Updates 9/19/2011

Tonight is Gears of War 3 release night. I will be wearing Gears' Pajama bottoms and taking frequent naps to prepare for the evening.

I have pre-ordered a Japanese RPG in Japanese and will have to tread across the language barrier.

I have a new Tuesday night bible study that just started up with new friends to be made.

There was no Supermarket Strike this year so I wont have a job with Albertsons.

My family is obsessed with football but doesn't like my obsession with games.

I am now officially a Brony. Rainbow Dash in ma' house Bitch!

That is all.

This Pony Thing 2

Yep I'm at it again. This time a tribute to rainbow dash. This video is about 20% cooler than the last one.

What if I Don't Want to Know my Meme?

    A visit to the website. (knowyourmeme.com) will drown the unexpected viewer in a sea of nonsense, not from an internet perspective but from a real world one.
  
    Anyone remember the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2008. The parade wasn't anything special but the appearance of a certain someone was. Singer, Rick Astely appeared on a float with some puppets and sang his popular hit from the 80's. "Never Gonna Give You Up." which wouldn't have had much meaning on it's own.
   
    Rick Astely's magnum opus was recently abused by internet tricksters who used a hyperlink to direct the unsuspecting to a Youtube video of Astley's music video instead of whatever it was they wanted to watch on the internet. The joke was supposed to be brief, but in a online society that thrives on blowing things out of proportion, this was the joke of the decade.
 
    The practice of hyperlink redirection to Astely is now known as "Rick Rolling." This strange phenomenon is no longer limited to the 4chan anime image-board. It has gone beyond viral and into the global mainstream media. As the puppet said at the end of the parade performance, "I love rick-rolling."

    It's no doubt that the collective internet conscience loves rick rolling, but the average person who works for 40 hours a week, and then goes drinking on the weekend, has no idea that this elaborate and growing phenomenon exists.

    Rick Rolling is but one instance of what is known as a Meme, an internet phenomenon. The website, Know Your Meme, is now a centralized database for every random internet sensation that is currently in use on the world wide web, and even those that might be. On the site you can get detailed information on the origin, history, current use, and even spinoff's of internet trends.

    As a geeky, internet savvy professional, I have indulged in more than a few Meme's. I get a kick out of going on the site and watching the state of chaos that is the ever changing internet.

    I recently asked two people if they knew about a popular internet Meme. One was a church going, fellow bible study group member and the other was a mid twenties secular college student with a wife and kids. Neither of them had any idea what I was talking about, even after I explained it to them.

    It was then that I realized how much the general public knows about the virtual world; almost nothing. The problem is that a lot of the Meme's originate from 4chan; a site used mainly for posting images of anime and obscure popular culture. 4chan has grown over the years to include posts about almost anything. Since most who flock to 4chan are internet savvy, anime and game loving, geek culture aficionados, it only makes sense that most of the Meme's would be created and enjoyed by them.

    Shout out a well known Meme at a game or anime convention, and everyone can get in on the fun. Sometimes fellow attendees will be irritated at you because they are already sick of hearing about that particular Meme, having become bored by seeing it on their favorite internet sites, message boards, or other associations. I remember being introduced to a Meme involving cats recently by my friends, only to see the vary same Meme prominently featured at a convention the very next week.

    Meme's seem to have a shelf life however. The Rick Roll is old news now and other more popular Phenomenon have sprung up to take it's place. No matter how popular a given Internet sensation is, most of them tend to grow old about as fast as they grew up. Even the most popular Meme's tend to dwindle into internet obscurity.

    What was the point? None of the internet trends I have been involved with have ever really stuck with me and no one around me, at least in the real world apart from my fellow internet savvy geeks has cared. In twenty years, are we still going to be falling for the Rick Roll relocation trick, or singing the Double Rainbow song?

    In conclusion, I believe that Meme's have their place in internet culture and that they are good to share with others and even indulge in as a temporary exercise in entertainment. In this world of economic troubles, war, natural disasters, and even the good things like relationships with our families and children, Meme's will always take back seat. If any person ever uses a Meme to take the place of something that really matters, then that person has just lost The Game of reality.

http://knowyourmeme.com/

My Personal Favorite Meme's:

RickRoll
The Game
Bronies
All Your Base are Belong to Us
Over 9000
Youtube Poop

Fanime Con 2011: Eat, Sleep, Game, Repeat (Part 2).

    Host’s girlfriend who I will call “Fairy,” had left early to room with friends and would not be the lone woman in the group this year. We were joined by a new X chromosome.

The door opened and a woman in her twenties entered. She had very bright red hair, a tattoo on her chest, and many piercings on her face and apparently in all the taboo areas. She was going to share a bed with Host, who was already taken and was deemed trustworthy. I will refer to the lady in bed as “Red.”

We proceeded to the convention center to pick up our badges to gain entrance to the Famine’s many events and services. Ranger and Roll where dropped off to fend for themselves. The line for badge pickup was 5 lanes of people. The line didn’t move forward, it just became more convoluted as more people saved spots for friends. Red and Trance were going mad and Animal’s 3DS ran out of batteries. I was level grinding on my PSP, which is about the same necessary evil as waiting in line. After two and a half hours, we received our badges.

At most conventions, day 0 was only for registration. At Fanime, it was an extra half day of the convention. Host took his sale items and went to the upper level exhibit hall to meet Fairy in a joint venture of money making.

Exhibit hall number four was the location I spent almost all of my time in. It housed the arcade, console game room, table top game room, and the swap meet. The swap meet was a regular occurrence at Fanime. Attendees brought all of their items to sell. Some sellers even made cash to pay for their trip or to facilitate their small businesses. Host was selling many items including two X Arcade Joysticks and Fairy was selling Glow Sticks for those who would be attending the dance/rave later. They ended up making over $200 in profits.

