So Sick...

First of all, Merry belated Christmas to everyone today. I guess for some of you Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, or Happy Holidays. To quote the great AVGN, "if you have a problem with Happy Holidays, then Happy-Shut-The-Fuck-Up". It's finally winter, it's only raining for the moment, but Michigan did get it's snow last week, so it was kind of a white Christmas. Whatever, this entry is not supposed to be about Christmas, but what the season brings every year for me--disease.

I've been officially sick off my ass for the last two weeks now. I still feel pretty shitty but this is the way it goes for me every damned year. It's not even that I get sick frequently either, it's more so because I get sick so sparingly, each time I actually do get sick, it hits me like a train. Sickness for me doesn't usually hit me until about the end of the week, usually a Friday night after a long week of school or work. I guess that's when my body is most vulnerable because I mentally and physically check out. I don't just get the flu for one or two days, but it'll be a marathon of sickness lasting at least a week, two weeks. I remember being sick last year for about three weeks.

It's not just having a cough here, a sneeze there; it's more of like a flu gauntlet that I have to painstakingly survive through. It's no easy feat. It usually starts off harmless enough with a sore throat for the first few days, then it can compound into a dry cough. Somehow by the fourth or fifth day I'll develop some kind of stuffy/runny nose. After that, it's pretty much a toss up of what I might catch. Sometimes I might lose my voice, sometimes I'll get strept throat, bronchitis, an ear infection, or sometimes all of the above. It really becomes like a a spin at a roulette table comprising a laundry list of illnesses and symptoms.

I hope it doesn't land on burning penis...

Probably some of you are thinking to yourselves: "How in the hell do I stay sick so long...?"

Q: Is it a lack of antibiotics?
A: Well, I was drugged up like an addict the last week so it wasn't a lack of medicine/antibiotics. It could have been a mix of weak sauce medicine probably. I was taking a combination of Tylenol cold day and night, Nyquil, ibuprofin, penicilin as well as some Halls cough drops to suppress my sore throat and cough during the day. If there's some kind of magical medicine I haven't been taking, please recommend one.

My mom has been insistent on me taking some Triaminic, but for anyone who knows, it's basically a medicine directed more towards children and isn't as potent as medicine directed towards adults. No matter what type of symptoms I may have when I'm sick, my mom tends to insist that Triaminic will cure it all since it has supposedly worked on her in the past. It's basically some magic elixir for her; available in orange, cherry AND grape flavor. It really reminds me of Chris Rock's take on Robitussin. If you haven't heard it before, I've provided a sound byte from it below.

Q: Was I sleeping enough?
A: Probably not enough during previous times when I was sick because of university/work, but this time around I was sleeping nearly 10-12 hours and catching a few cat naps during work when possible. Despite being a sick bastard, I enjoyed the sleep regardless of how annoying it was to have a perpetually runny nose--I love sleep.

Q: Did I get my annual flu shot?
A: I don't remember ever getting an annual flu shot ever in my life; I may have when I was only a little young'in but other than that I haven't had a flu shot that I remember. My immune system is pretty good to say the least, which is why I'm able to only get sick twice a year.

Q: Is my immune system just a pushover candy-ass?
A:I guess when my immune system wants to be a fierce and mighty Spartan warrior, it can be one. On the flip side when I actually do get sick, it's as though those same Spartan warriors became a bunch of lemmings and simply fell off a cliff. Oddly enough I only get sick on average only twice per year. Once towards the beginning of winter and then another time right when winter is about to end. I guess my body can't take seasonal weather change too well. Weirdly, and thankfully, I don't get sick any other time of the year. Not even a minor cough or sore throat. No headaches either. I'm completely disease-free for about 48 of the 52 weeks in the year.

In the words of The Rock aka Dwayne Johnson, being sick can kick my 'jabroni ass'. What's a jabroni you say? Beats me, but it sounds cool. Hell yeah, I'll give you some People's Elbow sometime. It's almost new years and I'm still sick off my ass. I've been so sick it's taken me two weeks to finally finalize this post. I hope everything above sounds coherent enough. Have a *cough* Happy *sneeze* New *sniffle* Year *puke*!

Seriously, he'll layeth (that's right, LAYETH) the smacketh (yes, smacketh) DOWN, on your candy ass.

