Skin is made up stratified, keratinizing squamous epithelium. Normally, basal cells are basaloid, with nuclei and other organelles. These nuclei and organelles, specially the nuclei, are bluish (basophilic). Their job is to create keratin that will act as a protective layer over the topmost layer of skin. As the epithelium matures, the cells migrate into higher levels and begin to lose their organelles and nuclei, becoming pinker and pinker (more eosinophilic) all the while.
So finding well-differentiated squamous cells carcinoma is a matter of finding a loss of that specific organization. The way I think of it is "look for pink where it's not supposed to be". Dysplastic cells start making keratin and maturing way faster than they should, or they refuse to mature as they rise into higher epithelial levels. Or both. Or maybe I just don't know enough about the process yet.
Regardless, the most obvious examples of well-differentiated have islands of keratin coated with immature, dysplastic cells. They look very pretty, and old pathologists probably would agree with me because they're called "keratin pearls".
Against my better judgment, I purchased a full-price copy of World of Final Fantasyshortly after it came out. Most Square Enix games I've played in the last few years have been crushing disappointments, but I guess old habits die hard. For better or for worse, my hindbrain associates Square with games I enjoy. I briefly considered buying Deus Ex: Manking Divided even though I know it's not the kind of game I like to play. It was published by Square Enix, apparently.
The only logical, if unflattering, explanation is that I'm not as immune to bitter brand loyalty as I like to pretend I am. For now, I'll console myself with the fact that, at least in the case of World of Final Fantasy, brand loyalty didn't lead me astray. I've not had this much fun playing a videogame since Fire Emblem: Awakening. And considering Awakening is one of my favorite games ever (Chris, I'm still gonna harass you into buying a 3DS and playing this game), that's saying something.
Much like Persona Q, World of Final Fantasy is a blatant play for long-time fans' wallets. And much like Persona Q, I was floored by how much the developers seem to have cared about making a fun game even though name alone was going to move copies.
You play as a pair of twins that. . . honestly, who cares? They travel from dungeon to dungeon, meet heroes from previous Final Fantasies, while catching classic Final Fantasy monsters like they're Pokemon. I can't even pretend to be able to judge this game with any objectivity because did you read that description?
My job makes me wish I was a better artist because things like these are worthy of watercolors, no matter how tragic they may be:
The detail never looks quite right outside a microscope
You can see a bit of gastric epithelium in the bottom part, at the center. This is a low-power view of a GIST (gastrointestinal stromal tumor), spindle pattern. It's a sarcoma of the gastrointestinal tract, originating from the interstitial cells of Cajal, which are the pacemakers of the gastrointestinal tract. At high power, they look this:
GIST, spindle cell pattern
These cells stain with DOG1 (discovered on GIST) and CD117, and other stuff I'm not remembering off the top of my head.
I don't remember if I ever mentioned it, but I have a psychology baccalaureate. At the time I chose my major, I thought it would be useful for a doctor to know as much as possible. And I also found the subject inherently interesting, though even back in the dark ages of 2007, people were warning my that a psychology baccalaureate would only prepare me to work as a cashier at Rite Aid.
I don't much use my psychology degree these days, unless you count the times I tell myself to be patient at work because we're all under a lot of stress. Mostly, I like to tell myself that I use what I learned about psychology in my writing hobby to help me with characterization. It's how I justified buying The Sociopath Next Door instead of putting an extra $12 towards my student loans payment, anyway.
Someday, if I become the next JK Rowling, I will have this book to thank for helping me write the most compelling sociopath imaginable. After all, Dr. Stout herself states that:
Conventional wisdom has it that dangerous people are attractive, and when we are drawn to sociopaths, we tend to prove out this cliché.
That being said, I very much doubt that any realistic fictional sociopath would be all that popular, at least not if they're realistic in the way this book describes. Not just because the chances of me becoming the next JK Rowling are astronomically low, but because Dr. Martha Stout writes about real people with Antisocial Personality Disorder, not the idealized Hannibal Lecters of the fictional world.
It's been a busy month for me, to put it mildly. Cancer hasn't let up, although I've been pretty lucky autopsy-wise. Only two this month, and one was neuro-only. But I've had at least one presentation a week and, during the first half of the month, had to deal with at least one colon cancer a week. I've gone out with friends only once all month, and though I had fun, I'm still bitter that I an NYC bar charged me eight dollars for cranberry juice. And not even good cranberry juice. At one point, I had a whole post ranting about it, but that was at least a week ago.
Anyway, I think I wrote a post about getting a PS4 and Final Fantasy Type-0. . . wait. Looks like I did. Mild update: Type-0's story is an abomination that hinders a promising battle system and an open map that at least tries to be engaging, unlike some other Final Fantasy games I could name. I gave up after two chapters, too many days ago to remember all the complaints I had for a blog post dedicated to the whole mess. Suffice it to say that my cautious optimism for Final Fantasy XV is more cautious than ever.
Moving on to better news, I'm really loving this game so far:
Apparently fans complained about it when it came out?
Not when it comes to this franchise. These last two weeks, I've been ruining my recent decimation of my credit card debt by setting up what I'm calling a home entertainment system. By which I mean, I bought myself a Roku TV and a PS4:
Yes, they're both on a couch
By the way, that couch is part of this number I got at IKEA. It's supposed to be attached to the couch where I sit all the time, but my mother (who claims to be a weak old women) ripped it off its hinges. It's now the world's crappiest stand. Anyway, I already pre-ordered the premium edition of Persona 5 at Amazon. They're promising an artbook, and probably a soundtrack, but I mostly want that book bag. Since Atlus' shameless lunge for my money, Persona Q, turned out to be awesome, my expectations for Persona 5 are off the charts.
