This is a collection of short stories that span the globe from Jamaica to Japan. Please read the story when you get a chance, and feel free to e-mail me feedback at the address included in the ebook sampler. Thanks in advance.
Archive for the ‘life’ Category
Marcus Bird’s “GAIJIN GIRL” Ebook, Great in-flight reading Leave a comment
Hot Japanese Mom & The Ribbon Girl 1 comment
Lonely heart + Cold = Hit Song Leave a comment
Best Week Ever! Leave a comment
Okay.
My title is horibbly deceptive. Last week wasn’t the greatest week, but I did feel like I accomplished a lot. With an 18 credit load, lack of sleep and feelings of mania crawling up my back, I still managed to do a lot of design-work, kept blogging and deal with my course load for classes.
My most interesting part of last week were my late night trips to Kinko’s to make this birthday gift for my ex-girlfriend. Yes, yes, I know what you are saying, I’m a loser.
I went to a meeting today for my school paper and one of the offered articles related to OCD. I wonder if I have a compulsion when it comes to design and writing. Maybe its my outlet, or my mojo or whatever. But there was one night after traveling for about an hour in total time (walking, waiting on bus, then walking some more) the Kinkos I went to was locked. I thought about smashing the large glass pane and doing my copying then. But I doubt the officers would believe I was trying to spend a few bucks doing copies.
So it was a long, involved week, with emotional ups and downs, and the release of that emotion during the weekend. It got released because the week ended. Today was an amazingly productive day. I did a ton of homework, two cartoons for the day, a presentation for class, and i”M about to start doing some script editing. Maybe I’m not doing as much as say–the CEO of GE, but i’m trying to maintain. I’m idle and e-mailing random people on the “w4m” section of Craigslist as a social experiment. Who knows, maybe it will give me something to write home about.
ciao
Half-life 2 got Pwned: Enter “The Piccard” Leave a comment
Okay, my title really has nothing to do with anything. I’m just trying to get more subscribers with catchy title headings. The demands of my day to day have been starting to get to me already. I have scripts to write, papers to hand in and i’m always up and down as the cartoonist trying to get something done. Add to that some design work, several books to read and the “bachelor” life and you have a recipe for burnout. So i’ve been using what little free time trying to get back into my gaming.
Gaming has always been a fun enterprise for me, and now with my new computer, I think I can start feeling that nice squishy feeling inside I used to feel when I was 18. In my Freshman year, I had no computer for the entire first semester, and I was envious, because all the guys in my dorm were playing Counterstrike till the wee hours of the morning. For those who don’t know what Counterstrike is, is was a “mod” (meaning modification) based on the original Half-life game engine. Half-life is one of the most successful video games in history, and Counterstrike is certainly the most successful Mod ever. Either way, the game works on a Agents versus Terrorists split. Either you are a terrorist, using Ak-47s and other weapons worthy of a cell, or you are a counter terrorist, meaning your guns and armour are better …sort of. Either way, coming from the stilted internet in Jamaica at the time (we had a measly 56K at the time), I was fascinated. Not only could I play online at blazing speeds, but with SIXTEEN people at once! It was amazing. Needless to say, when I got my computer in Spring of 2001, I didn’t sleep. Actually at the time I was suffering from severe insomnia, but Counterstrike was there to keep me company. I can’t describe how it feels for a guy who existed in a non-broadband society to jump into the bosom of super-fast downloads and ridiculous bandwidth. It was like a drug.
So flash forward seven or so years, and i’ve gone through a few gaming evolutions. My game of choice since day one has always been ID software games, since Wolfenstein and Quake are tattooed on my left butt cheek. (kiddding). As these games got more awesome, my sucky system couldn’t play them. It reached a point where all I did on my machine was write, and do graphic design because I couldn’t play any video games properly. I had a Gateway, which was a 1.2 gHz machine with I 512 megs of RAM and a 30 gig harddrive for two years. The harddrive died a few times, and then I upgraded to a bigger drive, same machine. Then one day I felt my computer crashed (actually it didn’t ) and rushed and bought what would be dubbed ” THE BEAST”.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. Currently i’m on “BEAST” number four, but I think that name is jinxed, so I’ve dubbed my new machine, “The Piccard”. Beast number one was a cool Pentium 4 with a gig of SDRAM (really really good ram). It worked great for a few months, but the started making noises like the kid in The Grudge when I was playing and then it died. Enter beast number two. This I actually bought from a friend of mine when he upgraded. This was a better machine, with a 64 bit chip, 1 gig of RAM and a bigger harddrive. I could play heavy hitters like Doom 3 and Half-life 2 on this one. Not maxed out (meaning all settings put to high) but I could run them. Then that died a mysterious death. Then my most recent machine ( you can check an earlier blog relating to my computer woes with that one) started acting funny and now… THE PICCARD is here.
