Isomorphic

This happened to me a few weeks ago. Originally I blogged this somewhere else... but I decided that I should share it here as well.

During one night I had a dream. I dreamed that I was late for work (very important work). During the dream I rushed myself to clean up, eat, shave, and running to my destination hoping that I'd get there on-time, but eventually it became inevitable that I'd be late. So I screamed and panicked - thus waking myself from the nightmare.

As I gained my consciousness, I looked at my clock - only to realize that I was going to be late for work (very important work), in real life. So I kicked and screamed and rushed myself to work - but in the end I was five minutes late. Nothing bad happened to me for being five minutes late, but it was sort of weird considering I just had a dream about it.

A TL;DR version can be found at the end.

After days of sleep deprivation I was finally able to take a nap during the day. During this time I had a weird dream, which I am recording right now within my best abilities.

Although the dream started with me in an unspecified location, it was believed that I was in South Korea where I was contacted by a lady from SKT T1 for a meeting. Appearantly I submitted an "application" to become a progamer a few weeks ago. This came as a total surprise to me, but I was almost too excited to go.

The dream then warped me to where the meeting was taking place - it was not just me, but some of my buddies too (all foreigners to Korea). A lady from SKT, with a few assistants, showed up to greet us. This lady introduced her to be Ms Kim something (could not remember her first name), but she looked awfully similar to January and she spoke English (yes, this is getting really ridiculous now).

I approached her in private and told her that I did not deserve to be in this position because I couldn't even make it to D+ on ICCUP. She disagreed and told me that the team liked to recruit new members often to keep the A-team working hard, especially TheZerg and Hyuk.

I seemed to be convinced of her argument and accepted. No conservation about my actual responsibility nor pay was discussed (toilet-cleaning?). After I got back from this ordeal I was feeling extremely tired, so I went to bed right-a-way.

The next thing happened I woke up from my nap. The time is now 8:25 PM. Evidentally, my bias against SKT Zerg was prevalent even in my sleep.



Here's the TL;DR version:
+ Show Spoiler +

I am not sure if this has been posted before, but here I go anyways: when I watch the streams I always see the same kind of commercials; so feeling bored I decided to look for some on Youtube, and I found this (carefully click on Spoiler to view; not safe for work):

+ Show Spoiler +

Characters:
+ Show Spoiler +

Marin (on the right); a girl that lives under water


Urin (on the right); a girl that lives under water, younger-sister of Marin


Kanon; a seemingly normal girl that often omits an evil aura

Welcome to a new show of this season. This is Sea Story (Umi Monogatari), which according to animenetworks.com, is:

---

The "transforming magical girl action" story centers on Marin and Urin, two "pure" sisters who live alongside the fish in the sea, but yearn to be in the world beyond the water and above ground. One day, a beautiful ring falls in the middle of the sea, and Marin and Urin retrieve it. The two decide to leave their waterbound world for the first time to deliver the ring. After an arduous journey, they come across an isolated island where a high school girl named Kanon lives. The encounter between Marin and Kanon — the maiden of the sea and the maiden of the skies — awakens a hidden power as the world is threatened by an enveloping darkness.

---

The story started with a ring that was dropped into the sea that was found by Marin and Urin, whom lived in the water (think about them like mermaids but they don't have a fish-tail). Marin, mesmerized by the ring's beauty, decided to go out of the water for the first time in her life to return this ring to its rightful owner on the surface. Urin was worried about her sister and decided to come along as well.


One Ring rules it all.


The first sight of the surface world was breath-taking.... literally


How can you not be catching people's attention when you are cosplaying?

On the surface world, the sexy and dynamic duo's yelling caught the attention of the ring's owner, Kanon. As it turned out, this ring was given to Kanon by her ex-boyfriend, whom dumped Kanon a few hours ago. In Kanon's rage she threw the ring into the sea - only to be returned by Marin and Urin. Frustrated at the sight of her ring, Kanon threw it away a second time, but this time into the forest.


The One Ring returns


You know, if I changed Kanon's aura from purple to yellow, many people would think that this was Dragonball


It's over 9000!

