Day Eleven: A Very Bazaar Day

6/26/15, 11:20 PM PDT

So I checked the weather today. And it was nice. Lots of sun, but not too hot. As far as SoCal's concerned, it was pretty fair.

Hah. Get it? Because we're going to the fair today??

I'm sorry for the double puns. So sorry. But yes, today is my friend group's third annual summer faire trip. But we don't have Brandon this year, so in his place will be Gwendolyn. Oh and Sam's jumping in too, since she hasn't been here for over seven years.

So anyway, in the beginning of our day, we decided to do some light sightseeing. We decided to rip off our faces and paste them onto cartoon animals to see what we'd look like if we were born beautiful.

Kayla and Angela messed up the face-pasting process and accidentally brought their shoulders along for the ride.

"Oh you, mom!" -Angela
(via Christina)

I, on the other hand, face-swapped perfectly. And I was pretty content with myself until I realized that the new body I had only has one really large nipple.

And an outie belly button, but that's not as bad.
(via Christina)

We also managed to find a one-man band. Sam, Kayla, and Gwen all bought signed pictures of him for a dollar. I thought it was a pretty stupid purchase until I actually saw the picture. Now I kinda regret not getting it.

Who wouldn't want a picture of a mustachioed man
firing sparks into the sky while wishing you to be cool?

Afterwards, we went on the rides. We started off pretty tame with Crazy Mouse, but we spiced it up by setting up a little wager. The Crazy Mouse is one of the few rides that takes reaction pictures of you when you go on it, so we bet that whoever couldn't make a neutral face when the picture is taken would have to get a design chosen by everyone else painted onto their face.

Sam lost that bet. Or maybe she didn't and we just rigged it by preventing her from seeing the picture. Either way, her face vandalism painting will come later.

We rode a LOT of rides. So much so that we actually got Sam to be PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE of riding any more rides. But I think the absolute highlight was going on this guy:

It was so tall that it couldn't fit in one picture.

So I had to put it in two, with a postage stamp of Angela
in the lower right corner.

That ride is INSANE. It spins in a HUGE radius, so even though it's a ridiculous height, it's actually a REALLY smooth drop. Smooth but fast. I don't know how else to describe it. It's like... a bowling ball sliding through a really long tube covered in butter, I think that's the best comparison I have.

It probably didn't help much, so instead, take this video of Gwen and I screaming like little children on the ride.

We also won a few prizes from the game booth places. Technically, we didn't really win it since we only played the racing games where you compete against other people, and we rigged it so that we were the only ones playing. But a win is a win, and when the prize is an adorable little BMO, I'm glad I shelled out 15 dollars for it.

If you look carefully, you can almost see my wallet
killing itself in its eyes.

Angela got a little something something too, thanks to the collective efforts of the entire group, and ESPECIALLY thanks to Christina's sharpshooting skills. We won this behemoth of a dog in that water racing game where everyone got a prize for participating and every single time Christina played, she won. Because of that, we managed to swap in 25 dollars worth of stuffed animals for this guy:

She named it "Vezpoochy." And shortly after, she
performed a suplex on poor Vezpoochy.

Before we left the games/rides area to go eat more food, we were approached by a sketchy old man with a deep, gravely voice and a look in his eye that radiates psychopathy. Normally, you wouldn't listen to such people, because nine times out of ten you'll end up in a shallow grave next to the I5. But he said the magic words, the words that would immediately disable Gwen's firewalls and hit her right where she's vulnerable. He said...

"Hey, I need two people to ride Speed for free."

Speed was Gwen's favorite ride, so she effing LEGGED it. She made it to her seat and strapped herself in before he finished saying the word "free." Swear to god, she broke the sound barrier in that 100 meter sprint to the chair.

No one else was willing to ride the giant, towering thing, so I decided to hop in and ride the thing AGAIN.

Angela and Christina got some pretty great pictures of us on the ride. I especially like these three, which I think tell a story.

In the words of the wise Christina, here is the story I titled "Ephemeral in Nine Words."

