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Happy Armistice Day.

The nice part of doing these blog posts is that I can post rants here and get things off of my chest without any concern of if anyone else will read it.

Warning: Drivel ahead.

I like the new MLP. Yeah, I've mentioned that before, but it bears repeating here. Long story short and as a result of this fact, the son of my wife's friend, whom I've mentioned here several times before, now says he likes the show. As a result, in thanks to his personality and age, he spends untold hours diving into the black hole that is YouTube videos, and some of these videos he watches are fan made MLP related stuff. My wife has been speaking with this person, who is now sixteen years old, on Steam's chat client and he passes two links for me to watch, and today a third to my wife. They're all by the same person. Here's the third and shortest of the three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a87_5ncLX_M . Now, here's why I want to bring this up. I look at something like this and I see that, yes, some kind of effort was put into it to make it animate and sound a certain way, so in doing that there is an objective means by which this could have been worse, and that's by not having those kind of standards. Beyond that, though, these movies are all painfully dull and simply bad. This is bad, isn't it? Wouldn't that be a common consensus here? Perhaps you think so as well - yet, according to the statistics on that page, there is a consensus quite the opposite of it being bad. At this point, this video has more than 370 thousand views, and of the 2766 people who made the effort to give it a simple thumbs up or thumbs down vote, 2628, or 95.01% of those who voted, gave it a thumbs up. The video has more than 1100 comments written for it as well. The creator of the video has over 10000 subscribers.

In the course of the last two years I've written more than 70 thousand words for my story, and I don't have a single comment on any of it. My wife has been posting art online for several more years, and she probably doesn't have more than 1100 comments on all of her artwork combined. This guy makes this two minute video and there are actually thousands of people who not only think it's not bad, they actually think that it's somehow good. Regardless of how little reception my work has had and my wife's work has had, I think the reception that this person and his videos have had is an all too great and disturbing reflection of subculture mentality if not the landscape of culture and art reception in the present day. When that person can make those kind of videos and have that kind of reception among thousands of people, what point is there to ever try to make something original at all? How many thousands of other people are there out there like me or my wife, who have created original content day after day and have comparatively nothing to show for it? Why should I bother trying to write anything original here if I can just spew erotic fanfiction between two preexisting fictional male characters and do that for a few weeks until I finally I write something of such a scandalous nature that it attracts an audience of thousands?

Ultimately, the reason that I do my own work is because I feel that it is something which I want to exist and have to show for my own effort. It is also something which I still believe my wife will help augment in the future. Anything that happens beyond that is not the immediate goal behind what I'm doing here. So that's why I will continue to do so, and that's why this whole rambling rant is not a thinly veiled attempt to get sympathetic posts of support or the like. It is not an admission of defeat nor an emotional appeal for a responsive audience. I'm just trying to make sense of how this kind of situation comes to exist, where something that "bad" gets thousands of people to support it, merely because it latches onto some other commercial product, while untold volumes of arguably objectively "good" or at least "better" art gets ignored because nobody bothers to look for it.

And with that done with, let's get to some writing today. Yet again, I find myself up against a wall thanks to some consideration of dates. I think I have to alter a birthday soon.

---

Quick Draft

19270522 20:46:44

HN-S-4040

"There's one thing that I haven't mentioned to you yet, and the man reminded me to do so earlier today." Western paused his address by picking up his cigar and twirling the tip of it in his fingers as he exhaled a stream of smoke. "This hasn't had to come up in a while since you're the only freshness that we've had in a spell, so we don't know of any other attempts she's made in the same span. I doubt there's been any. Anyway, you're aware that T has a few relations, right?"
"Right, uh, one of each I think, right?"
"Yep."
Ridgeland was about to prod the conversation on by asking what point there was to bring them up, but he knew Western would get to it eventually.
"So the main thing you need to know about her -" Western let a gap of breath sit in the air before and after the pronoun, which could have been interpreted as him considering her with a layer of contempt, then continued to say, "is that she's not with us. And the problem with that is she's not dumb, and she understands things around her, and she's had some, uh, unfortunate situations come around in her life, so the combination of that with some folks always telling her 'no' to some things means that she tries to dance her way around the tape, you know? One consequence of this is that unlike you and me, she doesn't have the same tool at her disposal which we do. So this means that there may come a time where she might introduce herself to you and be all friendly and nice and such, and being so isn't a farce, as she is proper and respectful and all, but. But. She may have a motive in tow. And that motive may be for you to help her have a tool of her own, like we have."
"Really? And that's forbidden?" Ridgeland drummed the fingers of his right hand against the bar top to contemplate the situation. He didn't need to think about it long to reach the general logic and inherent conflict, but still felt compelled to give his own interpretation of how it should ultimately be resolved. "I think that as long as it's clear that she would only possess it for her own self defense, then it should be allowed. She would have what she wants and there would be no secrets kept between her and everyone else."
"But doesn't that constitute an indictment upon our ability to handle our business?" Western said this more to echo the explanation given to him rather than his own beliefs, and as a way to gauge his reaction.
"Well, no, I don't think so. Accidents happen, and there's only so much any of us can do. And if she has truly has had some unfortunate accidents, as you have said, then perhaps that is the best direction forward."
"Fair enough, but these are orders here so don't forget it. Got it?"
"I got it, yeah."
Ridgeland cradled his beer mug into both of his hands and tilted it to his lips slowly so that he could draw out the process of taking the liquid in and drinking it down. In the silence of the moment, he wondered how many attempts were made for this order to be disobeyed.