Captivated by the ring, Marin decided to look for it among the bushes, with Urin joining a short moment after. At the same time Kanon was feeling ashamed of her immature actions. She should be ashamed, though, as she threw it so hard that Marin and Urin would continue to search for the ring until night, when the fireworks began. Having never seen fireworks before, Urin was extremely scared and fled by chance to a large stony coffin near a temple. Luckily for her, the ring she was looking for was right by the coffin; Urin made quick work in extracting the ring, but in this process also opened the magical seal that kept whatever sinister inside.


*rolls eyes*


It's actually a hidden patch of minerals.


Mission accomplished.


Uh-oh

All of a sudden the lid is blown out and black gases erupted from the stony case, spiring up into the sky. Kanon's ring seemed to also be scorched by the evil omen briefly. Feeling helpless Urin could only hid under a tree and cried while waiting for Marin and Kanon to rescue her.


This situation can be compared to suddenly having 5 control groups of hydras dropped onto your defenseless factories.


(is this possibly a setup for a plot-twist to come?)


Bad things always happen when there is a ring of black cloud above the sky.


Hiding under a tree while there is a thunderstorm is only safe in an anime.

With the combined effort of Marin and Kanon, Urin was found near the stony coffin. Feeling relieved Marin gave Kanon a big hug (I believe at this point Kanon stated that she has no interests for girls... ha! Her heterosexuality will fade in time, I am sure). During the searching process Kanon also accidentally released Master Roshi from Dragonball a turtle-elder who would briefly explain that an evil spirit called Sedona was released and her ultimate goal was to corrupt the hearts of everyone on the surface and in the seas once she was complete, and that Marin, who was the Sea Witch (Umi no Miko), was needed to stop Sedona before her completion.


Most of my attention are at the top-right corner


"Marin, I am sorry that I can't kiss you right now; not that I don't want to, but if I do the entire show will get cancelled."


Don't ask me about the bandaid I have no freaking idea.

Kanon seemed to have misunderstood the conservation and left angrily (while emitting her evil aura). On her way home she met her mom who briefly mentioned Kanon's special heritage as someone with strong spritual power. Not buying any of that, Kanon ventured to the sea shore trying to relax, only to meet a weird woman (hentai onna) who attempted to steal Kanon's evil soul.


Enter the swim-suit woman (mizuki onna), later known as the weird woman (hentai onna)


Seriously, hurry up and put that tenticle on her mouth already.

Luckily Marin and others sensed the evil presence of this weird woman and came for the rescue. At this point Marin performed the most cliched thing in Japanese anime - a transformation (also known as henshin; by the way my eyes were bleeding when I saw it; luckily it was only about 20 seconds long and I survived it). While Marin's clothes changed little (it was just as revealing as before), she did seem to gain some agility and the power to control water (reasonable for a Sea Witch) and form it into a projectile.


O no here we go again -_-'


This part looks like Dragonball too!


"I am sorry I have to separate you two right now; if not, the show will get cancelled."

Unfortunately Marin's new-found power was not enough to stop the weird woman completely. While she was buying time for Kanon and others to escape, the weird woman gained the upper hand on Marin and the situation seemed dire. Suddenly a beacon of power was drawn from the turtle-elder to Kanon, which transformed Kanon into the Sky Witch (sora no miko). After whining briefly about her embarassing transformation Kanon casted a fireball and stroke down the weird woman.


Ensnared


Kanon's spiritual power kicking in


Remember anime law of physics #102: a transformation allows a character to instantly change her hair colour as well as her hair length (compare with the picture above).


Does this mean that Kanon is actually a Human Mage from WoW?

The weird woman suffered as she was engulfed by flames, but Marin decided to neutralize Kanon's power with her own, saving the weird woman from certain fate. Marin claimed to have seen this woman's eyes before and decided to hug her - which somehow purified this woman into an octopus - an innocent animal corrupted by the the black cloud Urin released from the previous episode. After this whole ordeal Kanon felt that she was scammed into doing something weird and wished to never see Marin and her sea-folks again.


Marin uses ice beam! It's super effective!


O dear lord, why would anyone want to hug an octopus?

Fast-tracking a few months to winter - it got so cold that it became difficult to do a lot of things, such as playing guitars, so everyone just sat down without any fun activities. Yui made a suggection of eating nabe at her house (Ui will cook, of course), but it seemed that no one could go. Disappointed Yui decided to have nabe without the other club members. All of a sudden an intense feeling of drama kicked in and it almost seemed like the club lost its synchronization.


