’s my new personal track record, mission statement, and endstate.

Have I ever mentioned that Katie’s the best wife ever?

She told me a couple weeks ago that she got me a Sandman book. Neil Gaiman’s an outstanding writer but I’ve never read any of the Sandman series so I was expecting a trade paperback. She said it wasn’t an actual Neil Gaiman story but a Death spinoff by a fan author. Okay, not unheard of. The package shows up and there’s a manga inside. Then I read the cover. It’s the Death book Katie got me. It’s a manga. I will never insult Katie’s choice of gifts for me because she knows what I like and she’s never wrong and I enjoyed this but she got me a freaking manga. I think that’s so funny. It’s a Death manga. It’s totally not serious and it’s pretty good but I had no idea Vertigo published mangas at all. It also made me realize why mangas are always so thick. They’re mostly one or two panels per page or one big panel and since it’s a condensed comic format that’d naturally increase the number of pages. I breezed through the two hundred pages in a half hour. Like I said I’ll never complain about it because it’s from Katie and I enjoy it but I had no idea I’d ever own a manga in my life.

So here’s a little primer on manga for those of you who are clueless. They’re what was/is hot in Japan. Black and white strictly, either based on an anime or eventually having an anime based on it. They’re the size of a regular paperback book and printed on cheap recycled paper. They’re also the literary equivalent of birdseed. Lots of zany art, not a lot of content.

That’s the smell that comes wafting down to our dungeon room. The smell of cat pee. It’s great, really!

In the Army, you can pick your job based on your test scores but you can’t pick where you’re stationed. In the Air Force you can pick where you’re stationed but you can’t pick what your job is. So when people in the Army want me to hook them up with internet in their rooms I have every reason to tell them no besides the obvious ones of “you don’t need it” and whatnot. If these guys are so concerned about getting constant internet access, they should’ve signed up for a signal corp job. A job that guarantees you constant phone and internet access. And it’s not like we’re the only ones hooking ourselves up and screwing everyone else. Every shop does it. Supply never runs out of toilet paper or Dr. Pepper. Personnel never charges themselves leave dates. Operations always gets first choice of where they want to live. Everyone sets themselves up with what they have to benefit them the most. So cry me a river when I have intenet access in my room and you don’t.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I’d like to remind everyone that I have the best wife ever. I’m so sugared up from Valentine’s Day candy that I’ll never get to sleep. I’m counting numbered days. If this month doesn’t get over with soon I might explode.

I’m back where I’m supposed to be. I can’t say this is home or “where I belong” so it’s “home”.

I got my packages today. Two of them were waiting for me when I got here and the third came today. Food package from mom and Valentine’s Day and fun stuff from Katie. Katie sent me so much goofy Valentine’s Day stuff that I feel like a total ass for only sending her a tiny short video from here. Like maybe I should’ve tried to send home a bootleg movie or something. There’s not a lot of fun stuff outside of bootlegs out here really. I guess I could’ve ordered her something online but she’d know almost immediately what it’d be. Oh well. Being deployed sucks.

So I’m spending a couple days here at a much bigger, nicer base. It has pizza hutt, burger king, a big MWR, a big PX, and movie theaters. But with a big nice base comes people with lots of power and little to do. So last night when we got to the DFAC, the guard asked us where our PT belts were. Uh we’re not from around here so we didn’t bring them. So we had to sign in on a piece of paper saying we didn’t have PT belts and we weren’t from here. Kind of weird, but whatever. Then I went to the MWR. Again, where’s my PT belt? This time there was no piece of paper. I simply couldn’t use the MWR after dark without a PT belt. Ugh. Okay. So the PX is right next door, I thought I’d check the price of a PT belt and weigh the

Well I’m still here tonight. Flight was cancelled. Rescheduled for early tomorrow morning. What a pain.

I don’t have anything to say and I didn’t feel like updating today. I just wish Katie were awake.

In the last three Castlevania’s you’ve had to fight Death. It’s like tradition. You take the tour of Castlevania, you fight Death. It’s part of the tour. Death in Dawn of Sorrow is nowhere near as hard as Death in Aria of Sorrow. And he doesn’t really look like you’d imagine Death to look like. More like a guy in a purple/brown robe. What in the hell? It’s impossible for me not to compare Dawn of Sorrow to Aria of Sorrow because it’s the direct sequel. I know I complain about the game a lot too but if it sucked I wouldn’t be 7 hours into it and still playing.

So tomorrow I leave the base. This is by no means a bad thing because I’m going to a bigger base with pizza hut and a real PX and real showers. I’m going to get some computers repaired but this is also a pre-R+R R+R for me and the lieutenant taking me. We plan on spending an overnight there, maybe two so we have plenty of time to sham and sleep and relax. And we’re flying so no threat of getting blown up. I’m taking a fully charged nintendo DS + games, a full MP3 player, and two books.

So the countdown is beginning. My R+R leave date is set for early March. I intend on spending three to five days at home in Ft. Campbell before making the trek up to Springfield, where Katie and I’ll probably stay for just shy of a week. So count the days. I know I am.

I don’t curse. Often. Not as much as I used to. And it’s easy not to curse in typing, it’s a little harder not to in person. But I almost died laughing at this comic strip.

I think it’s the fact that it’s a dog and he’s wearing a variety of outfits.

I’ve been busy tonight. First, I spent an hour playing Castlevania trying to get my Ghost Dancer soul maxed out to level 9. Victory! Now I can eat souls for breakfast!

Then I spent an unhealthy amount of time goofing around with 43 Places. I wrote unflattering reviews for Heaven and Hell and a middling review for Earth. So now I’ve crapped on 43 Places and 43 Things. How can people not see the humor in writing about your experiences in Hell? Or how pooping turned out for you? Anyway you can read my “comic genius” at 43 Places and 43 Things.

I gotta go to sleep. I’ve got two hours of reading to do tomorrow.

So I’m posting from a Firefox plugin called “Deepest Sender”. Besides sounding like a porno title it’s for making blog posts without actually logging into your website. It works with Livejournal and WordPress and other things. I just thought I’d try it out. I can’t really see why I’d need this because if I’m using Firefox then I probably have intenet access and can just go to my site and do this “in person” but whatever.

I’m at work and not doing anything and I kind of have to poop.