Over the past few months I must say that I've grown to dislike this blog challenge more and more. There have been a bunch of times where I'll have an idea for a blog post, but not write it simply because it wasn't part of the challenge and I was already so far behind I can't possibly justify not writing a post for the challenge. This led me to also feel a need to have truly great ideas for challenge posts since I had put other ideas on hold for them so they had to be "worth" it. All in all it led to me writing nothing and that sucks. So I want this thing to end, but I am stubbornly determined to see it through. What is a man to do? My answer is to take the remaining 15 topics and just give you the speed round answers. To give some sort of flavor variant to this I'll limit myself to 140 characters for each question. Basically if I can't tweet it I have to shorten it. lets go

#15 Popular notion society has wrong. 

The freind zone is a massively overused term that has people use to deal with rejection. 9/10 times shes just not into you. Deal.

#16 Where my name comes from

First I was ClanToll, then this blog Critical Canuck came along. 3 C's = TripleC shortened to TripGG. 

#17 Favorite movie. 

Slightly harder, usually I just say Episode 5 of Star Wars. However I'm going to go with Shawshank this time around. 

#18 What I would say to a 16 year old version of me.

Why are you so dumb? Could you just like stop for like 5 minutes? Yeah that'd be great.

#19 Death Row Meal

Big steak and peppercorn sauce, poutine with more meat on the side, ice cold cherry coke to drink. Potato skins and wings to open. No green. 

#20 My City

Edmonton is a cool place, I actually like the cold, plenty to do, public transport is nice, it is kinda far from like everything else on earth though.

#21 Three Fears
Not fulfilling potential I have. Becoming too jaded. The new Star Wars might suck.

#22 Nicknames
JJ, Jonny, Mr. JT, Papa Jon, Harry Potter, idk prob missed a few.

#23 Favourite Pizza
Homemade Pizza made by my own momma, can't beat it.

#24 What makes me Unique
Idk, I guess I'm more ok with making an idiot of myself than most people. Mostly cause I really don't care what people think.

#25 Perfect 1st Date
Prob home cooked meal at my/her place, then some activity where plenty of conversation can occur. Good conversation is very important.

#26 10 Random songs
Ok can't keep the 140 character thing here. 1. Bend and Break, Keane 2. Going to the Ceremony, Kid Cudi 3. Problem, Arianna Grande 4. Make the Money, Macklemore/Ryan Lewis 5. Bodysnatchers, Radiohead 6. Volcano, U2 7. Radioactive, Imagine Dragons. 8. Halo 3: One Final Effort, London Philarmonic Orchestra. 8. The Riders of Rohan, Howard Shore. 9. The Way I Am, Eminem. 10. B#$#%, don't kill my vibe, Kendrick Lamar. Nice.

#27 Drugs/alcohol
Don't do drugs kids, drinking and driving is bad. Don't be a moron.

#28 Process of writing
I look at the topic, take a rough idea and write a draft in my notebook and then type it up making minor revisions usually. Post when done.

#29 Being single
It's ok I guess. I'm pretty ok with it, but am ready to find a relationship. Not desperate enough yet to do anything silly.

#30 How'd the challenge go?
Awfully, see 1st paragraph.

WE'RE DONE BOYS. NEXT FEW POSTS WILL BE LAZY LISTS OF THINGS I LIKED/DISLIKED THIS YEAR. PEACE BUDS.

Five Easy ways to my Heart

Man it took way longer to get this post together than I wanted to. Freaking school and things getting in the way man. Anyways I'm going to talk about Five different ways to my heart. Now originally I had thought that I would go about this pretty much the same way I have gone about every other post here, with me going a bit more in depth about my reasoning for choosing certain things over others and not just listing a bunch of things. Today I'm going to cut back on the explanations a bit, down to like a sentence or two, but I'll also include some honorable mentions so the post won't be 1/2 a page. So let's get to it!

First off, Food! Surprise I like to eat! Just like all those other humans on the planet. Simple meals  like X with rice and a sauce are going to be the best use of time to get my attention.

Second, be funny. It's pretty cliche since everyone lists this as something they want in the a significant other, but it's because it's important! If nothing else just roll with my sarcasm and we should be just fine.

Third, try to be cool about my weird little obsession with E-sports. It's not for everyone and I know that, I love it though. If you don't automatically dismiss it I promise to not bore you to tears with 4 hour lectures on "Rotations".

I know it's not me, but I don't got time for photo shopping. 

Fourth, Since you are going to be cool with my strange hobbies, I can be cool with your strange hobbies, but first I need you to talk about them. Don't go overboard, but I can promise to never be dismissive of your hobby.

Lastly on this list I ask that you have decent taste in movies/music/TV etc. There are shows beyond One Tree Hill, music beyond Country and Pop, and movies made by companies other than Disney. Some of them are even good!

Alright we got the main portion of this done, so let's go through a few more honorable mentions, and note that most of these will be jokes so don't get offended if I say something you don't agree with.

#1 Honorable mention! Be attractive.
#2 Don't be unattractive.
#3 Read this blog, share it with your friends!
#4 $$$$$
#5 $$$$$ family
#6 Have an uncle that works for Microsoft/Blizzard/Riot/Disney/Marvel/The President
#7 If you hate the character Tauriel because she's not in the books, go home.
#8 Like birds
#9 Know the 157th digit of Pie and not the other ones
#10 Drink Coke, not Pepsi and definitely not diet Pepsi.

I'd do more but I have class to attend now. I'll be streaming some of the new Dragon Age game and giving some of my first impressions tonight, or something along those lines. That will be at http://www.twitch.tv/tripgg and I'll be going up around 9:30 hopefully and going for a couple of hours. Come by and make fun of me! Peace buds!

My Lottery Winnings

So I sort of fell off there for a bit, but I am definitely not out of it! I've still got the need to give you something to read! (bad rhymes ho!) anyways I'm going to talk about what I would do if I won the lottery. Following some janky math I figured 35 million would be a suitable number to work with for this hypothetical. Now first things first. That is an unreal amount of money right? jeez, hard to even comprehend the idea of spending it all, but I will try for your entertainment. Also as a side note, for the sake of this post we will assume that this is AFTER TAXES pay out. Ok? ok.

The first thing to do when obtaining an massive sum of money is to make sure that you stay absurdly rich for the rest of your life. This for me would involve finding some sort of financial adviser to handle the task of investing the money I have safely and with intelligence. So I turn 30 million of my total winnings over to the task of investing and the likes. I'm not a expert but I'm pretty sure that much invested properly should keep me very rich for the rest of my life rather easily. Now we have 5 million dollars left, and I'd just one more responsible thing before I start goofing around, something simple like making sure anyone in my family has their debts taken care off, which shouldn't even put that big of a dent into my money unless there is some crazy crime debt stuff going on like on TV, but like come on, what are the odds of that? For the sake of numbers we'll say I dedicated half a million to this. I Definitely don't think I'd come even close to using all that but whatever.

What are the odds of my dad being Heisenburg? Zero, it'd be my mom obviously

It seems silly to say this, but I'd also like to move this blog onto a site of its own as opposed to being hosted here on blogger, not that I don't appreciate this service, but I'd like to have it be functioning on it's own. I'd also get some quality design people to come in and make sure it's well built looks nice. It's something that I would really like to have done.

Four and a half million dollars kicking around to just go be dumb with. (#TheDream) Even that is an absurd amount of money to spend. HOW DO RICH PEOPLE DO THIS!?!?!?! oh right yachts and things like that.. nvm figured it out. This is the part I think more people want to hear about since it we all love to indulge these fantasy fulfillment at least a little bit. First thing I would do for fun with my money would be to traveling. My plan for this would be to essentially attend a huge number of E-sports events around the world and  then spend something along the lines of a week after the event to soak in the place I am at. This gives me a solid start in destinations. Now that I'm rich I'll definitely be eating pretty good every night as well, prob not eating out every day, but being able to buy good food to cook for every day is nice. (RIP Ichiban) I'd buy a totally baller custom PC that I would probably have someone with more tech expertise than me set up just to make sure nothing is messed up. A new car would also probably be in order as well, but nothing super fancy. In fact I'd probably just stick with a Corolla, but have it be new. The last really stupid thing I would like to do would be to go to a fast food place, order so much food that they'll tell me that it's going to take like 15 minutes, and then tell them that I'll be going to another fast food joint and I'll be back. I really just want to see the looks on their face, plus with that much food I should be set up to throw a pretty nice party.