Toradora! - Review

Duration: 25 episodes, 24 minutes/episode
Genre: Romance, School Life, Slice-of-Life, Harem, Comedy

I scratch your back, you scratch mine; a fairly simple premise to this fairly recent romance anime. Toradora's plot revolves around Takasu Ryuuji and Aisaka Taiga's love woes as they try their best to draw attention to their crushes Kushieda Minori and Kitamura Yuusaku. Oddly enough and in typical romance/drama-like fashion, Ryuuji is good friends with Yuusaku while Taiga is good friends with Minori. From the clichéd foreshadowing I gave above, Ryuuji and Taiga join forces and help each other win their crush's heart over in some way or fashion. For those who have watched enough romance/drama series, one could probably figure out how the rest of the plot plays out--it is a love story after all. Just for the record, I technically didn't give out any spoilers there.

Story

Aside from the brief description of the plot above, it follows a fairly standard story similar to other slice-of-life/school life anime. The story can be outlined through several different events; all fairly typical for Japanese kids in highschool. These include the daily functions at school (e.g. class, club activities, lunch), typical special events held at school (e.g.time at the school pool, cultural festival, the field trip to Okinawa), and time spent outside of school (part-time work, summer vacation, Christmas/NewYear's break)--hence, slice-of life. Of course with every slice-of-life anime, Toradora puts its own spin on these various events, and for the most part kept me entertained; there were rarely any moments where I felt the story getting stale.

Characters

(From left to right: Aisaka Taiga, Takasu Ryuuji, Kawashima Ami, Kushieda Minori, Kitamura Yuusaku)

Aisaka Taiga: She's the cold-hearted, cold-blooded bitchy girl who has a crazy puppy dog crush on Kitamura. Despite her outward appearance of being very cold and violent, she's a very caring character you'll love towards the end of the series.

Takasu Ryuuji: Characterized as a so-called delinquent for his threatening looking eyes like his father, many people fear him for no good reason. He's a kind person who seems to have a weird obsession with cooking and cleaning. I found him to be quite different from the typical mindless/stupid harem anime protagonist. Although he can be very dense sometimes, he's very true with his feelings.

Kawashima Ami: She's the super-rich-beatiful-idol-I-have-a-summer-house character tossed in for eye candy. She doesn't really serve too much of a role, but she makes things fairly interesting along the way. Although she is a shallow person up front, she does have a personality worth looking into later on.

Kushieda Minori: Ryuuji's crush, and with good reason; she's the energetic genki character on the show who manages to put a smile on the group's faces throughout the series. She partakes in various club activities and works too many part-time jobs to count. Despite having the genki label, her character has a lot more depth and had me guessing her various moods and motives throughout.

Kitamura Yuusaku: The student council/class representative goody-two-shoes/socially awkward character of the group. I found his character to be fairly bland. Despite having his own issues later in the show, he's simply around to act weird and make Taiga a nervous wreck. He definitely has his moments. I guess he's not all bad.

Voice Acting/Sound

To be honest, there are no complaints here. I don't natively speak Japanese and currently there is no English dub recording of the show. The voices sound compelling and natural to their respective characters--nothing sounds out of place. The soundtrack really impressed me as I was expecting a fairly standard/stale sound, but there are some worthwhile tracks that evoke the right emotions at critical moments in the show.

Loved:
The Animation: It's a very pretty looking anime. J.C. Staff did a wonderful job of making all the characters and settings look vibrant and colorful. Surprisingly, the various close-ups of food made look really impressive too; almost good enough to eat. Also, if you want a lot of funny close-up pictures of Taiga, you got 'em.

The Characters: Everyone at first seem to fit well into very tight knit stereotypical roles, but are not as one-dimensional as you thought they would be. I just love this cast of characters and would like to see a season two. It's a common problem I have with slice-of-life anime, you simply just don't want them to end, but the show would jump the shark if it continued.

Blatant Ripoff: Of Starbucks, humorously called Sudoubucks. You'll just have to watch it to see it for yourself.

Hated:
Inko-chan: The show's attempt at comic relief through Ryuuji's pet bird Inko-chan. I had a hard time stomaching the various scenes with that bird. Honestly, I don't think a constipated/possibly mentally retarded bird is very funny. It's just not my cup of tea.

The Lowdown: A very refreshing romance anime that plays it safe, but doesn't at the same time. Although the ending is fairly predictable, we watch romance anime because we love the drama that ensues. It's not the end that's important, but the journey to the end.

The second opening for Toradora. Yui Horie - Silky Heart

Notes:Watched entire 25 episode series from beginning to end (CoalGuys fansub).

Music Mixhap - Blueprint III

I've been long overdue for a music review, so why not?