The grace period on my student loans will end in forty-three days. Though my monthly payments will be relatively low since I qualify for income-based repayment, I plan to pay at least double that every month. And I owe a lot of money. A lot. I've been enjoying the last few months of no payments, by which I mean climbing out of the hole I was in during the penniless period between finishing medical school and starting residency. I paid off my lonely credit card, bought new clothes, a new winter jacket, and even a new pair of sneakers. Living that doctor life and all.
In all fairness, I've made enough that I also got to see plenty of movies at the theater. I've gone out to eat with friends and family fairly often, and most of the time I even bought desert. Usually, I default to the warmed-up chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream option, but yesterday I went for a fancy passion fruit gelato with white chocolate:
Enough ice cream for four people right there. $8.00 USD
It was good, but certainly not worth as much as I paid for it. The tangy edge to the gelato totally overwhelmed the white chocolate crust, and since there was no warm portion to the desert, I lost an entire dimension of sensation. If that makes sense. I suppose there's something to be said about the price of information. This restaurant is right down my block, and now I know that I don't think their fancy "Italian" treat is worth it. I tried their tres leches a couple of weeks back, and it didn't compare with the tres leches from another restaurant further down the block.
In a move that I'm sure any restaurant owner would appreciate, I will share some pictures of menstruating/very late secretory endometrium under the cut, though the desert and period blood are in no way connected.
Last week, no particular movie caught my eye. I got conservative with my money and decided to save the $1 dollars for the ticket, and also went to hang out with my brother and his wife. Morgan originally caught my eye, but I'm not fond of the actress in the preview (the one who played the invisible woman in the new, atrocious Fantastic Four movie). She makes me not want to watch stuff she's in for some irrational reason.
This is not quite the image I mean. When I went to see Kubo and the Two Strings at Times Square movie theater, there was a cardboard, 3D poster that almost looked tough enough to take a few people's weight a server as a bench. It had an outline of the Old West town around it. I was about to use it as a bench myself, then noticed a much cheaper cardboard sign at it's base that said something like Warning: Not a bench; will not take your weight. Since the palate of the film is so brown, that cardboard sign almost looked like a part of the proper poster. I laughed because I'd almost made a fool out of myself. Somehow, that cemented the movie in my head.
I'd planned to go to the hospital to get some work done today, but I forgot it's 9/11 and I live close enough to NYC that I saw the towers fall from my seventh grade English class. It appears there's going to be some march or parade today, and the main road to the hospital is closed. I could've gone via an alternate route, but traffic is about to get horrid, so I just went back to my basement. Since I don't have the equipment necessary in said basement, I grabbed for my DS and opened up another file for Fire Emblem: Fates.
I could've chosen to play either the Nohr or Hoshido route, especially since my DS thinks I haven't played either since this debacle, but the truth is that both those routes are depressing as hell. I like the royal siblings, and don't want to see any of them die. So back to Revelations it is, even though I won't have enough room to get everyone married without significant grinding. I've said it before (probably), but this game would have been so much better if instead of the multiple routes gimmick, they had just created one long, integrated story line.
I chose to play as male Corrin because I didn't like the voice acting for female Corrin. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten how much I dislike this particular voice:
It's the breathyness that gets me
I'll keep updates on the dumb pairings I select this time.
Yesterday, I made the mistake of going to see the 10:10 pm showing of When The Bough Breaks. That kind of behavior is out of my life henceforth because I was exhausted by the time I was driving home. I'm up by 5:30 AM most days to get to work by seven, so by the end of the movie I'd been awake for eighteen hours. Which may not sound that bad, but I couldn't even go to dinner afterwards, and in fact should not have been driving. At red lights, some of which I almost missed, I tried to take mini-naps. Many people do that, I know, but I'm not one of them. In fact, I take the bust to work because I don't want to risk having to drive when I'm post call. I've seen too many horrific accidents to not be a very cautious driver.
Anyway, the movie. Very few people seem to have reviewed it, but I can't tell if that's because no one went to see it, or because of some critics embargo. Somehow, I doubt it was the latter. This movie didn't strike me as having delusions of grandeur:
This is the rare trailer that lets me know exactly what kind of movie this will be without spoiling every little thing that happens, though that might be because When the Bough Breaks makes no attempts to be deep or controversial despite its premise. Still, I'm surprised that it has a 0% on RottenTomatoes. The leads are charming enough, and the first two acts build excellent suspense. That should be enough to earn it some praise, even though the third act is a severe disappointment.
Last weekend, I went to see Don't Breathe like a woman in a desert, by which I mean I'm desperate for something that isn't a superhero movie. I hate to be one of Those People bemoaning the death cinema because all anyone seems to care about is men in tights. . . but hot damn, you can't step into a theater these days without drowning in some superhero or other bemoaning that they can't be normal, or that the government is trying to tell them what to do and infringe on their rights or whatever. So Don't Breathe looked intriguing.
I would share the trailer, but the one I watched goes right ahead and spoils one of the movie's twists. Though perhaps it's more accurate to call it a plot point, since it happens relatively early in the movie and it's only one of several satisfying twists and turns. Still, it is a spoiler, so instead I will share this ridiculous commercial I keep seeing at the movies with "real" people, "not" actors:
What are you doing Chevy? Literally no one cares about cars this much, in this way. Even car buffs don't care about silly awards (I assume), and if they do, I highly doubt they're talking about it like that. Come on. You sell somewhat affordable cars for suburban people, not BMWs.