Well, nothing else to do...

As it turned out, everyone was really busy with something else. Ritsu had to take her little brother to a movie, Mio wanted to go somewhere quiet to concentrate on writing music without Ritsu distracting her, Mugi was working at McDonalds (god knows why), and Azusa had to take care one of her classmates' cat, dubbed "Azumeow No. 2".


You may think otherwise, but this is actually Ritsu getting ready to go, not Yui


I thought nowadays companies would use those magnetic cards that are also used for credit cards to record employee's attendence


Who the hell wears the scarf like that


Learned from Yui-senpai

Things got more dramatic as Ritsu got ditched by her brother, Mugi spilled a drink, Mio could not think of anything for her songs, and Azumeow No. 2 started to puke at the plot of this episode. A sense of loneliness and helplessness was striken at everyone. Luckily Yui was there for the rescue:


I think the way Ui holds that cabbage is really cute. So cute that I am developing a fetish for cabbages.

Yui messaged everyone asking everyone if they'd prefer chocolate nabe or marshmallow nabe (both are absolutely ridiculous flavours for nabe because nabe is not sweet). This strange message somehow elevated everyone's problems away, as they happily sat and ate in the McDonald's Mugi is working for (except Mugi who could only watch).

The end?


Again KyoAni tried to add some drama into the show, which in my opinion is not that great for a supposedly slice-of-life show. Furthermore, by adding in the drama a lot of the possible comedic elements were lost; in fact the first 10 minutes or so was just to give settings and foreshadow the happy things to come, which could be used for more 'funnier' things.

At the end there was a promotion video for the show that will be replacing K-ON's timeslot, called Taishou Yakyuu Musume. According to random curiosity, it is about a group of girls playing baseball. It does not seem very exciting for me.

The next season will start soon, and I plan to blog a show (because it's fun!), preferably one that random curiosity is not blogging.

+ Show Spoiler +

As mentioned from last time, Yui was sick. At the beginning of this episode however, an alternative theory on why Yui got sick was explained: it seemed that Yui wore something Sawachan-sensei made, which was too thin for the weather (this also seemed to be the reason Yui got sick in the manga, according to Ecael).

Regardless of how it happened, the fact of the matter was that Yui was sick four days before the performance, and the club had to seek Azusa to back Yui up by asking her to play Yui's part as well. No one wanted to do it (especially Azusa was strongly against the idea), but it was out of desperation.


For one brief frame, it looked like that Azusa was picking Yui's nose. I tried for about 20 minutes to extract that frame but failed. =(


fapped too much

Surprisingly, "Yui" showed up on the next day for practice. Everyone was pleasantly surprised. It did not last long, however, as during practice everyone felt something was wrong - it was wrong that "Yui" was not making any mistakes.


Bust size increases after catching a cold.


looking good...

Things went weirder when "Yui" called the other club members "Azusa-chan" and "Ritsu-san". Ultimately it was Sawachan-sensei that discovered "Yui" was actually Ui in disguise (although Sawachan-sensei said she knew it was Ui through the difference in breasts size).


Even though she doesn't have eyes, she sees things the clearest.

Later on the real Yui showed up, but she was evidentally too sick to practice - something Azusa was not happy about.


tanjoubi omedetou, Azusa-chan; here's your present, a box of used tissues


This frame is too cute to describe in words.


=(

On the day of the performance, Yui recovered (a miracle!) and showed up barely on time (after tons of efforts spent on stalling the actual time of performance). Everyone was excited... until it was discovered that Yui's guitar was left at home. Sawachan-sensei lent Yui her guitar, but Yui could not play it - and there was little time left. At the end Sawachan-sensei had to play Yui's part while Yui ran back home to get the guitar. Luckily Yui arrived soon enough that she could perform fuwafuwa-time without a broken voice like last time.


Yui is back!


kiss~~~


kiss failed~~~ T_T


As Yui stood in front of the stage... how close! She almost did not get to ruin the performance play!


The end?

This is a continuation of here.

Getting my NDS was very exciting for me - it was my first hand-held system as well as the first game console that I bought and owned in my life. After some minor difficulty (that is, myself being retarded and bought SDHC instead of MicroSDHC), I was able to play on the same day as I bought it (June 16th).

