Aaaaand two months later....

I've been busy. Way busier than I thought I would be this semester. Thank goodness for Spring Break, my first day of which is today. I have not one, but two unfinished drafts saved here in blogspot for review-esque blog posts (both of which are almost finished). Days were simpler back in January. I wasn't as lazy in my extremely easy math course, chemistry was far easier and didn't require as much effort, and my English course...remains exactly the same. So school is school.

I've gone on a couple different adventures over the past two months, and my semester at home has actually managed to improve in quality quite a bit. One of the things that sealed that deal is that I've finally gotten the housing situation under control for next year. I've decided to get a place with Steve Dimino and Steve Gotter, and from what I've seen in pictures, the house looks very nice. I would have also liked to go with my MLC friends at the place they were getting, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. The houses will be in such close proximity that it won't matter really. I'll be taking a look at the house sometime this week, but it looks spacious, has a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, and a garage and a basement. I'm looking forward to rooming with both of the Steves, I haven't been able to make it down to Whitewater very often to visit anyone aside from Leah and Heather. Or anyone else I was planning on hanging out with this semester, like Josh and Kristina. I should have foreseen it coming. I'm completely swamped with school and trying to find a job, as well as other things like weekend plans and hanging out with Leah. If only I was that dbag from Clockstoppers...


Nah.

So yeah, Anime Milwaukee. It was...meh. I can now consider myself on an entirely different level of nerd now that I've finally gone to an anime convention. I probably wouldn't have liked it nearly as much if Peter Miller hadn't gone with me. We were a different breed of humanity than 99% of the people there. As I expected, there were tons of cosplayers, and I think I counted one or two decent ones (one of which was Mario, who isn't even an anime character). Most of them were extremely fat, and extremely ugly. Like, Return of Jafar's animation ugly. Me and Peter caught quite a few terrifying whifs of death, malice, and destruction whenever a big group of people would walk by. Everyone seemed to be an attention whore of some sort, creating a competition to see who could cause the biggest embarrassing scene in public just to make their existence meaningful. It sounds like I'm being harsh, but hey, shut up because you weren't there, alright?

I went to Anime Milwaukee for two reasons: buy anime stuff at the vendor room, and play in the numerous amount of videogame tournaments available. Since this was more of a casual affair than the Midwest Gaming Classic as far as tournaments go, it wasn't as well organized nor were the prizes as good. Although, the prize for the Pokemon tournament was a copy of Soul Silver, which would have saved me a good forty bucks. But I'll get to that.

The first tournament was Halo 3, and as I thought it would, it ended a bit on the depressing side. Not because we got our asses smashed, but moreso because I really think we could have won. Me and Peter were so, so very rusty. I couldn't aim worth a damn, and I was making the most basic of mistakes. They also picked Guardian, and the two idiots on the other team mumbled some sort of voodoo chant at me when I asked them to change the map. I saw nothing about picking specific maps in the Halo 3 tournament rules, so I'm guessing my hypothesis can't be too far off. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure the rules said "both teams have to agree on a map before play." I guess that translates to"Team Satan picks Guardian." Personally, I wanted the Lockout remake, appropriately titled Blackout. And no, Guardian is not a Lockout remake. Guardian is Lockout's annoying red-headed (Sorry Blake...and anyone else) cousin.

So, the odds were not stacked in our favor. Rust, strange combatants, a bad map, and a noisy room all blocked my concentration. We lost by about 10, but that was only one tournament out of the whole weekend. Their still remained Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, Brawl, Street Fighter IV, and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. We headed back to Kyle Bence's for the night to rot in his basement and prepare our teams for Sunday. Thankfully the Bailey's was a lot kinder to me than my luck in the Halo 3 tournament. Winky wink. The following morning, we set out for the Union once more.

I'm not legally obligated to talk about Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, so I won't. Let's just say, I managed to get in one hit. On one of the rounds.

Brawl was the only tournament of the weekend that went somewhat well for me. But before that, I want to take a short look at Peter's experience. Peter got a bad draw and received a strange, mute, overweight opponent dressed in all black. On top of this, we weren't exactly sure of the gender either. Let's just call it Rick, and we'll use she for the third person singular to cover all the bases. Peter and Rick decided to use the big TV to broadcast their fight, which was a big mistake. Peter picked Pikachu, his main brawler. After this, things started going downhill. Rick, who had picked Lucas, immediately switched to Pikachu, as if to mock Peter. After this, Rick called forth several different false gods and gained a swift upperhand against Peter. Twas a sad defeat, and a bitter victory for Rick. She offered no sportsmanship handshake or anything of the sort to Peter after the match was over. She just got up and left.