I used to think I had little free time in medical school, but clearly I'd forgotten what it's like to have a real job with a fixed schedule. This month, I haven't had time to do much outside work, except try to maintain my skeletal social life with a couple of friends, one of them from work. I'm more-or-less satisfied, but I can't imagine what residency would do to someone more outgoing than myself. Or someone married with kids.
Anyway, since this blog has an audience of maybe ten people, I'm keeping it as a project for my future self. It's something for sixty-year-old me (hopefully I make it that long to peruse if she wonders what her twenty-something self was doing. So here goes:
1. Work: lots of cancer, and becoming more independent. Three autopsies so far. Learning to recognize simple things under the microscope:
Epithelial inclusion cyst of the ovary; from before I worked out how to use the microscope camera
Hyperplastic polyp of the colon, after my picture-taking skills improved
I didn't watch the original Ghostbusters. Not the movies, the cartoon, or any of the other stuff that was apparently a huge part of so many people's childhood. Apparently. I don't now if it's because I'm too young, or because I wasn't in the US during the nineties. Either way, the new Ghostbusters movie didn't mean much to me. I was vaguely aware of some hoopla going on online because the new movie has women on it, and that's like destroying the original film with feminism and social justice. Or perhaps attacking men and boys with. . . something. I learned long ago not to pay too much attention to any random thing the internet decides is significant.
Still, as I sat at the theater, musing about the ridiculous internet flamewars about this film, I couldn't help but remember that one of our many mass shooters attacked a movie theater during a genre film. For a moment, I considered leaving the theater to sneak into Star Trek, a film that I hadn't heard any "controversy" about. I didn't do that, but at the second I had to exercise a degree of courage to sit down and watch a dumb movie. I don't know when we got to this point as a nation, but it depresses me.
Anyway, Ghostbusters. The trailer. . . well, it starts with the thirty years ago Ghostbusters thing that I don't care about:
Worst, I didn't laugh once. For something that's trying to be a comedy, that's a pretty bad sign. So why did I watch it?
Because Chris Hemsworth is hot. I wish I could say that I was making some kind of feminist political statement, but the truth really is that simple. He's my favorite Avenger. Because he's hot. He had like one shot in the trailer and didn't get to say anything, and he's probably the least cool part of this poster:
JD from scrub said that a medical resident works 80+ hours a week, is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and makes as much as a waiter. I don't know if I was planning to go to medical school when I first watched that episode, but somehow it didn't steer me away from the career. And finally, July 1st of 2016, I started my residency. I make much more than a waiter, though I only ever waited tables at run-of-the-mill restaurants that were just a step above fast food. Maybe JD was talking about fancy restaurants.
The first week went well, I think. I didn't make any egregious mistakes that I can remember, though I almost forgot to order a special stain for a case. I was assigned one autopsy, which I did with a chief resident's help. I had a nice mix of routine and esoteric cases on my plate, though I got very little of it, in all honesty. It's a good thing I don't make any real decisions yet. The greatest relief is that I'm loving my job so far. It shouldn't be a surprise since my first consideration when choosing a specialty was "am I going to enjoy doing this for hopefully 30+ years?", but it's still a big weight of my shoulders that I'm not panicking at the thought of spending the rest of my life reading slides and handling autopsies.
That being said, I will have to change how I study if I want to do it effectively. Now that I have a job besides passing the never-ending barrage of standardized tests the NBME throws at me, I can't take as much time studying as I used to. Up until now, I use hard copies or relevant print-outs of textbooks, then take notes and organize them as necessary. Perhaps it's because I didn't have access to computers until the second half of my childhood, unlike the rest of my peers, but I can't seem to absorb PDFs or ebooks. Typing my notes doesn't work either. For example, these are my notes for the normal histology of the cornea:
My art has not improved at all this year
I never gave it much thought before, but since I work from 7:30 AM to 5-8 PM, I wish I could work faster.
These promotional posters must be seen to be believed
This last couple of weeks, I've been watching Mr. Robot with my friend Chris. It's the first TV show I've re-watched from beginning to end in a long time. Probably the first one ever, actually. I can barely get myself to get through a whole season of TV once (still haven't finished the second season of Daredevil).
I've noticed several things about Mr. Robot the second time around, some of them big and some of them small. Darlene's early behavior doesn't seem so invasive in context, for example. Talking about the show with another person has also changed my mind about certain some of the show's themes. Most significantly, I'm not sure Mr. Robot's central premise about the loneliness of modern life, and the oppressive nature of its false choices, is as shallow and juvenile as I first thought.
Though I still think that Elliot is over the top with his multiple speeches about how the world sucks because everyone is always drowning in pop culture and posturing in social media, I've had time to consider that my reaction might not be so objective. I don't disagree with Elliot's conclusion that getting caught up with presenting a perfect, always-interesting face on social media generates anxiety, loneliness, and isolation, but I also believe that engaging in social media to that degree is a choice. So I couldn't fully sympathize with his anxiety because I felt like he was choosing to judge people sole through what they post on Facebook/Instagram/etc.
I was browsing through Netflix and noticed the following:
And I was like. . . Netflix is doing original anime?
