Ammunition > Heroics

I was thinking about doing a blog post regarding this past week (I'll just skip right by an explanation and refer to it only as "the national conference" because I'm lazy like that), but I decided against it. If you were there, then you don't need to read about it, and if you weren't, well... it won't be terribly interesting to read about it. Maybe to hear about it, though, because... life's just weird that way.
Anyhow, instead, a short summary of some things that happened:

-I got there Sunday evening and basically did nothing interesting until Wednesday (the day of the group competition).
-The first few days, I watched quite a bit of television (compared to the usual, I mean). Mostly the food channel. I think it was on JKR's blog that I read something like "Alton Brown is the reason we have cable." Some day that will be true of me as well, I bet. He's definitely the most interesting (real) person on television (that I know of).
-I also finished some optional tasks in FINAL FANTASY VI in preparation for the final assault on Kefka's stronghold. I got some nice stuff out of that, and my characters are also much stronger now, though still not enough to finish the game, unfortunately. Just for reference (yes, I know none of you care), Molulu's charm makes the Cult of Kefka's tower very, very easy.
-Apparently the unexpected relocation of the conference (due to flooding) made things even more stressful and crazy than they were going to be already, but I don't think anybody could tell. Everything was very well-organized.
-I hung around with the group from Campus all week because nobody from my youth group came. They were all "busy." They seem to be "busy" on a suspiciously frequent basis. And (if you haven't heard, I like to say this so it doesn't sound as if I'm saying something I wouldn't say to the face of the parties in question) you can tell them I said that. Except... nobody who reads this will see them, I bet. So... I can tell them I said that. Or... something?
-All three of the drama groups from CBC did really well (they won the top three spots, but... they were the only three spots). I took videos; I can email them to anyone who wants them.
-I thought the impromptu writing thing on Thursday went awfully. The "topic" was actually just a vague statement. At first, I just started writing with no solid idea on what I would be doing. Then I decided to steer it in an unusual direction ("points for originality"?) and finished a few minutes early. I went through and revised some things. I wanted to make my conclusion better and/or come up with a better title, but I didn't have time. Anyhow, I personally thought it was pretty bad.
Oh, and if you hadn't noticed, I don't really like to (/I don't understand why anyone would want to) talk about things like that, so that's about all you're getting out of me on the subject. I guess I'm just weird like that. To me, the question "what did you write about?" is sort of like the question "why are leaves green?". Yes, it can be explained, but it's often a better idea to just accept it and move on. Also, it can be answered with little research on the part of the person asking the question (Wikipedia, yay!). Or, in this case, you could just read what I wrote. Except... you can't. Because I'm the only one who has it. I'll figure out somewhere convenient (not here) to put it at some point, I expect.
-We never ended up doing the whole Spam-thingy on... was it Friday? Thrusday? I think it was Thursday. This was because of poor weather. By "poor", I mean "abysmal" (speaking of the word abysmal... *mental note for next topic*). Actually, I'm rather fond of rain. And lightning. And lampreys. But that's not really relevant, so I'll move on.
They didn't seem to have any definite plans (you have to realize, of course, that due to the relocation and all, they had already had several plans fall through), so things were a bit unorganized and we were all crammed into a room that was pretty biggish, but not big enough for such a large group. Anyway, all things considered, it actually wasn't so bad.
-There was this optional event that basically involved... umm, absolutely nothing. We sat around and listened to random people tell jokes, and watched funny videos. Actually, they were really dumb. But... that's why they were so funny. There was also free food and stuff. That's basically why I (and, probably, everyone else) went, and because of this we spent quite some time making fun of ourselves as North Americans. See the third topic of this post.
So, anyhow, I personally found the whole thing quite enjoyable. Intentionally unorganized/pointless events are so cool!
-We (Nathan C., Ben C., Daniel P., and I) stayed up all night Thursday/Friday. It was actually a lot of fun, and by the end of the night, I couldn't even tell any more how tired I was. Basically, my brain sort of skipped a whole night. I was a bit tiredish in the morning on Friday, but that sort of wore off, and by lunch time or so, I may as well have actually slept for several hours, because it didn't really seem to make much of a difference. I did end up going to sleep pretty early that night, though, and took a nap for a few hours today. Now I think I'm totally fine. Overall, the whole thing was quite odd. I'd almost recommend you try it some time, were it not for the fact that I'm pretty sure it's extremely unhealthy.
Anyway, we did lots of odd stuff, both inside and outside, though when we were outside, we were pretty much just in the parking lot right outside the dorm the CBC group was staying in. There wasn't a lot to do outside; we were just there so we didn't have to be so concerned about being loud. So... we ate pop-tart-things and called a bunch of people. We weren't trying to annoy anyone (mostly); we figured most people shut their phones off at night, and several times we called people specifically because we knew they were up anyway (or should be) for various reasons. We also talked amongst ourselves a lot (which was really the whole reason we stayed up so late; it got to the point where it wouldn't have made sense to go to sleep, because we would have just been really tired when we woke up, so we decided to get some food and stay up all night). Other than that, I don't think we actually did much of anything.
-Daniel won second place in the strings competition, and I think it was really close becasue he got called back to play again. I won first place for writing. I hope people stop making such a big deal out of it soon, as I really don't think it was such a big deal. Well, I hear the scholarship is pretty big. But that, of course, is its own reward.
-I spent most of Saturday at Jeremy M.'s house. It was just going to be Seth and me, as we needed something to do to that afternoon, but it ended up being sort of, "Party at Jeremy's house!" and I think it was about six people who came. We pretty much played Soul Calibur (the first one) the whole time. I had never actually played it before. It's amazing; I'll be looking for it now. We don't have many Dreamcast games....
We ended up going to the Lighthouse (where we continued to play Soul Calibur) because of bad weather or something like that. I think more people were going to be there, but next to nobody was.
-That about sums it up. I didn't really end up getting to see many people outside the conference, which was a bit disappointing, but oh well. It was fun.
I slept the whole way back, pretty much.
Back to my "exciting" (i.e., not exciting in any way) normal life.

