Current mood:	cheerful
Current music:	Denali - The Instinct | Powered by Last.fm

 I should probably post here. It won't be long, but I hate the idea of having been voluntarily silenced for this long. This whole year has pretty much been the busiest year of my life, and probably the best, despite having moved twice. I think this is the year I finally grew up, maybe.

I'm just gonna run off a short list of significant changes in my life and such things.

Firstly, and I guess most importantly, or at least at the foremost of my mind, is this guy Jason who apparently has a crush on me. He's been kind of lurking in the distant peripheral of my social circles, friends with Nate and AJ, etc. I'm not sure what took so long for him to approach me, but he came into my work recently, and after talking for a few minutes, I got a message from him on myspace essentially beginning what has been a pretty promising chain of interaction, discovering common friends and things. What really makes me happy is that he showed up at the weekly Cult Cinema Club yesterday, and stayed for the whole showing of Timecrimes (which is a fucking fantastic film that I don't think needs to be remade at all).  We sat around and chatted afterward, ending up with plans to go to a tattoo parlor on New Year's Day.

Speaking of Timecrimes, I'm absolutely amazed that I got that to work. First off, the torrent I downloaded of it (it's not available for purchase yet) didn't have subtitles, so I had to download a version that came with a seperate subtitle file. This meant that I couldn't burn it to DVD without either buying some shitty software or going through a risky, hour-long procedure involving SubtitleCreator and other things. I decided instead to bring along Alex's laptop, leave it there at the comic book shop so I wouldn't have to haul it to Radio Shack, where I would purchase an S-video cable to connect the laptop with the flatscreen at Newcastle Comics. Luckily, one of the attendees had an S-video cable with him, so I eagerly opened the jump drive only to find that I had forgotten to load up the codec-loaded video player on the drive so I could watch it. I panicked for a few minutes, then realized I could hijack the computer at Newcastle, download the video player there, and transport it to the laptop.

Success. I definitely felt like I had beaten some video game or something.

Speaking of, I'm officially Live. My gamertag is: sYnthYte. I now own Team Fortress 2, Lost Planet: Colonies, and Battlefront 2, in addition to Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Crackdown. I was especially eager to play Portal, and successfully beat it in four hours the same day I bought it. Truly, a modern classic. I was disappointed to discover that Lost Planet: Colonies is not compatible in any way with the widely distributed and cheaply-obtained Lost Planet original, so I won't get to play online with all the people I'd hoped to. These games were the cheaper alternative to the ridiculously expensive Left 4 Dead, a game I frankly didn't enjoy enough to pay $60 for. Shooting zombies over and over and over, no matter how pretty or intense, does not qualify as innovative game-designing.

Christmas was, as usual, a mix of love and disappointment. More cash this year than any before, but it was a good Christmas regardless.

Just a note; REPO! the Genetic Opera is coming to Saint Louis on January 20th. I'm going.

There's a cat in our apartment, and I'm not happy about it, but whatever. There are a few more things that I'm unhappy about in regards to my current living situation, but I guess I'm sick of being perceived as a sensitive jerk, so I'm just keeping my head down and my mouth shut.

Best Music of 2008:
Day Without Dawn - "Understanding Consequences"
Have A Nice Life - "Deathconsciousness"
Rabbit Junk - "This Life Is Where You Get Fucked"
Portishead - "Third"
Cynic - "Traced in Air"
Woven - "Designer Codes"

Best Movies of 2008:
Hellboy 2
Iron Man
The Dark Knight
There Will Be Blood
No Country For Old Men
Sweeney Todd

I have no plans for New Year's Eve. We'll see where it takes me.

New Year's Resolutions:
Finish Apparatus.
Record a complete Maggotbox song.
Get a tattoo.
Launch printzine.
Continue running NCCCC.
Go to a "Amongst the Creature" concert.