linterry's blogger

I know how everyone in the weblog community would much rather read about how other poeple's lives are getting fucked up (breakups, getting fired, rejected from a job, etc. etc.) instead of how they're doing well (landed a job, had a threesome, etc.)... but "unfortunately" mine has taken a turn for the better. After being unemployed for about 2 weeks, I have potentially landed a new job with Kaiser Kastle. I'll be producing songs for their TV series "ABC Bakery" for kids which is aired at 6:30pm every day on TVBS. The show itself is kinda like Sesame Street except way cheesier. You've got puppets and weird characters singing songs and reading scripts that teaches kids english.

Anyways, barring a major screwup in the two demos I'm going to produce for them by next week, it should be pretty easy (this is why I say potentially). I listened to some of the other stuff that was produced for them and I'm sure I can match/exceed that level of quality. The money... let's just say it's good, better than CMUSIC, and it's way easier too because kids songs are always short and simple. The best part is that I finally get to compose - something that I've been dying to do after dissecting over 80 full blown pieces for CMUSIC.

The interview was sort of strange. These guys know very little about music production. Basically, they're just regular folk who need music made for them. At the beginning, they looked at me with suspicion and doubt: "so... Terry... you've never made kids music before?". Well of course not. But after listening to what they really needed to be done, I actually put on a Salesman Hat for 10 seconds and with the most confident aura I could exude, said

"If you need a melody and background tracks, that exactly what I'm good at. I can make nearly all kinds of music. Kids music is especially easy because it's simple and pleasant".

I almost felt like laughing after I said that because it came out so well, I even convinced myself. Maybe it's partly true. I won't know until I actually start working on the demos. But anyways, the producer of the show actually came by, and along with the two interviewers, we proceeded to listen to the sample CD I brought. They listened to a couple of tunes that I produced for CMUSIC, and then I could see it on their faces "oh my god, hire this guy NOW!". I know it sounds like I'm bragging n' shit but I kid you not, they were really impressed. After listening to some of the other stuff that was produced for them, I can see why.

So anyways, that's a positive change in my life. Sorry, I'm sure you didn't want to read that.

So I haven't blogged in a while. Don't think anyone died cuz of that. But anyways, here's an update anyways for those of you who just incessantly click on random blogger/xanga bookmarks when you're sitting in front of the computer and can't think of anything to do.

Diablo 2.
My god, that game is the motherfuckin' devil incarnate himself. There are some hilarious reviews on Gamefaqs which pretty much sums up my feelings about this game after playing it through for the third time (although to be fair to myself, the game has been altered significantly in the new 1.10 patch). Yeah, we all laugh that the game is nothing but mindless clicking on monsters and picking up items, but that's just a testament to how powerful the "dy/dx" factor is (ie everything is relative) Leveling up, getting new items ... or how about landing a better job, buying a better house, a better car etc. etc. They all have something in common: the journey is everything, the destination is nothing. It feels great to hope, to want, to pursue, but once you achieve the goal and had your jollies basking in the brief dy/dx glory - afterwards there is nothing but a huge gaping motherfucking emotional void - and the only way to create those positive feelings again, is to hope, to want, and to pursue something else. It's fucking endless, and we're all puppets to this trite human behavior. That is why I never want to win the lottery. Just imagine... you're on Act 2 Normal, about to get your first badass Level 18 skill, and then bam! The next monster you kill awards you 10 trillion exp. and you are suddenly at Level 99. That would really SUCK, becuase all of a sudden nothing in the game seems to have any meaning anymore. You try out all those Lv 30 slvl 20 skills for an hour, and you'd probably completely lose interest in a couple of days. Just to prove a point, I purposely hacked my single player character to godly stats not because I wanted to cheat per se, but because I wanted to stop the addiction before it got out of hand. It worked. I fired a couple of fully synergized slvl 45 chain lightnings, Hell monsters died way faster, I went "that's cool", and then I quit. I don't want to play anymore.

