Oh my god, I am so sick and tired of everyone I know.

Code Geass: Lost Colors. I've owned this for about ten minutes now. We haven't started a game yet. So far, it's already really gay.

The first opening song is moderately different: Rai's silhouette is featured in a few places, and counterpoints Lelouch in the scene where Suzaku and Kallen's images are facing off while he walks. We cut out the Euphy/Suzaku dance, and replace it with a long pan of Rai's silhouette with his harem of rapable women + Lelouch. But it's otherwise the same.

( Read more... )

So I headed down to Florida in order to empty my dad's condo so we could sell it. It's a little strange. On one hand, it's sort of like a free-for-all! Shopping spree all expenses paid in the electronics department! Free TV! Free printer-scanner! Free Lord of the Rings extended collection!! Free DVD recorder!! Free external hard drive!! Free LG Incite smartphone!! FREE TOYOTA PRIUS!!

But on the other hand, anything I don't take is something my dad loved that's destroyed and lost forever. Teacup sets and special plates. Old cameras and telescopes. He was like me and he collected things, and he hoarded them forever. We found his journal from when he was 22 and backpacked through Europe, talked about picking up women and scoring drugs. Lists of furniture he bought in 1979. Ropes from a boat he sold twenty years ago. Random tubes of plastic, pots and pans he replaced long ago that are almost as old as I am, crappy watches that stopped working years back, every wire or pair of glasses or license he ever owned.

He'd be rolling if he had a grave, so angry with us for messing with his stuff and calling it trash. I hate tearing apart his movie collection. He had thousands and thousands of DVDs. (Many of them illegal, ripped from DVDs he got from the library.) But it'd be prohibitively expensive to ship it all. And 75% of it is foreign or artsy junk that no one wants to watch but him.

But it was his life. I wish I could keep it all -- every terrible, useless thing. Every redundant nail clipper and pen. Well, I am keeping all of those.

...It's so unfair to be here and looking at the stuff around this place. Notes he left on the fridge for himself ("Buy tall trash bags") and still-sealed bundles of liquid soap. If he hadn't tried to save that kid, he'd still be alive. It's frustrating. There were so many things he was supposed to be here for, like weddings or grandkids.

Like once a day, this line of dialogue pops into my head:

"Hey, Wilson."
"Yes, House?"
"...my dad's dead."

Holy shit you guys.

We ordered from Jimmy John's, laughing because they promised "Extremely" and "Freaky fast delivery". Isn't that cute!

I pressed the Place Order button.

...ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was Jimmy John's.

THAT IS FREAKY.

...Marina is on the big side now. Which is awesome, except that I... liked having free time... I've gotta be strong and keep disciplined instead of doing it all day, which I easily could.

WELL, I have a less distracting fun thing coming up soon. But in the meantime, little dorky fun thing. Ganked from okroginator--

NAME A FANDOM AND I'LL TELL YOU MY:
- OTP
- Runner-up
- Honorable mention(s)
- Crack pairing(s)
- Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't

I got my Dollhouse season one DVD today and I'm completely disappointed. I like the packaging, I like the series. We watched through all the aired episodes and we were excited and happy.

Then we watched the unaired thirteenth episode and it all drained away.

It was some bizarre, post-apocalyptic future, ten years later. That apocalypse was caused by the Dollhouse's technology. The whole episode hammers home how wrong the Dollhouse was, how misguided everyone involved with it was, how terrible humanity is to have ever wanted anything like that. Then, in the last minute of the episode, we reiterate all of this extremely bluntly, juuust in case you missed all that subtle conversation earlier. And it's not AU. It's official, just unaired on Fox; Whedon said it's supposed to "hint" [with a sledgehammer] at the direction the series will take in the second season.

Then we watched the unaired pilot episode and it just died. On top of being terrible, it was also extremely heavy-handed in telling us how wrong everything is. It's like watching a hastily-assembled clipreel of talking points about how wrong the Dollhouse is.

