The Vineyards

But this year I have a very good excuse!

I was extremely busy for the first half of it. Or at least for the second half of the first half of the year – commonly referred to as the second quarter, or simply Q2 in commercial jargon. For the rest of the months, I bite the bullet and … make up excuses as I go. They are all very convincing, none the less, I assure you.

January 1st – “This all you givin’ me?”
Silenced pistol, from behind, thirty-five paces away – aiming with a mouse, of course. Causa mortis only available for drug dealers, mind you, as they make the fine lads in green who would easily die for a cause refuse to and just sit around all day. That is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, of course. The aftermath of the mentioned precision-shot is piles of money scattered around the body – it amazes me how much money those drug dealers have. When picking it up, C.J., the protagonist, says various phrases. My favorite is “I need this more than you, I think.”, but “This all you givin’ me?” fit well as title over a year that had too few entries. I could repeat it here, even.

January 28th – “Attack any enemy aircraft anywhere without restriction.”
I asked Google to define the word “freelance” out of curiosity; I wondered if the origins were medieval, when some combatants did carry lances. Wikipedia, of course, had the answer, but Google also told me the Indiana Military has it defined as “attack any enemy aircraft anywhere without restriction”. I liked it. “So, did you find a job yet?” “No, but I am downing enemy aircrafts without any sort of restriction, ‘Top Gun’ style! Woo!”.

March 31st – “Because when you lie, it’s all over your face.”
Mr. Garibaldi to Dr. Franklin in a Babylon 5 episode, in response to “Now why do you believe her, and not me?”, ‘her’ being Lyta Alexander. I do not remember Lyta lying, however, but I do admit my memory of Babylon 5 is faded. Regardless, the post was an obvious lie. Except the parts that were true.

April 12th – “Alea jacta est.”
Julius Caesar, upon invading Rome just a few January 10’s before I was born. “The die is cast.” No hidden meaning for this post: I did not go to war, join the military, started playing Civilization seriously, nothing. I had not even taken the plunge and chosen the final theme to my work at this point.

May 20th – “Adult manga, or H Manga, is manga designed for purely pornographic purposes.”
Wikipedia’s page on “Hentai”, one of the hundreds of pages about hentai manga I visited while writing my paper. Yes, my final paper for college was on hentai manga. And it was a blast, with over thirty people watching the presentation, and a near perfect score – the lack of “printed references” cost me half a point, which was completely excused: even the judging teachers only knew two books on the subject that I failed to use, one released two weeks prior, one out of print in Germany. No worries, it was all fine. And I am not a pervert.

May 23rd – “I have a question for Etienne, when will we hunt again?” “Whenever you catch me online. I will probably not be doing anything useful, anyway.”
A conversation in the Planet Dark Ages forums, in the “Ask two old Atavism dudes anything (and get wrong answers)” thread. I went back to Dark Ages for a month while working on the paper, to steer away from all the hentai for a bit when I needed a break. As was always natural, I was never doing anything useful in Temuair whenever I was online.

May 27th – “Interlude: Book of Planet”
I love the game Alpha Centauri, even though it is little more than Civilization on heavy make-up. From time to time during a game these interludes would pop up to say what was going on with the planet itself. In theory, the planet is an extra enemy faction for the player to deal with – and for the first time in a game by Sid Meier, a faction you can manipulate or cooperate with, instead of coexisting until an inevitable annihilation. Unfortunately, the planet has very little weight on the game, so these interludes from the Book of Planet serve only to give some background story of little relevance, even if they are well written and a pleasure to read. The chat logs from this post are exactly that: they have little relevance to the matter then at hand (the paper), but were a great way to spend some time.

August 28th – “Glad that you’re feeling strong, thought I might lose ya!”
Callisto to Xena in “The Bitter Suite”, first (and best) musical episode in Xena: Warrior Princess. The paper was done despite all hell and it was grand. That was all.

September 14th – “We are committed to providing an online meeting place where people can socialize, make new acquaintances and find others who share their interests.”
“I am no fan of online social networks or of music, but I joined Last.fm to see what happens.” I have not touched it for months. The quote, I believe it is from orkut. I had to actually go there to find a usable line. Feh.

September 20th – “In Brazil, ‘Tom Sawyer’ was used as the theme music for the television series ‘MacGyver’.”
From Wikipedia’s page about Rush (or possibly “Rush in popular culture”), the musical group. That is no longer true, however: “MacGyver”, when shown on open television over a decade ago, did have that theme, and was called more or less “Occupation: Danger”, even though everyone just knew it as MacGyver anyway. It moved to cable television in the last few years and regained its original name and theme song. Regardless, it was an interesting fact about Rush that I found randomly and fit well in a post about Last.fm’s inability to play it.

October 10th – “`But then,’ thought Alice, `shall I NEVER get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way–never to be an old woman– but then–always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like THAT!’”
From Alice in Wonderland. The books are so, so much better than Disney’s adaptation. The post is just a quote, it speaks for itself.

October 30th – “Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!”
A poem by one of Brazil’s first presidents and scholar, frustrated for all the dumbness and stupidity and idiocy of his fellow countrymen. Copies of it suddenly invaded the internet shortly after the results to the presidential election were out, with the reelection of the drunken hobbit. The quote is a tagline from the days of BBS and Blue Wave mail reader, used because said poem was being tremendously overused at the time. I heard it on the radio, in fact.

November 30th – “It happened to a friend of a friend of mine.”
Little collection of interesting facts and observations under a common cliché for urban legends. But cockroaches do throw up.

December 14th – “That’s B.B. King, master of Blues.”
The line is in the post itself, fully deserving of the title.

Not a memorable year, eh? Must be something with even numbers; years with odd numbers are always more memorable. Hah.

Happy New Calendar Day.