( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

I'd suspended Postcrossing for college, so I was all too happy to start it up again when I wasn't homicidal. And I really enjoy it! So far I've only thoroughly traded 7 [since my birthday], but they're pretty much all awesome. 8D I do have a few favourite picks, though:

( 3xPostcards Received )

I've sent out a bunch meself but here are the ones I find moar interesting:

( 3xPostcards Sent: 1 scrapped, 2 sad animals quickly becoming a theme. )

Man, I really like Postcrossing. It's so horrifically maudlin but brilliant. I've got another 'Sad Animal' in transit, so when it gets there, I'll be sure to post it too. Much to its chagrin, probably.

EDIT: I must mention that Postcrossing has a great image sorting system now - so you can check out my page for the images of all the postcards I've sent and gotten this year if you'd like! I have the received ones from last year uploaded, but I can't backlog the ones I sent. I look forward to a nice, complete archive for this year though. ::rubs hands together::

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

...from what I saw in detailed character customisation and a little bit of test-playing.

Perspective, stats:
- Owned Sims since first iteration, played through most of the expansions from 1 to 2.
- CC [custom concent] -user late in Sims 2
- Character and interaction focused, not so much on building and decor.
- All this from my own experience, my own opinion, put as fairly as I can manage.

I hadn't meant to buy Sims 3, and thought to perhaps wait till another expansion pack, but curiousity got the better of me and I went to check reviews out. After that, I was curious, and since I was going to get it sooner or later... silencestation and I got it sooner. and it was cheaper than I'd thought! I did have to drag silencestation from the deluxe edition with the plumbob usb drive though... but nevertheless, it got me my lifetime membership at Gamescore [not too hard after buying the Guitar Hero WT Band set] so here we are.

Brief, initial thoughts about Sims 3, largely for Character Creation, Interaction and general Game Mechanics, not building and decor. Bullet points for easy reading:

( Character Customisation )

( Character Traits and Interaction )

( Game Mechanics )

Probably how best to enjoy Sims 3:
- Keep in mind the base game of Sims 2, not Sims 2 with all the expansions and the CC. CC took years to develop and flourish. Of course EA is gonna wanna earn money with expansions. A much fairer comparison.
- Don't expect CC to come out any time soon. Though TSR is developing a workshop and the various CC sites have started piecing the meshes, Sims 2 CC took years to get to the level they are now. With the colour customisability of Sims 3 it'll probably take longer.
- Remember that it's going to have expansion packs and don't expect your funny-area whoo hoos and your hot tubs and what not. Those were all from expansion packs, if you remember right.
- Read the manual. So many things people are going nuts about have you prepped for it in the manual [and they tend to miss out how to fix those self-perceived 'problems' by reading the manual too]. It builds what to expect.
- Don't play it if you like your Sims super-modelesque and thin. Play it if you like soft, fleshed-out Renaissance women. Else you'll have spent 50+ for no real reason and you'll just want to bitch about it even though I warned you~

So - Rock Band! How the story starts is silencestation waiting forever before caving to what will relieve her of stalking Guitar Freaks in the arcades for them to develop something that will relieve me of stalking Percussion Freaks in the arcades. Is Konami not the early king of rhythm games? Nay, nay Konami is. Anyway, yes, the story's origins are sordid and involve a long period of youth, some DDR mats and complaining neighbours, the sissies. However, the story is that the main events started proper when I submitted a hasty preorder to one of the local, more updated game shops [who bother to give me the time of the day even though I'm only a little taller than their counter] for Guitar Hero World Tour. There the hongbao money was vanished and then I scoffed at their attempt to help us carry it down, hauling it out and down escalators.

There are various reasons why we bought [and still stick with] Guitar Hero instruments, but there are also various reasons - and it is the truth that - we have long since almost permanently switched to playing Rock Band 2. Before I go into stuff that are more boring than what I'm going to talk about...hay look at my Rock Bands! 8D

First, probably [unfortunately] my favourite and currently main band [and I love the name that silencestation came up with]:



( Members and Stats )

Our first 'base' band, a concept we've always liked [did I mention that silencestation came up with this? you can safely assume this for everything I guess]:



( Members and Stats )

Then the cute girl band comprising of chocolate and canday:



( Members and Stats )

Whee!!!1111 Now that all the frivolous things are done with, I'll just put some thoughts about Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 [the most equitable versions] here...