It turns out that Netflix is just licensing and dubbing certain anime now. I like me some anime, so even though I'd never heard of this series, I decided to give it a shot. To this day, I've never looked up its history, so my knowledge is limited to the few dubbed episodes I watched before deciding it wasn't for me. I gathered that the story is set in generic anime fantasy Europe/Britain, where a squad of super powerful knights (that were also government officials?) called "The Seven Deadly Sins" plotted to take over the kingdom, and were then defeated by other super powerful "Holy Knights".
The story starts when a princess with a breathy voice (at least in the dub) stumbles into the main character's bar (the short blond guy on the banner above). Holy Knights are chasing her because they suspect that she's one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but it turns out that she's not. In fact, the short blond guy is actually Meliodas, The Dragon's Sin of Wrath and former captain of The Seven Deadly Sins. There's also this talking pig thing, a giant flying/travelling? turtle of some kind, and this weird Holy Knight who seems to have some backstory with both Meliodas and the princess with the breathy voice.
As I said earlier, I only watched a few episodes of this before calling it quits. The story line obviously didn't grab me as I have trouble recalling basic details, the female lead's voice grated on my nerves, and I was put off by the weird interactions between the female and male leads.
Eve Dallas married Irish prince charming last book, after defeating the evil villain with the magic anti-aging drug that kills users. This book starts when a young engineer with no history of depression or suicidality hangs himself in his room at Roarke's outer space resort, where Eve and Roarke are finishing their honeymoon. I think this might be the first time I read this installment because I remembered nothing of the plot. Except for one subplot I will get to in a minute, I quite enjoyed this book from beginning to end.
Since this series is set Twenty Minutes Into the Future but publication began in 1995, earlier installments have a decidedly retro-future feel to them. Most of the time, it's odd blips like state-of-the-art, futuristic computers running on "discs", or people remarking about how only certain professionals have "links" (cell phones) with them at all times. Other times, Robb includes moral dilemmas about "new" technologies and/or scientific advancements that hinge on outdated theories.
In this installment, Roberts tackles the controversy about "nature vs nurture" through the lens of "genetics vs. environment". I wouldn't say that this conflict has been settled already, but Rapture in Death was published in 1996 and the Human Genome Project was declared complete in 2003. The doctor that argues in favor of the genetics side of the debate in this book espouses ideas that would only be entertained in some weird neo-Nazi "scientific magazine" today. I'll let this quote speak for itself:
Not that Reeanna is an actual neo-Nazi, it's just that the scientific concensus today is that the relationship between genes and the environment is more complicated than "genes --> behavior"
I went to Connecticut this weekend to catch up with some of the more affluent members of my family. It was pretty fun. We went to a. . . semi-private? beach. It's hard to explain. I think only people who own houses and/or live in the area are accepted into the beach, so it was fairly clean. Best of all, it wasn't crowded at all. From what I understand, you can have barbecues in these types of little islets:
If you own a boat, of course.
Then we drove around the neighborhood to admire all the beach houses that my family members can't afford. (They own property about five minutes from the beach. I'd have asked how much it cost, but it would've been tacky. It's cool, though. One of my aunts asked and it was around 600k. Ten years ago).
Anyway, in all the talk about pretty things, my mother aunt started talking about a beautiful cousin I have who posts artsy pictures of herself on Facebook. I was only half-listening, but my ears perked up when one of my aunts lamented that my cousin looks way more beautiful in pictures than in real life. I didn't join in, but of course she does.
It's obvious that my cousin expends a lot of time on her pictures. I'm not knocking her. They're beautiful pictures. I wouldn't know how to make myself look like that even with filters and photoshop. But I wonder how she must feel like in person. Does she worry that her Facebook and Instagram posts set up a standard that she can never meet in real life? Does she enjoy posting those pictures even though she must know that people make snide comments about how they're "fake"?
I found trailers of The Purge: Election Yearjust intriguing enough to rent The Purgeon Amazon. The tagline "Keep America Great" was just unsubtle enough to work on me, I guess.
Yeah, this trailer would not have been enough to get me to watch The Purge. For what it's worth, the movie itself is better than this, especially the first hour or so. Unfortunately, it does little to change that this movie's premise is fundamentally broken. Even if we accept that people will just start murdering each other en masse if only murder were legal (which I'm not sure I do), the financial implications of such a policy for a society are hard to enumerate. America loses significant money when people call in sick for work because of the flu, for God's sake.
But it's the movie any good if you just stop thinking and enjoy the spectacle?
I'm not sure why certain sections of the internet hate Nickleback so much. It's possible that the lead singer, or someone else in the band, is a well-documented backside opening, but it's way more likely that there's some sort of meme going on about who can pretend that they've been the most severely victimized by Nickleback. I don't pretend have a research the origin of the hate.
I also don't pretend that Nickleback is particularly good either. I've said in previous posts that English music has to deal with the least musical language ever, or at least the least musical language that I know. And Nickleback's lead singer doesn't strike me much either. I think Seether's lead singer does a much better job of injecting some emotions into whatever lyrics he's singing (my tastes in rock music is that of a twelve-year-old girl's).
This might be the point where I lose any good taste rep that I might've had before, but here's my favorite Nickleback song:
And by "favorite Nickleback song", I mean "least likely to skip it if I run across it on the radio". Still, the mere fact that I don't pretend to fly into a rage whenever I hear their sound makes me feel like I might be an anomaly (though considering how they're still making music and money, chances are that they have tons and tons of fans).
Then, to regain some of my nonexistent hipster cred, I will share this cover by Alkistis Proptopsalti:
My friend Chris (who has way more hardcore music taste than I do) showed me this when I revealed that I didn't hate Nickleback. Well, I mostly just told since it's not like I hide it.
