I recently signed up with Netflix, which is a company that does DVD rentals by mail. You sign up for their basic service and you get to rent three DVDs at a time. No due dates, and you just send the movies back when you’re done. Pretty good deal for twenty bucks a month. Now that I’ve explained all that, and done my little bit to promote the company, let me explain the reason for this particular little log entry.

I liken it to the Matrix in the world-within-a-world type concept, but the truth is that this was a little bit above and beyond your typical science-fiction flick. In fact, it was pretty much a complete and utter mindfuck. No wonder my ex-wife loved this movie, it’s right up her alley. And I don’t mean that in an insulting sense, she just tended to embrace intelligently written movies. I guess this means I’d better keep an eye out for the other films I avoided while we were together. Including Pi and maybe I’ll even try watching some of the thrillers she liked. For the moment, though, I’m just going to sort of sit here and recollect my thoughts…

… now where did I put my thoughts?

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Recently, I decided to alter the programming on Radio Free WNOHGB. This came after there was some email furor over the whole decision to start varying the five o’clock hour. It used to be the James Darren hour, then I tried to fit an hour of Robin Williams Live at the Met. But it was always four hours of anime in the morning, an hour of all domestic stuff, four hours of J-Pop in the afternoon (when I usually woke up), an hour of James Darren, Frank Sinatra, or Tony Bennett, and then for fourteen hours it was pretty much anything and everything I had in my archive. It made for a slightly chaotic schedule, but people seemed to enjoy it. However, when I removed the James Darren & Friends hour, I got feedback. Negative feedback. Amazing, since I didn’t get a whole lot of feedback when I ran the station in the beginning, or up until then. So, I was making slight changes and adjustments to the lists, but I never switched the times around. Suddenly, one list drops off the face of the earth and then I get emails.

Wow.

Anyway, as I was saying, I shook the schedule up and created twelve distinctly different playlists to run throughout the day, giving a little more variety and just trying to give listeners a better understanding of what I consider to be good music. While I was going through and recataloguing everything, I noticed something. I had over 11 hours of J-Pop in my archive (live365 only gives me 1.1 gigs). So since I had this five hour hole in my schedule from 2am to 7am, I decided that I was going to take advantage of that and run a playlist I called J-Pop After Midnight from 1am until 7am. It was original a one hour show, but then I just ran out of stuff to play. Pretty much, my schedule from midnight goes like this:

0000 to 0100: Midnight Domestic Hour
0100 to 0700: J-Pop After Midnight
0700 to 0800: Waking Up with Dennis Miller
0800 to 1000: Morning Anime Show (Opening Songs)
1000 to 1100: The Comedy Hour
1200 to 1300: Lunchtime Domestic Hour
1300 to 1500: J-Pop in the Afternoon
1500 to 1700: Afternoon Anime Show (Ending Songs)
1700 to 1800: The John Williams Hour
1800 to 2000: The Three Crooners (Darren, Sinatra, and Bennett)
2000 to 0000: The Anything-Goes School of Music

The playlist titles are just on-the-fly things I came up with, but it’s a pretty accurate cross-section of what I like to listen to at any given moment. At 12 midnight and 12 noon, listeners are treated to a slim selection of tunes put out here in America. It’s kind of like a cleaning of the pallette before we dive back into the Japanese groove. I inserted Dennis Miller, America’s Favorite Sarcasmoblaster right befor ethe morning show, and I split all the anime tunes up into opening songs and closing songs, since most people have a preference for a particular type of song they like to listen to. Some people like Kenshin’s opening song, but hate the ending song. I’m of a similiar disposition. And the interesting thing is, that most of the lists are set to randomly shuffle everytime it gets played. So no show is the same every day, with the exception of the domestic stuff. That’s pretty much going to stay the same list, without shuffling. Since I put these new lists into motion on Friday night, I hadn’t really had much opportunity to sit down and listen to my adjustment. Now that I’m sitting here and listening to the show, I’m thinking that it was a pretty fucking brilliant idea to have 6 hours of straight J-Pop. Why? For some reason, the best time for me to listen to J-Pop is at night. I don’t know why, but it just seems like I love listening to it while I’m feeling the creative juices flow, and that happens to be at night. When I’m at work, I usually just have my playlist set to random and I fast-forward through most of the anime tracks. Also, I uploaded a whole mess of new stuff from some of my favorite artists, including Utada Hikaru and aiko. aiko went and slipped a new single by me, naughty girl! Grabbed that right before Audiogalaxy got hamstrung by the all-powerful anal retentive RIAA. Let’s hear it for facist litigation!

