Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
January 26, 2006
Hey, this blog is two years old!
Category: SC Updates

The origins of this weblog are kind of convoluted, given that it first began as Blog of Wes on a subdomain of Scary-Crayon and, upon its conversion to Wesoteric, not only got all of the Blog of Wes posts ported into it but also a number of entries from the personal site I used to maintain back on my Yale webspace. Sort of calls to mind the existential questions concerning the ship that is rebuilt with different planks and whether a person is the same person if all of his/her memories are ported into the brain of a French poodle or something. Anyway, the Blog of Wes began on January 16, 2004, so I've been around in this current run for just over two years. Yep. It's really been that long. 😛

Scary-Crayon's official two-year anniversary was yesterday, so feel free to head on over there if you want to check out the zany celebratory articles. In addition to an action figure flip off, a guest Hot Flash from Jax, and an unrelated Crayon Haiku, there's a detailed piece that may prove amusing to you, though my experience with it was rather horrific. Remember those expired boxes of cereal I found while cleaning my room last month? Enter: The Stale Cereal Wars. Bloody hell.

Aquaaaaaaarium~

By the way, have you all seen this fish screensaver? It came with my laptop -- it's probably the demo version -- but if you don't have it you can get a demo at Prolific.com. Assuming you want it, that is. It's freaking amazing -- almost like having Duncan MacPhish of the Clan MacPhish back with us. If only there were a way to make the water cloudy and yellow.

All for now -- ja ne, minna-san.

-posted by Wes | 6:24 pm | Comments (5)
January 22, 2006
Ugh.
Category: Miscellany

I spent the better part of the last 48 hours mucking around with a multitude of programs in an attempt to figure out how to burn DVDs and encode various video and audio files.

I am frustrated and exhausted.

So now I shall sleep.

-posted by Wes | 5:12 am | Comments (1)
January 18, 2006
Sayonara, Teen Titans.
Category: Miscellany

The final episode of "Teen Titans" aired on Monday. After five seasons, my favorite show is over.

Hello, Terra.

And as if that fact weren't sad enough, why did the last episode have to be so damned depressing? It made my heart hurt, even though it contained the revelation that Terra is, in fact, alive.

Beast Boy...

The relationship between Terra and Beast Boy, though limited to the first two seasons, was one of my favorite things about the show. Terra was cool yet vulnerable; Beast Boy was goofy yet strong and loyal. They fit. And then Terra betrayed the team to Slade, the most vicious of villains, and gave her life to correct her mistake (or so it seemed). At the end, only Beast Boy believed in her, and she hugged him and told him that he was the best friend she'd ever had. I cried.

Sadness.

And now we learn, in the final episode, that Terra is alive. Joy! Joy! But wait. She wants nothing to do with the Titans. She wants nothing to do with Beast Boy. She doesn't even remember him, or so she claims. Slade, apparently still watching over the Titans and his former apprentice, returns to suggest that she doesn't remember because she doesn't want to. Terra returns and doesn't want to remember her best friend. In the final episode. What?

Goodbye.

I enjoyed "Teen Titans" because it was a fun, oftentimes wacky show. The character development and interaction was both amusing and touching. The show had its misses -- particularly in this final season -- but its heart was always undeniable. The Titans were a team: they laughed together, cried together, fought together, won together, and held each other up when they fell. Beast Boy spent the majority of the final episode away from the team, trying to get Terra to remember things that she had apparently intentionally blocked from her mind. Things like him. Why was this the last episode? Why was the final shot of Beast Boy, alone in a hallway in the school that Terra now attends, resignedly returning to help the team -- and only because he couldn't get Terra to come with him? What is the meaning of this? Does Terra represent the network executives, who supported the show, then turned against it, then supported it again -- and then, after being quiet for a while, returned only to reject it openly? Are we Terra, who have apparently outgrown and abandoned the Titans -- or at least lack the will to join them in more of their zany adventures? I don't know, but this was a deeply depressing final episode.

The bad guys are down for the count...

Sayonara, Teen Titans. You will be missed.

-posted by Wes | 7:22 pm | Comments (2)
January 13, 2006
Oh baby
Category: SC Updates

Mmm... Felicia.

That, dear readers, is hotness. Heeeere kitty kitty... 😉 Oh, and for audience members who actually recognize the character (Parizad, maybe?), the latest Scary-Crayon article may be of interest to you. And if you find the idea of someone mistaking me for a sexy blue-haired lass and flirting with me via IM to be amusing, the latter part of the latest Scary-Crayon blog entry may satisfy your desire to chuckle at your desk!

