11:42 am greencastle, july 8; 12:42 am taipei, july 9

so today was a whole lot cooler than i was expecting it to be when i last posted, but that doesn't mean this'll be a very long post. you'll yet behold. see, first i slept in. until about 9:30. and by 9:30, i mean 12:30. well...went to sleep late, so it worked out. ah...then i went upstairs and talked to carl for a long time--barney fell asleep while we were up there; guess he was really tired or...something. well...that was cool. see, having been living in the states for a good few years, carl's english is really, really good, and so i could talk full-speed and pretty much full-mannerism/catch phrase/whatever--at least, all the ones that i'd use around other people that don't wouldn't get two thirds of them. it was cool. talked about random stuff; school, computers, and, oddly enough, cars and driving. well...then i proposed we head to an arcade. huh...around this time, barney was back up. well, they thought, yeah, that'd be a bunch of fun...but there aren't any half decent arcades around here. just one or two that they knew.

well, i got us to try anyways, and wow, did they misjudge it. that, or the ones that they used to frequent were unbelievable. see, when chen-shui bian (or however one spells his name in english) was in power, he basically killed all the arcades, saying they were a bad influence or gambling was happening or whatever. this one is one of the few that came back. hah...huge, i say. huge! all kinds of games i've never seen (well, a few) among a dozen or so sequels to games i remember playing just a few years ago. none of them unexpected, but still. and a few new takes on old styles--a crossbow time crisis-like game, more of those chinese drum games like drumstyle, that game that's beatmania/ddr only with a keyboard that i saw being previewed when i was in china, and countless others. and, of course, ddr itself. well...needless to say, i really sucked today, not having played in months and, more importantly, used to pads like mark's, much, much larger than the arcade ones. but carl was really good, probably a little better than i used to be, and barney was about where i am, but he actually knows what songs he can do.

vastly importantly, though, i met another american while i was there. not just any american, one from ohio. and not just any guy from ohio, but a ddr fan from ohio. but that's an exceedingly drastic understatement. it's saying that jeff's a fan of computers, anna garst's a fan of shopping, and tracy's a fan of swimming. well...so when i played, he was sitting there, waiting for a turn. then barney, carl, and i, after i failed, went off and played some time crisis. we came back and he was playing; no, wait, *winning.* like...AA while looking around at stuff. approximately two greats on some eight foot like 200 bpm song--1.5 speed modifier. on his extra song, meaning that he'd just gotten three AA's. oh, man. so later we were talking, and he did stuff like...show me pictures of AAA's he's gotten. and...pull out a sheet of the steps for max 300 that he'd memorized before. uhh...wow. *all of them.* says that he can AAA almost every song on the arcade version of extreme, which has most of the songs from every single ddr. i mean, that's getting bloody perfects for every step, not even a single great. he has gotten AAA's on all extreme video game songs. extraordinary. he's pretty amazing on double, too. lesse...try max 300 A. *right before my very eyes.* double. that means both pads. you know, when there are eighth note runs back and forth across every arrow. and jumps with crazy stuff like left on the left pad and down on the right, only a quarter note between other things. and...lesse...was this one of the songs that he played on 2x speed? yeah, probably. he's good at that. know what else? he knows the world champ of ddr--this guy, megamanx, whose name is kevin. who can definitely easily (relatively) AAA virtually any song--i'm not sure if that's actual, too. man...man! i mean, i was standing there, talking to him, with him sometimes even looking over at me, glancing around, and *AA'ing songs.* auuugh! he's, like, indescribably good. anybody remember jsb? found those videos of him a long time ago? yeah, this guy's met jsb. when he's been playing, he's better than jsb. now, though, he's really out of practice--he's been in taiwan for a while, not playing *too* much, and the whole week before he came, he--you can practically put this in quotes--literally woke up every day, got on xbox live, and went back to sleep later. literally never left the house. halo 2. guy's unbelievable, but since i've met him, and seen him play, i believe him. oh, but kevin? yeah, aaroninjapan.com has a video of him AAA'ing max 300, and, if you look carefully, you should be able to see this guy in the background. says he and kevin have a bunch of other friends who are just as crazy (another understatement) at ddr as them, but kevin is, of course, the best. they go around to tournaments and stuff to win. it's crazy! but, once, my friend actually beat kevin--on doubles, once. kevin got like 5 greats, but this guy only got two or three. i mean...wow. they measure and describe how well they did by the number of greats that they get--you know, like, "i did pretty well, but didn't quite make it; just three." says that if you really want to get good, you have to realize that "great" just isn't good enough; if you get a great, you must see that you've done something wrong. figure out what it is and turn it into a perfect. i just though...no, way. this guy spends way too much time. but...very cool.