Jobs
So I've been reading No Logo, and all of a sudden this apparent void of quality full time jobs in the private sector is suddenly starting to make sense. If that book is right (and I believe it is), the idea of working loyally for the same company for 20 years+ is now extinct. Everyone's adopted a "me first" attitude - the individual, who seeks nothing but financial reward and betterment of his own career; and hence the company, who seeks nothing but to cut costs to keep profit margins healthy. It's a war of selfishness, really. Apparently when a company announces massive layoffs, stock prices generally go up and the CEO is considered a hero... by the shareholders. If you look it from one point of view, the company is making a wise business decision by "trimming the fat" and cutting down on fixed costs that would be unproductive during periods of slow business (ie employees surfing the web (gasp!)and having water cooler chats (gasp!)). On another point of view, it's fucking heartless. I distinctly remember how the CEO of a car company was suddenly appointed to replace the CEO of a major toy company... and I'm like... gee... cars and toys aren't really the same thing. But the CEO, who's supposed to be a big hotshot, said something this "it doesn't matter if we're making cars, toys, or toilets, it's all business, and I know business". Yay MBA's. You motherfucking soulless pigs. Anyways CEO's have sorta become the same as star athletes, hopping from one team to the next, while taking their share of a motherfucking ludicrous compensation. Did you know CEO's generally make the most money when they layoff the most people?

Anyways, I actually have an interview for tomorrow. Not really excited though...unless it turns out to be something that I can do from home. Anyways, as I was preparing my resume and changing it for like the 100th time to "fit" the target job description, I really felt sick. I absolutely positively hate pretending to be something that I'm really not (I hope I didn't say anything in this blogger than makes that last statement hypocritical). But seriously, whenever I rearrange the order of my experiences and abilities... it's like "this is such vacuous shit". It's like the world won't take me for who I really am unless I put mascara and eyeliner on (yeah, I'm talking like a girl now! go terry). And I'm so sick of the fact that this modern world is so heavy on image and so light on substance.

Remember this guy? Recently arrested for possession of narcotics.

A poster child for this saying "Don't level-up your life too quickly, otherwise you'll spend the rest of it having nothing to look forward too". Yeah, I made that up.

I've been pretty crazed about football lately. Not the american football, but soccer. This has partly to do with me playing Winning Eleven 8 on a consistent basis and the fact that ESPN in Taiwan shows a lot Premiership and Champions League games. Also, it's a relatively new and undiscovered world that makes me feel like a kid again.

I think football has a certain aura around it that is unparalleled by any other sport in the world, including NBA basketball. The core game itself isn't all that great to be honest - I've seen too many matches where the ball just gets kicked around for an hour with nothing really happening. It's more the culture and popularity surrounding it that makes it really appealing.



What's really cool is that most of the big football clubs have been around for over a century, and have this certain "timeless" characteristic to them, as if they will still be around for the next century. I think pretty much everyone knows Real Madrid (aka the Galacticos) and Manchester United - the latter mostly because that was where Beckham used to play. Some other big names include Juventus (Italy), Arsenal (England), FC Barcelona (Spain), Internazionale (Italy). Commonly funded by multi-millionaire entrepreneurs, these clubs (which nowadays seem to resemble massive corporations) have so much money flowing through them, it's almost horrific. Real Madrid in particular has no qualms of spending sickening amounts of money to acquire the best players in the world - check out some of these world record transfer fees for these superstars:

Zinedine Zidane -- £44 million (from Juventus, 2001)
Luis Figo -------- £37 million (from Barcelona, 2000)
Ronaldo ---------- £29 million (from Internazionale, 2002)
David Beckham ---- £25 million (from Manchester United, 2003)

These are just transfer fees. While the player is at the club, they can earn in excess of £100,000 a week. What's funny about Real Madrid is that even though they are stacked with top quality stars , just two days ago I saw a no-name German club (Leverkusen) smack them down 3-0 in a totally one-sided game. They also finished fourth in La Liga last year, which was a huge disappointment. This kind of "just because you have all the stars, doesn't mean you'll be champions" phenomenon sorta reminds me of the 2003-2004 Lakers.

Of course, my favorite club is Arsenal, mostly becuase my favorite player Theirry Henry plays for them. But I think Arsenal is diffrent from other clubs because their team spirit is just unbelievable. Their red and white kits are also really aeshthetically appealing.