This party will require a great venue though, and I'll also want it to be my own place, so I suppose a new apartment/house will be in order. Not a bachelor pad though since I quite enjoy having roommates, I would probably still charge rent on them, but it would be at quite a discounted rate. I'm not really comfortable with just letting anyone free load off of me you know? Another aspect of a new place to live would be that I would have an office. There is something about writing in one's bedroom that I find... less than ideal. It would also give me a good space to continue to goof around and do creative things whenever I feel like it. Hold up. When did it become a priority for me to have space to be creative? I was never like that as a kid. Anyways, I'd stay in Edmonton for at least another year or so, but would be ready to move to a new city as needs be.

I don't have to be really attached to any one place since I won't have any commitments to a particular place. School would definitely become more of a hobby kind of thing, like I'd go just because I want to learn more, but only like part-time and I wouldn't be super concerned with when I graduate, since I don't really need to jump into the job field that early. I'd be there for the pursuit of knowledge and not the pursuit of a piece of paper to get me hired like university seems to be like for most people. Maybe I'd attend schools like NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) to learn some of the ins and outs of specific jobs. Cooking classes for sure, things like that.

Lastly, I'd put money into E-sports. Most likely in the form of sponsoring a team since I don't have the know how to run a team, but I want to be involved. With the level of buying power I would have and since it would just be me sponsoring instead or a corporation that could potentially rival sponsors already in place I could probably work with any team/player I wanted to. It's not like there are teams that don't want more money to work with. Personally I'd like to put my money into two specific teams. Cloud9 for sure, I have a lot of respect for their League of Legends team and think the owner Jack Etienne is absurdly smart with how he's running the entire organization. Definitely think he would put that money to great use. I would also like to work with Axiom E-sports if given the chance. While they only operate in the StarCraft II scene, I think the team is amazingly well run and I would love it if they had the resources to expand their roster out. I think it's for the best that I would work with organizations rather than through sponsoring individual players mostly due to my previously stated lack of experience in handling business like this and I would much rather just entrust people, but I would have to go with organizations that are already established and trusted since I actually want the money to be put to good use rather than have it be used in one of those dumb scams that seems to frequent E-sports often. Plus how cool would it be to have something like a graphic for this blog up on a Cloud 9/Axiom Jersey? Only cool to me? Right. Don't care, it'd be awesome.

So try and wrap up this massive wall of text. Invest most of the money to stay rich forever, pay off family debts, buy new house/car, go to school for fun rather than constantly stressing, new place, blog on it's own site, lots of travel and my face on a Cloud 9 jersey or something like that. Peace buds. 

One of My Embarassing Moments

Well this ought to be a pretty easy post to write no? I mean the hardest part will surely be deciding which of the many embarrassing moments from my life to choose from. Just the other day even I managed to walk headfirst into a door on campus, that was awesome, really a superb display of grace and control. Anyone that has seen me play games like Just Dance/Wii Sports and such have also received a lot of first hand experience in me embarrassing myself. There is one thing that really sticks out in my mind though.

What my brain was saying, too bad I didn't listen. 

This is a story that some may have heard recently, but I don't think that they will mind hearing it again so soon. I was on a double date that my friend Brad had set up. The date had been going decently well I think. People seemed to be enjoying themselves and all was well and good until very late into the date. Then I goofed up. You see I am not that good with remembering names, and I had in fact forgotten the name of Brad's date. I had gotten by just fine the rest of the night by using general terms or addressing the entire group at once, but near the end I got cocky.

somewhere in the deep recess of my mind I had apparently remembered her name. I didn't even matter at this point since the date was practically over, and the smart thing to do would be to not take that risk, wait until Brad had dropped her off and then confirm with him, since the worst that could happen there would  be he laughs at what an idiot I am, but he already knows I'm an idiot so it doesn't matter.  I instead made the bold and idiotic choice and just asked her a simple question and addressing her with her name, Jessica. Suffice to say her name was not Jessica. Luckily for me no one got angry, rather everyone there burst out into hysterical laughter. At this point I have no real choice but to own up to my stupidity and own it. Apparently it's now a joke between us all that I just call her Jessica anyways. I'm not really all that fond of the joke to be honest, but as long as other people get a kick I guess I can keep reminding myself of what an idiot I am. It's Karma really. The moral of this story though is to laugh at your embarrassing moments and don't let them haunt you. While I might like it if everyone pretended it never happened, it's better that I do remember so I don't do it again. Hopefully... Also screw sliding doors man, those things are totally out to get us all! You have been warned!!! Peace buds.

Favourite Band at the Moment

This post promises to be shorter than the last one, if for nothing else there really isn't a whole lot to be said about this particular question. Onto the question though, and man am I glad that I'm writing this now instead of in April/May. Back then I was in a stint of listening to 50 cent constantly, and that would have been such a pain to write about since in reality it's not that good. Instead I get to write about Keane since I've been listening to them a lot again. This is good since they are probably in the top 3 of my favorite bands ever and you know... they're really good.

One of their many great albums, give em a try if you haven't already

So why do I find myself always coming back to this band? Seriously, I go through these phases of listening where I'll listen to a couple of groups obsessively and then burnout (remember that term?) and find myself back on Keane, I never seem to burnout on these guys though. I think the simplest answer to that is that so many of their songs just connect with me on a very emotional level. More so than any other band I find personal connections in their songs. Not all of these emotion connections are happy ones though, let's get that straight. I think the best word to describe the feelings I have when I listen to Keane would be, "bittersweet."  The main reason would be that I was introduced to Keane by a very dear friend of mine, and one that I have not seen in a long time. I miss them very much and regret that we've somewhat grown apart. The music does remind me of those good times we had though and I appreciate it for that.

Welp. That's not really a happy note to end on now is it? I'm not going to use Corgis to fix it either, just wallow in sadness with me Kappa.

^ = Grey Face with no space

My Dream Job

I bet you all didn't see me getting another one of these things written up so quick eh? Well surprise! I did it and there ain't nothing you can do about it. Anywho before I get started on this topic. (12/30 if you are keeping count.) I would like to establish a "qualification" of sorts to the question. This said qualification is simply that money doesn't really enter the equation. When one talks about a "dream job" I feel like you should be looking for job satisfaction and not a fat cheque at the end of the day, because that ends up being the factor that deters a lot of people from pursuing these dream careers. So many of us would much rather, read/write, act, create art, music, or other similar activities, but the unsavory truth is that these jobs are rather top heavy in the sense that if you aren't the best at those things you will probably struggle to keep a roof over a family's head. So we compromise and choose careers that make us the money we need while hoping that we'll have enough time to pursue those interests in our free time. So with that in mind I decided that for this question I would assume that whatever I chose would provide enough to comfortably provide. Fair? Fair. Not like it matters whether you agree with this qualification anyways.

My dream job at this point in my life would be to work as a coach for a professional league of legends team. I figure the majority of people who read this blog are going to read that and think to themselves, "That's not even a real thing and therefore cheating." So I'll try to give a brief overview of what a coach does for a team. I'll also try to be a bit more general since this could easily be a post on its own. So basically a coach's job is to give their teams the best possible chance to succeed outside of actually playing the games for them. This can vary from a wide range of things from planning out team strategies and analyzing opponents games to find potential weaknesses to even to the role of mediator between teammates in solving internal issues within a team. These issues can be directly related to in game problems like two players not communicating properly with each other during a game to something as silly as two players not getting along outside of the game. The former can be a problem that easily bleeds into the game since the common practice at this time is to have the entire team live together under one roof. Another responsibility of a Coach is to find other teams to practice against or "scrim" with. It's actually quite similar to how coaching works in traditional sports, funny how the works out isn't it? Just on a smaller scale.