When Jay-Z released The Black Album he said he was going to step away from the music industry and invest more time in his other business ventures. It was a shock for many and for the most part many people didn't really believe him. Some fell for the marketing ploy and the album went triple platinum. In the end he obviously didn't retire from the music biz; after all, he ended up releasing two other albums.

For the most part, I didn't pay attention to those albums (Kingdom Come, American Gangster). I guess they weren't well advertised. Well, not well advertised enough for me to actually discover them. I'm a busy person and for those who know me, I listen to a lil' bit of everything and it's hard to keep up to date with every new album coming out especially when I'm trying to look for some new upcoming artists to listen to. Different from his previous two albums, Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 has been over-advertised to death recently so I decided to have a listen. Does it live up to its hype and meet expectations or is it an over publicized piece of Plies poo-poo?

Anyhow, on with the review...

For the most part it's a very easy album to listen to. With most rappers, Jay-Z included, they will flood their album with collaborative works featuring other artists; thus it's very single-friendly too. Nowadays artists need to produce a single-heavy album in order to sell albums--a very smart business move by Jay-Z if anything. I'm completely okay with that since I'm a fan of collaborative work since it breaks up some monotony in albums out there.

There is a problem with albums like this though as your liking of the album will definitely depend on your liking of the featured artists on the individual tracks. Despite this problem, Jay-Z's fairly lyrically substantial verses are worth listening to. I enjoyed at least 3/4 of the album which is definitely worth listen-through for any Jay-Z fan. It's not an album that overachieves with gradeur, nor is it very revolutionary in any way; Jay-Z plays it safe this time around, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Notable Tracks:

• "Empire State of Mind" (feat. Alicia Keys)
• "Already Home" (feat. KiD CuDi)
• "Young Forever" (feat. Mr. Hudson)

Worth a Listen:

• "Real As It Gets" (feat. Young Jeezy)
• "D.O.A." (Death of Auto-Tune)
• "A Star is Born" (feat. J. Cole)
• "Thank You"

Meh: (Avoid)

• "Run This Town" (feat. Kanye West & Rihanna)
• "Hate" (feat. Kanye West)

Any tracks I didn't mention are fairly mediocre; perhaps worth listening to only once but could get some getting accustomed to. Some may disagree that Run This Town shouldn't be in the Meh column, but to be honest, I don't like Rihanna too much and the beat to the song is quite annoying. If you hear closely, it's a duck quacking over and over--nice one Jay-Z. Maybe this is why mainstream rap gets a bad rep sometimes.

I'm an Old Fart. Let Me Rip...Black Friday

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving. I hope most of you were able to stuff your faces with stuffing and indulge your inner glutton--it truly is the American way. In this entry of the Old Fart series, I take a look at my past experiences with Black Friday and how it has drastically changed over the years.

For those of you who may not know, the day after Thanksgiving is designated as Black Friday. I'm not exactly sure why it's called Black Friday, but according to Wikipedia (yes, such a reputable source of information), the term has been tracked to be coined since the 1960s; describing the period in which retailers would go from being in the red (a net loss -) to being in the black (a net gain +). Largely known as the busiest shopping day of the year, stores lure in shoppers with ridiculously marked down goods and other various promos. For those in the know, Black Friday has become a culture for bargain hunters and holiday shoppers alike, hoping to save BIG $$ on their purchases. Some may also call it an early Christmas simply because they would rather keep the stuff they buy instead of gifting it off. I am definitely guilty of treating myself to too much stuff before on Black Friday.

I remember when I was growing up, the day didn't necessarily matter to me. It was simply that extra day off of school; an opportunity to sleep in and let that Thanksgiving turkey and its accompanying food from the night before settle right in my lower intestine. I was aware that there were some special sales going on since it was that week when there would be two rounds of sales advertisements in our newspaper; but there wasn't anything that stood out that made me realize how significant the day would be to me later on.

What really triggered my interest in Black Friday and shopping as a whole was the entire hype for the Tickle-Me-Elmo toy from awhile back. It was the very first of the 'Tickle-Me' series of Sesame Street toys. I suppose no one had ever seen a toy like that before. My family was looking to buy one for my baby brother at the time. Back then, it was THE toy to have. You just couldn't get anything else for your child that Christmas that would be comparable to it. Although my brother was only a few months old, we exhausted ourselves looking for it that holiday season. In the end, we got him a Tickle-Me Big Bird--highly inferior to the grand poobah Tickle-Me Elmo. My brother at that age could barely distinguish formula from breast milk let along why Big Bird sucked compared to Elmo.