You would not believe what game I have been playing recently.

Diablo II

Yeah, it's pretty goddamn random isn't it. When I was teaching my students, I saw the Diablo II retail cd case lying on the table and I asked the kid whether I could borrow it - for fuck's sake. I thought it'd be cool to show my girlfriend this game since she's been pretty hooked on Warcraft III - not that they're similiar in nature, but they are both made by Blizzard and thus have my official "This is a Genuinely Good Product And Not Just Another Capitalist Quick Buck Scheme"(tm) approval.

I should have never touched that red & black box. It truly destroys lives.

What was supposed to be just a 10 minute demonstration has now turned into another unhealthy addiction. I have so many new PS2 games and PC games lying around that I could have distracted myself with: Viewtiful Joe, Suikoden 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, Medal of Honor:Spearhead - but Diablo II beats them all in terms of the "what game do you want to play the most" category. This is extra sad because I've already wasted hundreds of hours on this game 5 years ago. To be spending all this time playing this oldie... well.. it makes me feel old and like nothing has progressed in my life. To make matters worse, I'm not even playing the expansion and I only play on LAN. While this cheapens the leveling up experience (you could just cheat), it's not enough to stop my girlfirend and I from playing for hours every night.

Diablo II is such a narcotic, it's really scary. It's almost fitting that the two times I was seriously hooked on this game were at the lowest points of my "real" life: after breaking up with my girlfriend, and the summer when my acne was just out of control. Both times, I resigned from the staleness and angst of real life and totally immersed myself in Blizzard's wonderfully concocted fantasy world.

Even after the totally traumatic breakup with my 1st gf, where every moment alive seemed like gut-wrenching torture... when I was playing Diablo, I was actually able to feel happy & satisfied again, accompnied with fits of massive euphoria everytime that awesome level up sound chimed in and those two buttons "New Stats" and "New Skill" popped up. I clearly remember how I was able to exploit Corpse Explosion to level up insanely fast... and it even prompted me to write a FAQ on the night that I was supposed to leave for Taiwan that summer. When the plane got delayed, I contemplated abandoning my trip to Taiwan just because I wanted to get back to playing around with my level 30 necromancer. And even when I did manage to get away from home and completely deprived of Diablo, I was still scouring the diabloii.net homepage and reading their forums constantly - at work no less. I studied and devoured all Diablo-related material like it was the only thing that mattered in my life. But two months away from the game made the addiction gradually dissipitate, similar to how I was able to stop my dependence on online chatting the summer before.

Then I had that serious acne problem in 3rd year, and that summer, after being turned down by Goldman Sachs AND a girl, plus having JACK SHIT to do everyday... that's when the diablo expansion pack saved the day. I made a Werewolf druid but he completely sucked compared to my static field/frozen orb Sorceress the first time around. Anyhow, I remember how my friend Jeffrey would invite me to certain social activities like strawberry picking or fishing... and I was just gripped with fear... I really wanted to tell him: "I'd rather just stay home and play more diablo ii exp", but that would make me sound like such a loser and he would just keep pestering me... so I would end up going and not having that good of a time. When I got back home at night, the 5 or 6 hours of NOT playing diablo would catalyse a 10 hour non-stop binge. I can recall many nights where I would be cooking pasta at 1am in the morning, eating in front of my monitor while spamming Frenzy with my werewolf, only leaving my computer to restock on Dasani and/or Coke. Then, after I was too tired to continue, I would brush my teeth and see that terrible acne in the mirror... I would then slop on loads of benozyl peroxide which would make my skin burn and peel like crazy (but didn't remove any acne at all), and then go to sleep. That is how sad my life was.

Recently my friend Allen returned to Taiwan after a 1 month trip to Canada. Of course, I was curious as to what has changed over the last year or so, and he told me the following:

1. Earl Haig is now saturated with Mainland Chinese and ethnic gang rivalries are at an all time high.

2. Nike superstores are infesting the malls... not just one store mind you, but three: Nike for mens, Nike for womens, and Nike for kids.



Coincidentally, the fabulous book No Logo explains the reason behind #2. These stores are super-bright, fancy, and also too expensive for everybody I know. Sounds like a stupid business decision right?