Like this, but with less yelling. 

Some of these reasons include that it would be a career in E-sports, something I'm quite passionate about. (See my previous post) It would also be challenging task to perform since there are a lot of things that need to be done and some of them, such as planning out a strategy for the team are evolving tasks that are never totally complete. A job like this also encourages my competitive side since I'd hopefully be working with a team that wants to be the best right? Now some might ask, "Why not just be a player though? Wouldn't getting paid to play the game be more fun?" In short, no you silly goose. Longer answer is that I think being a coach would be better for a few reasons and yes I'll explain it to you thanks for asking. Sometimes you play one particular game for a long time and then become so bored with it that you just stop completely, this is known as "burnout" and I'm quite prone to it, you know what you can't do if you play one game for a living? Stop playing it randomly. So that doesn't fit me. Players in the professional scene are also constantly up for ridicule on sites such as Twitter and Reddit, and I don't really want to be just eating hate from random strangers all day everyday. Coaches receive that hate as well, but not nearly as bad as the players do.  Lastly while a player must be well versed in the strategies of League of Legends they don't have the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in it since they have to spend a large portion of time practicing being good at the game. Since you know, the best strategy doesn't mean anything if you can't execute it and the strategy of League of Legends is what I appreciate most about the game.

So there you have it, my dream job. Why aren't I actively pursuing this? See the first paragraph. It's a massive risk and only the absolute best even manage to get paid positions and even then it's not some massive bag of money to be had. So I'll stick with what I'm doing because I do love it and it will at least land me a steady paycheck... hopefully. Peace out buddies.

You made it to the end! Here is a Corgi with a bow tie for your troubles. 

Misconceptions About Me

Before I get on to answering this question, (Yes I am going to just ignore the fact I haven't updated this in months, deal.) I'd just like to quickly mention what a massive mind game writing this actually is. Trying to not only see yourself in the eyes of others, but to then also try to see what people have wrong about you is a very surreal experience to say the least. Now on to the question!

So I think that a lot of people get the impression that I am an apathetic person. I can totally understand why people would get this impression of me since I know there are many times that I will vocally express my lack of care for a particular idea or thing. Even as some people would call it, "inappropriate" to blatantly express such disinterest in a topic but eh, what do I care? Now some people have the particular circumstance of seeing or hearing me express this disinterest of things in a rapid succession and have arrived at the conclusion that I simply don't care about anything at all! While I can understand why a person might have come to this conclusion, since it isn't the biggest jump to make I can assure you that this is far from true!

Than what is true one might ask? Simply that while there are many things that I really don't care about there are some that I truly and honestly do care about, and believe me I care quite deeply about these things. My family and friends stick out as people I care quite a bit about, but that much should be obvious though? I also have a deep appreciation for music, movies, games, E-sports, comedy, and funnily enough, freedom. These are just a handful of things that I care about, but are probably some of the things I care the most about. So the next time you are thinking about me (come on you do it all the time!) and your mind turns to apathy try to steer away from that line of thought. If you think I'm lying right now just be sure to try and cause some sort of outburst of emotion from me by saying really silly things like, "Attack of the Clones is actually a pretty good movie." or "Wouldn't it just be better if the government was in control of the internet?" I'm sure I'll have some sort of emotionally charged statement to give about that. Peace out buds.

Seriously, this movie is such garbage and don't you dare try to defend it. 

A Guilty Pleasure

Guess who's back? Nope, not Slim Shady but rather your favorite inconsistent blogger! I said I would finish this blog challenge and even though I'm like really far behind I'm still going to see this one through, mostly so I can tell myself that I actually did finish one of these things.

.So I'm going to tell you a guilty pleasure of mine today even though I'm not sure I really have one, since I don't really feel bad about anything that I enjoy a lot. Actually now that I think of it, there is something that I know I should feel much worse for liking so darn much. I take so much joy out of listening to people tell me that a movie is "bad" because the source material, (99% of the time books) is not being perfectly represented in their film counterparts. When people say things like this, all I can do is laugh and think of a quote from the YouTube channel Cinema Sins, "THE BOOKS DO NOT MATTER." and they don't, because your source material only gives you a basic idea of what the story CAN be and in no way determines the quality of a film. Having spectacular source material does not guarantee a good film and terrible books don't make terrible films necessarily. Yes this does mean that there was a real possibility that the Twilight movies could have been quite good actually,  but there would have had to have been a significant departure from the books in order to accomplish this, and that's something that you just have to do sometimes to make a movie work. Or you can always rely on the massive cult following to just carry you to box office success, whatever works.

The examples I like to bring up is Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies. Both of these series take some liberal departures from their source material, and you know what? So far it's worked pretty darn well. Also I have read both of these so people can't just claim that I'm totally ignorant of how amazing the books are and how that should shape my opinion of a movie. (don't do this by the way, it's really dumb.) If we can be realistic for a moment here and take a look at what the Lord of the Rings would have been like if they had stayed really true to the books. We would've had some sort of weird combination of a documentary about this incredibly detailed universe that J.R.R. Tolkien created and a musical. ( they sing ALL the time.) Guess what? That combo of Les Miserables and Planet Earth? Terrible movie. Guaranteed. Now with the Hobbit I jump on anyone that is still upset about the existance of Tauriel in the second part of the Hobbit trilogy needs to think about how silly it would be to not have ANY consistent female presence in the set of films, it was fine to just have the band of dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf in the book because it was a very not serious children's book that also happened to fit into the canon of the Middle-Earth universe. The films however are major blockbusters that need to connect to as many audiences as possible and not including a minor character that is female at least does not bode well in that department.

I feed on your fanboy tears. 

Enough rambling on the subject though, my guilty pleasure is laughing (at least on the inside) at fan-boys who think that whatever book they like is above interpretation and change by a filmmaker trying  to make a FILM. Stay Salty and peace out buds.

Something I Miss

Alright, so I obviously fell pretty hard behind in this challenge, but now that I've got everything figured out and I'm ready to ease into the more slack summer times I can actually sink my teeth in a bit and hopefully keep steady on this challenge. So Last we left off was, "Something I Miss."

This one isn't terribly hard I suppose, I miss a certain aspect of being in high school, not actually being back because please now let's not ever do that again, but I do miss how trivial all my problems were back then. Like seriously nothing I stressed out about actually meant anything in reality. Random high school drama is so dumb and it would be sort of nice to go back to such a simpler time, however the back draw to that is that not a whole lot I did meant anything either, like my grades have some effect on me, but I did plenty well enough to get into University, and beyond that the only thing that had any real meaning on that was the relationships I built over those three years. Those have stayed intact for the most part at least, but I spend more of my free time with people I met/got to know post high school now then people I did go to high school with, and frankly I don't see that changing anytime soon. That's just something that should happen naturally as we all grow up and live our own lives. So yeah, I kind of miss how carefree high school was, but not nearly enough to actually want to go back in any way shape or form. Sorry that this one is boring and short, but that's all I really have to say on the matter. Peace buds.

An adorable puppy cause science. 

Photo Sourced from Imgur.

Confession Time!

I bet you all thought that since I started falling behind on these posts that the challenge was for all intents and purposes over? Wrong! I'm still going to get through this, and we're even going to get back on schedule, just not immediately. Something about having the majority of my finals in the next two days makes it harder to sit down and spend a considerable amount of time thinking about these blogs. So the plan for the next two weeks is to write a post for today, then write posts Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to get back on track. Simple right? So now that that is out of the way let's get into the fun part. Me confessing things, which I thought might be a bit difficult since I try to not have things to confess, not like I don't have bad habits or embarrassing stories, just that I'm pretty willing to tell people about them which leaves not so much to confess to people.  I think I've got three for today which should be good.