There's a scene where Topher and Saunders argue about pro-bono work, Saunders is like, they evolve magically and become more powerful and intelligent and have better reflexes when they go on pro-bono missions instead of serving rich men! and Topher's like, w/e I don't care about them I just want them to suck the cocks of rich men bwahaha I am cartoonishly evil, and I'm like, this is such complete bullshit. First of all, wouldn't Topher be interested in this progress? Isn't it his field of study, his big geeky passion? And second of all, there's a very, very small amount of engagements where the dolls do anything other than make good but lonely people happy. Everyone else, like, wants to rescue kidnapped children, avert a suicidal cult to save the people inside it, have a last happy moment with their dead wife, solve their own murder, or just have a romantic human connection with someone. HOW TERRIBLE OF THEM. DOLLS DON'T EXPERIENCE ANYTHING WORTHWHILE FROM FILTHY SERVICING OF RICH MEN MISSIONS LIKE THESE, ONLY FROM READING BOOKS TO SMALL CHILDREN.)

Look, this just isn't the show I thought I was watching. I thought I was watching a show about how the allegedly-wiped-clean Actives were in fact still people, still themselves; how they had access to their memories and their deepest longings even though they should have been empty. I thought it was a series about evolving, exploring what it means to be a doll. Instead, it seems to be a series about how its own premise, which is interesting and made me want to watch the show in the first place, is fucking evil and everyone who advocated it was naive and wrong.

It's really, deeply disappointing. The dolls voluntarily entered into a contract to escape their crappy lives, and when the contract is up and they've made loads of people happy, they'll be incredibly wealthy and far away chronologically from whatever scarred them. Meanwhile, the Dollhouse takes extraordinary care of them: they live in a serene, luxurious, stressfree paradise -- their missions are all checked to make sure it'll never be people who want to hurt them -- they only go out as dominants, never submissives, just in case -- they have Handlers watching them on all their engagements who protect them if anything goes wrong -- and yeah, they have sex with people, but the doll is always in love, never just screwing some random guy. The doll always loves the client.

Ascribing cartoonishly evil motives to them and heavy-handed implications that OF COURSE that technology is wrong and will eventually destroy civilization (usually this comes from the mouths of rapists and traitors, so I didn't realize I was supposed to agree with them!) is just. Deeply disappointing. Not to mention I'm so bored of the downfall of civilization and post-apocalyptic hellscapes where everything is burning and everyone is dirty because hot water doesn't exist anymore.

Ironically -- I feel like Fox was trying to save this show for me by not airing the pilot and last episode. If only I had trusted them more. :(

My birthday loot = some sort of epic.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE I KNOW

Why are they all trolls.

They sedated and put him on life support this morning, because he wasn't doing well. An hour before I left for the airport, maybe two hours ago now that I'm here, he went into cardiac arrest, and they couldn't save him. It's a week after his 60th birthday exactly, and six days before my 26th.

I knew it was a real danger: his heart was at like 30% capacity and after a heart attack there's supposed to be a very high risk of a second attack within the first 90 days or so. When I said good night to him yesterday, I didn't really expect anything.

My mom tried to guilt me into staying here in Florida for no reason and crying on people and seeing his body before they cremate him and missing my flight. Whatever, I don't need any of that.

I'm really happy I was able to be with him again when he was awake, and smiling, and glad to see us, that's all.

Good night, Dad. I won't forget the promises I made.

Thanks everyone for the good wishes. I know my LJ's been depressing and all lately, but I really appreciate your support.

So he's cursing and demanding to be let out of bed, etc. Sigh.

Then they're suctioning his mouth, which is terrible. The nurse finds blood in his mouth (she thinks) and gives him some water on the provision that he doesn't swallow it. A few seconds later she and my sister are like, did he swallow it? he swallowed it.

I'm grinning at him. He grins slowly back at me.

I say, "You're a troublemaker."

He nods proudly.

My dad is finally off all the life support (he started out on three different kinds) and conscious and talking to us! He has a staph infection but at least now he's going to be weaned off all this shit. He said "Don't leave me" when they kicked us out for shift change, which was lkjlkdfjg sort of heartbreaking.

I've been reveling in my computer time ever since and I forgot to eat. sob I'm hungry but I should go back in there.

YES, I READ THE ANONMEME. A CARDINAL SIN, AS I AM LEARNING. I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN. I was happy for like five seconds that someone called libekory a good Suzaku, but then one little slip and anons think that sniping it to death = clever.

Whatever, my dad is talking, who needs to worry about anons?

Well. I was freaking out last night because my younger sister keeps talking over me and acting like I can't make decisions and basically treating everyone in the family like they don't matter.