Wrong. These stores in fact, are not meant to generate any profit at all. Their functionality is actually the same as a billboard - advertising - except now, it's all in 3D, you can smell & touch the whole line of Nike products, you can stare in awe at all at enormous posters of Nike's sponsored athletes, and if you're stupid/rich enough, you can actually buy a Nike shoe/basketball/apparel/accessory from the store.

"Advertising?" you say? "A whole goddamn dummy store all for advertsing?" Yeah right, who would be that crazy? Well, here's the basic idea. Let's stick with Nike. Prior to these brand superstores, you could only find Nike shoes in multi-brand stores like Foot Locker or Sportschek, and they would unglamarously stacked on a wall right next to competing brands such as Adidas, Reebok, AND1 and so forth. Sometimes, the display was downright ugly, like the Sportchek at Fairview (not sure if they've upgraded it now, or if Sportschek is even still there).

Nike CEO's Phil Knight has been revered for his epiphany-like philosphy towards selling: "brands, not products". So it comes as no surprise that this relatively "dull" display of their branded products in multi-brand stores is something that Nike would like to remedy. Enter the Nike store (or any other big brand superstore for that matter). Their raison d'etre is to glamorize their branded products by providing a display that is more, shall we say, appropriate for such a high-class brand. The store is not actually a store that tries to move as much product in a month, it's more like a shrine that places any product with the Nike logo on a pedestal. That's why the prices are more expensive - it's all part of Nike's plan to imprint the image that Nike products are superlative, worldy products used by star athletes across the globe, and the steep price is nothing more than a ploy to make you believe that Nike shoes are actually worth that much.

Of course, few people are that stupid/rich to pay for what they consider the "normal" price for a Nike product at the Nike store. So here's how typical consumer usually reacts: after "experiencing " the Nike store at Fairview and buying absolutely nothing, he then prances along to a multi-brand store like Sportschek, or even better, an outlet store. He then finds similar Nike shoes (along with Adidas, AND1, and Reebok) for quite a bit cheaper. Now, hopefully the consumer will remember that aura of "branded-goodness" you experienced in the Nike store, and will apply it to the same products found in this rather unglamorous environment. Shoppers, after all, are always looking for a bargain, they want to buy the best product at the lowest price. Of course, "lower" is always relative - what you may not realize is that the initially high prices of the Nike store is what sets the "base" watermark in the consumer's mind.

So now, you might see the usefuleness of the big brand superstore. A Nike shoe that costs $250, enshrined in aftermentioned super-glitzy Nike store, can now be found selling for only $180 at a shitty looking outlet. Does "holy fuck what a deal" run across your head? That's what Nike is hoping. Does it not provide you with MORE motivation to buy the product at $180 than if you never saw it selling for $250, and never saw it on such a beautifully pristine display surrounded by visceral images of famous athletes that you love and worship? That's what Nike is hoping. While the typical consumer thinks he is outsmarting Nike by finding their products selling for 30% cheaper through his l33t comparison shopping skillz... in reality, Nike is the one laughing the hardest.

The Nike store is nothing more than a transmitter for the images and auras they want to dissipiate into our minds. Next time you pass by the Nike store, or any other big brand superstore, give it some thought as to why it's even there in the 1st place.

Hahah. This pic is funny. I've got two quotes for you, which I thought were just un-fucking-believably hilarious. This is from a famous trial going back into the 90's, where Mcdonalds sued a couple in the UK for making and distributing this pamplet: What's Wrong with McDonalds. Some of those claims will seem pretty far fetched, but I've got some even more far-fetched defense quotes from some Mcdonalds execs:

this is a DIRECT quote from the trial transcripts, where David Green, vice president of marketing of McDonalds at that time, tries to defend their position that their food is "nutritous"

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http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/trial/transcripts/941104/45.htm

MR. MORRIS: (To the witness) So, for example, a Coke could not be described as nutritious, could it?

A. Well, providing water, and I think that is part of a balanced diet; but if it has no nutrients, or if it has no vitamins and so forth, then it probably is irrelevant.