Thanks to the TLer We Are Here, I was able to download certain things and start quickly. Influeced by the comments of many from the post above, I first tried Tetris - for about 2 minutes - before my mom saw the game I was playing and she wanted to try - for about the next hour or so. Basically, my mom first played my first console, and it was kind of fun because she really likes Tetris and probably she hadn't played it for years.

When she retired, I was eager to play something on it. And the one I chose was New Super Mario DS, since the game mechanism is kind of similar to the classical mario game and I *should* be able to play well. Well...

The keyword here is "should". The reality was that I sucked so much that I was a little angry (much worse than getting tanks rolling over my UD base 13 games in a row in wc3). In fact I think I died about 10 times for World 1-4 or 1-5.

I am 100% certain that I am not retarded and only a retard can lose 10 life in World 1. So what went wrong? Some deeper analysis showed me the answer: the control. The control on NDS (and other conventional gaming pad) was bad, in my opinion, in the following way:

Direction keys. On NDS, and other conventional gaming pad, the direction keys, as I would call them, are on the left.

+ Show Spoiler +

Since it was time for the school festival again, it was natural for Ritsu to tell Azusa about the Club's glorious history - that is, how Mio fell and the unpleasant consequences. Mio tried to stop Ritsu, but ultimately it was Sawachan-sensei who exposed it, by showing Azusa the video (burned on a DVD) of what happened on that day.

Starcraft 2 Beta on a DVD


O wow this game is so great!

At the beginning Azusa was thrilled; well, until the pantsu part anyways.


I am not sure if this is the right way to react


By showing this scene right after Azusa saw Mio's pantsu must imply something...

Upon Yui's mentioning of her guitar's substandard performance, Azusa asked a series of questions that blew Yui's mind. As it turned out, Yui's guitar was VERY POORLY maintained. After about a year since her purchase, this costly guitar had turned into junk. It was decided that Yui's guitar was to be sent back to the shop to be fixed before the big day of the festival. Mio, however, was not exactly happy about the trip, since most of the guitars sold at shops are not for left-handed players (but Mio is left-handed, in case you forgot), so going to such shops was always depressing for her.


Look on the bright side... she hasn't made out with the guitar yet


Considering how much Mio gets abused, this is probably nothing

In the shop the clerk spent some effort on fixing Yui's guitar. It was hard, but not overwhelmingly difficult. At this point it seemed that whatever problem the club was facing (as indicated by the name of the episode) would be over - unfortunately this was only a beginning.


*GAPS*

When everyone was getting ready to leave, Mio was nowhere to be found. As it turned out, Mio saw some left-handed guitars and was extremely excited to see them - so excited that she was acting out of character (as a Mio-fan I purposely did not include a shot Mio acting weird because I could not stand seeing her like that). After seeing this, Ritsu took the direct approach and dragged Mio out of the shop.


For a second I thought I was watching Pokemon

Ritsu might have used too much power in this and Mio fell (how dare you Ritsu!!!). Mio did not say much but appearantly she was not happy about it.


Gravity Pull

In the aftermath Mio seemed to be ignoring Ritsu, prefering to not have tea with her. Ritsu was worried and decided to follow and spy Mio.


I think that bookshelf is misplaced

To displease Ritsu more, without her Mio seemed HAPPY. This promoted Ritsu to do a series of pranks to piss Mio off, with the real goal of trying to catch her attention. But this actually made Mio very angry and the relationship of the two was drifting apart, interrupting the activities of the club. All of a sudden the club would not be able to perform for the festival, which would be a huge emergency event. Azusa tried to fix the problem to no prevail.


Azusa's efforts were in vain, but I am sure many people are happy to see it anyways.

Ritsu excused her from practice that day. For the next a few days she was nowhere to be seen and the entire club was very worried, as everyone felt Ritsu was inreplaceable. As it turned out Ritsu was absent not because she was angry at Mio and others - she caught a cold and had to be in bed.


Swine flu

The other members quickly realized this and went to Ritsu's house to check on her. Mio arrived first and had a heart-felt chat with Ritsu, which mended their relationships.


This pic further reassures that I want Mio to be my waifu

Soon afterwards everyone else came. For some reason Yui slept with Ritsu (more on this later).

Bad decision from Yui's part.