...Well, I said I didn't want to do a whole post on that, and that I'd just do a summary.
That didn't happen, obviously... at all.
Oh well. I enjoyed it, I guess. It was something to do.
Now on to a new topic (this is going to be a pretty long post!).

Ben asked me the other day whether I had a favorite word. I said I didn't have one, but that there were a lot of words that I thought were cool or funny.
I've already done a list of funny words (though I think my paper list has expanded a bit since then), so I guess it's time to talk about "cool words."
I think "coolness" with words is affected by the combination of two or more words. Like I already said that "abysmal" is a cool word. In FFVI, there's an Esper summons (Midgardsomr, maybe?) whose attack/effect/thingy is called "Abyssmal Maw."
Pure awesomeness.
I'm getting pretty good at combining words to make them sound good or whatever; I give a lot of my stuff ("art", "music", games, etc.) weird names and stuff. Here are some examples:

"Scyphozoa Preserves" (Photo / computer art / desktop wallpaper thing)
"Electric Vegetation" (desktop wallpaper thing)
"Neon Bug Trap" (desktop wallpaper thing)
"Whispering Caverns" (.midi track)
"Synthetic Reassurance" (.midi track)
"Virtual Plankton Kleptocracy" (name I put music out under)
"Elastic Apogee" (name I put games out under)


Now, on to our final topic. It's getting late, so I'll keep this short (fortunately there's not a lot to say, as I want to do a whole post on something similar later).
Basically, we decided t hat Americans are dumb, and that it's fun to joke about ourselves. By "Americans" here, I mean specifically North Americans, or, even more specifically, residents of the United States. I don't usually like to use the word "Americans" in any specific sense, due to the fact that America consists of two whole continents and many nearby islands, but it just works in this case. It's more convenient to use than any long phrase, and nothing else sounds right.
So I came up with a bunch of jokes regarding that. They're all either "crossing the road" jokes or "changing a light bulb" jokes.
(The ones with an asterisk are ones Nathan C. came up with.)
You may take offense at some of these, but, really, lighten up. While they may not be true of you, they're certainly true of the common American stereotype.

Q: How many Americans does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fifty-two. But it doesn't matter, because not even one of them will fit in the room.
A: Five. Four to get drunk, and one to be the designated light bulb changer.
A: Twelve. One to change it, ten to yell at him because he did it wrong, and one to complain about congress.
A*: A hundred and one. A hundred to believe the light bulb needs to be changed, and one to actually change it.

Q: Why did the American cross the road?
A: There was food.
A: That was his exercise for the week.
A*: That's where the moving sidewalk took him.
A: Everybody's doin' it.
A: He was protesting high gas prices by walking...
...to the parking lot.
A: It was a team-building exercise, but nobody else wanted to do it because it was stupid.

Several people (myself included) came up with more, but I didn't think they were good enough to write down.

Anyway, I'm done for now. I want to keep posting, and I have several ideas written down, but I don't want to do any of them just yet; be sure to remind me of "arcade-style games" (you don't even have to know what I mean by this) at every opportunity until I actually do a post about that.

:::Source=Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII

(Note: I have another short post I did earlier today, so keep scrolling if you haven't already seen it.)