I think I’ll just groove to J-Pop for a little while longer, before I decide to collapse into bed.

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Inu Yasha rules. If you liked Ranma, Inu Yasha is definitely up your alley.

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At my birthday dinner, I was able to talk to three of the four people going with me. This is Dave, Mark, and Jody. Todd was working that night, so I had to speak to him at a later date and time. But in preparation of getting there, we have to coordinate our efforts. For the most part, I hate driving in a caravan formation. I like everyone in my car, driving down all together and thereby enjoying the trip down without it having to seem disjointed. This year, however, it’ll be Jody and I driving, with Dave and Mark coming with me and Todd going with Jody. That’s kind of a first, since every year since 96, Todd has always ridden with me. If you’ll recall either of the Anime Expo travel logs I’ve posted here on my livejournal back in April, I think you could come to understand the magnitude or level of planning I must dump into it. I can’t put enough emphasis upon the stress factor that goes along with getting five guys to work together as a team. Shit, Anime Expo might actually be considered a team sport, given the complex nature of communication, not to mention lighting a fire under Mark’s ass to actually get anything done. With that said, the plans have been put into play. I’ve taking care of my car, Jody’s got his plans with his. Team Cochrane is meeting at my place, where everyone is going to pile into my green machine and then we head over to Todd’s where Team James will be ready to rock. Once we have both cars ready to go, we pop in the musical selections done up by our respective navigators and we make for Highway 85 to US-101 to CA 152 over to I-5.

Interstate 5 is a long stretch of highway that’s four lanes and runs from Seattle to San Diego. It’s pretty straight, too. This is an excellent place for cars to figure out where their speed governors kick in. I found out back in 2000 that it kicks in at about 131-132mph. I remember accelerating and then suddenly it was like I hit this plateau and I couldn’t go any faster. I practically forced the pedal through the floorboard, but she wouldn’t go. I had no idea what had happened at the time, to be honest. I just recall feeling very disappointed with the performance of the car.

Anyway, back to the plan. What’s still left to do? I still have yet to change the oil and wash the car. I’m planning on changing the oil sometime this week and then I’ll wash the car Tuesday before we leave Wednesday morning the 3rd. I’ll posting daily news on the plans, and then when I get back, I’ll have to write up the travel log.

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I bought a Sony PlayStation way back in mid-1995, with a couple of games. Prior to that I owned the Sega Master System (SMS), the original 8-bit Nintendo, then an SNES. When I bought the PSX, it was like stepping into a whole other world for me as far as console gaming was concerned. As with the other consoles, I always loved and enjoyed the baseball games they made. With the Nintendo, I couldn’t get enough of the Nintendo-released Baseball(tm), or R.B.I Baseball, or Bases Loaded. For the SNES, it was Ken Griffey Baseball. So for the PlayStation, I had one choice: Triple Play Baseball ‘97. It came out just before spring training in 1996, and I loved it to death. Todd used to play this one game called Baseball All-Stars, and it had this option to create your own players. TPB did the same thing, and it captured the whole arcade feel that some of the baseball games for the PC had lost. The PC games tended to be a little more clinical than fun, often just being fantasy league simulators with the option of watching full games played out, like Baseball Mogul.