( I guess this kinda counts as a game review. )

Okay that's all. 8D Excuse me while I run back to my RB Taking Back Sunday DLC!

As my tweets show, my fingers were idle during a hair-cutting/dying session, but my hair is back to its cropped short, streaked self. I've had too much hair hanging around my neck for a long time - long enough for a ponytail again, which I abhore - so not only is it good that once more it is breezy around my neck, my hair is all ready for summer in technicolour. I am now resigned to actually bothering about what I wear [okay, so it's massively unlikely I'm going to break out of my t-shirt and jeans cycle, but still] because otherwise my hair is too cool for me.

Alright so it doesn't look much different from the previous time I did the streak, but hey, I'm a creature of habit and 'if it's not borked, don't bork it'. It is, however, a little longer for a new purpose. But before I get to the final product, allow me to document how interestingly gold my hair gets after bleaching [the picture is ghetto handphoney, but nevertheless the closest I can get]: ( gold streak. )

( red racing stripe, default. )

If you've read my previous entries re: my hair you wil realise that I am always forcing my unwilling hairdresser to slice more of my hair off than she intends to [she's experienced undue influence, the last two times I've seen her from the last time she had red streaked ringlets her hair had increasingly shortened and she now has a blunt cut sloping fringe mirroring my side-part and fringe, dyed fully in a dull red]. This time I kinda did [in a 'more off the sides and back, please?'] but I warned her various times to leave the fringe long. Not only for the buck-banging, but really also because I am old now, and sometimes I feel like being a bit more 'cool' than 'emo', so this is my hair's new purpose:

( red racing stripe, godfather. )

So there we go. I'm done making a big deal of my once-a-year hairdye and once-a-summer haircut. 8D

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

Anyway, my birthday. So full of win-type wonderful. I stayed up with silencestation who was obsessively finishing up my gifts that I had berated her the upteenth time not to kill herself over [though a good part of it was me selfish fault, since she asked 'option A or B' and I said 'gosh I can't make up my mind, both? 8DDDD'], to finish this up:

( inking progression... )

Until Djinn was completely out of it and done, so after rudimentary breakfast off to bed until a few hours later. Got up just in time to have the Dad pop by with deliriously $12 cake, that has a strangely long and complicated story of Djinn not revealing what's on it until the day of my birthday itself. Long story short, I had no idea what was on it, and Djinn was being self-derogatory as per usual so I don't trust a fucking word she says.



So lovely and adorable it's mad.. I spent probably 15 straight minutes bashing Djinn's head in until she stopped complaining about it so I'm just reiterating the long-short here.

Past that it was just a lot of cooking, as far as I could remember: brining, soaking, washing, de-scaling, etc… And then it was dinner. The light over the dining table had blown, so the Dad moved the table outwards towards the lit area of the living room – a little off the area of the telly, where Man U was playing Arsenal at home at 7.40pm. I was craning my head over as I poured the sparkling juice, because of my now not-so-recent revelations that I am alcohol-intolerant…

( Yay seaaaafood! )

After dinner the dad dutifully washed up, while - get this, Djinn and I sat there in front of the telly gaping while Man U boringly inched closer to wrapping up the English Premier League title. My dad passed by, sat down, got bored and went away. He came back a while later, looked over, clucked his tongue about how the match must suck because there no goals at all [we conclusively agreed, though still not peeling our eyes from the screen] and then went to play with the cat. He was kind enough to agree to cake-time after the match. In the meantime, we went crazy over the crappy footage, and my dad went downstairs to buy a newspaper and retrieve the mail [I got three postcards: GB-75134, PT-82389 and NL-164079! Got a bunny one the day before, too.]

