Introduction the book.

Again. I will probably make that one a forward and this the intro. Or something. Whatever.

I often do my writing in public. I use a red moleskine notebook. Often I am capturing scenery with my mighty pen, transferring from my perception to your perception through verbose input the innate beauty of the natural world and its inhabi—aw fuck it. Who am I kidding? That fucker over there looks like a polish Gwen Stefani crossed with a transvestite shark!

I wonder what people think of me as I write? Aspiring novelist? Amateur poet? Songwriter? Technical notes? Maybe the journal is filled with bullshit business jargon such as “synergize” or “virtualization” and contains hastily drawn flow charts labeled “ROI” or “doability”. Maybe I am an artist, a creative master of literary  presentation or penetrating penmanship. Perhaps I am writing up travel experiences or a cookbook. Perhaps a collection of inspiring vignettes of my difficulties in overcoming diversity and inadvertent corruption. Perhaps this notebook is my teenage diary of ill fated romances and melancholy drama.

I bet none of them expected the writing to be this motherfucking stupid.

Church Time

My memory of church isn’t a pleasant one. This  isn’t for any legitimately unpleasant reason (arguably) its just that I stopped going to church in about sixth grade. Being what all except probably myself would consider a child at the time, I took advantage of my god-given whining ability to complain for hours on end and absolutely hated church. I bet I went most often in fourth grade.
This is an average church procedure:
Wake up at an obscenely early hour for the weekend, If not for church I would be sleeping back to the single digits of the day. I would be woken up by my mom. My mother, I will note, hated going to church as much as I did but was compelled by religious burst of her husband that roughly coincide with his calls back to family. Then it put on uncomfortable and ill fitting clothes. After presenting self to family, go back and put on even more uncomfortable and ill-er fitting clothes that also now restrict airflow to that of ferret. So we finally are crusaded into the suburban, and off to church we go! woo! After struggling to find a parking spot – we were the last ones regularly – we would find a seat behind the overeager singers and adjacent to an entire family with gastrointestinal issue. During the preceding, the (what do you call him?) dude reading from the book would tell us to stand up. Then sit down. Then stand up. Then kneel. Now stand again, ok sitting time. Just kidding, stand your ass back up. I think he is messing with us. Probably punishment for not showing up often enough. Why is it my legs get very tired during church but I just spent 2 hours standing while practicing juggling just fine? What is this? Church just makes you tired. and bored. I will probably become very intimate with one of the stained glass murals. I may also study the strange outfits of people, or try and count the number of sneezes/coughs as a test of my hearing. I was bored. I think at one point we all shuffled to get our snacks. Waiting for this moment (did he just say ‘this is my blood’? Here it comes!) is ultimately disappointing. Any attempts to save or christbody is fruitless, because saliva dissolves starch. Still tried every time. Also, the christblood was legit wine, so that’s was cool. After what eventually degraded into naptime, The kids would leave to have their own instructional time. What the adults did could only be speculated. One kid thought orgy, but only because he heard someone else (yes, older) say it about a party and thought it was a party game. I always believed that at this point, the charade would be lifted and church would stop being boring. That all of the boring stuff the adults sat through as a secret way of torturing us for all those years of leaving popsicles places or asking them to hold things for us. During this time I would chat with Emily Knebel, my third grade sweetheart. I wonder where she went? Maybe this post will pop up if she ever searches for her name. If so, email me Emily! hunter@hdyar.com! Tokeneke Elementary, St. Luke’s parish, you know if its you! (edit: I found her and we are penpal-ing it up)
(ed: I think I found her, but I deleted my Facebook and cant dig deeper. Ok, stop stalking, resume church rant)
I actually can’t remember what else I did. We played games and losers lost because they didn’t love Jesus enough, or something like that. I would head home and strip off the agonizingly irritating clothes and probably spend the rest of the day in just my boxers, cus, you know, putting on pants is way too much effort.

HP spectrum Analyzer

If anybody has any more information on this newly acquired toy, I am all ears. 3580A HP Spectrum Analyzer.
I believe if I use an FM to AM converter, I can use this baby as an oscilloscope. Spectrum uses Amplitude, while oscilloscope uses frequency, the A and F’s in AM and FM. Must investigate further.
edit: found the manual! http://www.scribd.com/doc/23786937/HP-3580A-Spectrum-Analyzer – Isn’t the internet great?