TPB 97 was followed by 98. 98’s version improved several features but retained most of the game that I loved. 99 was the same thing, and 2000 was amazing. Then, in 01, things started to suck. 2002 I didn’t even bother buying, as it had taken it to moving a cursor around this stupid little box in order to get a proper hit. You couldn’t even be bothered with the feel of actually swinging the bat anymore, not the way I was used to. In the other games, you moved the directional pad a certain way, you swung the bat and off you went. Now, with the newer games, you must move your bat into position and then swing, instead of changing bat position on the fly. I felt too removed from the gameplay for it to be enjoyed.

Now that I have a PS2, I’ve been looking for a decent baseball game to play. I bought the 2002 TPB but it blew chunks, so I traded it back in for store credit and I picked up High Heat Baseball 2003. Everything that Triple Play lost, High Heat made up for. Gone is the stupid cursor, and they enhanced the aftertouch on pitching to make those curves a little curvier, or the knuckleball almost insanely wicked. I love this game, it just returned to me all the cool features I loved about all my early baseball games. Also, it does allow me to create players, so now I have this roster of players made up of nothing but anime characters!

I’m taking this team to the series!

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For some reason, I’ve always been of a particular belief that one’s birthday is supposed to be something of a wonderful day. When I say wonderful, I mean in the sense that perhaps there’s a great expectation on the outcome of the day. Something to look forward to, it’s drilled into you as a kid. Your birthday is like Christmas Junior on the calendar, though you’re the only one getting presents. While I don’t judge how good a birthday is by the material aspect, I did feel somewhat disappointed. I didn’t do anything except lay around and watching movies, chatted online for a bit. I wrote a little bit, too. But that was it until dinner.

I had to schedule my own birthday party this year. A dinner at my favorite restaurant, with my mother and some friends. My best friend couldn’t come because he was working, and I was pretty disappointed by that. My own grandmother didn’t even go, all because she doesn’t like Japanese food. I felt hurt by that, not because of my choice in food, but because I thought maybe she’d give in because it was my birthday. I guess love has it’s limits, a lesson I’ve learned time and time again, but I never understood completely. Because of that action, I think it just reset the whole night for me. I mean, she’s pretty important to me, so it said a lot when she decided to stay home and not spend time with me. If my father knew, he would be very pissed off, but I just feel rather hurt by it.

I’m sure you wouldn’t know it to see me over there, I think I held myself admirably, but I just couldn’t get over it. I even extended the night by going to pick up Todd from work and going to go see The Bourne Identity. Good movie, by the way, highly recommended. Right now, I still feel the need to want to go out and have some fun, somewhere. It’s too bad Todd and Jody had to go home, but it is a weeknight and they both have work tomorrow. I guess I’m cursed out of a proper social life with my working weekends and having the week generally free. None of my friends are of such a schedule, and that makes going out a little tougher. I live with my grandmother, who’s pushing 80, and my mother… both of them aren’t exactly what I call active. I guess this is why I try to play DDR everyday, as much as possible. I’m getting out, and I’m exercising. I never come home without feeling as though I just ran a marathon, but it feels good to do that. I get a lot of frustration out of my system by doing that.

Tonight, though, I got a visit from a friend of mine who lives pretty far away up in San Mateo. John was able to make it down and spend time, even though it was for a mere hour, I still felt very happy by his making the trip down through rush hour traffic on 101 and even though he got lost, he still made it. He had 30 minutes notice, but he came. It gave me a little pause to really think about that whole friendship thing. John and I hardly spend time together, not every day or even every month at times, but when we do talk, we just sort of pick up from where we left off, y’know? I don’t think I’ve ever heard him get upset with me once for going a long time between chats. Same with Todd, Jody, Robert, Dave, Mark, Karen, Mike… except one.

Now this isn’t to say that everyone is the same. Others might have a different view of friendship, different definitions of what friends mean to them. This is something I’ve been trying to understand, lately. John’s act made me realize about something. So, I need to take some time and figure out what I’m going to do about that one person. I have the middle of the week free, but she doesn’t. Makes things pretty difficult, especially if I’m going to do what I want to do. But we’ll see. I’m sure this’ll pull it all together. This is going to be the one thing I know that’ll help things between us.