Q. It has sugar. That is a nutrient, is it not?

A. Yes.

Q. Is that nutritious, then, a Coke?

A. A Diet Coke? I do not think a Diet Coke has sugar.

Q. No. A general Coke, that could be nutritious, then?

A. A Diet Coke could fit into a well balanced diet.

Q. A Coke, sorry, not a Diet Coke?

A. A Coke could fit into a well balanced diet.

Q. So, in fact, Coke is nutritious?

A. From my definition.

Q. Yes. Okay.

A. It provide nutrients.

---

OMFG. Here is a 12 billion dollar company who's trying to tell us that Coke is nutritious becuase it contains water and sugar. And their lawyer/whore is playing along with him. Holy fuck! Notice how the guy is like panicking and can't even listen properly, his lawyer is trying to focus on regular coke, but Mr. Green has mistakingly skipped to the Diet Coke part of the script.

Believe it or not, it gets even worse. Here is McDoanlds exec Ed Oakley telling us why the garbage that McDonalds produces is a good thing, becuase it uhh... fills up landfills:

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http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/trial/transcripts/941205/29.htm

Q. Right, OK. You do not see any problems with the dumping of waste?

A. I can see it to be a benefit, otherwise you will end up with lots of vast, empty gravel pits all over the country

Q. So you are asserting it is an environmental benefit to dump waste in landfill sites?

A. It could be.

---

Now, I find it pretty fucking mind-blowing that this kind of idiotic shit gets thrown around in a REAL WORLD courtroom. I mean, in any other situaiton with the "common sense" light turned ON, everybody would be laughing their heads off - "this is a joke, right?". But no. This is an actual legal argument: "McDonalds garbage is good for the environment because we're doing our part to fill landfills". Get the fuck outta here! Can't you just stick with "well, every other company produces waste". That would make like... actual sense?

Okay okay... so you're sick of all this cliched corporate bashing... but if you read No Logo, some of the facts in that book are pretty hard to believe. "Do corporations really pull this shit off"? is what crosses my mind the most often. Some other brief examples include: Mattel suing MCA Records for Aqua's "Barbie Girl's" lewd lyrics, Dairy Queen won't squirt Bart Simpson onto frozen birthday cakes for fear of a lawsuit from Fox, in 1991, Disney forced a group of New Zealnd parents in a remote country town to remove their amateur paintings of Pluto and Donald Duck from a mural. The best one is this: remember the super-gay Barney the Dinosaur? Apparently, the Lyons Group, who owns the Barney character, has a policy: if anybody dresses up in a purple dinosaur suit, it is a violation of copyright. Quote from Lyons' spokeperson Susan Elsner Furman:

"They can have a dinosaur costume. It's when it's a purple dinosaur that it's illegal, and it doesn't matter what shade of purple either"

I wonder if black is a shade of purple. I'm sure their lawyers, if required, could argue that even yellow is a shade of purple.

All I can say is, while anti-corporate activists may seem like flaky people (mostly becuase we are saturated with corporate controlled media), sometimes, you just can't argue with hard facts and historical evidence. Here's another "corporate evil" story: Royal Dutch/Shell and the Murder of Ken Saro-Wawa. Something to think about next time you pump gas at Shell. By the way, if you type in "shell nigeria" into Google, it's downright hilarious how the first link and like almost all the rest are sending completely different messages. You can bet your ass that Shell paid a lot of money to get that first search spot. Too bad it's not enough to push out #5 from view.

What is fairly shocking is that I have never even heard of these incidents prior to reading No Logo. I can however chant several McDonalds jingles off the top of my head. What does that tell you? That despite the internet, virtually all push-driven information is regulated by a certain faction: the corporate elite. You can still get these stories if you search them on the internet or read every article in the paper everyday, but by and large these corporeate misdemenaor stories go unheard of by the majority of the public. I'm living proof. Also, everyone's got their own worries already, like not owning a big house or a tricked out ride... so we just end up going "oh really? that's too bad" aka not giving a shit. So we calmly join the ranks of the indirect, indifferent benefactors of corporate exploitation. After all, who's to say that the rewards you got from that Shell card weren't bought from the huge savings Shell scrounged up by doing jack shit to help the Ogoni people?