#1. I don't actually hate puns that much. I mean when I first started saying that I hated puns I really did hate them, just couldn't stand them, but I suppose I got desensitized to them because once people heard about this particular hatred they seemed compelled to tell me all the puns they could think of. So I've gotten used to them, and I even laugh at some of them from time to time. They are cheap laughs and I will never sway from that opinion, but they are laughs none the less and who am I to get in the way of a laugh?

#2. Birds are really just ok. I think my family will be the only ones that actually get a laugh out of this one, because I know that the easiest way to drive my mother bonkers is to say the simple line, "I like birds" The truth of it is that the line comes from a song by the Eels with the unsurprising title of "I like birds." Birds are still pretty cool cause they FREAKING FLY, but they are not the end all be all of creatures.

So at this point, most of you are probably thinking that this post is just a joke now, so I'll hit you with a real confession now so you don't feel like I was just messing around the whole time, cause it was really only like 84% of the time that I was. Anyways, this last confession is going to sound kinda sad, but I`ll try to explain my thinking of how it`s kind of ok. Ok?

#3. I generally put the blame for anything that doesn't go my way on myself. Even things that seem like really obviously not my fault like walking down a hallway and some runs into me I'll think to myself, "Well I could have been paying more attention to where I was going." Something like that. This is probably why I get really frustrated playing games like League of Legends, because you have to coordinate with a team in order to win in that game, but if I lose I will certainly blame it on my own personal play. This thinking works out ok for me right now because I use it as a drive to constantly improve at anything I do. I also don't particularly like blaming people. I just feel bad about it after, even if it's totally justified. It seems so much simpler if it's just my fault cause it's easy to legitimately criticize myself since I know all myself pretty well. In short, if something I'm involved with goes downhill I'll probably blame myself, but not in a dopey self-destructive kind of way, more along the lines of "That sucks and I suck, but I know how to do better now at least."

Right, so I'm pretty darn far behind right now, I think I need two more plus one on Thursday to catch back up. I probably won't do another one till Thursday though, so Thursday, Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday to catch up? Who knows. The next one will be

My bald head cause why not?

State of Mainstream Music.

Let's see if I can rattle some more people like I did with my last post. Today we're talking mainstream music, and when I think of mainstream my mind immediately drifts towards pop music so I'll be pretty much be focused around that genre, although I'm sure some of these ideas will apply to other genres as well.

So obviously I'm not a huge fan of mainstream music right now, if you were to ask me what kind of music I listen to I would tell you anything but pop and country. I don't particularly like the fact that to get big in music, and therefore be considered "good" by the masses you basically have to follow a simple formula and then promote the absolute crap out of the song. Step one: have a chorus that anyone can sing along with. Step two: Put it to a beat that would fit well at a party/dance/club/whatever. Step three: Make sure that stuff isn't too heavy, subject matter should always be about things like your swag, your money, your girl/guy, a party you are going to, or just having fun in general. Don't you dare write about struggles unless you are insanely confident in the song. That's it, three easy steps to create the next big hit, easy stuff. Now obviously there are exceptions to this guideline, but seriously just take some time and listen to the radio and see what's playing, these things are the three uniting factors for nearly every song on the radio.

Is there a solution? I guess hypothetically it would be really cool if people just formed their own taste in music and bought (BOUGHT, not downloaded.) music according to that and then who ever made good music would then succeed while the terrible artists would never leave their bedroom, but that's just not how it works. All I can say is that I think you should be looking to purchase your music legitimately if you really do like the artist. Vote with your dollars man.

Man, that's really all I have to say? How short and boring, oh well next time is confessions so that should surely produce something interesting to write/read about. Peace buds.

Here's a really cool song so there's something beyond the text here. 

Why How I Met Your Mother Ended Well.

So I've recently (Like in the last twenty-four hours) finished the How I Met Your Mother T.V. series and contrary to popular belief I thought the series ended on a relatively high note. I certainly don't think that every character got their ideal ending, but that would've been ridiculous if that had happened and I think it works out better for the group it ends this way. It does make me a little sad knowing that Ted had to get snubbed the hardest to make this happen, since he was my personal favorite, if nothing cause he was the one that was consistently single and I'm consistently single as well so I connected with him. Regardless I'm going to go through each of the five major characters and give both a grade for their ending and why I gave it that grade. Marhsall/Lily (They're a unit) get a A, Robin get's an A-,  Barney receives a B+, and Ted scores the lowest with a B-. If it isn't already insanely obvious there are complete and total spoilers for those of you that haven't finished the series.

SPOILER ALERT

Stop reading now if you care about that sort of thing. 

So let's talk reasoning. Marshall and Lily are the real winner of the series since they both get to go and live their dream jobs, have a wonderful family and arguably the deepest relationship in the series. Seriously, they go to Italy, have more kids, Marshall becomes a judge and then makes the state supreme court and they somehow manage to keep their whole group together in the end even though they came insanely close to losing Robin, but I'm going to assume that with Ted and Robin getting back together she is able to more consistently make group outings since it's not such a huge pain for Robin so Lily keeps her best friend. Yes, the Eriksens do alright for themselves if I do say so myself.

Next up we get Robin. Initially I thought that Robin had the most satisfactory ending, but as I thought more about it, I had kind of hoped that her and Barney had made everything work out and could stay together. Alas, that was not meant to be as there were other factors in play, but she does get to have an incredible career as a news anchor all over the world (Is that even a thing?) and does eventually end up with the guy that was probably better for her in the end.

Let's talk Stinson, here's where I get into the other factors I mentioned with Robin. We're all aware of the fact that Robin can't have children, nor does she really want them anyways. Barney wants kids though, mostly I think so that he can have all the experiences of being a parent and having a family that he feels that he didn't get to have because of his father leaving. It feels weird that only by random chance that Barney actually does have a child, but it's all he needed to really change into the person he always could have been. I would've given him an A if there was something that confirmed that he and the mother of his child make it work, but with literally no info I'm forced to keep him at a B+.

Ted, Ted, Ted. It does suck quite a bit that his wife does die in the manner that she did, but it's also oddly appropriate. Ted only got the opportunity to meet her because the love of her life died early so it makes sense that something similar would happen to Ted. Ted without a doubt though met the love of his life though and got to have all those wonderful experiences that go along with that. You know, kids and all that jazz. It would have been better I think if the wife hadn't died obviously since she was like totally perfect for Ted, but having it this way allows for a better end for all the characters. The waiting six years thing makes it much better in my opinion as well since it makes it into a scenario where Ted wasn't just waiting for the opportunity to go after Robin again, but rather reinforcing that Tracy (The mother) was the one for him but its time to move on.

So in the end Ted and Barney didn't get what I would have ideally wanted for them, but this ending  is pretty good still. It's definitely not the best end to a T.V.  series in my opinion, but its far from the worst as well. That's my two cents at least.

This scene was absolutely adorable though and I'm not afraid to admit it. 

My Favorite Place to Eat.

Well darn it all, this one is so much easier and light-hearted to do so let's just get right down to it. So picking my favorite place to eat was supposed to be a rather simple process, I already knew the place so a few quick words about it and we'll be done right? Wrong, the freaking place has closed since I was last there. whattajoke. Therefore I have decreed to forgo specifically naming one restaurant as my favorite entirely in remembrance for my fallen brother Ginza of Salt Lake City. RIP my good friend, you did honorable things in life.

So now what will I write about? Easy, What kind of place is my favorite to eat at? Pretty straight-forward since Ginza is a sushi joint, sushi joints are my favorite place to eat. The most obvious reason for this is that I love eating sushi. It's freaking delicious. If you are one of those people that are thinking to yourself, "Ewww sushi is so gross." but you've never actually had sushi. Stop yourself right there, try and then come trash talk it. Otherwise your opinion is totally invalid in my mind. You wanna know what's like the best part about eating sushi? It's insanely hard to really over eat it. Even at an all you can eat sushi joint where I've consumed an insane amount of food I've always been able to leave the place and not feel totally stuffed an needing to not do anything for a few hours while the food is digesting, I can always job right into the next activity. It's totally awesome.