---

Today's song session was basically very good. I had to play the first song a while before restarting it without random, as it had long notes which I forgot about, and I restarted it a second time before that because I wasn't sure if the program had a loading error and I didn't know if it was playing a proper song or not, and I couldn't initially tell if it was giving the error of playing the chart of one song with the sound files of another. Once it was resolved, it gave the rare warmup increase, so that much was nice. After doing that and bumbling through Rainbow Rainbow, the rest of the day was good. I'm glad to have rectified the fumbling of Brazilian Rhyme that I had made last time, as well as having a good increase with Rizing You Up. That's a ten percentage point swing between its last two plays, I believe.

Lunar Beat. Extra Mode. Double play. "@" denotes Random chart modifier. All songs are of highest difficulty type unless specified.
First line, by column; song title, EX score percentage and letter grade rank, EX score value and pass/fail, judgment readout (just great, great, good, bad poor), highest combo reached, note count of chart under Extra Mode, original note count of chart, percentage increase of Extra Mode notes over original note count, timestamp.
Second line, by column; pass count / play count, EX score percentage difference from record, EX score value difference from record, judgment readout difference from record (if current play is new record), highest combo reached difference from record (if current play is new record), timestamp of old record (if current play is new record).

Code:

			EX% & Rank	EX.p/f	pg.gr.gd.bd.pr		combo	nc	onc	%+nc 	date
visiblizer 		44.11 D		2084.F	721.642.454.174.788	0127	2362	1494	058.09	2013-11-12T02:42:47:381Z
0/2			02.75+		0130+	79+28-43-47+72+		0033+				2012-10-13T00:47:31:041Z

rainbow rainbow @	37.64 D		1599.F	536.527.595.185.780	0109	2124			2013-11-12T02:49:46:541Z
0/11			08.07-		0343-

happy wedding @		69.04 A		1541.P	594.353.127.10.60	0178	1116			2013-11-12T02:52:38:260Z
4/9			01.25-		0028-

the safari 150 @	62.61 B		1127.F	425.277.146.5.80	0103	0900			2013-11-12T02:56:17:486Z
0/5			00.11-		0002-

another fall @		30.00 E		1490.F	483.524.779.288.1026	0019	2483	1274	094.89	2013-11-12T03:00:22:342Z
0/1

wise up @		61.11 B		1649.F	610.429.221.35.138	0072	1349	0792	070.32	2013-11-12T03:09:30:126Z
0/10			01.44+		0039+	21+3-29+11-52-		0012+				2013-07-29T01:07:31:657Z

rizing you up @		52.72 C		2091.F	758.575.338.110.543	0171	1983	1680	018.03	2013-11-12T03:12:42:141Z
0/9			03.66+		0145+	82+19-144-38+152+	0039+				2012-05-01T01:49:46:819Z

brazilian rhyme @	70.06 A		1023.P	384.255.68.8.31		0144	0730	0693	005.33	2013-11-12T03:16:49:861Z
3/4			04.93+		0072+	26+20+30-3-23-		0117-				2013-01-23T03:40:51:033Z

bring her down @	61.74 B		1572.F	600.372.216.30.141	0216	1273	1010	026.03	2013-11-12T03:20:09:406Z
0/8			00.98+		0025+	30+35-11-13+40+		0044+				2013-11-04T01:19:23:904Z

華蝶風雪 @		62.56 B		2151.F	787.577.238.30.178	0125	1719	1481	016.07	2013-11-12T03:23:52:596Z
0/8			00.55+		0019+	12+5-7-3+4-		0099-				2012-04-10T01:02:05:948Z

with you @		66.63 B		2071.F	763.545.172.23.126	0094	1554			2013-11-12T03:28:31:877Z
0/12			00.19-		0006-	

super mario 3 bgm @	82.74 AA	0978.P	418.142.25.3.12		0284	0591	0206	186.93	2013-11-12T03:38:57:058Z
3/3			01.78+		0021+	25+29-8+1-3+		0018+				2013-10-26T00:49:02:457Z

wish @			73.89 A		1376.P	526.324.66.3.21		0309	0931			2013-11-12T03:43:45:645Z
8/9			00.85-		0016-

im in love again @	75.16 A		0672.P	263.146.35.0.3		0300	0447			2013-11-12T03:49:03:213Z
6/6			01.23-		0011-

silvia drive A14 @	62.50 B		1724.F	632.460.221.21.87	0156	1379			2013-11-12T03:55:05:756Z
1/5			04.38-		0121-