It was a tough personal debate between using Meta Knight or Zelda, but in the end I felt swifter and more comfortable with Meta Knight. I did fairly well in my first two matches, but following these I went up against a smelly guy dressed in a red zippie and wearing a hat that mimicked the head of Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. He used Link, who really isn't all that good in Brawl, especially when compared to the much more agile Toon Link. Nevertheless, he beat me in a heartbreaking loss. It was bittersweet. Mostly bitter. The prize for winning wasn't all that great (none of the prizes for any of the tournaments were really), the room that the tournaments were in was always boiling hot, and we wanted to get back to Kyle's to clean ourselves up for a Milwaukee party.

We were stuck there for a few hours waiting for Kyle to get home from work at Chili's, but Peter, Jake Rothe, and myself found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves, mostly derived from tabletalk with Kyle's sister and a girl that the three of us came to know as Sneeks. The two of them shared their daily Prep lives with us and some other details, and then it was time to head out. If you're reading this, Heather or Sneeks, me and Jake still want to go to that movie.

It was a party. A fun party. Got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time, and on top of that all of the pizza was free. I really don't go to parties very often anymore, as a matter of fact I haven't gone to a party since that very party a month ago. I think I'm growing out of it, which may be a good thing. I don't really like being classified with the "Asher Roth generation." I just like pizza. On a semi-related note, I was driving through Whitewater on St. Patrick's Day and everyone was drinking in their front yards and acting stupid everywhere I drove. And my girlfriend told me that apparently professors give extra credit to the students that show up to school on St. Patrick's Day instead of skipping to go drink. Is that what this generation is coming to? Seriously? Anyways...

I woke up in the morning to find out that Peter had somehow ended up in West Allis, which was about 20 minutes away from Kyle and Sam's apartment. After a close call, we made it to the Union in time for the final tournament, the Pokemon tournament. And we lost. It was crushing and we had no chance, just like everything else. Legendary Pokemon were banned, but dragons (which are basically legendaries) were not. So pretty much everyone was using dragons except for Peter and I. I drew a rough sketch of what the other tournament contestants looked like:


And apparently I penciled in "yahoo" after I drew it.

The weekend was finished with some Pokemon Soul Silver and some Noodles & Company, which was well deserved after the weekend's various ordeals. At least I got an incredible new One Piece wallscroll, and my first Gurren Lagann wallscroll. And I got to have a bird's eye view of the bottom tier of society. To quote Peter, "At least we are sexier." Fin.

Ehhhhhh

So I was going to do a game review of the now year-old Banjo-Kazooie for Xbox Live Arcade, but I'll save that for a different day (maybe tomorrow). Right now it's 8:48 in the morning on a Saturday, and I can't believe that I'm up this early. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers isn't on for another two hours.

A very tentative plan for today was concocted last night by Leah's mom to go up and surprise her older sister at MLC with all of her younger siblings, as sort of just a last minute thing. Unfortunately, they decided to cancel last minute, and this only affects me because I would have been able to go along. It would have been an exciting car ride, me and Leah could have played videogames on my laptop the whole way up, or she could have helped me with chemistry. I wouldn't have stayed at the hotel with her family, I would have probably stayed with someone in Concord. It would have been nice to see everyone, plus there's a DEX tonight, and DEX is always so much better than COS it isn't even funny. Oh well, I can always look forward to the 12th, with our ever growing group of people parading up the MLC for the end of Winter Carnival week. With the ever-lovable Jake Leibl coming with us, what could go wrong?

That being said, Leah's mom might still change her mind, which would be pretty sweet, although I'd have to do some careful last-minute planning with a couple certain girls to order a pizza. Wink wink.

Me and Leah have been working on a project since the last week of school up at MLC: watching all six of the Star Wars movies. Like any other normal person who isn't a murderous terrorist, I started her off with A New Hope. I was able to keep her attention all the way to the end of Return of the Jedi, at the end of which she cried her eyes out. Mission accomplished, I'd say. Now we're on Revenge of the Sith, and if the plans to go up to MLC fall through for today, then we get to watch Revenge of the Sith (easily the best of the prequel trilogy, I might add), on the big plasma TV with 7.1 sound. Never a bad date in my book.