Another reason I really like sushi joints also because I'm usually a pretty social eater, when I sit down for a meal with people I'm often more interested in having a conversation over the meal rather than actually eating the meal. I feel like sushi goes well with this. You can pick up a piece, eat it and then go on with your conversation pretty easily. You almost always have a ice-breaking tool in either your ability or in-ability to handle chopsticks. It's always been a social experience for me to sit down and eat some sushi with friends/family and that's something I really like. Sometimes when you go to a nice steakhouse you just get so darn focused on your steak you forget that you came with a bunch of people and don't talk to them at all. Not fun. Delicious, but not fun.

Man I really wish there was more to say about this, but that's all there really is. I like sushi, and the social experience that goes along with it. So know that I'm almost always down to go grab some sushi, even if you've never had it before, I'd love to show some people the delicious treat that is raw fish. Peace buds.

dang doesn't that look yummy?

A Big ole' What If?

So I didn't get anything up on Tuesday, and my excuse for that is that I had thought I was talking about mainstream music, so I had been thinking a fair bit about that, only to find out that I'm writing about what ifs. Well alright, I guess I'm doing some more thinking, and yes I do in fact think about the things I write, maybe not in terms of making outlines and rough drafts, but I do take some time to think the idea over and then get to work on writing it.

So we're talking a big what if today? Cool, so when I thought about this naturally the angsty teenage part of my mind that still exists went absolutely ballistic and arrived at the question of, "What if I got cancer and died?" Yeah, we're going there today. Gonna be so much fun right?

So as I thought this through, I kind of split it into two areas for this particular scenario. Part one is Diagnosis and Treatment. So that takes me first to how would I break the news to people? It seems wise to me that I would inform family and close friends ASAP via private communications (Skype calls, Phone, FB messages for those not immediately available, that kind of stuff) and then that's kind of just it. No big FaceBook post to inform people, I'll tell who I think aught to know and if other people would wan to know then they would ask me right? So now people know, and I imagine I'd move back home quickly and begin treatment there. I wouldn't go to school during treatment, even if I survived  (Which I don't in this hypothetical scenario) I have no intentions of adding that stress onto myself at that time. For the first few months I'd imagine I would still be healthy enough to go and work a simple job so I'd defiantly keep doing that. Having something else to just keep my mind occupied would be nice and it would allow me to accrue some cash to go out and do some of the things I would want to do like travel if that would be possible.  For the sake of this scenario we'll assume I live for another year after diagnosis K? The entire experience would be recorded here on this blog since I've done a terrible job at keeping a journal and I would need something to record my life story (as little as there may be to it.) So that someone could potentially read it later on. Would be nice to have something people could refer to instead of just word of mouth. I'd probably also write a bunch of stuff in some notebooks so there would be a physical copy in case the Google lost the data for whatever reason. You know, back up plans?

So at this point I'm back home, working a little, recording my life story, and starting treatment. As far as that goes, I listen to what my doctors tell me and follow their instructions, I'd probably do stuff my Dad told me to do as well since he has that medical expertise but beyond that, no weird treatments, no natural medicine. Just stick to what the doctors tell me. Psychologically I don't think I would struggle with this that terribly much with the idea of death. What do I know though, I don't think anyone that's been as healthy as I have been and is as young as me has really ever actually thought about the fact that at some point they're going to die. Way to morbid for us youngsters. I think I'd do alright though, mostly because I know that sometimes the cards really just don't play out in your favour and that's something you just have to accept.

Beyond just things that involve me, I'd also have some work to do with bringing all of the relationships with people I know to some sort of weird "Conclusion" Not like in a sense where I shut everyone out and stop interacting with people, but more along the lines of making amends for the wrongs I've done to people, forgiving those I've wrongly held grudges against, (Basically anyone I have a grudge with) Telling all the people I honestly dislike that I dislike them and why, although this part comes much later in the process, and finally making sure that all the people that I genuinely love know how much I care about them. I think that's something I'm pretty bad at, letting people know how much I appreciate them, might be something to do with the stubborn sarcasm that's always spilling out of my mouth. Seriously though, make sure important people know they're important. I think I should also note that there is absolutely no chance that I'd start a relationship with anyone if this happened. I feel like it would be a worst case scenario if I fell in love at this time, or even worse what if I married someone and left a widow at that age? Augh.... Just no.

 Weird thoughts about widows aside, now we've reached the point where I'm really not healthy enough to do much of anything and that leaves just a couple of key decisions left to be made. Do I sit down and peacefully accept death as it comes, or do I go out in a blaze of glory/yolo and do something really dumb. I'd probably just flip a coin to decide what I do at that point. Would be kind of funny if I had cancer for all that time and then just went down in some dumb drag race with a beat-up Honda civic or something. Assuming I do the less stupid thing though I'm probably going to be spending my last days in a hospital bed or similar situation. Now the last decision occurs, I think ideally I would actually want my passing to be a rather unknown affair, like I just slip away during the night. Don't really like the idea of having like family/friends there to watch the life leave my eyes, because dang does that every sound depressing. Obviously other people need some time to get like final goodbyes done with, but after that it becomes a bit of a moot point, so yeah I'd just kind of let it happen in the middle of the night or something. I hear about that, when people are near the edge like that they just sort of let go (LET IT GO!) and pass away. I want to be listening to something really cool like Stairway to Heaven when I go though, cause that's just cool.

Now we've reached part 2. Admittedly this part is quite a bit shorter, cause I'm done making decisions at this point really. Also this is kind of the part that really sucks for me, just saying. I think the only logical place for me to be buried (Yeah I'd be buried, no cremation unless I start the fire, you know what I'm saying? Man that's dark and probably not that funny.) is in Magrath, It just makes sense. Weird to think about being buried in that cemetery though, I've mowed it countless times now and it doesn't really feel that different being there than other places. Regardless, funeral service I hope would be pretty simple, nothing fancy.

As for how I'd be remembered, all I can really ask for is that people remember me as a person that had stuck to his guns and did what he thought was right. Also that I had passion. I'd absolutely hate to be remembered as an apathetic person. Whether or not people liked me for that, thought I was funny, nice, or anything like that doesn't really matter that much in comparison to the first three I mentioned.

Alright I'm done. That was pretty dark, and weird to think about. Hopefully it made for an interesting read though, because it was defiantly an interesting thing to think about. Especially once you get past the idea of thinking like, "What if I died? Well that would suck" and actually explore the idea more in depth. I don't think I even went that deep though, good enough for now though. I don't think this challenge can really get darker than this one though, hopefully this is the only one where death, and mine in particular, is the central topic. Peace buds.

This is roughly how I would like to be remembered

Celebrity Crushes V2.0

Oh thank goodness this one will be pretty easy. We'll do five just like I did when I first did this. Basic disclaimers will also go out that I'm aware that this makes me look pretty darn shallow and materialistic. However I want to remind you all that I don't particularly care cause dang these girls are fine! Disclaimer that again people listed first are not nessacarily ranked #1 but just happen to be who I write down first. Also to recap the last five I had were Emma Watson, Anna Kendrick, Rachel Mcadams, Evanna Lynch and, Olivia Wilde. Not a bad list I'd say, but I've matured so much since then that I'm sure the list will be completely different this time.


#1 Eva Green. Yeah, if you disagree with me here then I don't know if we can be friends anymore. Not a whole lot else to say. You know what was really hard about this one? Finding a not scandalous picture to use cause this is a family friendly blog man.








#2. Dianna Argon. Man Screw Glee for becoming so unbearable that I actually had to stop watching this show despite having someone as good looking as Dianna Argon on it. Like you have to purposefully try to make me dislike a show to actually make that happen.






#3. Mekenna Melvin. What an absolute shame that she wasn't prominent in Chuck until the series started dragging on rather than being fresh and new. Regardless a fine looking girl nonetheless. Also if you think Yvonne Strahovski was the best looking girl in Chuck just stop. You are wrong and I refuse to hear your argument.