On another note, my presents were a little complicated on the Djinn side – largely that she couldn't give 'em to me in front of the Dad [no, not like that] so when we went to pick up the Transformers Encore Big Cassette Mission Set 1 we also delightedly picked up a nice discounted bundle of TFA Blurr and Swindle [I paid for the Mission Set and she paid for the TFA] so the TFA made it as her present to me in front of the Dad.



My cake and prezzies. TFA bundle in that big spotted bag over there, the plaid with the Chinese from me Dad, and the last one ostensibly from me Dad's girlfriend [which was really dictated by me Dad]. Oh, and my Guitar Hero Les Paul says hello on the left.

( The big 2-0! Or the big two candles. Imagine that. A bunch of you have known me since I was 12. Most of you have known me since I was 14. Scary, huh? )

So I did wish for something as retarded as the last one I wished for, which essentially means it will not come true. The spoils of the day were awesome, at least:

( It's knowing and waiting, and knowing is half the battle. )

I'm going to have a time-warp interval a bit in the future just to mention that catatonic_cats is some kind of weirdo who has this totally unwarranted affection for my handsome self and was rebellious enough to send me not only all the blank ACEO cards I told her not to, but also sent me some lovely paint/tea/ink-stained ones, and it all came with this box with pretty dangling things.

( Seriously man! What is this?!?!?! )

Back to the 16th now. When the Dad went away full and satisfied and cheery about 12 dollar cake [he made off with almost 1/2 of it] Djinn and I kinda digested for a while and then proceeded on to get to Djinn's Real Gifts^TM.

Her real gifts were, and are, her gift of writing. ::dodges some wailing and unhappy swipes:: You will not remember that last year, she filled up a bunch of flash cards that one of my weirdest friends arrrghigiveup gave me with gay haiku. When we toddled about in Liang Court's Kinokuniya a few days before my birthday, we sighted them and she asked, "would you like haikus of Option A or Option B?" and I was like "man, I dunno…both? 8D" [::shifty eyed rephrasal::] Well, she took me seriously and she regretted it [recap top of entry anecdote].



4 different pen colours. Three days of writing. Two fandoms/pairings. A night of penning. 75+129=204 haikus.
That's what's in these things. And they both moved me to tears.

I don't cry. I particularly do not cry over writing. In fact, I am hardly impressed by writing. I avoid fanfiction and most sorts of 'serious writing' posted online because more often than not I sit down, read and start feeling so embarrassed for the writer that I can't focus on reading the words anymore. Often I rarely feel. I did not feel particularly sad when I read both of these [well, technically all of these]. But out of nowhere – I wept at the end. [Just like the last one…Do I see a trend here? Moving Haikus^TM?] Very strange! But here, I can't resist some excerpts even though you won't know what's going on anyway:

( From the black kitten… )

( And from the blue bird… )

Wow, it was really hard not to put everything there! They all fit into a Meiji Meltykiss box, which we bought on the same day we bought the flash cards.

Oh, you know Djinn, that wasn't all. First there was this:

( The image on my cake! )

And then there was this:



Which in my opinion is just really crazy beautiful. I was literally struck speechless.

And the full image is here in an incredibly romantic but also a very uh homoerotic [understatement] NSFW fashion. I've got it in a hard card on my table that I flip over to my cake image whenever my dad is in the house. 8D

So! That really about concludes it, I really could not think of anything better. It was pretty much bestest day ever, again. You know what, I really don't know what I've done to deserve this. Do I just inexplicably have some kind of weird good karma magnet or something? silencestation is just the most brilliant person in the world to me and I have her waiting me hand and foot [well, not really, but she's liek my artsy bitch or something]. Then I have so many of you out there who are just so strangely nice to me, nice beyond words, so…so awesome to me. I don't get it! But thank you so tremendously much! There are no words to describe, like I said, only lots of flailing and adoration.

A few days later we went to the Bird Park to test my lens [under the staunch insistence of my dad, too] so you can expect some spam coming from that sometime soon. But really, everybody, thank you.

