Oh my lord in heaven/ hell/ nirvana/ etc. If I have to frequent the downtown casino area as much as I have been in the past two months compared to the past year... well, I'll have to take up residence somewhere down there.

Guess where Matt's having his "big" 16th Birthday bash? Yep, the Forum Shoppes. Yep, Cheesecake Factory. Yep, he says not to buy him any gifts and later adds that he's only saying that to be polite.

I'm tempted to either tell him to bugger off with no gift whatsoever besides a nicely calligraphed card, or let him have his way and pay for one item at the mall that he wants. Hopefully he won't be eyeing that $40 Victorian writing set or that $200 Harlequinn mask.

Don't as me why, but recently I've been playing FFX again... and again... and again. Sheer boredom? You could say that. I prefer using the game to avoid making any other accomplishments (namely practicing instruments, playing DDR, or working on that damned painting). Currently going through the first half of the game with hour-long breaks for a game of Blitzball. Who would've imagined that a maester would wait for you to finish a game before setting off to destroy the world. Ahem... anyways, the subtitles have been turned off as well as the map so the game is even more cinematic than before. A pity that the lip-sync program is only correct half of the time.

Come to think of it... the storylines for every single new RPG out there are getting increasingly unusual. FFX delves into the dismissal of false hopes in order to truly live (go Hermann Hesse!) while distorting the time/space continuum to give the true hope a physical body. Even the old historian who tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the story in the end still can't explain the procession of events clearly.

Then there's FF8 with even more time-travel hi-jynx and astral projections, FFTactics with it's completely confusing (yet thoroughly enjoyable) political and social intrigue in a medieval setting, Wild Arms 2 with the notion that a "hero" is merely a sacrfice of one to save many. We'll not even discuss Xenogears with it's numerous references to Darwin, Catholic Dogma, Wave-Existances, Jungian/Freudian psychology, Kabbalah, incarnation, creation, the Alpha Omega, and pink fluffy bunnies that can grow to sky-scraper height.

A thing to note about most stories/ shows/ movies/ etc. coming out of Japan in the recent years: each one has a gratuitous "moral of the story" moment. Every single anime (specifically the movies) have a moment in the end when one, two, or all of the characters start preaching the gospel according to their creator at you. The Utena movie, up till then an amazing exercise in psychosis, sensuality, and visual metaphors, lost much of it's dramatic climax when the two protagonists are zooming away on their motorcycle with a voice-over of their thoughts playing in the back.

Hell, even Battle Royale (a movie depicting 15-16 yr. olds killing eachother in almost every way imaginable with the allowed weapons) has that same voice-over ending that produces a sour anti-climax.

... I'll stop there before I get too ahead of myself.

Meanwhile, here's to hoping that my computer won't act like a complete git the next time I log on. Lately I've had little to no internet access.

Cable modem = superspeed my ass.