Juggling to music

I always listen to music when I juggle, but  once I am ‘in the zone’ and cognitively entirely focused on juggling, the music is ignored and/or drowned out. I watched a few juggling videos where the jugglers are juggling to music, and I have to say that it is stupid difficult. I like doing things that are difficult, but this may exceed my abilities.
As a side note, I am talking having virtually every throw in sync with the music, not just more-or-less going along with it.
When I throw a ball on the beat, that beat happens when the ball is released from my hand. That moment of disconnection. When you see the ball being thrown, you see the beat of the ball at the moment the ball begins its up path. This is after it leaves my hand. My ears hear the beat of the ball when I catch one.
But that can all be ignored, to an extent. If the pattern is continuous and aligned (more or less, close enough) to the music, then we will register it along with the music as one entity. It will groove. But throws can not all have the same hang-time. An overhand throw will have a longer hang-time than underhand, and, well, every throw is different. This is a huge pain in the ass.
End note: its hard!
If I ever do perform to music, I will probably not do it to some heavy beat stuff, I will let your ears drown the music out in favor of the stimulus presented by your eyes.

Mount and Blade: Warband - Day 5

This is the part where I should have been on day 1, The part where I succeed!
This day is played with one of my friends (over 600 hours in this game) looking over my shoulder and telling me where to click. Lets do this!

The first thing we did was upgrade my equipment and ride to a kingdom that didn’t hate me for repeatedly forcing supplies from its villages. Green colored people land, Here I come!

A band of 14 mountain bandits attacked me. This is normally the point where a little bit of poop would appear in my trousers and I would think Oh no, more rape. My friend, over my shoulder looked at me and informed me “Attack”.
Attack I thought? I have been in this game long enough to know that wouldn’t work. My friend has an impressive beard and is therefore quite persuasive. Attack I shall.

“First let them run out of ammo. You can reload from a chest for more arrows. They can't do this, so just circle strafe until they run out.”

Circle strafing done (or so I thought), I prepared for my offense. Just need to find the chest.
Looking for the chest for about 8 minutes – a long time to run around randomly—eventually they got me.

With an arrow to the face, one of the dirty AI’s must have been hoarding it. Like a bitch.
We recovered quickly, regained supplies, and approached some bandits again. Still no troops at my side, but I knew where my chest was this time. (Hit backspace at the beginning of a battle and take note). The strategy, after they ran out of ranged weapons, is to ride past them, and as they walked to me, shoot at them until they got close. Then then run again.

The strategy worked so well, I witnesses something peculiar. This person was running away! Wimp! I chased him down and added a significant more metal to the composition of the back of his head.


Wait – What was this? My first victory! Ever!?! That it is good sirs. Hunter has taken his first step into the bloody ring of success. HoomotherfuckingRah!
I was on something of a roll. No challenge could surpass me.
With some more money from selling the bandits stuff, I purchased an aid.
Nazir, the overconfident sunofabitch who (do this day, many battles later) has yet to survive or die.
I also talked to a farmer,and decided to help him. See what that says there? This NPC is calling me a FEARSOME WARRIOR! I had to stop and blink a lot of times. Sure, I may by this time be known as something of a bandit hunter, but ‘fearsome warrior’ is just too much to ask. Since a little bit of flattery is all it takes to persuade me to do something, I said I would help him.
My men, and the villagers ready to attack.


Victory! I took the supplies the villagers offered me (didn’t even think about declining. Friend said it would increase honor, and recommended it. He doesn’t know what my character’s butthole has been through. I took the supplies.
My next fight would not be an easy one. I was taking on 23 other men, and halfway through, 21 more bandits joined their side. It took 40 human minutes of fighting. Except for the peasant battle, I have not won a single battle with anybody but me alive and conscious.
I kept fighting, but I had to remember my original mission. A wife to abuse love for ever and ever. I headed to all the castles I could, but no lady would even listen to me.
Bitches. I had to do something drastic. Like pledge my allegiance to the green-text-people! I did that! no help, but I did have fun losing all of my upgraded men in a joint battle with some orange-text-people.