Anyway, I didn't do much research on this band (or is it just the singer?) because I like their name (her name?) so much. Protopsalti Alkistis sounds like some bird of prey that's about to descend upon you and strike at your carotid, then fly off with your larynx to display for its enemies. It might just be "Mary" in the original. . . whatever language this is. Either way, I choose to keep the mystery for now.
My original point, which I probably never got to, is that they sound much better than Nickleback. I don't know if this is Nickleback's fault, or English's fault.
There are instants of my life that etched onto my memory like a brand on cattle. That time I was hospitalized with Dengue fever and couldn't breathe (I distinctly remember a doctor standing over me, sticking his gloved fingers in my mouth. Even the rubbery taste is still in my memory). When I stepped into an American airport for the first time (lots of whooshing cars and horns). When I first vomited a "hot dog" from a NY hot dog stand (severe disappointment there). The first time I passed through the Holland Tunnel (it looked so shiny!). When I saw the Twin Towers fall from my seventh grade class window (it was during English period, and I didn't realize the significance of what I was seeing. I wasn't even scared).
And then there's the time I caught a Shiny Cacturne:
The one on the right
It was the summer of my eighteenth birthday. I was at Rutgers New Brunswick for a summer program that must have had to do with EOF, towards the end of it. I'm gonna say it was early afternoon, though the mercilessly bright sun could've as easily been from later in the day. I had just finished taking a summer preparatory class for pre-calculus, and I was a little bummed that I'd gotten an 87 (actual numerical grades on individual tests still meant something to me back then).
So I walk outside the dorm room next to Frelinghuysen Hall, which has classrooms in the lower floors (don't remember the name of the actual dorm, but I lived at Frelinghuysen during my second year at Rutgers, with I roommate I rarely saw or spoke to). The actual architectural details escape. Maybe it wasn't a dorm.
Anyway, I know next to nothing about EV points at this point, so I'm trying to get some random Pokemon to level sixty (probably Charizard). And I'm at the area with all the Cacturnes in the game that must have been a remake of the originals. There's a constant sandstorm in the area. And instead of the regular Cacturne, I get a brownish-burgundy one! I almost killed it in one hit before I realized it was different.
I threw my single master ball at it, which, looking back on it, was probably a waste. I called my friend immediately to brag. Couldn't text because I had one of those flip phones from. . . I forgot the company that made them. It was magenta. Then I probably called my brother. At the time, shiny Cacture was an omen of my good fortune, and I had to share it with anyone who might slightly care.
Sadly, I've long since lost the cartridge that held this all-important life Pokemon. Which is my long-winded way to say: I'm playing Pokemon again!
I've finally gotten tired of vegetating for weeks, so I've decided to explore the Garden State. For someone who's been living here for about fifteen years, I know very little of it. I'm an inside kind of person, and for a long time, I didn't have a car. Never saw the point of the expense when public transportation in the area has always been reliable. Or, "reliable". At least there is public transportation.
Anyway, talking to my brother inspired me, so last weekend I explored one of the parks running along the Hudson River with my friend Chris. We didn't venture far away from people, and we walked basically in a straight line, but there was a lot of nature. And non-city smells, like water, trees, earth, and flowers. And mosquitoes, which were less nice, but I suppose they enhanced the afternoon.
A bridge leading to New York, which I should probably know, but I didn't check Google maps. I want to say George Washington Bridge, though. It's fairly close to where we visited.
I trained Gengar every single time when I was kid, and had elaborate dreams where I became a Pokemon master by defeating the Elite Four and the Champion with a Shiny Gengar. I thought mine psychic to defeat my friend's Crowbat. Memories.
Anyway, I spent more money than I'm comfortable remembering for this thing, all because it has Gengar on it. So I write this post to alert Nintendo/Shonen Jump/Marvel/assorted companies to continue making supbar products with my favorite characters on them, then overpricing the hell out of them. I will probably buy them like the weak consumer that I am. In all fairness, the Gengar wallet seems good so far, but it's been a week. And how much does a wallet need to do anyway? So it's not like I can destroy it.
It also makes me want to spend more money because it gives me an excuse to pull it out besides "admiring Gengar". For starters, I'm currently half-way to convincing myself that I should totally buy the next Pokemon game because I will totally have enough time to play it this time, somehow. I am of course deluding myself, but there are two Gamestops within walking distance of my house. This is a problem.
Details to follow a week or so from now, when I will almost certainly bought a copy of Pokemon: Whatever They're Up to Now.
In an attempt to improve my awful, USA northeast professional diet, I've been trying to become a better cook. Today, I tried to make zucchini fries. Unlike any logical person, I did this without consulting any recipe. This was the result:
I've been listening to this song almost nonstop for the last three days:
The title roughly translates to "Where Will My Spring Be?", which I know sounds odd, but that's because English is inadequate for this. I would try to translate the lyrics, but I would butcher them worse than Google translate. I'm pretty sure. The singer is Marco Antonio Solís, who I assume is extremely famous in Spanish speaking countries because my mother knows who he is and I've been listening to him in the background of my life since I was a kid.
Anyway, I don't think I can do much a "review" because I don't know anything about music. I can't even identify the instruments in this. I assume they're classical? There's a piano! And a violin? A cello? I'm not sure about the last two, but they sound like classical instruments, so I'm gonna go with them. That being said, I do know when something sounds nice, and how it makes me feel.
I got cut off in traffic today while listening to this song, and the following thought crossed my mind: that's okay, I'll get to listen to this song a little more. So I have concluded that, while listening to this song, it's impossible to get angry. A benzo couldn't make me so calm that I wouldn't mind being cut off in traffic.