so i think we're going to try to hang out again or something tomorrow; means i've got plans pretty much all day. sleep until ten or 10:3ish, lunch with the people with whom i'm staying at 11:30ish, until about two, shortly after which imma try to meet up with this guy, and then i'm meeting my mom's brother, alex, in the evening some time vaguely after six. apparently, my mom told him to take me out to watch a movie...uhh...okay, whatever. i'd been hoping to some time, so i guess it'll work. i think i'll talk to my new friend and see if he wants to come along, but we'll see. oh, hey, know what's funny? it was so loud and i was so busy thinking about how incredible this guy was at ddr, i didn't quite catch his name; maybe dan, mayble kyle, but i really can't remember...and that's pretty embarrassing. huh...we exchanged emails and aim id's, and i gave him mine first, writing my name on the top of the page, but he didn't quite pick it up, and so i just have these two intarweb contacts. well...mebbe he'll have his name in his aim profile or up with his email. hopefully. whatever. he's pretty cool, though, and really modest, never bragging or anything. at least, i didn't feel like it was bragging, and i suppose that's mostly what counts. hah...crazy, crazy, crazy.

oh, so carl and i had a pretty good conversation on the way back before sushi tonight. i can't remember how it started, but politics happened! most fortunately, he's not a bush supporter and knows a bit about general politics, so he could join in my relatively (to, say, a blog entry) short rant, bashing, and flipping out (including throwing my arms emphatically into the air). i was glad he wasn't just another foreigner with rose-colored glasses. i'd've been pretty upset in that case. but all turned out for the better, thankfully.

then sushi was pretty good. i didn't eat a lot; guess i just wasn't hungry. hah...ended up not doing much in the arcade, so i've a whole bunch of coins left over. well, no matter, i'll definitely be visiting again. hrm...nothing really noteworthy there, but i was really thirsty and ended up drinking a whole bunch of tea. hah, funny story, i starting writing "eating" instead of "drinking" just there, surely at least partly because one may say that one eats tea rather than drinks it. meh. had some eel, aside from the standard calamari and various many fishes. make that many various fishes...yeah, i think i'll go to sleep soon. too much excitment in one day; too much talking as fast as i can, eager to blabber at full speed and with full use of my active vocabulary. i'm pretty sure i even mouthed "in the face!" and a few other ones today, but none were verbalized, for the sake of (once again) my integrity in the eyes of others. the illusion of relative normalcy.

oh, but so all the while that i've been writing this surprisingly long post (you know, i really did so little i didn't expect it to be this long; guess it's all that stuff about which i could talk today, and i'm even leaving stuff out, like carl's obsession with HID headlights that he wants for his 2004 accord, which he also loves, or the fact that the ddr guy played football--which reminds me, also, that carl at least tried a whole bunch of sports, such as rugby, soccer, swimming (mom signed him up for some meet when he was a little kid and decided that he'd have the best chance of doing well if he participated in *every* event...), cross country (had fun and seems to have been on a team very similar to ours), played ultimate, etc...)...here, lemme start that sentence over again, so's you remember where we were and don't have to waste some energy flicking your eyes back up to find the start of the...well, actually, i suppose that since this'll actually be in paragraphs, rather than the way i'm writing it right now--one obscenely massive chunk of text occasionally punctuated by the codes for closing and starting new paragraphs--it'll be pretty easy for you to catch those first few words again--most certainly faster than it's taken for you to read up to here. hah. okay, i'll move on now. (sorry.) ...and so as i've been typing this entire post/entry, i've been listening to some of my new music. wow, though...it's great stuff. one band, "stranded at the drive-in," had me puzzling over them for a really long time, trying to figure out whether it was a mistake wherever i read it and it was just supposed to be "at the drive-in," or whatever, especially when i couldn't find any other mention of them online, i.e. amazon or a web page of their own. no matter, they're definitely not the same, but they're definitely awesome. slint? yeah, they're a lot like mogwai, but i like them more; it's ambient, but their songs (or those that i've listened to; lots of music here, and my listening time is precious) all seem really familiar, plus the lyrics are well worked in. and...ah, there was also six organs of admittance. uhh...suffice to say, good stuff, but i've been listening to so much random, eclectic, really good stuff, i can't briefly recall how good--that is, in what way they're good, not the degree. (upon further reflection, they're also quasi-ambient, but up-tempo and generally indescribably [and wordlessly] quality-full enough to be listened to with one's attention partly on just enjoying the music, not solely concentrating on something else. makes for really good soundtrack music, too, methinks, and so i'll probably be listening to a lot of that while mrt'ing or wwhatever. sweet.) oh, and, of course, i finally got around to the decemberists, to my joy, both at how good they are, and, more importantly, the fact that they weren't overhyped. woohoo! good day, good day. (saying it twice makes it all the more so.) oh, and, of course, i finished changing *all* of my wma's (namely, almost every cd i'd ripped onto my mp3 player) to mp3. yes! theoretically, the quality would be a bit better, but, of course, quality can't go up...but at least i feel better about them now. oh, and filled in a bunch of the idv3_2 tag info for albums that needed it. so today felt both productive and extremely fun, not to mention mentally revitalizing. yes! big score! and, with that, i'm off to read a bit of "the great and secret show," by clive barker, which is shaping out to be much more than it'd seemed at first. i can barely stand it. just barely.

(oh, and then shortly after i finish this post and shut down and everything, i decide that i'm way too out of shape, and so do like 250 crunches and 30 push-ups. uhh...if i keep it up, maybe i'll be able to notice a difference. well, at least i'm not sore this next morning, just a little tight.)