"Here they come."
(via Christina)

"Now they here."
(via Christina)

"They are gone."
(via Christina)

Beautiful, isn't it? Who would have thought nine simple words would have such a profound effect on its readers? Nine words, all carefully chosen, that convey the happiness, sadness, and inevitable end to every friendship, every relationship, every single event that one will encounter in their entire life and even encompasses the entirety of one's own life. Truly a literary masterpiece.

One of the exhibits we visited was a rock display. Which yeah, sounds boring, until you actually look at some of the really creative stuff they have, especially their stone food display. They made a bunch of food-looking stuff entirely out of rocks and I LOVED IT. I'm especially impressed by the grapes.

I don't believe that these things are capable of wrath.

Take a look at it zoomed in, every single grape is made out of a rock.

This thing must have been a chore to make. Hahahah... ahhhh.

They also had the world's saddest frog for sale too.

When you realize that your entire life is worth three
bucks, you'd be pretty depressed too.

And if you recall from our banquet this year, then you'll realize that WE FOUND OUR LORD AND SAVIOR AGAIN.

HE HAS ASCENDED.

So anyway, rocks aside, remember the little bet that Sam lost about halfway up? Yeah, this is the part where we plaster her head with whatever designs the rest of us choose to put on her mug.

She went from this:

Beautiful.

To this:

Even MORE beautiful.

The face painting artist really didn't have to do much, honestly. In fact, she didn't even have paint on her. We paid her nine dollars to basically erase the thick layer of foundation on Sam's face. The pink, purple and black hairs on her head are all natural, and the blue sparkles are just really bad acne.

She doesn't like to show other people her true colors (pun not intended). I mean the first time I saw it I was actually pretty surprised. Not disgusted surprised, but happy surprised. Like when a kid opens a present and sees a box from Macy's, immediately believes that he got clothes for Christmas, but then when he actually opens the box, finds a dead puppy because his dad forgot to put air holes in it.

Yeah. I'd still date her even if she had that much hair. I mean she does already, and I've kinda grown attached to it.



The rest of the day consisted of us roaming the fair and looking at cool stuff. We went to more of the exhibits and took more pictures of ourselves.

Here we see Angela doing what her ancestors have been doing for thousands of years.

"Vezpoochy gon' taste real vezgucci when I'm done with 'em."

And we found the sign that I'm gonna hold in my children's room if I ever meet a woman unfortunate enough to be stuck with my mini-me's.

Well, when you call it "domestic abuse," of course
it's gonna sound bad...

We also found Kayla's ancestors.

Her legs are twigs. This thing is literally a twig.
ANCESTRY CONFIRMED.

We found a wild valedictorian too.

Too busy taking a Snapchat of a blooming onion to notice that our
blooming friendship is now shriveling up.

Not to be outdone, I also have a pic of something brown, circular, and delicious to post.

It's a funnel cake, you pervert.

I also found the best license plate EVER.

This thing got me at least eight likes on UCLA Social, hah.

And we rode the gondola too. The rest of the group isolated Sam and I to our own gondola because of our gross, disgusting, lovey-dovey nature, so have this selfie of us.

Thank you, SCOTUS, for making our relationship
valid at last.

I got a picture from the gondola...

But Angela took another one that just TOTALLY shit all over my picture so I'll leave it right here.

Then again, she did use a filter, which might have been the deal sealer.

To end the day, we took the obligatory group pic. As always, here's the past years we went...

Year one...

Year two...

And here's this year. Somewhere along the line, Christina and I switched and Brandon turned into a woman. All of which were better improvements prior to the last years.

Also notice how our arms have gotten progressively closer to each other.
It symbolizes our friendship.

See you later fair. Thanks for a great three years, hopefully we can get the entire group along together in the future for more annual trips.

"You're welcome, Michael." - Balboa Park tower.

RFotD: Every time I fall behind on my blog entries, a small demon comes out of my vent and slaps me with a spoon until I get a bruise. It's the worst thing, I swear to god.

Day Ten: KamiKon 2015, Day One

6/25/15, 11:28 PM PDT

Today, Angela, Kayla, and Christina came over to harass Mocha and to soil my Nintendo Wii's memory card with subpar games.