The above photo is my epic flank of the enemy. I swung around (secretly!) and was quickly met by all of their archers turning around and shooting in to me, the drastically closer enemy. But hey – I did a damn good job of distracting them, and despite losing consciousness, we won the battle. Or, well, I did. All my men died!
I still had some drastic lady-problems, and Nazir was too injured to throw me a sloppy-second. I also needed some money.
Winning the tournament did that! 200 prize, plus the 3980 moneys from placing bets on myself. But still, the bitches didn’t bite.
I decided to stop while I was ahead. I finally got out of the dress (probably a turn-off) and I am playing the game properly. Except for that I can’t seem to win a battle with any troops alive. Well, that’s a story for another day.

Mount and Blade: Warband Day 4

The day where I lose everything, gain it back, lose it, etc..



I began by heading over to Reyvadinpalinkalin. I assessed some prices and had to buy some fish so I could sell them somewhere else for a profit. That somewhere Else? At the bottom of the fecking desert. But I bravely marched on, like a boss.
Apparently you shouldn’t enter villages at night, because bandits will attack you.
…
Bandits attacked me.


Take a note to all of the arrows on the left.
Unfortunately I had no arrows, or… well, anything, really.
I threw my knifes and then my rocks until I ran out. This happened a little too quickly. My only hope was to rush then for some fisticuffs, but, uh, It didn’t work. The bandits took all of my stuff, including my clothes and horse. So Not only do I not have a dress (and the boobs that come with it) I also do not have any dignity.


I will abbreviate what happened next in a few pictures that should sum it up.









2 weeks. 2 fucking weeks. That (in game) is how long I was bitch-handled across the desert by various groups coming to attack me. I had 0 moneys, 0 clothes, 0 dignity, 0…anything.
I had hit in-game rock bottom. It is impossible to do any worse in the game.
Well, FUCK!
I had to do something to get back on track!
I fought in the arena and got myself up to the point where I was able to buy a bow, some arrows, and a club. This took a while, but You got to do what you got to do. When I felt I had enough resources to lay on an attack,  I visited a village, recruited one peasant to fight with me, and then took a hostile action on that very same village.

They did not like it very much.

Who knew there would be so many peasants? There’s like, what? 3 buildings in the whole damn town! They must pack the kids into roofs or something, probably gaining some developmental disorder. I say that because my recruit was very useless when I turned him on his own people after all of 16 seconds of training.

I was fighting them with the same club they were using to fight me. Really? How low can I go?
Apparently pretty low, because they killed me.
As I lay there, dead, in my dress, probably about to get sexually molested (I do have boobs with the dress on), I decided I had to do something to get myself back on track. Again.
One lucky break up out of the desert, and I headed for the training fields. I alternated between the training fields (where I beat all levels of AI) and the arena, where I grinded and earned enough money to hire some more troops and some better weapons.
At the same time I was also recruiting a few volunteers. Once again I took hostile action against a town and – it worked this time! They begrudgingly handed over their supplies!
SUCK IT, PEASANTS!
As a retrospective side note, one is supposed to keep food in their inventory, you know, for something to eat. Just letting all you people know. I found out the hard way.
I sold food for enough money to buy a horse. It is, of course, only a horse in the most technical of senses – 4 legs, neighing noises. Outside of that it is more comparable to an truck without tires, or perhaps a large rock. A large rock with little health, might I add.
While shuttling between villages and training field, I encountered a battle that I might be able to win. It would be my first victory. Challenge motherfucking accepted.


There is some text in the bottom corner that says ‘battle advantage = –1’. I ignored that as I charged my untrained troops on! Huzzah!

The blurry things you see in the above image? Spears headed towards my head. Hundreds of them, I dodged most by strafing circles, letting my peasants get murdered. They killed a few of the enemy (the enemy probably laughing to death), but soon all of my men had died. No wounded. No unconscious. All dead.

I suffered similar a treatment soon after.
So today I did worse than others thought possible. I want to tell you that I actually lightened this up a bit. I excluded a fair amount of lost battles, and I decided not to delve into the 2 weeks I spent in perpetual imprisonment in the desert. Fuck the desert. I need some help!
Stay tuned for tomorrow, where things turn around with some instruction from my friend.

DePauw

My decision on which college to attend next year has been, well, decided.