Up on that note (sort of), the prequel movies haven't held her attention nearly as well as the original trilogy did. I've always disliked Attack of the Clones the most, but upon rewatching all three movies by myself a week or so into break, I've decided that I easily, easily hate Phantom Menace the most. The story in Phantom Menace is boring and makes no sense at all. I could go into great detail about how absolutely mind-numbingly stupid the plot (or lack thereof) of the Phantom Menace is, but that would be an entire blog post. A really long one. There's a one-hour video review of The Phantom Menace on YouTube that points out everything wrong with the movie. It's hilarious (as long as you're not offended by coarse language), but I won't link it here, lest this blog is being read by parents or the blokes from Ichabod. We wouldn't want something on here to be taken entirely out of context, or a constructive post on Evangelism Day turned into a weapon of personal vendetta.

So anyways, if you want to email me I could link you to the Phantom Menace review, or for those of you that popped on over from Facebook you could just find me on chat or message me. It's a very eye-opening review, and very hilarious if you have a good sense of humor.

The prequel trilogy will always be (to me at least) the definition of why it's stupid to flood the screen with special effects instead of a good story. This is especially true when you flood a movie with late 90's/early 2000's special effects, ala Phantom Menace. My first thought when I rewatched the Gungans Vs. the Droid Army scene at the end of Phantom Menace was, "Wow, this is a really open field, and everything that's on this really empty lifeless field reeks of CGI." Nice job, George Lucas. I think my viewpoint is confirmed by the fact that my girlfriend fell asleep during Attack of the Clones and Phantom Menace, and didn't fall asleep once during the original movies. Nothing beats a good story with real, tangible people and real, tangible action scenes. One of my friends likes to argue that "well, it's his (George Lucas') story." So he sucks at directing and writing stories for the newest generation of movies. That's all that statement proves. I'd also like to make note that he wasn't as involved with the first movie (A New Hope) as most people think he is. And he didn't even direct Empire or Jedi. Coincidence? I think not.

Enough about that. Back on the topic of Evangelism Day (which is a great day), I can't help but feel it was marred a little bit by the presence of certain folk. These certain folk will remain unmentioned, but I'll give you a hint as to the identity of one: she's a girl pastor.

I've never liked the staff ministry program, and I never will. I think it's a waste of resources. But go figure at WELS wasting resources, I guess. I don't think women should ever help distribute communion, I believe it's a job for the men. Instead of cutting Professor Tim Schroeder's and Professor Jon Balge's jobs, why not cut out something we don't need? We don't need a staff ministry program. The entire basis of the staff ministry program is extremely shady, and I've heard nothing but complaints (from both adults and students alike) about Larry Olson. Mark Gnewuch told me back when I was applying for MLC at Lakeside that they were planning on phasing out the staff ministry program. I think they should speed that up, especially with the onset of the chapel being severely over budget (again, go figure).

I don't even need to rant about the chapel, the chapel was a stupid idea and it's always going to be a stupid idea. Worship isn't dictated by place. Worship is dictated by people coming together in God's name. Will this chapel help create better worship? Maybe, but I severely doubt it. If a person's faith in God is lifted by a building, then perhaps the public ministry isn't for him/her. After all, the organ in the auditorium is better than pretty much any WELS church could ever even hope to ask for, and the auditorium is an excellent place to worship. The organ is beautiful, it's easy to get students up on stage to perform instruments, there's an extremely large projector screen, the seating/view is magnificent, and there's plenty of room for every last person on campus to grab a seat. But hey, I hear 20-gallon (or whatever it was) Baptismal fonts are all the rage these days. Especially on a campus where everyone is likely Baptized.

Okay, that's enough before I get myself in trouble.

First Post

Well, after reading my close friend Blake's blog for quite some time, I've decided to start my own blog on blogspot, despite its stupid inability for readers to edit the posts they make. I made this as sort of a joint effort to write about my interests (videogames, toys, and movies mostly), and keep my typing skills sharp during my (thankfully) short tenure at MATC. While I do miss MLC, it just wasn't for me. The judgmental attitudes of many of the students, the extreme lack of organization for the STEP/Secondary Education program (does anyone know which one it's actually called?), and the inability to live off campus are just a few short reasons why I decided to end my time there.

