I’ve decided to merge this blog into my stillborn video game blog (or vice versa?). Its template is prettier, friendlier, and probably easier to read than this one, and I’m feeling like this one is dated and needs a change. However, I won’t do this until I find a good way to bring it to this URL. I have too many trackbacks and I already am forwarding to this blog from LiveJournal and other sites.

It shouldn’t be too hard; all I have to do is migrate a couple of posts and bring the template over.

This shit is never as easy as it sounds, though…

Anyways, look for a pretty new scheme with a snazzy logo soon!

Those of you who are interested in my blog updates, I would highly recommend that you use my RSS feeds to track my blog, especially if you are using Outlook or a similar e-mail client. If not, I recommend Thunderbird if you’re a Firefox user, or even if you don’t use Firefox. You can even do this in GMail.

This way you don’t have to hit my blog every time you want to see if I’ve updated, which as I’m sure you all know, isn’t often.

My RSS feeds are at the bottom of every page. I may one day break through my laziness and put up the standard RSS button closer to the top as is conventional on sites these days.

Oh, and if you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, Wikipedia has a decent primer on RSS. I’d suggest reading up on it; this is the future of news by Web.

Yeah, so there’s a drawing of a twig and berries on one of the papers I’m grading, right next to the name. It’s complete with dribble and a nice little puddle. How stupid can you be? I’m not really going to do anything about it, but now his name’s firmly in my mind, along with another who wrote about “not taking this bullshit anymore.” Not good when you’re on the cusp of a C-/D+, for example.

The idea came up in one of my boards to rank the Final Fantasy series. It’s an exercise I haven’t done since a few of them came out, I believe. Here goes, from worst to best:

Final Fantasy II - Trash. The story does not hold up well at all, and the character development system is tedious, at best. There’s really not much to like about this game.

Final Fantasy - The original, but obviously unrefined. Still better than some of the slop that passes for RPGs these days, though. I’d still argue that the original Dragon Quest was better.

Final Fantasy IX - A return to the series’ roots, but a bad homage in my opinion. So much of this game was just uninspired, and the loading times just killed it for me. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t dislike this game as much as I do, but yet…

Final Fantasy VIII - Very odd storyline, but it’s the Junction system that made this game bad. Difficult to figure out at first, easy to break once you did. Primary villain was dumb, too. Notable for being the first title with really amazing videos.

Final Fantasy V - Still in the realm of games I didn’t like. The game handled summons well and the job system was fun, but the plot was pretty bad, and amazingly, the game didn’t look as good as IV did.

Final Fantasy VII - Great gameplay, and not so much else. Flashy presentation obscures an otherwise weird storyline. The first game to have a contemporary setting, and doesn’t necessarily hold up well as a result. Even still, this really was a Cloud vs. Sephiroth game, and couldn’t convincingly tie it to greater world conflict, as is typical for the series.

Final Fantasy X - No real complaints about this one, aside from killing the world map system. Fun combat, great storytelling, good artwork.

Final Fantasy III - Best game no one played. If you have a DS, pick this up. While there are some plot holes here and there, this was easily the best of the NES titles. Great music, good combat system, and not just the typical dungeon grind. The last three hours of the game have some of the best parts of the series.

Final Fantasy VI - Did just about everything right. The cataclysm was beyond anything seen in the art form until that point, and the only game in the series until XII to have a form of sandbox gameplay. Only marred by a very unlikely villain.

Final Fantasy IV - Probably not better on a technical level than VI, but a damn good game. Probably the first true incarnation of the series as we know it, and responsible for just about all of the Final Fantasy archetypes we see today. All of this game’s elements were well refined (after a second translation, that is).

Can’t really rank XII yet, but I can definitely say so far that it is among the higher end. Really well done so far, even if the combat does take some getting used to.

For some reason, I’m having this overwhelming urge to reconnect with my past. This runs completely counter to my mindset of shunning it all away, what I’ve had for years.

It’s like this; I can pretty much trace my educational history from the first day I started at Tampa Catholic to my last class at Kansai Gaidai to now. Everything before that is a blur. If I really concentrate (let’s be honest, I prefer not to), I can pick out specific events here and there, but there’s zero sense of time. There’s none of the telltale signs of who is around and who isn’t; for all I know, my memories might be displacing people, giving me incorrect points of reference.

I remember the grounds very well, I remember the new structure they put up, I remember the place getting more and more crowded. I remember specific instructors and can tie them to specific points in time (and there was a lot of damn turnover at this school), but I can’t string anything together in a coherent manner.

I don’t know if this is just because the memories are too early for me to remember them clearly, or if it’s because the school had an inherent lack of structure, or if it’s because some thing or things happened during that time. The latter is what I fear. Here I am, supposed to be working on an easy homework assignment and I can’t focus. Something’s tearing away at me and I have no earthly idea what it is.

I’ve acted so differently in the past few days…I wonder if something got triggered, or sparked.

All I know is that I associate everything and anything with that school to negative emotions. I’m willing to accept, for the first time in my life, that this may be irrational or unfair. Sure, the faculty was unqualified and ill-prepared for their first real class of students, sure, I did gradually worse as I got older. But there’s something else…perhaps something related to quite possibly scary behavior that I was acting out on.

I know I’m vague. I don’t want to say much here. I’ve just slowly come to the realization now that I’ve been away from home for a few months that things weren’t nearly as happy as I’d like to imagine they were. And, trust me, “happy” is a relative term. I knew things were bad.

I feel like time is running out. I don’t want to ask my parents about it because they will think I’m crazy, asking about some “thing” or some “event” that “may” have happened. I have no leg to stand on here, and I have no right to be that disruptive. I suppose the big problem is that it would have to involve mom. Nothing’s changed with her. I had entertained the notion after I came back from Japan that there might be a day when I could consider reconciling with her. Here I am, two and a half years later, and nothing’s changed. The seething rage is still there. I suppose the good thing is that I no longer have the selfish thoughts of her depriving me from a better experience in Japan. The rage comes from a more rational source - how can you abandon your son like that? How can you treat him like shit over a lover, call him a freeloader after he bails your ass out, and let that carry over to the threat of deportation or potential withdrawal from the program. It’s really unbelievable.

I still stand firm that she will never be allowed near my children, should I have any. I refuse to let a person like that act as a maternal figure to shape them. It’s a poisonous attitude, and I intend to shield them from it with every ounce of strength I have. I can’t imagine ever feeling that way towards a child of mine. It’s frighteningly pathological.

Anyways, looks like I got off on a tangent. What a surprise. If you’re still here, I’m thinking I might do counseling next term. I think I’d like Andrea to come with me at some point. I have to admit that I’ve had periods of time where I’ve been so unemotional that I “forget” how I feel about her. I think she knows what I’m talking about. It’s scary. I just want to be able to function within the guidelines that have been set for me. Deadlines, paper writing, reading. I’m not doing it to any degree of efficiency and I’m going to have to start if I’m going to make it to graduation. Right now…I think things are a lot harder for me than they should be.