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Unlike others, I tend to think of my birthday as the most appropriate time to set my resolutions for the coming year. I mean, this is the beginning of a true new year for me. New Year’s is a little too cut and dry, and to be honest, I’m just not as introspective on New Year’s as I am for my birthday. Therefore, as I’ve come to understand what I want this year, I have written down online here for everyone to see, what I intend to do.

I, Zefram Cochrane, resolve to:

1) Have the very best time I can at Anime Expo 2002.

2) Continue losing weight and watching my diet.

3) Mange my money enough to have a savings account I can be proud of.

4) Work as hard as possible to get into a school in Tokyo.

5) Avoid emotional entanglements.

6) Complete my current creative project before I leave the country.

I can try and explain what I mean by each, of course. The first and second one is pretty explanatory. I’ve already begun losing a couple of inches off my waist. My goal here is to be able to fit in a damn coach seat for the long almost-day-long flight to Japan. The third resolution is to ensure that I’ll have enough money to fall back on, and use it for the living expenses part of my stay in Japan, which leads to the fourth resolution pretty nicely.

Number five is a strong one. I cannot afford any kind of relationship beyond intimate friendship. I have a personal goal I need to tend to, and that’s paramount as of right now. This is pretty important, and a resolution that’ll be difficult, as I am very aware of the fact that I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, but so far so good. Ever since Marla, I’ve been emotionally free for almost six months, a new record since Stephanie left me. I definitely need to continue on by myself, so that I can accomplish this and then maybe I can work on that whole “shiawase” concept everyone is finding these days. My extended thoughts on this could be the subject of another livejournal entry, I’m sure.

The sixth resolution is pretty important, too. I have this book I’m writing, and I’ve finally found a good outlet for it. Not to mention, someone who’s actually interested in seeing this project to fruition and able to technically advise me along the way to make sure that I’m writing accurately on that level. This is good, as it’s provided me with inspiration to continue instead of falling short and losing interest. I hope, this time, I’ll be able to see this one through, because so far it seems like it’s going pretty good.

Anyway, there we have it. I don’t believe that this is an unreasonable list of resolutions. I’ll see what happens in a year, and try and make sure I accomplish as many as possible.

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In other words, happy birthday to me. It finally arrived! You what this means, right? My AX trip is right around the corner! WOOHOO!

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All of this angsting over turning one year older, and I’m already feeling the sense of complete and utter ridiculousness over hemming about it. So I’m turning another year older, I’m only going to be 26, it’s not like I’m turning 27. I’ll worry about that next year, when (hopefully) I’ll be in another country. Gah, I am starting to turn old, and I’ll tell you exactly why this realization keeps smacking me in the head.

1) I’m beginning to treat younger people with disdain. It’s true. Some of the one who obviously have their head up their ass seem to keep finding me. It would appear that I have become part of the social consciousness. Those young whippersnappers need to seriously catch a clue or two, like I did when I was their age.

2) I have officially noticed how much closer I am to thirty than I was when I was about to turn 25. Four more years and I’ll be a bona fide old person. I’m starting to have a mini-midlife crisis over here.

3) Much as number one is prevalent, I constantly surround myself with young ones to make myself feel less old. Though I do have some older friends, but maybe just one or two. Most of my friends are ages 19-24. As long as I avoid questions like, “So, where were you when Challenger exploded?” I’ll be all right.

Uh, anyway, I actually looking forward to tomorrow. I’m going to go down to the local Japanese restaurant with my friends and family, and have a little get-together. There were no formal invitations sent out, but I did make contact with everyone I want there. Some are coming, some are not, but I don’t care because I’m still going to have fun. Good food and good company, what more can one ask for?

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That host modification form I mentioned earlier I mailed in before I typed my little rant. When I went back to my email to check it once before I logged out, the completion of my changes were DONE. Okay, I take back all the crap I said about Verisign. One good thing, if you work the system with everything formatted properly, they’re fucking FAST.

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