This morning she calls me, freaking out, because the doctors that have been working on my dad think his heart can survive without the assist devices, has made an unexpected recovery even though half of his heart muscle is dead from lack of oxygen. I called the doctor and spoke to him.

If anything happens, he dies.

But if we leave the assist in, when it's already been in for so long, he'll probably have a stroke and die, and it's days before anything else can happen.

And -- if we take him off the support, his heart could keep beating on his own. And if he survives, then that's it. He survived. They close him up and send him home.

I guess I got to make the decision.

By the time my plane had landed, my dad had stabilized. Turns out that he was doing so well -- he was reading, and writing messages/requests, so there's not too much significant damage -- so they tried to remove the ventilator tube and he went into cardiac arrest. Hence the panicked phone call from a nurse insinuating that he was totally dying right now hurry and fly down.

They're keeping him heavily sedated now, because he worked himself up into agitation after his cardiac arrest and kept trying to tear out the tubing. So he's not really responsive, and he's very uncomfortable. But he's okay for now.

When he was writing, he told them he was asthmatic, and that he breathes through his mouth. And he wrote, "I want a drink."



It also turns out that he's a hero. I was sure that his heart attack was because of his smoking and stress over Nana's death, but it turns out that that's not the case.

He was at Delray Beach and he spotted a kid who was drowning out in the ocean. He raced in, swam out, and saved the boy, and the exertion triggered the heart attack. But he didn't realize until much later what was going on, and then he drove himself to the hospital.

But he's a hero here. He was in the newspapers and everything.

The GPS on his Prius was still programmed to give directions to the hospital.



He has two stints in his heart, and heart disease. They can either put another stint in his heart or get him a new heart. If they can keep him stable long enough to transfer him to Miami.

I like it here, though. He lives fifteen minutes from Delray Beach, and our hotel is right on the beach. It is really swanky, man. Limousines and crowded streets at 10PM, dressy shops and glamorous people... I think I see why Dad's been hanging out on the beach here every day.

Yesterday he was doing much better -- he woke up and he was responding to commands, so there probably wasn't massive brain damage or whatever.

Today he's doing much worse and I was told to fly out there immediately.

Thanks for everyone's good wishes.
...um
Keep sending them?



ETA: I just got an email from Philips saying "Father's Day Gift Ideas". Considering that Father's Day was months ago, I have to assume the universe is conspiring against me.

Oh wow my dad had a major heart attack. He moved to Florida and no one lives anywhere near him and he's on ventilators and unconscious and stuff.

Not... good.

God, Lelouch and Carmen Sandiego are going to have such an epic showdown. At Marina she stole Nina and messed with Euphy's head to get to him, so now Lelouch is going to have to find Carmen Sandiego.

And then I'm going to make a list of his accomplishments just to put "Knows where Carmen Sandiego is" on it.

Everyone reading this had better know why this is fucking awesome, or I will call you a young whippersnapper.

I had a phone interview today. It went well.

Everybody send good thoughts way plz.

I'm super-enthusiastic about this job opportunity, super-enthusiastic about going on Weight Watchers, super-enthusiastic about doing Wii Fit. But I don't want to do anything online, no fic, no RP, no anything. Not great timing, since Inksome is collapsing and I have to write an essay for our players about the possibility of moving to InsaneJournal -- or, distant third option, Scribbld.

Any thoughts on InsaneJournal, flist? Aside from enraged gnawing upon their stupid fucking theme and their stupid fucking mascot? (I've got that covered already.)

So, remember my cousin Scott, who died in a car accident this time a year ago? Well guess who I just got an IM from???


RealistiQ71: what scum took down my memorial
Savinsilk: You're hilarious.


His friends must be real dicks. They better not email his mom.

My nana died yesterday while my phone was dead. She'd been in the hospital for like 4 years now, and didn't remember anyone anymore. Dad told me a week ago that she wasn't doing well and I couldn't think of much to say other than, "Oh. ...oh no."

It's inconvenient for me.

...I don't want to fly out anywhere on the 4th of July. I want to be at home watching the fireworks like I always do. But I don't want my family to think I'm too much of a bitch to come home for the funeral.

Sigh. Maybe I'll try to catch an early flight...

Sorry, Nana.

Oh, Bleach. Those last pages make me pretty happy. I am anticipating some fun in these next chapters. (*grabby at lisa*) Give me some Urahara in a few weeks and I'm sold.

...yeah, that's all I have to say.