Second last dental session! I am gleeful and actually eager to go back. Not so much the 'finishing up goddamn!!!' business but more of the 'wow, this temporary crown is huge, like an acrylic elephant cemented upon my leper of a tooth.' Today's soundtrack was The Whitlams and my tooth was - as expected after I researched about it - ground down with guess what A DRILL. It's supposed to be shaped like this: /\/\ but ended up being kinda more (\/\. My tongue was very eager to get away from burrs - the lady with the vacuum-tongue-holder-finangle found it very cooperative. I was bleeding slightly today because of all the sanding goin' down and my gum worn away for the crown, but I am manly and I did not notice until I was told to rinse.

The moulding was tragic. She applied some caulk-like release substance and pressed down a putrid yellow putty onto my teeth, dislodging it with impressive might later when it set. She aggressively slid on another bridge of putty onto my upper teeth that was green with a menthol flava. And then she got some of the mould on me lower lip, and asked for some mystifying 'Vaslean on gauze.' It was only when I saw her assistant clearly that I found out it was Vaseline, of which from youth I have pronounced as Vhas-Sel-Lean and I'm fairly sure that everyone must pronounce it differently now. So now I have some aggressively sticky remnants of cement on my lip, and a massive blotch of temporary acrylic affixed rudimentarily to my tooth.

And yes birthday post will be forthcoming, I just had to get this down. 8D

Also, just so some people who will probably stop by sometime and wonder why they haven't heard from me via their mass-message sending: if you were, at any point of time, a good hobby-unrelated RL-acquainted friend of mine, so much so that I wrangled time out for you during my college term of which I am always dead to mankind just to meet you for a couple of hours, only to have you skip out on me in the very last minute without so much as a tone of regret just because you wanted to continue chatting with someone else or be completely AWOL even after SMSes and calls - please don't expect me to flip the 'hullo friend' switch on again like nothing happened. I usually don't harp on grudges forever, but I'm going to be resentful for a good long time.

The 16th of May was some kind of fucking awesome! Why:
- Loads of sweethearts wishing me happy birthday. Couldn't stop grinning.
- Did not struggle with a long restaurant queue [with potentially crappy food and huge bill] - instead helping out to cook and later devour a bunch of seafood. Mrrrr scallops.
- Cake was literally half discounted because I wrote them a long, disappointed complaint letter for the terrible way they did silencestation's cake. Slightly more upscale chocolate tiramisu cake with custom top graphic at $12 is no joke. 8D
- Man U put the BPL title battle to rest.
- Gifts other than Djinn's were deliriously practical!
- Finished up some cool lineart experimentation.
- Three freaking postcards arrived on that very day, and a super-cute one the day before!

Only downside:
- Damn, twenty already!

Upside to only downside:
- Everyone who've known me [that's quite a few of you!] since my early teenage days on my flist go "Oh my god twenty already?!?!?!"

Late and I do apologise - the immense amounts of fun I had on my birthday completely knocked me out, and I had not yet recovered well enough to be properly delirious about it. So please allow me to belatedly thank:

- silencestation who fed me and entertained me and surprised me and made me happier than I ever deserved and will ever deserve, as per usual. ♥
- The Dad, who sent a strangely hilarious text message the night before and really astonished me with practicality. 8D
- scrunge, who really should not stress out about it and thank you so much for keeping my iconspace so aliieeeeev.
- vox_veritas, my long-time buddy, who sent an early lurvin' text message from all her hunks [guess that's where Rey fits in too!] and cute chicks.
- ruthieangel, who certainly made my day everywhere with her supersweet and big-fonted happy birthday messages! 8DD
- allende, who left me a darling birthday comment in my previous post!
- catatonic_cats, who is really still too nice to me. I don't understand nor deserve it!
- arrrghigiveup, who sent a belated message ahaha loser 8D
- Lydia, who caught me online for a lovely chat.
- All of my Gaia babes, of whom I've already thanked in the relevant places. The heartfelt genuine adoration of my fine self and the digital gifts bestowed touched me more than they know.
- Anyone I left out, please let me know so I can grovel madly. orz

Of course, post concerning this sort of thing coming up soon. I just tested out one of my gifts today and it was pretty cool!

Also, I got a lava lamp. 8DD