----

The wealth and luxury of 1st world countries can only be sustained by the suffering and poverty of 3rd world countries. I don't know where I read that, but it seems to be quite true. The more I think of it, the more it sickens me. "That's how business works" - yeah, that's a great justification. I always thought those people who refuse to wear Nike shoes were so stuck up... now, I can see where they're coming from. It's not just the labor exploitation, it's the fact that Nike is really not about making quality shoes or apparel (even though that may be coincidentally true; I'm no expert on the science of shoemaking) - they are about making images and auras. When's the last time you saw a Nike ad that actually talked about the merits of their shoes. Actually, just thinking about the idea - Nike actually telling us why their shoes are so good, in a direct, honest fashion - seems cruelly ironic, as if the brand is not supposed to be subjected to such "uncool" or "boring" technical evaluations. Why is a Nike shoe good? Cuz it's Nike. You just don't question it.

Apparently this is why the Harvard Business Review worships Phil Knight (CEO of Nike), and why MBA students study his ideas and philosphoies. Instead of making just another shoe and selling it for a "meager" 100% markup, you can now exploit poor countries, saturate kids with multi-million advertising and sell it for 2000% markups.

Come to think of it, I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable wearing another pair of Nikes ever again...

The more I read No Logo, the more frightened I become of entering the "real" world. I read a line that I think really does describe the dilemna we face today - that giving employees full-time jobs with stability and security is now "out of fashion". I think we can observe this trend quite easily without looking too far. How many friends do you know that have graduated and are now working happily in a large corporate enivronment, as opposed to those who are sort of 'stuck in a limbo' career wise? You can't really blame the entire group for being paranoid of the "real" world... it's more that the cutthroat corporate culture is totally repulsive. Also, stooping down and begging for jobs isn't fun either.

Anyhow, I have polished up my final fantasy boss bgm (called "Deep Menace"). I think in it's current form it's pretty well balanced from beginning to end, and with some big studio treatment it could be used in a real game. Actually, if you try to picture a final fantasy battle scene with this bgm in the background, i think it would really kick ass. Then again, I'm biased because I made the damn thing. This bgm marks a "Breakthrough" for me, a couple of years ago, I tried to write a similar boss bgm, but the lack of experience with sequencer techniques and embellishment methods forced me to give up real quick. After a year of CMUSIC contract work though, it's a lot easier to produce music on the spot. It has nothing to do with my musical per se... it's more the familiarity with the sequencer and certain tricks that lets me carry the ideas forward.

Here is a list of "upgrades" from the first version

- more reverb on organ, louder in intial solo.
- copied the organ riff into the first brass section to make it contraputal with the rising brass+strings
- cleaned up the trumpet riffs
- embellished the "awkward" ff diminished chords section with a string arpeggio, revsnare+"tah" sfx to empahsize beats - boosted string bass with choir part, replaced the concert bd with timpanis - other small cleanups... now it actually blends in better with the rest of the bgm
- added faint tambourine part to chorus
- smoothed out the counterpoint in the last part of the chorus
- used a 5db hard-limiter boost to make the song a bit louder. you still need to turn the volume knob up in most cases, particuarily if it's currently optimized for "super-compressed" commercial songs.

Download it here: Deep Menace v2 (1.73MB)

Well, better start working on work that actually gets me money...

since i had absolutely nothing to do today (waiting for cmusic to send me my very last set of songs), I played around with my sc-8850 and tried to make some video game music

any of you remember the boss music from ff series, it was a strange but awesome fusion between rock and orchestra. so you'd have like a rock organ, distortion guitar, a standard drum kit combined with strings & brass.

http://members.rogers.com/jigen-ongaku/DEEPMENACE.MP3 (~1.3MB, 96Khz MP3)

the sound quality isn't the best, and it's still unpolished, but hopefully it will bring back images of fighting final fantasy bosses haha. i think the part with all those diminished chords sounds kinda awful, but I couldn't think of anything good to connect with the chorus... grr...

my girlfriend's younger rino called tonight. i picked up the phone and surprisingly, I was able to sustain some idle banter for like 10 seconds before my girlfriend scurried over and "ordered" me to stop talking to her.