We need to harness this song's power to cure all anger management problems.
The good news is that this one is infinitely better than the second one, which had the leads behaving like unlikable high school students. I finished this one much quicker.
I assume that this series started as one of Roberts' many trilogies because there's no real reason for Eve and Roarke to jump from meeting, to getting engaged, to fairy-tale wedding that Eve totally doesn't want, for realsies, in three books. Especially when their issues get rehashed over and over again in future installments.
The wedding stuff is pretty boring, perhaps because it's difficult to get into the fairy-tail-ness of it all when Eve acts like she's marching towards an execution. I'm not entirely sure why Roarke insists on it when they could easily get married legally and take a private trip to some outer space colony or something. It leaves me feeling like the party is all for fan-service's sake, and it ends up throwing me out of the book. I know I'm a lady reading a romantic thriller, and that part of it is wish-fulfillment (though I've never fantasized about a fairy tale wedding, to be honest), but I don't need the female lead to be tortured with some fancy party where she has to wear a custom-made designer dress. Really.
Enough complaints, though. As I said when I started, I mostly enjoyed this book. It starts with Eve going to visit an up-and-coming designer for the aforementioned dumb wedding. The designer happens to be dating her BFF Mavis while trying to break off a relationship with the supermodel "Pandora", who of course shows up to make a scene as Eve is getting her measurements taken (while naked, also of course).
Pharell Williams "Happy" is the worst. Yes, this one:
I took a long drive today, and it went south even before my phone started bleeting this song (I assume I liked it at some point, because someone must have downloaded). First, I miss one lousy turn and, instead of following my instincts and doubling back, I let google maps sort out how to get back on track. I figure google is the closest thing we have to God.
Somehow, it took me through four different tolls, all within fifteen minutes, before getting me back on a highway that would have cost me one toll, if I hadn't missed the one right turn.
I would say lesson learned, but it's only a matter of time before I find myself behind the wheel of a car, and too lazy to think for myself.
Anyway, I'm driving around between trucks with my phone's brightness set to the lowest point because I lost my phone charger like two months ago, and I don't want to run out of charge out in the highway. My phone is my GPS (how did humans function before phones came with GPS?). When my phone is on lowest brightness setting, I can't see anything but a black screen when I'm outside.
So. I'm driving in the highway, with trucks on all sides. "Happy" comes along, a seven minute or so version that I must have liberated from the internet at some point. Normally, I'd let Pharell Williams do the chorus once or twice, them switch to something else.
For about a month now, I've been lounging in my couch while waiting for residency to start on July 1st. I literally have no responsibilities beyond keeping my body and living space clean, and filling out some paperwork. Most of my peers have gone on vacations, but I don't like spending money or going outside. I went on a cruise once and by day three, I was all "I wanna go home and sleep on my bed now".
So I've been writing (on the computer) or playing Fire Emblem on my 3DS. Sure, I've been going to the gym as well, but I'm no Terry Crews. So that's basically an hour every other day. It's not so difficult to keep my apartment clean, and since I'm not doing anything physically or even mentally draining, I don't require much sleep. I didn't do any formal tracking, but I suspect I was spending around fourteen hours a day in front of a screen.
Last week, I got a headache. Frontal, bilateral, throbbing headache, 2/10 on the pain scale, but constant. I didn't think anything of it, besides attributing it to my lack of stable sleeping schedule. Perhaps I'd manage to become sleep deprived while doing nothing.
The headache persisted after a nap, which I found strange, but I decided it must be the beginning of a head cold. I've gotten excited about summer and gone out without a coat/sweater later in the evening, when it's a bit colder. I took an Advil and went to bed "early", whatever that means when you don't have to wake up at any particular time.
I'm in my third playthrough of Fates, this time just trying to get as many supports and finicky special abilities as possible, and I'm at the end of my rope with this thing:
Maid turned dragon that does nothing
At the beginning of the story, one of your maids falls down a canyon with you, turns into a dragon, and takes you to your castle in. . . Streetpass heaven, I guess. The outrealm or something like that. Saving you took so much out of her that you have to feed her in between chapters so she levels up. As far as I can tell, you jump down this canyon again with Azura and it's no big deal, but whatever. This is just an excuse to get the castle deal rolling.
For the most part, I like the castle. There's the convenient shops, the statues (which became way more awesome once I realized they raise character stat caps), the mess hall, and even the arena. The private quarters, I could do without, but at least that helps you with supports.
This astral dragon thing, on the other hand, seems to be there because Intelligent System woefully overestimated how fun it is to see a characters' EXP bar go up in a single whoosh.
As I made clear earlier, I did not likeDawn of Justice. If Rotten Tomatoes is to be believe, neither did most critics. Or youtubers (I would pick a videoreview to exemplify what I mean, but there's just too many).
Well, there's this youtuber, who believes Dawn of Justice is a "rock-hard, rectum-shredding, anus-prolapsing blockage." I thought it was a little over-the-top, but I laughed. Anyway, hatred for this movie took over the world like a zombie virus of disappointment, rage, and sadness. Or so I thought.
It seems that there are people who loved this film (seriously), and they've come to a certain conclusion about why the rest of the world (critics in particular), are trashing it: Marvel Studios payed them off.
I'm reading the next installment of the . . . in Death series, and keeping track of the way Roberts describes the characters. Back when I was more active in writing forums, writing character descriptions could get. . . controversial. It seems like the current trend is to describe the characters as little as possible since "the readers don't care", or it's "intrusive" because the reader will imagine whatever they want anyway, and some would be jarred away if their mental image of any character is contradicted.