Bastards.
(via Angela)

I took a nap right before they all showed up, which meant I was kinda woozy for the first part of them being over. I don't think they noticed that I was half-awake though, even though I was talking at a few octaves lower than normal and I was reacting to everything super slowly.

So anyway, Kayla brought Call of Duty 3 for the Nintendo Wii. As you can expect from an award-winning series like Call of Duty, the graphics were superb and the action was incredibly immersive. Even though it was one of the games that was released with the Nintendo Wii, I felt it completely captured the graphical and hardware capabilities of the new console.

Nah I'm kidding, it was a total piece of crap. Take a look at their launch trailer, highlighting this nice orange-haired boy showing just how immersive the game is.

Given the fact that my sensor bar was at an awkward position and the fact that you have to point the Wii remote to aim, our experience with the third installment of the Call of Duty franchise was mostly this.

Next, we played The Sims. Well, Kayla played The Sims. We just yelled a bunch of suggestions of stuff she needs to do. We managed to make two characters.

The first was a large, African-American professional chef who is incredibly irritable, lazy, outgoing, and grouchy. This was that man:

I would trust this man with my wife life.

His name? Vezpuuccii Gucci.

Ready for goddamn action.

Of course, we couldn't leave poor Vezpuuccii all alone, so we made him a beautiful companion. Personality-wise, she was the polar opposite of him (because opposites attract), she was a park ranger, and she was known to all only by the name "-￠@$#-"

True love.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we were playing this Sims game:

Complete with bloody volleyballs and Tom Hanks!
(via gamefaqs.com)

So the first thing that happened was that we got shipwrecked. And for some stupid, stupid reason, Vezpuuccii and the wifey got stranded on SEPARATE ISLANDS. So we had to fetch Cash Money from goddamn Airplane Island while we were stuck with a bunch of literal monkeys on Shipwreck Island.

Maybe Vezpuuccii was just that terrible a husband. Cash Money had to literally catch a plane after the shipwreck to avoid him.

We quickly got impatient. We were running out of food. We were running out of water. We were afraid we were gonna die virgins.

Luckily, we found out that we could interact with (and more importantly, name) these guys:

I'm talking about the monkeys, not the social justice warriors.
(via gamespot.com)

We named a monkey "Waifu." And we grabbed a banana, found some bushes, and we were happy.

Later, we went to eat at The Loving Hut, driven by the safe and careful Christina.

Ignore the obvious phone distraction or the fact that Christina
is currently driving a hearse.

We made it relatively safely to Loving Hut though.

I cropped out the tire tracks on Kayla's legs though. But you don't
need to worry about that.

...Except I didn't check Loving Hut's schedule. Apparently, they're closed until 5PM, which was the exact time that Christina needed to be home by.

The exact moment that all three of their disappointment meters peaked.

So we went to Islands instead. We ordered a LOT of delicious food, but again, I'll spare you the food pictures. Christina left at 4:55 or so in hopes that she would make it back home before her mom unleashed a can of Vietnamese Ass-Whoopin on her. She got home at 5:08.

So yeah, Christina's dead. It was nice knowing you.

We went to Old Navy afterwards. We found this shirt pretty interesting.

Thank you, Shia LaBeouf.

See the little running dude inside of the word "IN?" We remembered that the slogan for The X Files was "I Want to Believe" and we thought it would be HILARIOUS if the little guy in the center was an alien.

So I made it so.

I should totally sell this as a shirt.

Oh and I bought this AWESOME cutlery set. It can turn into a spoon, a fork, a knife, and even CHOPSTICKS.

And it's Australian so you know it's good.

Here it is opened, with all its parts.

It's adorable.

Aaaaand assembled (partially). You just switch out the handles for the other heads as you need to.

Totally bringing this to college. Bruins are gonna be
so jealous.

Good day, good good day.

RFotD: That cutlery set cost THREE BUCKS. BUY IT NOW IT'S AMAZING.

Day Nine: My First Step Into Getting A Job

6/24/15, 11:35 PM PDT

Hey, so I finished my video reel today! I'm pretty proud of it, which is why I will leave it right here for potential employers you guys to watch as well.