No wonder people were so crazy about Elmo. He's just too damned cute...too..much..cute

Ever since that crazy hyped-up holiday season, I have been enamored with Black Friday and shopping in general. Every weekend on Sunday would be kind of a mini holiday for me because I would get an opportunity to check the weekly sales ads. Sure, it doesn't seem very exciting, but it was the only other colorful piece of media that would keep me amused other than TV--and the occasional Dr. Seuss book.

"Oh hell no I'm not eating those green eggs and ham!" One of my favorite books of all time.

Anyways, once I began to get an income either through an allowance or through part-time work, I started to really pay attention to sales on Black Friday. It would be the opportunity to cash in on those early-bird specials that only the highly-motivated and borderline crazy bargain hunters have been raving for months. I would always be anticipating that extra bundle of sales ads distributed on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I would circle the things I wanted most and then made lists out to prioritize which store I would go to first, second, and whatever stores later in the day if need be--call it the shopping route of champions (uggh that sounded really lame, but bear with me). I didn't really partake in an actual Black Friday-early-morning stakeout until high school when I had a car. My parents never really saw the fun in waiting in line outside of Best Buy at 3am in sometimes blistering cold weather to get some cheap DVDs or a TV that they really didn't need. It really was a holiday for the passionate bargain shopper. I felt like I was a part of some exclusive club of shoppers who were given the privilege to buy stuff at ridiculous markdown prices.
Some of my favorite memories from Black Friday include my first early-morning stakeout outside of an ABC Warehouse (a local electronics wholesale retailer), and getting a really super cheap all-in-one HP inkjet printer, getting a cheap Microsoft wireless mouse from CompUSA, and picking up a few bargain video games from Circuit City. It was a grand time for the crazy bargain hunter in me.

This year I definitely noticed some changes with Black Friday. Something didn't feel right about it. In light of things such as the Internet, shopping has become easier for people since they don't have to make the trek outside to the stores to get what they want; they can simply buy it online simply with a few clicks and have it shipped to their house in a matter of a few days. Improvements with logistical infrastructure has revolutionized the way we shop nowadays, and I certainly don't like it too much. Even a simple search on google for Black Friday or an occasional visit to your favorite retailers' website will often bring up the upcoming Black Friday ad scans days, even weeks in advance for you to outline and plan your shopping terror. The exclusive club of shoppers that I previously thought I was a part of was gone now that most people can find an excellent deal on an item simply by sitting on their ass the entire day refreshing/snooping the pages on slickdeals.net or bfads.net. Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that if I were to find an excellent bargain this year, it wasn't going to be in stores.

What happened to the entire experience of Black Friday? Are there still people out there camping at 11pm outside of Best Buy? Are there still groups of people selling hand warmers to those freezing their butts off for not bundling up? Where are those kids who are standing in line in place of their parents while they stay warm inside the car? Are there still cheaply xeroxed 'vouchers' for the people who are in line first to grab their item of choice? Are those same people with those vouchers selling them to the people later in line simply to make a quick profit? Where's that crazed man with a map of the store planning his route through the store to pick up everything he wanted? Is that crazed man hiding his items in some discrete place so he can buy it later? Do I still need to fill out and mail those painstaking and demanding rebate forms to actually get my bargain deal? These were some of the questions I had this year while sitting at home on my ass refreshing online retailer pages.

Don't get me wrong, this Black Friday I ended up sitting on my ass checking out video game deals on CheapassGamer and constantly refreshed the 'Game Deals' page on Amazon to catch the next Lightning Deal. There were simply more deals to be had online than at the in-store retailers. For the most part I didn't have to worry about sales tax and shipping was more often times than not free since I was buying mostly from Buy.com or Amazon. The issue of getting my items in a timely matter didn't factor in since I'm perfectly okay with getting stuff later; after all, Christmas isn't around for another few weeks.

One of the few items I pounced on was the PS3 bundle (with KillZone 2 and InFamous) I've been way long overdue for one.

In retrospect, the way things were done on Black Fridays past were more inefficient, less convenient, and probably didn't offer the best prices for consumers; yet I still yearn for those days when I would join in with the people camping outside in line to get their cheap big screen TV and whatnot. Even in the last few years, the entire hype of Black Friday and the official beginning of the holiday shopping season has fabricated a whole new shopping holiday: Cyber Monday. Don't even let me get started on Cyber Monday. Oi.