rino told my gf about a scary dream she had: she dreamt that my gf was pregnant and that she and I went back to Okinawa with a newborn child. we would normally just dismiss as "just a dream", but unfortunately, we've been joking around that my girlfriend was pregnant cuz she's had slight cravings for sour things and has been eating a little bit more than usual at every meal. what are the chances that all of these weird things happen in the very same month? of course, logically and scientifically there's no reason why my gf should get pregnant, as she has taken bcp's without fail for the last year, but it does get kinda creepy.

ok, it gets even weirder. for some reason, this call has re-ignited my latent crush on rino. yes, i am quite attracted to her younger sister - and for some reason, the fact that she was dreaming about my gf getting pregnant must mean that in her mind, she has visualized us having sex before - okay, maybe not visualized, but at least given a passing thought about it (especially when she slept at our place in the living room while shinobu and I slept privately in the bedroom). the fact that she is virgin and thinks like a virgin only makes it more tantalizing. the harder it is to get something, the more you want it.

ok, it gets even weirder, or sicker. after my girlfriend went to bed, I opened up paint shop pro, took all the pictures that I had that had rino in it, cropped out everyting else, and made a "rino slideshow" of sorts. i then went into my fairly large "snap shot" japanese av porn collection, loaded up the closest rino-look-alike (which would happen to be #11 Ryo Serizawa), and proceeded to jack off - with half the screen playing the porn and half the screen being normal still photos of rino. that was something differenet. It was then I realized that a person's eyes gives a lot of definition to their apperance... so i fast forward to the blowjob scene, where ryo serizawa closes her eyes, and with a bit of imagination... presto! you get some pretty good results.

i know y'all reading that and saying "terry is so mentally distrubed" or "he's so sexually obscene" - lol, that ain't news to me. however, if everyone in north america came out of their closet and wrote out all their secret little mastrubation stories, i'm sure i would become so boring and unexciting.

Check out the Taiwan Bureau of Health's new "rape prevention" web animation:

http://210.240.39.29/se/un09activity/play.aspx

(click on that purple heart that has the GO! below the three chinese letters "kai dong hua" to start the animation in a popup)

For those of you who can't really read chinese, the animation will ask you 4 questions. Say yes to all of them to witness the Satanic Power of the Penis.

Here's the article that brought this animation to my attention:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/09/07/2003201937

All I want to say is: I am SO happy that my girlfriend grew up in a place where this kind of "keep your dick in your pants" attitude is almost nonexistant. I can imagine that if you constantly bombard a young girl with those kinds of messages, sex becomes so taboo and "evil" that only something as dramatic as marriage can justify doing it. That's just too bad.

Did you know that "love hotels" are a staple establishment in Japan? You're probably thinking red light distrct, cheap rooms with unwashed beds that reek of semen and vaginal fluids with and tacky pink neon signs plastered on the walls. Well, that's what I thought too, until my girlfriend took me to one and it literally blew my mind... clean, spacey, bright, complete with widescreen TV, internet access, and a PS2 on request (although it seems like a waste of time to be playing PS2 at such a place). The bathtubs are bigger than 5 star hotels and the shower area is probably bigger than the one in your house. Another neat feature is that every room is actually different, and from check-in to check-out, everything is automated so that you don't even have to talk to a single person. All the small things are also done to perfection... bottled water, tea bags, toothpaste/toothbrushes, tons of tissues, hot water. For all this, the price is totally unbelivable - roughly 5000 yen for 1 night at a fairly good quality hotel... it can get as cheap as 4000. Here's a couple that I've actually been to in Okinawa:

http://www.hotelangel.co.jp/index.htm
http://www.hotel-grandblue.com/

Aren't love hotels such a fantastic idea? How many times have a boyfriend and girlfriend been on a date, they've finished their bubble tea, watching over-commercialized movies etc etc, and now they want to fuck... If neither one lives by themselves, then it's either cramped car sex or just go home totally unsatisfied and masturbate. In Japan, this is not a problem, for the price of the average North American meal for two, you can stay at a love hotel, you get utmost privacy, a super clean room with a huge bed, you can roll around naked, take a hot bath together, etc. etc. and of course, fuck, and when you're done, you can leave everything super messy and housekeeping will clean everything up for you.