I'll be using this to apply for various video related internships and jobs in the future, but in the meantime, tell me what you think of it! And of course, if you need anyone to edit your stuff, just hit me up and we can probably negotiate a price/trade or something. I could probably give you a coupon code or something since we know each other.

I finally got a library card as well. Seeing as how I am now an eighteen year old and thus, am now ready to take on the numerous responsibilities bestowed upon me by the government in one fell swoop, I decided on a whim to get it today. And they changed the design, which is pretty cool. Take a look.

It's in a book. Almost looks like a spectrum of reading.

I also spent a few hours at Justin's house playing Melee. I got wrecked most every time, but it was still worth it because I got to practice my tech chases and I got to give him some relationship advice. Although considering the fact that I have the relationship experience of an overturned turtle, it probably won't do him much good.

Don't tell him that though.

RFotD: Libraries that existed in the Middle Ages had their books chained to the wall to prevent theft. Due to the labor-intensive processes that went into every book, even monastery libraries were very protective of their books. And yet somehow, in the modern age, a library was irresponsible enough to give me a library card. They're doomed.

Day Eight: I Do Nothing

6/23/15, 11:24 PM PDT

Today was a pretty chill day. I went on a movie marathon and watched Good Will Hunting and The Big Lebowski, both of which were movies that I can't believe I waited this long to watch.

Hmm... not much else I can really write about today, since I don't really wanna bore you with a movie review and pretty much all of today was movie watching. Which was great, by the way. I mean I know it's not the most exciting thing to read about on a blog, but for me, it's nice to just have days where I do nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Guess how many times I've used this picture on my blog?
(via SpongeBob/engadget.com)

BUT, the next few days will be way more interesting to write about, promise. Wednesday I'm finishing my video reel to try and take me some jobs. Thursday, squad's coming over to harass Mocha the dog from his peaceful slumber. Friday's gonna be one HELL of a day at Del Mar. And the weekend's the weekend, so it's given that those days will be fun.

But for today, it was just peaceful. Peaceful and relaxing and full of Steve Buscemi. 

RFotD: A picture of Steve Buscemi is located inside of Samantha's wallet. Ask her about it sometime.

Day Seven: Thanks Samantha

6/22/15, 11:08 PM PDT

Today was a MUCH better day than yesterday, largely because Samantha came over to watch movies with me. The day started off pretty rocky, but as soon as she came over, everything was all better. She has that effect on people and I'm so thankful that she does.

OH, I owe you guys some Legoland pictures, so have at it!

Welcome to Jurassic World Legoland. Cue music!

We got lost at one point because this sign had really horrible directions.

When the janitor said the bathroom was "over there" I didn't think it'd
be all the way in Japan.

There was also BLATANT racism on one of these signs.

"C'mon, every Asian knows that Tokyo is only 29 million chopsticks
away from Legoland."

Aaliyah, you might get a kick out of this license plate if you read this stuff.

I absolutely LOVED Miniland though. I tried to take a few forced perspective shots of everything. Here were my best takes.

Cute.

The Luxor hotel. Also known as the Illuminati Headquarters.

A nice little white castle. They probably sell really good burgers.

I think Pacquiao's having a fight here later tonight.

That's no dumpster...

They had a few cute Easter eggs too. Here were two I found in the Chinese Theater.

"DOES HE LOOK LIKE A FEMALE DOG?"

I haven't seen it yet, but I think this is Reservoir Dogs.

A few neat little Star Wars landscapes...

Maybe these are the droids we're looking for.
Probably not though.

Trench run! Kinda like the one I went on last night with your wife.

DC was cute too.

Oh, wait, sorry, this is still Star Wars, it's where the Sith lives.

Here's the place for scale.

Actually, I just have a really small dad.

At the waterpark, we found this FULL BODY DRIER (which I tried, it wasn't fantastic).

Five bucks for 1/4 of your body dry. Worth it?

Dad looks up in wonder at the beauty that man can create.

"They recreated the pose I take when I'm on the toilet so well..."

And we found this cruel hellhole of trapped Pikachus in the park.

How Pokemon managed to sneak into a Legoland theme park, I don't know.
But they certainly got them all.

