The time draws near! Oh, damned be you, the mighty Odin, for cursing me to these brittle bones and wit of stone. For what gift of Valhalla have I but the burning chaos that is my rage and sorrow betwixt in an endless dance of torture!

I can't stay in Montreal because I have bad grades. I could go into why that's a bullshit reason, but I've already done it elsewhere so many times that it hurts to do it again. I wonder if anything interesting will ever happen to me again. Everything sucks.

Except for Snoop Dogg Thanksgiving. That was the shit.

My headphones keep breaking, and my flash drive broke yesterday, destroying my 3D animation project as well as knocking one of my projects back by a week. I felt shitty enough without that crap going on, so I've been brewing a perfect storm of depression and teen-like angst. Don't feel sorry for me, I'm just a big baby. but still. This sucks. I'm spending too much money on replacing things and buying bullshit stuff I don't need. I feel like the kind of person I never wanted to be when it comes to money: irresponsible, despite very clear obligations to stay alive and healthy. I'd vent more, but A: no one cares and B: if someone did care, I wouldn't want them to care, because fishing for pity is something a worthless douchebag does, and as far as I'm concerned I'm not a douchebag. Or useless. Well, I may be a douchebag. And my worth is questionable. But that's neither here nor there. Vent over.

You probably won't read much of my adventures, but I expect the lively city and all of the fantastic art it has to offer within, I will be making some not-as-shitty-as-usual art over the course of the semester. Hopefully. No promises. I have 5 classes this semester; 4 of them are art-related and 3 require me to make art of my own. The remaining 1 is Conversational French. What an impossible language to speak and understand. I hope I can at least not look like a stupid tourist by the time I'm done here.

Ok, first I'll get the ATLUS games out of the way. I'm playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, and I've been known to say that it's basically what "The World Ends With You" could've been if it was fun and wasn't completely supersaturated with unlikeable characters. Being a more-or-less silent protagonist, you have the option of not being a dipshit, and I really like the prospects that opportunity provides.

Speaking of which, I've recently gotten into Fallout 3, which is a great game. I'm not used to such a non-linear game, and the change of pace is ridiculously refreshing.

I'm very honestly getting tired of the Japanese archetype where the hero can only do what he does if FATE ordains it. I'm tired of playing games where the reason I'm better than everyone else is due to some cosmically predetermined law and not due to the consequences of my own actions and life choices. This make me of the opinion that American and European storytelling provides vastly more potential and merit. In addition, it has caused me to contemplate matters that have led me to assume that Japanese culture is largely ruled by hopelessness and an overall denial of self worth or potential. It seems far more obvious upon observing nearly every seriously-toned game or show I've seen from the country; to paraphrase Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, "You do not make yourself who you are, the people around you make you who you are." I could divulge further into ill-informed philosophy, but time is of the essence, and I ramble as it is.

I suppose now I shall chronicle a retrospective on the summer's events thus far for no reason other than my own satisfaction or lack thereof. The Anime convention I had since mentioned has long since come and gone and, much to my chagrin, my efforts to network and maintain communication with the many fine fellows and females that I was so fortunate to meet have been fruitless; fruitless indeed. There is a second event in a week administrated by the same organization, and I am debating my attendance there, though hopefully I do decide to attend.

Within the past month, I was in and out of a relationship with a member of the workplace in which I spend a lengthy five of every seven days. This has served in rendering each and every day since the termination of relations to be frightfully awkward, and not in such a way that I often thrive. But, life goes on... just very slowly and tumultuously.

As an early birthday present I received an Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 video card, and it has proven to be a gift that keeps on giving -or rather, keeps giving me reasons to buy more shit. Upon inserting the card, I realized that my power supply was insufficient to power the card, so
I got a new one. Then, since I am running windows XP, I realized that I could only support DirectX 9, which does not use the full potential of my sexy new card. From there, I ventured to partition my hard drive to be able to dual-boot XP and Windows 7, which supports DX10 and soon DX11. I was unable to partition the hard drive and so, unfazed, I acquired a second internal hard drive. Unfortunately, the new drive did not come with a cable to connect it to my motherboard, and unfortunately still, I got an IDE-format drive whereas my current drive is a SATA-format, making it so that I can only connect one or the other, but not both. This caused me to realize that no matter how I arrange the drives and what adapter I purchased to convert one format of drive to another, space and proper ventilation have become very real concerns. The myriad new wires from the 500 watt power supply coupled with the fact that I cannot connect an IDE cable to my drives without it brushing up against my behemoth of a graphics card has caused me to purchase a new case for my computer. About 300 quid later, I've now replaced everything in my computer with exception to the motherboard, CPU and disc drive. Unwillingly at times and willingly at others, I've succeeded in leaving enough discarded parts to build roughly 70% of an entire computer. What a summer of expenses it has been!

I leave you now, as I am engaged in packing for a weekend in Burlington to celebrate my 20th birthday. I'm not a teenager anymore. Praise Zeus, I'm delighted.