Except, apparently, for people writing romance. The idea is that romance readers expect character descriptions, especially of hot people and sexy clothes. Maybe that's true. I'm a romance reader, at least sometimes, and while I'm not sure I expect character descriptions, I can live with them. I do wish Roberts would stop describing Roarke as a warrior-angel looking type with an Irish accent (I get it; he's prince charming, good gawd).
Then there are the descriptions of all the other characters. This is Leonardo:
When I was younger, I didn't really know what "sharp cheekbones" were, only that all romance novel heroes had them.
What I get out of this description is that Leonardo is supposed to be tall, very well-muscled, and conventionally attractive. . . but Eve thinks he looks like a cartoon character. Seriously:
Who wouldn't want a man with hot dog fingers touching them?
Fire Emblem: Fates royal siblings are way cooler than the Avatar main character. Out of all the old FE tropes that have been vanishing in the newer entries, the one I miss most is the non-intrusive "Tactician" player Avatar that had next-to-zero impact on the plot. I was ultimately displeased with the player Avatar's prominence in Awakening, and Fates is even worse.
First of all, Corrin's supposed familial relationships with both royal families weren't equally compelling throughout all routes. In Birthright, I would have liked her to be more anguished about going against the siblings that she grew up with. Conquest made more sense from a psychological perspective, but the idiotic plot device regarding the "curse" that didn't let her tell anyone about Valla crippled the storyline. Revelation comes out better story wise, but it's saddled with way too many characters for a mere twenty-something chapters of gameplay.
To make matters worse, Fates can't resist making the royal siblings love interests. My theory is that it has something to do with the meta-game that's undoubtedly cropped up somewhere online (I bet that you get stronger Child Units if Corrin marries one of the royal siblings). I've seen arguments that Japan has "different" views about incest than the West, which. . . I'm no expert in Japanese culture, but I'm pretty sure brother-sister incest is taboo in Japan. And don't give any of that "they're not blood siblings" nonsense. For most of the story, Corrin doesn't know that. And you can marry him or her to the siblings before they find out otherwise in the story.
But fine. I can easily ignore this incest thing by simply not marrying Corrin to her siblings. Which I didn't do. Whatever. You know what's not so easy to ignore? Camilla's status as a creepy fanservice girl. Just look at her boss battle intro scene:
As I said before, Awakening is a pretty easy game. Even hard mode is no big deal as long as you pick casual mode (and what adult with a job and limited time wouldn't?). Beat the first couple of chapters, rack up supports, and join characters so their important stats basically double. I can only imagine that someone at Intelligent System didn't like the watering down, and thus came up with new ways to screw with players, even those who picked casual mode, in Fates.
The first major change is to the Pair Up mechanic, which essentially rendered Awakening into a "press A to win" joke in everything but the highest difficulties. Enemies can now pair up as well, meaning that it's not a good idea to just pair up a Swordmaster with a General and place them at the center of the map so enemy units can rush in for suicide. In that light, it's probably for the best that paired units can now either defend or attack together. I'm not sure I'd want to deal with a paired up set of tanks that not only blocks attacks, but also dishes them back out.
Dragon Veins, which seemed fun in the beginning, serve to further complicate the hell out of some maps. I believe the internet hates Takumi because of that water-draining incident in Conquest chapter ten. There was also a late Hoshido chapter that had the Dragon Veins appear and disappear, which trapped me in some booby-trapped floor with no healing items or healers while the games spammed Faceless units at me.
And then there's the RNG, which delights in screwing with players. More than usual. I hear this was common in the older games, but I started playing way back in high school, and I don't remember stuff like this happening:
Thanks to my friend Jean for capping these.
For those of you not playing this, that 4% on the right is the chances that "Ragnarok" would hit the your unit. I don't know if my friend was playing Classic mode at the time (permadeath mode), but let's hope not.
But that's just a one-time thing, right? Apparently not, because:
Ryoma is literally the strongest character in the game.
I don't mean to sound like a hipster here, but the English language just doesn't lend itself to music very well. Spanish lyrics just sound so much better. It's not just for music that's translated from another language to English either. I've noticed that new Spanish music just has . . . deeper meaning than English music.
All my life, I assumed it's because English is not my first language so it never sounds quite as soothing and welcoming to my ear as Spanish. That's a strange feeling since I'm way more eloquent in English by this point (like ninety percent of my formal education as been in Spanish).
To be specific, I think Shakira sounds about a hundred times better in Spanish (I think this is the point where I lose any pseudo-sophistication points I might have gained above). If you happen to be bilingual, or just bored, go listen to "Suerte", then "Whatever, whenever" on youtube. Hell, even if you don't speak Spanish, I think you'll notice that "Suerte" is just a better song.
Also, listen to "Que Me Quedes Tu", my favorite Shakira song ever ("That you are left to me", can't think of a less literal translation that makes more sense . . . perhaps "That I'm left with you", but it doesn't sound right either).
This one took me way longer to get through than the first one. And it's because the main characters spent the entire book, to put it very bluntly, acting like anal sphincters.
The plot is once again standard thriller stuff: an unknown subject is killing successful women in NYC. He (or she) slashes their throat and leaves them in a pool of blood. As any self-respecting fictional serial killer would, they take an item from the scene as a trophy.