This machine is a beast. It PWNED halflife on max settings. it PWNED Bioshock two and Quake Wars. If I wasn’t tired from school, jaded from lost love and a little bit hungry right now, I would be playing games into the wee hours of the morning. I thought it fit that I devote a blog to my new computer. A cool, dual-core “beast-esque” machine with Windows Vista (gay…) and enough bells and whistles to keep me well into next year. Like Piccard, I will go where no one has gone before.
Into the max-out-everything-verse. :p
IPOD – TOUCH ME 2 comments
Today isn’t a great day for me. As you can see i’m doing my second blog of the day. I’m hurting a bit right now, because of an event that happened on Friday night that I can’t get into. So, like most people, I’m trying to distract myself by either eating too much, watching tv, or spending money. As it stands, I really don’t want to go down a self-destuctive path, so I decided to research the new Ipod, a.k.a “The Ipod Touch”and blog about it. I wouldn’t call myself a technophile, and I am a skeptical early adopter (I learned my lesson after the Ipod Video came out). This new version of the Ipod excites me somewhat. Hey, I’m bored, single with nothing to do. A cool device that has a cyborg like sexiness has appeal in our wired world of today.
I’ve owned almost every version of the ipod ever made. This hasn’t been by choice. I bought the third generation thinking it was a godsend. I like the way little red lights lit up the buttons on the Ipod face, and even though it was pre click-wheel, it was still pretty easy to navigate. One night I went to a club my friend worked at. It actually wasn’t a club, but this cool Sushi restaurant called Japone in Dupont circle. Either way, I was chilling in the the back where there was a bar, talking to this cute bartender. As she commented on my hair (it was a huge fuzzy muff of blonde at the time) I rested my man-bag on the bar chair. I took a thirty second walk to the front of the restaurant and when I came back my Ipod inside the bag was gone. I was upset because I had never had a device stolen from me in that way, but it wasn’t that bad. The third gen had a terrible battery life (mine capped at 8 hours) and it would “crash” on me occassionally. A little while later, I sold a bunch of stuff on Craigslist and then I bought my fourth gen (with clickwheel!) That wasn’t bad, but I only owned it for one week. I went on a business trip with a few classmates to checkout the Investment banking world. Seeing all those droopy eyed, highly paid college grads only a year or two older than me made me cringe. Investment banking wasn’t for me. I did read the paper however, I see that a new “Ipod Photo” was coming out in… a week.
I almost screamed, because I had bought my Ipod just recently, but as soon as I got back to DC I put it for sale on CL and bam! It was gone. So I bought my Ipod Photo soon after, and I must say I was the most pleased with this Ipod (even more than the Video). The Ipod photo felt very sturdy and it had an amazing battery life, it went up to 21 hours on a full charge. I used this Ipod for at least a year, then I heard about the Video. I researched it for a while, hating the fact that the battery life was now a paltry 16 hours and that you couldnt’ adjust the brightness on the screen. “No matter,” I said to myself “It is new tech. And New tech is F-ing cool.” So I bought the new Ipod with most of the Photo sale money and I was very dissapointed. The screen was marginally bigger and the menu was cool-ish, but the battery life for me was almost cut in half and I didn’t like watching video on it. The screen was too small to really enjoy full length video, and it was a task actually putting movies on the device itself. So after owning the Ipod video for about two months, I sold it.
Later I would horribly regret this, when I eventually wanted a portable music player and had none. Either way, as a birthday gift I received an Ipod Nano and I’ve been using that for over a year now. Naturally my head works in tens of gigabytes, and its a huge drop from 30 gigs on the Ipod Video (or 20 gigs on the Photo) to a measly 2 gigs on the Nano. But, I organized my playlist, made sure everything was okay, and I’ve been using it ever since. My happiest accessory is a pair of those Bose headphones they sell at the Apple store for 150 bucks. (I bought mine for $85. Ah…Craigslist). I had no desire to ever get an Ipod video again. I knew sooner or later, Apple would drop an Ipod that would wow the masses again. When the Iphone came out earlier this year, I didn’t bat an eyelid. Only a crazy person (I thought) would camp out to get a device with slow phone service, severe data limitations just because it looks “cool”. I fiddled with the phone at the Apple store, and I agree it IS cool, but not 600 bucks worth of cool.
But now I hear about the Ipod Touch, and my heart feels warm. I’m so used to my 2 gig nano that 8 gigs sounds like a lot of space. I like the fact that it has more functionality as well for my money. The $299 price tag doesnt’ sound that bad either BECAUSE it has so much. I can access wifi points and surf the web, I can browse my music by tapping my fingers, and the battery life isn’t 16 hours, its 22. Its also thinner than the Iphone (take that At&t!). So if I can, I think I’ll be heading to the Apple store to get my touch and be an early adopter of THAT product. Then I’ll hear about the “Ipod Touch II” which comes out in January which has 20 gigs of Space for $299 and then i’ll rush to sell my little 8 gig. But until that time comes, we’ll see what happens. This has nothing to do with my usual blogging about writing, but I needed to vent about something and the Ipod gave me a really good excuse.