Totally awesome, dudes!

In other news, while the impending close of the local Toys 'R' Us is a source of much sadness for me (with the loss of KB Toys last year, this was the only surviving toy store in Laurel), the slashed prices did allow me to pick up the Ninja Action versions of the green team for under $8 total, whereas these guys are still running upwards of $10 in successful retail stores. It's depressing, but hopefully the coming weeks will afford similar deals to lessen the pain.

I sure hope it doesn't rain today, 'cause in addition to hitting up the store for more Donatellos, I'm planning to walk the town in the interest of taking advantage of the numerous free food deals taking place. With camera in hand, of course!

Ja ne, minna-san. Until next time! 😀

-posted by Wes | 6:45 am | Comments (3)
January 6, 2006
Chocolate makes for crazy sleep
Category: Dreams

So, have you ever had one of those days on which you don't want to get out of bed because you're having this really odd and interesting dream and you know that despite being woken by the alarm and being completely awake and even having gone to the bathroom and drunk a glass of water, you'll be able to resume the dream when you crawl back under the covers and close your eyes? Well, that's totally what kept me from crawling out of bed until around 3:30 PM yesterday (and I probably would've stayed even longer, but I had to get to work!) despite initially having set my alarm for 11:00 AM and constantly re-setting it to wake me 45 minutes later every time it interrupted my wacky hijinx on the other side of consciousness. Admittedly, I used to have days like this all the time during my junior year of college (seriously, I'd even skip classes and/or attend them with the express intention of sleeping through them, all for the pleasure of gallavanting with my supernatural pals in a twisted version of the Greek pantheon), which I think had something to do with the fact that I was subsisting on like twenty cookies and a single tuna fish sandwich a day. Similarly, attribute yesterday's adventure to my insane consumption of little chocolate bars over the past couple of days. What's going to happen when I go to sleep upon finishing this post? I can't wait to find out!

I sadly don't remember the dream in its entirety -- or at least I'm pretty sure that more happened, given the length of time that I was asleep and the paucity of details that I can currently recall -- but somehow I ended up hanging out in the parking lot of a local shopping center with two girls who were or were at least somehow based upon I've never actually met in real life. Now, as far as I know, in the real world they've never met each other unless through interactions in my comments section and are related only in the sense that I adore them both, but for some reason they were sisters in the dream. They were also both about my age, despite the fact that one of them is like ten years my senior.

So anyway, we're sitting in this parking lot, talking, and one sister starts going on about how she's totally about to throw up. For some reason this prompts me to take her hand and start telling her that everything's going to be okay -- as if she's just confided that she's been diagnosed with a terrible disease or that she's just found out that aliens have eaten her entire family -- whereupon she comments on the coldness of my hands. She then proceeds to talk about how, at length, she was nervous earlier in the day, and this nervousness caused her to sweat so profusely from her hands that the resultant river came up to her ankles.

She leaves to go throw up in the bathroom of the nearby McDonald's, leaving me alone with the other sister. I forget what we talked about, but after a bit this sister notes that she's cold and is going to walk home -- and for some reason I assume that she lives just around the corner and will be okay. When her sister returns from puking, she tells me that, in truth, they live far, far away, and that terrible danger will befall her sister if we do not find her before she reaches her destination. In hindsight, this strikes me as being kinda odd, seeing as how if she got home she'd be okay, but in the dream I just went along with it.

This sister drove a double-decker bus with a scouting post protruding from the top of it. She drove; I stood at this high, vantage point and peered into the distance in search of the sister. We traversed many bumpy roads, with me almost falling out of this post a number of times and being quite hot underneath the glare of the desert sun, because our travels took us across the desert -- which somehow happened to be located in the middle of my hometown -- and back into an area of this city, and then into a bizarro version of shopping center from which we'd started. Finally, we ended up at this massive high-rise apartment building, where apparently the sisters lived, whereupon we were going to wait for the sister to arrive so that we could intercept her before she entered, because terrible things would happen if she entered alone after having come that long way on foot. And because we needed to spot her from a distance, we sat on the roof of the bus, keeping watch and eating jelly sandwiches while wiggling our bare toes and telling jokes.

That's all I remember. Wacky, no? And now it's time for me to retire for the night! In the meantime, if you've anything to suggest in the way of analysis, ah'm list'nin'. 😉

-posted by Wes | 5:23 am | Comments (0)