A few days later Ritsu recovered and the club was back to normal. However, due to Ritsu's absence the club was not able to decide on a name for their band yet, which was required to perform in the festival. A discussion was made but each member of the club had a different idea, so negotiation seemed impossible. At the end Sawachan-sensei decided on one for them (Afterschool Teatime) so she could continue to enjoy her tea.

From this pic you can see Yui's unpleasant face, because she actually got sick from Ritsu. Let this be a lesson for all the TL'ers that safe sex is important.

Well I think that was better than I hoped. While I was looking at the preview for Episode 10 I questioned if Yui's guitar would actually cause any REAL problem; appearantly the writer fooled us all.

I swear to god: when they had a shot of the curtain (during the part in Ritsu's room), I thought it was KyoAni's way of implying that they were making out. Then again my yuri-sense is hypersensitive these days.

Click below to see pics + comments
+ Show Spoiler +

The story started with Azusa talking to Ui about her senpai-tachi: how lazy Yui was, how fantastic Mio was, how ojou-sama-like Mugi was, and how crazy Ritsu was. Regretably for Azusa, Ritsu was right behind her and heard her comments and had to make her pay by like Homer always did to Bart.


Stalked by Ritsu

While they were on topic Ritsu made up a bunch of things about Mugi having a butler and went on oversea trips every summer, only to later discover that they were true when Mugi's butler picked up the phone and told Ritsu that Mugi went to Finland.


Then Ritsu got stalked by... Mugi's butler?

Anyways, after some ordeals the club members finally realized their destination: some crazily luxurious place rented by Mugi's family


Mugi's macro is amazing!

As expected, a trip that was supposedly for practice turned into 100% funtime. In fact, it looked and felt almost exactly the same as last time (more on this later)! A common rule surfaced, however: whatever activity they decided to do, Mio always seemed to be the one suffering: on the beach she had to deal with banacles (yet again), while they were cooking she had to be depressed about her hands being too big, after their dinner she had to be challenged by Ritsu for a "trial of courage" only to be scared to death (yet again) by Sawachan-sensei, and later was almost boob-grabbed by sensei ... it was not pleasant for her, but all the Mio-fans probably enjoyed her suffering to the fullest. So rejoice! On the other hand, Azusa seemed to have the most fun, and got tanned the most for some reason.


Reversed Minami-ke?


Mugi was happy to see Yui and Ritsu making out (refer to bonus)


Beware of spider-mines


G-cup lovers must be really happy right now


I won a SeaWeed2 Betakey!


Japanese castle this time


Ritsu reminded me of Ga-Rei Zero episode 1


<3


パテラダイス = paradise (thanks Ecael)


Ritsu: real men girls eat all meat!


Mio depressed as always


Yui looked really weird. Seriously.


They were actually smoking pot


Sawachan-sensei arrives!


This bath shot reminded me of Love Hina, for some reason


Yet another perverted idea from Sawachan-sensei was born

In ther aftermath, Azusa discovered that Yui was the only one practicing after everyone else fell asleep. Azusa was impressed and taught Yui some techniques. Yui was really happy and their relationships were reinforced.


Fuwafuwa

This was, in my opinion, a disappointing episode. Plot-wise this gave Azusa a chance to bond with her club members (and she did that well); but there was nothing except that. In fact, this episode was mostly Episode 4 remade - for example, in both episodes banacles were scaring Mio to death, Ritsu and Yui constructed a scenario with them stranded on a lone island, Mugi made a sand castle, and everyone got impressed the heck out of Mugi's family, etc. While I found Episode 4 to be really funny, I barely laughed when the jokes got recycled in this episode.

Another disappointment factor was the lack of new OP, as pointed out by Jaalin on RC on his blog on Episode 9. While last week I was also unhappy about the lack of new OP, I had held some hope that this week they'd make a new one, but this was completely shattered as the same lame OP appeared again for Episode 10. Since there are only 13 episodes in total I doubt we will see a new OP, even though fuwafuwa time could easily be made into one.

Ultimately, I come to the realization that one has to be disappointed at a show by the 75% mark. It's a fact in life that I have to endure. Luckily, the next episode seems to feature some drama, so hopefully things will pick up a little bit.

Here's a (in my opinion very funny) comic from Abstruse Goose:



To see more from the same author, go to abstrusegoose.com


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