That night I ran into some friends that I only see at the convention. One had his own booth, and two helped run the game room. My oldest convention acquaintance sold small plushies of the Touhou (shrine maiden girls) variety for 40 bucks a pop and made over 1600 dollars during the two swap meets. I will call him “Money.” The 2nd had Japanese import games for old systems and knew people who could translate them. He is “TV,” Due to his constant strains from moving of Televisions for the game room staff. The third one was studying to be an engineer and made his own custom Joysticks while running arcade games on custom hardware. He is “Supergun,” named after the custom arcade machine itself.

The swap meet continued on in the evenings for two days. The game room and its arcade ran 24 hours a day. My friends and I not wanting to waste any time were up until 1 am for day 0 festivities.

As almost always with conventions, I slept on the floor taking the green blanket off of the Xbox and using it as a cushion along with two comforters from the beds. Trance and Animal shared the first bed, the Host and Red, the other. Since my first Fanime, I had gone from sleeping on a hotel bed, to an air mattress on the floor, and now enjoyed the simple pleasure of sleeping on the floor. It didn’t matter really where I slept. I knew that I wouldn’t get much sleep anyway; my excitement would be the driving force during the convention.

Fanime Con 2011: Eat, Sleep, Game, Repeat.(Part 1)

Fanime Con 2011: Sleep, Eat, Game, Repeat

Disclaimer:

This is a true chronicle of real events that occurred at the Fanime 2011 Anime Convention in San Jose. All of the names have been changed to protect those involved. I will be using nicknames that I have created for each person to keep their identities secret. Some of the events may not be exactly at the correct times they occurred, but rest assured, the events are all true and they happened.

1. Leading and Following

It was 5 am. I had just finished filling a suitcase with unmentionables, socks, shirts, new jeans, old sweats, pajamas, and a Japanese region Xbox 360 console wrapped in a fuzzy green blanket. An old backpack was sitting on top of the case. I grabbed both in my aching hands as I slowly made my way to the front door trying not to wake my parents. I knew they heard me anyway, they always did.

My car was parked in the usual spot in front of the dumpster. I let the car warm up for about 3 minutes while I put my belongings in the trunk. The car was a 2001 Honda Accord. It had become my Second home as I recently had adjusted to a new job with a long commute.

Today my “Commute” was to a house In the Mission Viejo area where my friend with a more lucrative job was loading up his two Mercedes in preparation for the 8 hour journey to San Jose. He would drive the black one, and be in charge of the route, hotel stay, and gas distribution. He is called “Host.”

A second addition was going to be riding with Host. He was the youngest of our group and a party animal that was known for staying out late. He will be called “Animal”

I was a little irritated that both of the sporty luxury cars didn’t really have enough trunk space to accommodate the large amount of luggage. Since Host was business minded, a lot of space had been allocated for things that he would sell at the convention’s swap meet. To my half asleep horror my suitcase was the biggest one, and I would be contributing to the storage problem myself. After a luggage re-alignment, we began the trek.

The black Mercedes lead the way followed by a silver one. I was a passenger in the silver with another friend at the helm. Some early LA traffic greeted us with a middle finger as we neared our first destination, Carl’s Jr.

During our first meal together I gave each member of the party a “Slim Jim” for later use, in honor of the recently deceased wrestler Macho Man Randy Savage, who used to advertise for the delicious beef snack. I mentioned that I had small snack packs of trail mix and peanut butter crackers at the ready. Animal ate his burger in less than 3 minutes. When asked about it he replied.  

“I just can’t stop eating once I start,”

Since I had made a vow not to eat fast food for breakfast, I had a protein nutrition shake. I was on a diet plan and had lost 20 pounds in several months. I thought I would keep it up during the convention.

After our first meal we made a stop in Ventura to pick up two more individuals. One was in his twenties but looked much younger. He will be referred to as “Ranger,” due to his fascination with live action Japanese shows like “Power Rangers,” and his desire to pose dramatically at random periods. The other looked like he just rolled out of bed so I will call him “Roll.” To our surprise they had packed a very little amount of luggage. We loaded up some things and were off again.

I was not really enjoying the mix of CD’s Playing in the car. Every disc was the same club dance track that would drive a normal person to insanity after an hour. For some reason the driver could sit there and enjoy the same repetition for hours on end. I will be referring to the driver as “Trance.” The CD’s got better as the trip progressed, finally finishing on the sixth disc in the changer featuring ending in the trance music of DJ Tiesto, which I enjoyed. The Daft Punk fueled Tron movie soundtrack on disc four was enjoyable too.

It had been 4 hours of Driving. We stopped at a small but very famous Inn that was known for its waterfall Urinal called The Madonna. It had been featured on the travel channel. The Inn itself was very gaudy and frou frou, but had a definite style. A wedding and honeymoon spot for sure.

Host decided not to fill up outside the Madonna so he was running low on gas. I watched as the black Mercedes pulled over to the side of the road. Trance got out of the car to assist. They figured out that he might have enough gas after analyzing the car intensely. It was 12 miles to the next destination. By a miracle we had arrived at a gas station that looked very familiar from our past convention trips. Host also discovered that he had gone over his gas limit, but because he had topped it off at the last fill up, he was in the clear. If he had to drive one more mile he would have been stuck.  

The rest of the journey went as planned, with occasional stops to get supplies. We were ahead of Schedule.  

Finally after 8 hours, 4 stops, 2 snack packs, 3 “Slim Jims,” another shake and many gallons of gas, we had arrived. Fanime Con 2011 was ready to begin. We were all hungry. We had a short dinner at “Del Taco,” and then went back to the “Motel 6.”