To make matters worse, Eve herself is now a high profile NYC woman, not necessarily because she solved a high profile case involving a sitting US senator last book, but because she is dating mega-gajillionaire Roarke. During the murder investigation, Eve has to utilize her newly found "fame" to bait the killer.
Nadine Furst, one of the supporting characters that appears almost every book, is introduced this installment. Her introduction consists of Eve calling an off-planet penal colony, where Nadine is presumably doing an exposé regarding future USA's deplorable treatment of criminals. Nadine is career-driven and ambitious, but she isn't willing to take shortcuts to achieve glory. She considers it her duty to report on the truth, and she also admits that not every story needs to be told. (In other words, she's a foil for the killer).
That being said, this is not a book I would recommend. Because Eve and Roarke's relationship troubles makes them behave, as I said above, like entitled children.
My friend got food poisoning this Wednesday and I wanted to take him to this movie after leaving observation to distract him from any remaining stomach discomfort. This movie had one job: distraction for a couple of hours. Instead, I get distraction for mainly one hour. It was better than Man of Steel, but since I considered Man of Steel a hostage situation, that's not saying much.
There was a teaser for the Batman: Lego movie, which might have been the best part of the whole thing.
The teaser was different than the one above, but this one is still good.
As I discussed recently, SquareEnix and I have broken up. At the moment, I'm bracing myself for hating that FFVII remake they have in the works, dreading the time I will purchase the necessary consoles to play it like a good little consumer. This post it not about that. This post about something that SquareEnix actually got right: Theathrythm: Final Fantasy.
If you like Final Fantasy music, and I'm pretty sure that anyone who's ever played the games does, then this game is distilled nostalgia. Like the introvert that I am, I've spent most of the day playing tracks on this rhythm game (the battle themes for FFIV, in case anyone is curious). Well, I also wrote some, went running, and practiced Portuguese, but most of my time has been at my 3DS.
This is the only thing that has tempted me to play Final Fantasy games in a long time. Whatever else about the newer games sucks, the music remains superb. My current favorite is FFXI's Opening Theme (hey, there's Spanish in this video):
The gameplay itself is . . . I don't actually care. This game kills my ADHD (meaning I suck at it because I keep missing targets, especially the hold triggers). To be honest, I should probably be just buying the soundtracks, though I suppose I wouldn't be as engaged if I wasn't trying to get things perfect despite my suckitude.
If you're a completist gamer, I would suggest you stay away from this game. There's always three levels to each song (Basic, Expert, and a third level I haven't bothered to try). There's grading for each track, the highest being SSS. There's getting perfect chains for each track. There's getting all criticals in for each track. There's unlocking all the characters via that crystal thingie at the end of each track. There's something called CollectaCards, which resemble Pokemon but more pointless (still want all of them).
By the way, there are at least a hundred tracks on this thing, plus God only knows how many I haven't unlocked.
Yesterday, I found out which hospital I'll be working in this coming July. Without giving up too much personal information, I can only say that I'm very happy. Pathology is a challenging field, and I have an opportunity to go into academic medicine. Four years of hard work, nine if you count undergrad, and I'm almost where I always wanted to be. And I cannot describe how good it feels to budget with a paycheck in mind rather than student loans.
I went to celebrate with my family and one of my closest friends to one of my favorite restaurants. One I used to visit since childhood, though much less often back then since I had no money at all. When my brother and I got our first jobs, we used to visit the place often. (Well, first real jobs. When we were much younger and got some money for shores, we used to buy Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards).
Hot brownie sundae; my favorite in the world
The only complaint I have about this restaurant is that their servings are too big and too difficult to resist, meaning we have little room left for dessert. Out of all the food in this restaurant, their hot brownie sundae stands out. The presentation on the right makes it look like any random brownie under vanilla ice cream, and the vanilla ice cream might be nothing special, but the brownie. The brownie is incomparable.
My brother says that this brownie sundae is what he missed most when he left for the military. He says he's tried multiple times to recreate it, both by baking and by buying brownies at fancy bakeries, but he's never quite managed. Nothing, from the texture to the taste, was ever the same.
Last night, our dessert came on a plate rather than a cup (as seen on the picture), and my brother confirmed that the secret is in the brownie itself, not in the ice cream or the hot fudge. I've been telling him as much for years, but he's the type that likes to see things for himself.
A few months back, I witnessed a . . . heated discussion about the fall of our civilization. Someone noticed that adult coloring books are outselling "real books" on Amazon, which caused them deep discomfort. Coloring books, after all, are for children.
I must admit that I thought as much, though learning about "adult" coloring books didn't cause me any pain. In fact, I went to Amazon immediately to locate one of these books, then despaired at the price tag on the things. Though I wanted to try them, I couldn't justify spending more than ten bucks on one. Or more than five bucks. I am, and will be until July, a broke student.
This weekend, I went to Costco with my brother to get some cheap running shoes and was thwarted by "blue laws" (the Costco is in some town that won't sell anything but food on "the Sabbath", which I thought was on Saturday . . .?) Anyway, I couldn't get the running shoes, but my brother got me Millie Marotta's Tropical World. Which is an adult coloring book. Behold my artistic vision:
I've been using my favorite pens for it: G2 pilot gel pens. They are expensive and probably murdering the environment in some way, but they're so pretty! When I need to study, I use them to make my notes happy and colorful. The colors are sharp and the book pages are of high enough quality that the ink does not bleed through.
Coloring this little beak has been very relaxing. I can't color within the lines even as an adult, but it still so relaxing. If these books are ending civilization, then I'm happy to contribute. I highly recommend them.