I'd like to say that my dear friend Zachary D. Moyle being called to his Eternal Home didn't really have much to do with me wanting to leave MLC, but I have a feeling that deep down it affected me somehow. That being said, this past semester was an absolute blast, despite the death of two amazing friends, and the departure of two other very good friends from MLC. Thankfully, they visited every so often, even though one of them was afraid to step foot outside of my room most of the time. I met Hulk Hogan, watched movies with some dumb blonde girl for my Film class (which was an amazing class, and provided a very good commentary on Christian media as well), went to quite possibly the best DEX ever, and made fun of all of the self-righteous people with the friends I can trust. And I have a fair amount of good stories too. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to take Self-Defense & Softball, or one more class with Professor Timothy Schroeder, who is unfairly getting booted from MLC when it should be the Chapel Committee getting their calls revoked. Just kidding. But not really.

Normally, the living off campus thing wouldn't be a huge deal, but I guess in the end dorm life just isn't for me. The cleanliness level in the Concord dormitory was horrifying at some points. I have no idea if Summit is better or not, but I'm not staying to find out. The hallway closest to the front of the building smelled especially bad and musty. It was thanks to that group of guys that never showered and always read wacky books that they think are cooler than the Bible (at least that's my interpretation). One of my friends had a Biblical History and Literature class with one of the guys and she told me he claimed in class that, "The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were at the Lord's Supper. I read it in a book." Was that book the Bible? No? Then nobody gives a crap. I'm pretty sure I only saw a couple of them shower regularly, and it only reinforced my belief that most overweight men almost always smell really bad. Someone on campus thought that was kind of a rude thing to say, but hey, they were the ones reinforcing it, not me.

I recently celebrated my one year anniversary with my amazing girlfriend, and I've been sharing plenty of amazing times with her this past semester, although I doubt anything will top the six-month anniversary trip to Sanibel Island, Florida. Hopefully, my family will be taking both her and my sister's boyfriend (also my good friend) along with when we go to the Bahamas in June. We haven't had a family vacation in quite some time, so I'm really looking forward to it. Gotta make use of the ol' passport after all.

I'm already missing many of my best friends, including the girls I always hung out with, my former roommate (although now I get to spend more time with my other former roommate), and the other guys on my floor, although two of the ones that I was closest with also decided to leave at the end of last semester. Since then, I've pretty much just been sitting around at home, playing videogames, watching TV, surfing the Internet, doing homework, and finding other various hobbies to do in my spare time. Every three weeks or so I'll take a trip down to Milwaukee to see that crowd, but usually I just don't have time/don't feel like it. Maybe I'm getting old.

One thing I'm intending to do on this blog is to review things that I've been toying around with in my drastically increased free time now that I'm going to MATC. Mostly videogames, and possibly some anime and toys and stuff like that too, as I have an incredible backlog to work off of now.

I'll also probably just write every now and then on things going on in my life or things I have a strong opinion about. Maybe I'll write a bit on how stupid building a chapel is at MLC when we're already over budget on the donation money (go figure), pastors and teachers all over the synod are losing their jobs, and Prep's tuition rose by 33% over the span of one year. Hmm, is anyone else seeing a better place where the money could have gone? I could name about twenty different alternatives. Even if the donor of the money said it was to go towards a chapel, why not wait until, like, the economy is better and the synod isn't flat broke? Oh wait, that would be being a good steward of what we're given. From what I've seen, that's easily the WELS' biggest fault.

We'll see how often I do this, I hope to make it a habit of sorts. Gotta do something to keep myself sane and keep the parole officer off my back at the same time.

Up first, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a critically acclaimed PS1 game from the 90's, and a staple of the adventure game genre. After that, I'll probably do Rise of Nations, an award-winning PC game from 2003. I've actually put quite a bit of time into Rise of Nations before, but I just recently found it at Best Buy for twenty bucks (and it came with the Expansion Pack too, which I've never played because I quit playing the game before the Expansion Pack came out), so I'm giving it another go. Somewhere down the line, I'm going to review the upcoming Pokemon Heart Gold & Soul Silver versions, but I'd imagine I'll get to some other stuff before I get there.

Until then, lata playa.