Dear LucasArts/Telltale games:

Thank you, so much for brightening my world.

A new Monkey Island game from Telltale games: http://www.telltalegames.com/monkeyisland

A "remade" (updated) Secret of Monkey Island from LucasArts: http://www.lucasarts.com/games/monkeyisland/

My heart is warmed

-- Aubin

I have been out of town for ~3 days with no internet access. Now, while I'm not like I was in my younger days -- an addict needing a fix -- I'm staring at my Flist, and my webcomics, and my inbox and am whimpering. This will take more than the 15 minutes I can spend on it tonight.

So. Uh. Will catch up laterz. Nini, world.

I've kind of withdrawn for a bit -- and want to apologize to everyone. I was just coming out of my shell after my breakup with Drew, and then in a few months I'd all but disappeared in dealing with graduation/finals/marriage/moving/preparation for grad school/5000 little things that needed to be done and am now withdrawing further after being walked out on and the subsequent divorce.

All in all, no reason to be such a bad friend, so apologies. Gonna x-post this to facebook, as I've been feeling really guilty recently over this. I hope y'all can forgive a few more weeks of seclusion -- I'm not that much fun to be around right now, what with the random bouts of crying and...stuff...

My feelings have been morphing a lot over the last few days. Several things need to be considered.

A: It looks like the quickest this barrel of monkeys is going to be wrapped up is 6 months. This is after I sign a bit of paper. Maybe. I don't know. 6 months. In order for a divorce to go through in Virginia you have to be separated from your partner for a minimum of 6 months (With a legal separation on paper). If you have kids? A year. The lesson to be learned here? 80$ and 1 day to get married, 100-200$ and 6 months-a year to get divorced in Virginia.

Can we say "The government is enforcing their morals by making it super easy to get married but ten times as hard to out?". I can understand making the proceedings take a while if you have kids. I can even understand making it so you have a month or two to sit and think regardless of children status. But 6? For a couple that has been married less than a year?

B: This brings us to point two. You have probably guessed that my tone has changed a bit since my last post. This is a product of the mood whiplash I'm undergoing. From heartbreak over loosing someone I loved enough to marry, to a kind of anger and realizing that it was a relationship where I probably would have gotten the short end of the stick anyway in the long run and just wanting all of this to be over and to be done with this and to have closure and to be able to move on.

Steve walked out on me a few days ago, saying he wanted a divorce and hasn't spoken to me since. I learned through his mother that after talking to a bunch of people he's gonna go through with it. Currently we're separated, and he wont speak to me. I have no idea when the divorce will be finalized.

I am experiencing some pretty severe heartbreak. He was the closest person I'd ever encountered to my idea of a perfect mate. Sadly, at this point in time at least, I'm not what he wants.

This has been really sudden, and I can't believe that this has all collapsed after only two months, when, even through all the stress it looked like we'd gotten things set up so that in a few months we'd be starting school and things would be great. I want my old life back. But even more than that, I just want my husband back.

I don't feel this is the venue for me to say anything more than that about all this. But if anyone wants to know more, or would like to talk to me my email is clawsight@gmail.com and my AIM is clawsight. If I don't respond on AIM it is because I am away, but my computer is stupidly not sending my away message. MSN doesn't work for me anymore, but I can get to it via Meebo.

Times are tough.

More news later when the future is clearer.

Okay. So. I've been clean since last October, after basically not playing since last August. So. In that time period I've discovered all the things I can do with my free time. I'm getting back to the point where I want to start doing creative and useful ventures!*

But, Blizzard, that foul succubus is releasing my greatest wish. New skins for druid forms that reflect the color of your fur/hair! You will be able to be a glorious black lion. I see these forms and my resolve weakens. I do not have time for WoW now. I have a husband, two birds, a move, and grad school to attend to, but still its siren song calls to me.

--
*
For instance, watching all of Star Trek and all of the available Dr. Who and then comparing and contrasting the two series in the context of the societies they're cultural phenomenons in, and writing a paper detailing this analysis.

I mean, everyone in the States knows Star Trek, and in the UK everybody knows Dr. Who and from what I've seen of Star Trek: TOS and the new Dr. Who both series go out of their way to give winks and nods to their countries of origin. I just think comparing and contrasting them would be really interesting. But, in order to do so effectively I'd need to watch all the Dr. Who that can be watched (Given that there are lost episodes) and all the Star Trek that's out there, at least once, and most of it probably twice.

I'm organizing our netflix for prime Movie Watching. We got given a 360 as a wedding gift, and, with it for 10% a month we can stream as many movies a month as we feel like. It's a good deal. We've used it to work our way through countless hours of documentaries by David Attenborough (I highly recommend Life of Birds and Life of Mammals.), Season 1 of Dr. Who, Pan's Labyrinth, and are currently munching through Season 2 of Dr. Who, and Season 1 of Star Trek: The Original Series. I won't bother to list the 50ish movies we have awaiting our attention.

We also get to rent one DVD at a time, and are planning to use that to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Anyway. I'm on there. Poking around and I see that newly added for streaming video is Neverwhere. Cue me stuffing my fist into my mouth to stifle the screech of pure joy so that the neighbors won't think anyone's being murdered.

Oh my god. Neverwhere. I'm finally gonna get to see it!

EEeeeEEEeEEEEEeee.

Yoinked from setissma



Pop song + another pop song + piano + cello - lyrics = love!

This site almost qualifies as porn if you're in to sociology/demography/geography. With just a waggle of my mouse I can compare and contrast world fertility rates!

(This is brought on by research I'm doing on my own. After hearing people crying overpopulation doom for years I've recently encountered several interesting articles about how -- particularly in "first world" nations fertility rates are dismal. And, well, they are. It's fascinating from a sociological standpoint to try and work out why so.

For the record, in the States we're currently at 2.05 fertility rate according to the CIA website, which means that we're doing fine -- we're replacing our current population. However, check out Europe -- or even Canada or Australia (and China... and Singapore...) -- and fertility has gone way down.

What's this mean for us? Well, implications about a graying population and the healthcare thereof, and the need for job replacement aside, let's all consider, briefly, the political ramifications. The conservative reasoning behind why this is happening is terrifying. Since we're still at replacement rate here in the States they've not yet added it in to their arsenal of fear tactics, but, if we dip down I'll bet you my ovaries that they're gonna start howling about the evils of abortion, contraception, cohabitation, and women working outside of the home. They're already using the 'they can't have children' excuse to try and keep gay couples from marrying. Can we see a future where these yahoos are trying to place penalties on single people over a certain age? On married couples without kids? On women who choose to work rather than stay home?

I'm not sure what can be done about all of this -- I just know that the conservative ding-bats are already blaming Europe's low fertility rate on their 'sinful nature'. It's pretty freaky.)