The Japanese have a neat saying "tamatteru". This literally means "to build up, to accumulate" and is sometimes used to describe a person who behaves like he hasn't had sex in a long time. To me, a "tamatteru hito" (accumualted person) is simply an unnecessary tragedy. It should be society's responsibility to faciliate fucking as much as possible.

I'm telling ya, it's a real fucker.

I took a trip down memory lane: loaded up Warcraft II for DOS (demo version Link) Damn. That's some ugly shit. I still remember though at that time, it was rare to see a 640x480 game, and I was floored when I saw that smooth text scrolling mission intro screen.

Then I went even further, Warcraft I (full version link). Weighing at an astounding 1.44MB for the whole game, and presented in a "whoops, did my contacts fall out?" 320x200 resolution the game is absolutely hideous. The EXE file for warcraft 3 is bigger than this whole game.

And yet when both respective games came out, I was really impressed, particuarily witih Warcraft II's "awesome" 640x480 resolution. I played through both games all the way through, and yet now, I can't stand the graphics.

What does that tell you? Absolutes are meaningless. Only differences have meaning. It doesn't just have to be graphics quality. It's anything. Wealth, power, security, love, strength, courage, wisdom.... it applies to anything that takes on some kind of scalar value. The brain only can only perceive the following: sameness, some amount better, some amount worse.

Well, there are absolutes, but they only deal with primal physical needs, eg we need to live at a certain tempreature, dryness, and have a constant food supply to prevent pain. But after that, it's all relativity.

I bought a new book: No Logo by Naomi Klein. I guess I just like Leftist books. This one is quite similar to The Corporation, I wouldn't be surprised if those two authors have had quite a few coffee breaks together. They both reside in Canada, coincidentally.

When it comes to music however, I'm strictly commercial-conservative. I fell in love instantly with Paul Oakenfold's Southern Sun today, even though a lot of Oakenfold fans accuse him of selling out on that album (Bunkka). I guess I'm a huge sucker for that "big studio sound"... you know... everything over-processed and over-sterilized so it can be digested by just about anybody. It's a great substitute for actual musical complexity, because a lot of songs you hear nowadays have like what... 2 or 3 different chords repeated over and over. But the sounds are so nice, you don't really care. Big studio sound is like MSG or lard. It doesn't add anything in terms of "pure" value, but it gets the audience hooked.

i think wanting to be liked by the opposite sex is one of the strongest motivators to be a good person. once you have secured that from a particular person, you either get the next one to like you or you become an asshole.

hell, it doesn't have to be the opposite sex. the need to be liked, loved, idolized, respected, and accepted by others is as instinctive to humans as taking a piss. it's so amazing that this is not common knowledge. nobody tells you that what people think of you is super-important, in fact, most self-help books and "popular friend advice" preach the opposite - fuck what other people think. that is so self-delusional. you cannot fuck what other people think, because by nature, what other people think of you is the only way you can define yourself. so you'd be fucking yourself.

people "work" hard (it's not really work, if you think about it) to impress others so they can create a positive self-image. you cannot create a positive self-image out of meager willpower, it must come from reassurement and approval from others. so here's the thing: if you like somebody a lot, don't treat them too good, because you're taking away the most instinctive motivator for them to be good to you - their own instinctive worry that you don't idolize them.

yeah sure, people can still force themselves to be good as some kind of "code of behavior" they must follow. but that's only in theory and in self-help books. it actually never happens... what is happening, is that they force themselves to treat idolizer person x well so that it might impress non-idolizer person y.

in a sense, we are trying everyday behind the scenes to make idolizers out of everybody we idolize ourselves. it's like a cheap 5 line while loop embedded in the deepest recesses of our brains.

so many strange habits and activities are borne from this cheap 5 line segment. the sick need to perpetually communicate, even through crippled forms of communication like e-mail and instant messaging. the need to write socially acceptable bloggers that refuse to express thoughts beyond a certain range of cliched material. the need to think certain things are "cool" and "hype" just becuase other people think the same way.