Yeah, we saved one from its prison.

Hell yeah.

See you, Legoland.

Anyway, back to the present. So Sam stayed at my house today and we watched a really scary movie called The Den and I LOVED IT. It was the first genuinely scary film I've seen in a long time, evidenced by how tightly I was holding on to Sam during some parts. And I can sleep through Insidious, so it's not like I'm just being a wimp this time around.

Anyway, thanks Sam, for making today a lot better than it would have been.

Sorry, I'm really tired and I've fallen asleep a few times typing this out, I hope some of my words are still coherent after this, haha. I'll find out in the morning.

RFotD: Michael doesn't sleep. He crashes and burns.

Day Six: Changing Moods

6/21/2015, 11:36 PM PDT

You ever have those days where everything is good and fun and happy and then all of a sudden, one thing, one thing happens that just makes everything crash down?

This is one of those days.

We went to Legoland today for Father's Day (at my dad's request, not because we pressured him into choosing it) and it was a really fun day. We rode a bunch of rides, raved at how cute Miniland was, took a bunch of pictures, ate a bunch of unhealthy shit that will probably shorten my lifespan by a few minutes, introduced my sister to water slides, and at the end of the day we even won a stuffed Pikachu that was as big as my sister. It was great.

And then, I don't know, I just do a complete 180 when I get home. I don't know why, it might be a combination of a bunch of factors or it could just be something that's wrong with me, but a few hours later, as of writing this, I am pretty miserable.



Word of warning: I'm just gonna vent for a few paragraphs, so feel free to ignore this shit until you see the pretty pictures at the very bottom, with the mildly funny captions and whatever. Spare yourself from reading this garbage if you want to.



I mean I guess it's fun, exaggerating stuff about my life to hopefully bring at least a smile or a stupid laugh out of you guys and I hope that I at least have done that a few times, but to tell you the truth, it is exhausting. Not physically, mind you. I don't really give a shit how late I stay up writing this since I can just sleep in since it's summer. I mean emotionally.

It is fucking draining to pretend that every single aspect of my life is perfect and happy and covered in sugar rainbows or whatever lovey dovey frilly shit you guys believe that it contains. I mean god knows I already do that enough when I'm in public, I don't want to be wasting hours at home doing it on the Internet too. And I know that it's entirely my fault for that. Since day one of this blog (or hell, since day one of those emails I sent that did the same thing as this), I have written these for the sole purpose of entertaining people. And with that desire to entertain people naturally meant that I had to omit some things.

You guys read about the banquets, the parties, the funny stuff. But you don't read about the sleepless nights, the depression, the times where I've felt like total shit and couldn't even tell anyone because of this expectation that I'm supposed to be funny or happy or some other expression that vaguely resembles a smiley face. And that kills me.

I don't know if this is making sense or not since honestly, I'm so tired and my head is throbbing right now. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's hard to pretend that everything is fine all of the time. It's sometimes hard to write these entries because there are days where I have to wring out the happiest, funnest details of a day to convert into keystrokes even though inside, I want to die.

I really think this article from Cracked about Robin Williams' suicide  really embodies how I feel sometimes, so give it a good read. And please, before you readers (if anyone even reads this) mass-message me on Facebook with your reassurances and your questions about what's wrong, I just want you to know that I'm okay right now. I might not be the happiest, but I'm not gonna do anything drastic. There's not much you guys can really do to change how I feel, other than just understand that sometimes, things are not exactly what they seem.

I'm not gonna turn this into a vent blog, because let's be honest, no one wants to read this shit on a daily basis. Tomorrow, I'll maybe upload all of the pictures I took from Legoland (and I took a lot, so that might take awhile), but for today, just have this giant block of text. Tomorrow, I'll go back to how this blog normally goes, but I'm gonna sleep this off, see if that helps any.



Oh, and here's the pretty picture, like I promised I would give you.

This puppy is blissfully unaware of the meaninglessness of its existence.
Fantastic.
(via wallpaperscraft.com)

RFotD: Pugs are rated as the fourth wrinkliest dog in the world. In first place? Your grandmother.