.




#4. Emma Watson. She's back for the same reason she was on the list the first time I did this, because I have yet to see a look she cannot pull off. I bet that must drive a lot of girls absolutely insane to know that someone like that exists. Oh well, too bad for them.










#5. Your mom.







Cool so we got another one of these done, and it puts me back on schedule, I guess that means I won't be updating again until like Tuesday. Or more likely next year, but thats the gamble I take with these challenges. Peace buds.

Ten People Who Influenced Me?

 Alright so I didn't get this done on Thursday, but I'm going to say I have a good excuse so it goes up on today instead. So I'm supposed to go over ten people who have influence me today. Thinking of ten people who have influenced me and how they influenced me might be a bit difficult, none the less I will give it a shot. Let us remember that the number on the list does not indicate level of influence just which ones I wrote first. The exception being #1/2 since that's just true.

#1/2. My Parents. I'm going to put the two of them together unless I really can't think of ten specific examples, then I'll cheat and count them as two. Beyond that I couldn't imagine having a list like this and not mentioning them. They raised me for crying out loud! Like how much more influential can you be on a person's life? Like seriously, they gave me all the basic foundations that would later lead into pretty much any good characteristics I've developed in my life. My negative ones are likely a result of me not listening to them either so there's that.

#3. Bishop Boyes. I can't think of any particular characteristics about Clay Boyes that really made him so influential to me, I know that if I'm ever in a lost in the wilderness type of situation that he's the person I want with me though. I think though it was his humility that always stuck out to me though, despite being a pretty great man you would've never guessed it from his mannerisms, he seems the perfect example of someone who is leading a regular life and is then thrust into the spotlight. After being pushed that far though, he never faltered, simple grew at his own pace and flourished because of it.

#4/5. John Spencer/Brad Smith. I'm only lumping these two together cause they've both influenced me in the exact same way. They both seem to completely lack social inhibitions that would normally keep a person from expressing themselves 100%. This leads to both of these individuals being completely themselves at any given time and that level of drive to be yourself is something I can truly appreciative and seek after myself. Here's to becoming less #Filtered.

#6. Keane. There had to be a band in here somewhere right? Keane wins my personal award for having the most influence on my thinking out of any musical group and therefore I award them this prestigious spot on this arbitrary list.

#7. Duncan "Thoorin" Shields. This guy is probably a tool, but he does incredible journalistic work in E-sports and I hope that one day I can give this kind of quality content out in whatever field I work in. I'll lump in Slasher in here as well cause that guy doesn't give a care in the world if people hate him, so long as they still let their players take interviews from him.

#8. Alysa Lybbert. This crazy freaking girl will without a doubt in my mind stick to her guns no matter the situation so long as there is a chance that she's still correct. It's not even out of stubbornness (Usually) but a sincere idea that she's correct. Wait a minute. Yeah it's just stubbornness. Oh well, I said she influenced me, not that I intend to copy her methods. Still good.

This is where the list actually gets a bit harder, because I can think of several people that influenced me, but now I have to decide who I put on the list. I'd probably just be safer putting whoever might actually read this so they can feel good about themselves/not feel snubbed by me. So I'll do that regardless if they would've made this list of ten. I'm not ranking who is the most influential just ten people who are/were influential on me.

#9. Samara Dewey. This woman ( I think I have to say woman now that she's married) taught me an awful lot of things, but the biggest one I think is simple loyalty. She's a fiercely loyal person and I hope that I can one day reach that level of commitment to those I care about.

#10. Kim Passey. So maybe she's here cause I think she'll tear me a new one if I included Samara and not her, but regardless I have learned quite a bit from her. The biggest lesson I learned from her though was that thinking objectively doesn't mean that you can hold grudges/not forgive a person. No matter how far you think a person can fall don't be shocked when they not only get back up, but are even taller than they were before.

Wow didn't that get a little heavy right at the end there, but I unfortunately don't have time to dwell on that because I have to get a whole new post done today in order to keep on track with this challenge. So I hope you enjoyed or at least didn't hate what I had to say. Peace buds.

New Blog Challenges. For Artificial Motivation of Course!

Alright so I'm going to be starting up another one of these old blog challenge things. It will be slightly different than other ones though, mostly because I'm not specifically using an already set one. So no link to a flowery little tumblr page that will neatly (or sloppily depending on the list) line out what I'll be doing. Rather I went through five to ten different lists and nit-picked the topics I could actually write posts about. So you hopefully won't have to endure through any posts that have absolutely nothing to offer in terms of anything interesting. No questions like, "Would you date someone with plains looks and an amazing personality, or someone with amazing looks and a plain personality."  Which could be better worded as, "Are you shallow? Yes or no?" Now I don't want this to feel to heavy, so I've set it up in a manner that will be something like two more light hearted topics and then we'll have a more serious thoughts. With this I'll be presenting a "schedule" that should accompany this challenge. If you read this blog at all you know why the quotations are around schedule. So enough nonsense let's lay out this schedule and challenge topic list!

Tentative Schedule: Posts on Tuesday, Thursday, and over the weekend. Simple as that.

The glorious list of great topics that will grant you ghastly amounts of knowledge about myself!
#1. Ten People who Influenced Me.
#2. Celebrity Crushes V2.0! Who will stay and who will go! Link for Lazy.
#3. A Big "What If" I've Thought About..
#4. My Favorite Place to Eat.
#5. My Thoughts on Main Stream Music.
#6. Three Confessions.
#7. Something I Miss.
#8. A Guilty Pleasure.
#9. A Misunderstanding People Have About Me.
#10. My Dream Job.
#11. My Favorite Band Right Now.
#12. An Embarrassing Moment.
#13. What I Would do With Lottery Winnings.
#14. Five ways to my Heart.
#15. A Popular Notion I Think Society has Wrong.
#16. Where my Blog/Gamer Name came from.
#17. My Favorite Movie.
#18. What I Would say to my Sixteen Year Old Self.
#19. My Death Row Meal.
#20. My City.
#21. Three Legitimate Fears.
#22. Nicknames I've had.
#23. Favorite Pizza.
#24. What Makes me Unique?
#25. My Perfect 1st Date.
#26. Ten Random Songs From my Phone.
#27. Thoughts on Drugs/Alcohol.
#28. The Process of Writing one of These Cringe Shows.
#29. How is my Relationship (LOL!) or How is Being Single.
#30. How'd the Challenge Go?

There's a few more food ones than I remember putting initially, but whatever, I like food sue me. Looking forward to Getting this one going. See you on Thursday after when I'll talk about Influential people to me.

What Some of you are Thinking. 

A Quick Response to "Video Games vs The Brain"

A good friend of mine recently wrote a post on her blog titled, "Video Games vs The Brain" wherein she talked about a study conducted by a professor Akio Mori. In the study Professor Mori brought in subjects that fit into one of four categories: normal, (Those who rarely played games) visual, (Those who are avid TV viewers) half-video game, (Those who played played less than fifteen hours a week) and video game (Those who played games at least two hours a day.) Professor Mori then measured the brain waves of the subjects and found that those in the visual and video game group did not have much activity in the areas of the brain related to creativity and emotion. Shay (The author of the blog) Then extrapolated some of her thoughts on the results of the study and about excessive gaming and television watching in general.

Now before I get into my response I would like to say a couple of things, first off being that I quite enjoyed this post. It's an interesting discussion and I thinks its good to have discussion about it. Secondly, can we be real for a minute and mention how absolutely awful having the font, size, and colour of the text change seemingly at random throughout the post is? I love you Shay, you are a good person, but seriously that just looks so bad. Just painful to read. I mean I think I get why you changed font the first time as you transitioned from writing about the study to your thoughts, but it's 100% unnecessary. It makes it look like you just copy pasted a paragraph from somewhere else onto your post and it looks bad. Now that we got that out of the way, let's actually talk about what the words said an not the font.

There are already a bunch of Facebook comments that highlight the major problems with this post. The study doesn't say what games people were playing which could have a dramatic affect on what kind of brain activity the subject will show. Imagine a hypothetical situation where the game being played is pong. Everyone knows that game right? You move a paddle up or down to hit a ball back and forth. There is nothing else to it, you could sit Leonardo DaVinci down with pong and he's not going to show off creative thoughts because there isn't anything to that game. That's just one hypothetical situation though. The other problem with the post highlighted by Facebook comments was that it was a study of correlation and not causation. A study like the one conducted by Professor Mori simply can't offer itself as evidence that excessive games or T.V. stop your creative thinking, it can only be evidence that a relationship between the two does exist.

Another problem that I did not see mentioned was the fact that it was only one study. That's a problem. This study might show a relationship between excessive gaming and a lack of beta waves, (Which are thought to be related to creative thinking and emotion) but another study might show something completely different. I'm not saying that another study will, but leaving that question unanswered erodes the credibility of an argument. Also don't think for a second that this isn't an argument being made because it is.

Now I only have one more thing I want to bash at in this post, the last paragraph made me cringe. No word of a lie. To quote, "If you answered the same as I'm doing today, Then I'm sorry, but you are living your life not to the fullest, and that's where regrets come form." Not only does the wording feel awkward, (living your life not to the fullest? Really? How about but you are not living life to its fullest. Don't lead you reader into thinking your going to say one thing and then turn it around on them like that, feels weird to read.) especially since in the previous paragraph she stated to take things in moderation, and now she's saying it would be good to cut it out completely. The real problem though is that it's an absolute statement. What if I meet my long lost brother and the only thing we have in common is playing games? I'd say playing some with him would still be well within living life to the fullest, and I know that's a really extreme example, but you expose yourself to problems like that when you make absolute statements about subjective things. Honestly I was thinking this was actually a great post until the end of it, now I'm forced to call it just "good."

Alright I'm done, hate train has departed. There are definitely flaws with the reasoning in the post, but I applaud Shay for taking the time to open up a discussion about this. It's nice to see discussion in comments on Facebook rather than just a mass of likes. Keep it up Shay.

Just a reminder of some of the really great things about games.

Miss Wedding. Blog Instead.

My oh my Makinna. I thought I'd have some more time to put this little piece together, but as it turns out my procrastination got the better of me yet again. None the less I feel like it would still be a good idea if I celebrated marriage by boosting your ego with some nice words, also I'm kind of a bad friend and missed your wedding and need to make up for it a bit. That's not the important thing though! The important thing is that you had a wedding! So I'm going to stop ranting and just go on with the whole ego boosting bit I was talking about before.

If i only received one word to describe Makinna Kristensen with I would without a doubt in my mind go with wing-nut. Yeah... I really feel like that word totally captures everything about her. Wing-nut. Whatta word. Jokes aside though I'd really go with consistent. I use consistent because for the very limited time that I've known her, and no matter what the context of a situation was I could count on the fact that Makinna's attitude and behaviors wouldn't change.  She's almost always caring, kind and willing to sacrifice for others. Willing to lend her ear to a friend that needs someone to talk to, all that lovely jazz. Ninety-Nine out of a hundred times this would be good. Sometimes I'd be hoping she'd let me off easy for something stupid I said, but being ever consistent individual I would get slammed for it. She's surprisingly good at subtle slamming a person into the ground with a clever thought or phrase. I know subtle isn't exactly a word many would use in any sort of a description of Makinna, but it's true.

Beyond her consistency I've always thought of Makinna as a very intelligent sort of person in the sense of understanding her surroundings and the people that filled them up. There is this unspoken ability to just understand how another person thinks and know what their action will be based on that. Makinna has it. I think that's probably what allows her to be so consistent, because she is able to predict very accurately how a situation will play out and react accordingly.

Alright, that's enough of the ego inflation for one sitting. I'd like to kinda wrap this mess or words up with thanking you for being nothing short of an absolutely fantastic friend to me. You truly are one of the shining examples of what I think a person aught to be like. (Here I thought I'd stop inflating your ego!) This is normally where I say something like, "I hope you have a very happy and successful marriage!" But I don't have to because I've seen you and Calvin together, There can be no doubts that your marriage will be fantastic. Congratulations on progressing forward with your life and here's to me one day joining you in the married club! (ROFL good one Jonny!) Sorry again for missing your wedding today, but I'm sure I'll apologize for that like a hundred more times at least.

A Quick Look at the Fast-Push Strategy in League. Part one: Compositions.

Fast-pushing is a strategy that has become extremely prevalent in competitive League of Legends. The strategy revolves around taking enemy towers down early and fast in order to establish dominance over the map and snowball the game into a fast victory. It often relies around team compositions with strong early/mid games but suffer heavily into the late game. This puts an effective "Timer" on the team to create the overwhelming advantage before the opposing team accrues enough gold to buy the core items for their compositions which often rely more on the later portions of the game. Recently in the North American LCS there was a game that very well described how a fast push should work, and also what a team needs to do in order to stall the game out long enough for overcome the early disadvantage and win the game. I'll be going over the Curse vs Counter Logic Gaming match from Week three of the NA LCS to examine some of the in's and outs of Fast-Pushing, both pros and cons. Today it'll be just the drafting portion of the game.

So what I would say is the general rule of drafting fast pushing teams is that you want attack damage/speed, strong wave clear and mobility. You also want to try and bait the other team into picking champions with weak wave clear, as strong wave clear is the main method of stopping a fast pushing opponent. With that in mind let's see what drafting decisions Curse and CLG make in champ select. Starting with bans, where not a whole lot unfolds in regards to the fast push strat. CLG ban away a few champs that have strong potential to pick off individual champions, but that doesn't really matter that much to Curse because they aren't going for a team comp that focuses on picking people off like that, rather forcing them to back away from turrets through out numbering people at the turret with smart and fast rotations. Curse also doesn't ban away any really strong wave clearing champions, more of two all around strong picks with the Annie and Elise bans.

Moving into the picking portion of the draft we begin with Curse picking up Ziggs. Ziggs works really well with fast push strategy because it's very easy to push enemy minion waves out and shove yours up against the oppositions tower allowing you to either put damage on the turret or to roam to another lane and help shove turrets there. Shoving a lane like this also keeps at least one person pinned to the turret allowing for your rotation to become more effective. CLG respond to the Ziggs pick with a Renekton and Shyvanna. Now both of these champions have decent wave clear with Shyvanna's actually being quite strong, however picking them both of these forces the Shyvanna to play in the jungle, making her far less effective in stopping the fast push because when you are playing Shyvanna in the jungle, your strength comes from counter jungling, and not so much from moving into lanes and assisting/ganking. Curse then takes Dr. Mundo and Jinx. Dr. Mundo can hold a turret very well and Jinx might be the best turret pushing champion in the entire game with her natural attack speed steroid from her Q and strong wave clear from her Q as well. These two picks now are also very smart as they don't reveal that Curse is looking for a fast push strategy. The first three picks from Curse are totally normal picks that could also be used in a pick comp or a team fighting comp due to Mundo and Jinx both having forms of CC and strong late game scaling. Not knowing it's a fast push comp CLG take Vayne and Yasuo next. Both of these champions are really bad at defending the fast push as vayne has no real inherit wave clear and Yasuo needs a static shiv at least before he can clear waves easily. Knowing that CLG has now picked a team compositon that will struggle against the fast push Curse immediately lock in the Nunu and Janna picks. Nunu and Janna both have good synergy with  Jinx adding another attack speed steroid and an attack damage steroid with Janna's shield, not to mention the knock-up form Janna can also persuade people to abandon turrets form fear of the dive initiate she brings, Janna's ultimate also can counter-act the hard engage a Shyvanna ult brings to a team fight. So two very smart picks for this composition. CLG knowing what they are up against now have no real choice but to simply stick to the comp they are already bulding and lock in the Lulu for the last pick.

So in summary, Curse picked strong pushing champions that are also usable in other compositions to bait CLG into picking champions that are weak against the fast push. Once Curse knew CLG couldn't build a strong composition to counter their strategy they revealed their strat with their last picks. CLG at this point has no other choice but to stick to their guns and hope to out play Curse in game.

Later this week (Prob Tues/Wed) I'll be looking into the first twenty minutes of this game to see how Curse now execute this fast push strategy.

Obligitory Chauster picture. 

Image source from ibuypower.com

New Goals

So It's been awhile since I talked about anything that wasn't League of Legends related here and I thought I'd kinda go over some of my goals for this upcoming year so that if nothing else, there is a place where they are recorded that I can easily find and remind myself about. I'm some specific ones like do x number of y task, but also just really general and frankly vague statements. So let's jump right into them.

First off a specific one. I want to become a better writer in general, so I figured one thing I can do is simply practice right? So I decided that I would do one-thousand words of writing every week that did not involve my school work. Whether that be writing on the LCS, WCS and other E-sports related things, friends, family, or even my woes in the world of dating, but just something! It seems obvious that this would fit well into making more regular content for this blog so this is where I'll put it. So TL:DR writing 1000 words a week, posting it here.

Right, next I have one of those vague ones. "Be Proactive" Like really? I just wrote that and I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "How stupidly cryptic!" but I need this to be a really broad statement for it to work in several areas of my life so I went with it. Deal. The most prominent component I can think of for this is dating, for the last.... like forever I've taken an incredible passive approach to dating, you know what? it really doesn't work. For some weird reason girls in western society just seem to think that you, the male, should be the one to initiate things of romantic nature. Blah, how lame. None the less, I can't really force society to adopt a new trend where Females initiate these kinds of things so I just have to play the current meta-game of dating and make things happen myself. I don't want this proactive thing to cause a massive shift in my behavior though, I like the fact that I'm flexible enough that when someone presents something to do for an evening activity I'm usually pretty good with just doing that thing, maybe it would be good though if every once and a while I was the person who presented the idea for evening plans.

It took me some time to actually come up with a third goal, mostly because the second one is so darn broad that it covers pretty much everything I could think of! But if you know me you know that my diet is at times normal and healthy, but more often than not pretty atrocious. So I'm going to cook things more often. Cooking takes time and effort though which sucks, but I have a lot of time on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I figure I should be able to manage to muster up the effort to do some real cooking those days at least.

Well, that's about five-hundred words for this week already! good work team, and by that I mean me. Not to be to high on myself though obviously. I still have another five-hundred to go this week so I really shouldn't be getting boastful too quickly.

Do or do not, there is no try. #YOLO

The Casual Fan's NA LCS Power Rank!

With the North American League Championship Series booting back into high gear this weekend, I'd thought I would share some of my thoughts on how the North American teams stand up to each other with their European imports. So without further delay, we'll proceed form eight too one!

#8 - Dignitas. Let's get something straight, I am a Dig fan, I love these guys and I sincerely think that Qtpie is one of the best AD's in North America, but at this moment there isn't really a lot else going on for them. Scarra is kind of just another mid right now, Kiwikid is still new to support, Crumbz has some moments of brilliance and Cruzer just looked totally outclassed against Wickd at the Battle of the Atlantic event. I hope to see this team improve and I think they can, but right now they are in deep trouble.

#7 - Curse. Curse probably isn't actually as bad as I'm saying they are, but thats mostly because I haven't jumped on the Quas hype train. Dominate and VoyBoy seem to be meshing well together in play so they've got that over Dig at least. Cop and Zekent will almost guaranteed be one of the most average bottom lanes in North America, and with the upcoming changes in patch 4.1 almost forcing the 2v2 every game Curse's bottom lane will have to lean on their solo lanes even more if they are to start winning games.

#6 - CLG. I don't get it. I just don't. CLG has everything in the right place to be top 2 team material. They have one of the best strategic minds in League with MonteCristo coaching them, one of the two most mechanically gifted players in North America with Doublelift and Link who are both very capable of carrying games. I'm particularly fond of Doublelifts preference to playing Jinx, a champion I think can carry games infinitely better than other top picks such as Cait, Lucian or Sivir. On the other end of the bot lane, Aphromoo seems to have become very comfortable with supporting and is enjoying it, and Nien continues to evolve into a high quality top lane player. Finally, they have the super strong European jungler now in Dexter. They should have everything going for them, but things just don't seem to work out. I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest if CLG challenged for Top 2 in NA, but until something magical happens that makes this team work they'll continue to wallow in mediocrity.

#5 - Coast. Coast looked really good playing against the other challenger teams during their relegation period, but those are only the challenger teams. Coast suffers from the same problem that Curse does in my mind in that they are good players, just not great. Nothing about them really stands out, but their bot lane doesn't make me cringe with how passive they are at least so I'll rate them a fair bit higher than Curse. Someone's gotta be the middle of the pack team I suppose.

#4 - XDG. I honestly didn't know whether to put XDG or EG here, ultimately the recently renewed commitment to swapping Xmithie to AD and Zuna to jungle forced my hand though. Xmithie is a great jungler, and I really don't think he's going to fully adapt to the bottom lane until very late into the split or even the summer split. Zuna's positioning as AD was well... pretty awful, he just seems to want to go in deep all the time, so I guess Jungle will suit him better, but really this move overall is a mistake I feel. Despite this bad move within the team, I still think XDG will be a strong team that will give people a good run for their money. If they can stop throwing games I think they can beat anyone really.

#3 - EG. All hail the European rejects! Seriously though, this team has a really solid line-up. Snoopeh seems to be back on the rise getting his mechanics back together. I do thin Yellopete is way to passive, but the bot lane makes up for it with Krepo being willing to go balls deep at a moments notice and on top of that the team seems synced up with Krepo well, diving right with him. Innox seems to be a solid top laner, but I do hope to see a bit more from him over these next few months. Lastly there is Pobelter. He's super strong, I'm not going to lie, but EG cannot afford to fall into the trap they did with Froggen. They cannot rely too much on their mid, they must realize that other people on the team are totally capable of carrying the game as well. regardless, this team looks to be solid throughout the year. How ironic it would be if they made it to worlds from NA and Alliance failed to make it...

#2 - Cloud 9. The biggest debate I had with myself over these placements was the top 2. It seems pretty clear but who are the two best teams in NA right now. (I'll give you a hint, its the ones that WON Battle of the Atlantic matches.) The real question is which of these two is better than the other though? Ultimately I had to put the boys in light blue in second, but really I can see either of these two being number 1 easily. Cloud 9 absolutely dominated the last split of  the LCS with strong team fighting oriented compositions and decisive decision making. Having one of the best Junglers in the entire world acting as the spearhead certainly helps as well. Coming into this split Cloud 9 have to prove that they can still be the best consistently. I again criticize the bottom lane for being passively oriented, however Cloud 9 plays that as a strength by having Sneaky and Lemonation play utility oriented bottom lane that allows for the solo lanes to shine. I don't think its optimal, but it works pretty darn well.

#1 - TSM. Team Solo Mid has only made one change, but boy was it big. Team Owner Reginald stepped down from the starting roster to coach the team. Replacing him is star European mid laner Bjergsen. This not only makes what I thought was TSM's weakest point one of its strongest, but it also removes the massive power dynamic issues that plagued the team during Season 3. In game I feel that TSM is now actually in a position to communicate in a healthy manner. Combine that with TheOddOne's recent surge in performance and we have a scary scary TSM. Just how strong is TSM now? Strong enough that I think Dyrus is the weakest player on the team now. Yes Dyrus, the North American All-star that consistenly performs and often would be large factor in TSM's season 3 wins is now the weakest person on the team. They're like SKT K lite now, thats honestly not even a real dig at TSM. They are scary and I expect great things from them this season.

So there you have it! Some random fan's opinion on how the LCS teams are going to do in NA this split. Hopfully I get at least a couple of them right.