Notes and Errata of Mark of the Asphodel

So my most excellent spouse and I were drinking Johnnie Walker Red last night in honor of Elliot Smith, and oh boy did I have me some bizarro dreams.  In particular, I had a very long, detailed, anime-styled dream about a Gundam Wing/Seisen no Keifu fusion in which the twelve holy bloodlines were associated with the twelve Zodiac--themed mobile suits from the AC universe and Julius and his Lopt blood were the "thirteenth constellation" mobile suit mentioned in Endless Waltz.

Uh, it was kind of awesome and I wish y'all could've been there.

I had one hell of a dream before waking this morning.

( What is this I don't even )

Then I woke up. The mind is a weird, weird place.

PSA: The Salted Caramel Pretzel Milkshake from Steak 'N Shake is the best mass-produced milkshake ever.  Yes, better than the Shamrock Shake.  Go get one if/while you can.

Anyway, Steak 'N Shake also offers a Red Velvet Milkshake at present.  Now, I have started to turn a jaundiced and skeptical eye at anything calling itself "red velvet," as most current velvet-merchants seem to not understand what the hell the original concept was anyway.

Red Velvet Cake: a rich, moist, cake lightly flavored with cocoa (so it kinda tastes like chocolate) and colored with red food coloring.  The original coloring came about because buttermilk interacted with cocoa and tinted the cake kinda reddish.  And then you top it with indulgent cream cheese frosting or a cooked roux frosting if you want to be hardcore[*].  There's a clash of textures and the whole thing isn't sickeningly sweet.  Half the red-dyed shit on the market now tastes not of cocoa, or buttermilk, or the delightful tang of cream cheese, and then you get the homogenous glop of "red velvet cake pops" or red velvet eggnog or whatever else has cake crumbs and food coloring dumped into a sea of sugar.

I think the worst product I've encountered to date was this.  It's solid nuggets of white "cupcake dough" coated in red wax.  What the hell.  They obviously know what a red velvet cupcake is, or at least their marketing department does, but these candy bites in no way approximate the real thing and aren't even trying to be.  I threw a half-eaten box of these away and I don't throw food out unless it's actually spoiled or toxic.  Anyway, by the time Steak 'N Shake brought their own red-velvety offering out, I was pretty skeptical, but Steak 'N Shake is an awesome chain and overall I trusted them.  I was expecting something that did have the cream cheese bite and the richness of the cake crumbs.  I mean, cookies 'n' cream works as a milkshake, so why not?

Well, I'm not sure what went wrong here, but the milkshake is pretty terrible.  Yes, it contains cake crumbs and there are little globules of frosting in the mix.  The description is perfectly honest.  But it's not good.  Maybe if they'd started with a cheesecake base for the ice cream and then put in the cake crumbs it would've been better.  As it is, it's... pink.  It tastes red.  Not the horrible bitter red of red-hued frosting, but it tastes RED.  I think if you offered it to someone and claimed it was strawberry they might be fooled.  And then they might punch you, or at least that's what my most excellent spouse says.

My husband and I between us could only drink half this thing.  Like I said, we don't throw away food, but this weird, weird milkshake simply defeated us.  As ice cream concoctions go, it was almost on par with the durian-fruit ice cream I sampled once in San Francisco's Chinatown.  DURIAN FRUIT.  Yeah, that weird.

Try it if you dare, but the salted caramel pretzel one is a million times better.

* Not worth it IMO.

So, I guess I can stop wondering about what a remake of Seisen no Keifu might incorporate.

( W.T.F. )

All gamer geeks need to see Wreck-It Ralph.  You'll get all the in-jokes and revel in the visuals, which is a plus 'cause the story ain't especially deep.  Imagine a Smash Bros fanfic in which, say, Luigi falls into an awkward romance with Samus while Donkey Kong carries the emotional weight of the piece, except well-written and convincing.  Or convincing enough for cartoons... and make no mistake-- this is a cartoon, not a "film" that just so happens to be animated.

It's a highly entertaining cartoon.  It's oddly racy and vulgar in parts for a Disney movie... but Sarah Silverman is voicing the female protagonist so I guess we're lucky it's still G-rated.  It's not in the league of Toy Story 2 or The Incredibles-- especially not the latter, a film that went places that were definitely not kiddie-flick froth.  The best Pixar films contain an element of loss, a sense that choices have to be made and that no, the heroes can't have it all-- or, if they get "it all," something else is lost along the way.  Ralph is a Disney flick and everything is tied up in a neat little bow.  

It did have one scene that would've sent me from the theater screaming if I'd seen it as a kid, though, and it had nothing to do with the bugs.

-x-

( Brief political commentary under the cut )

I have seen the light.

I have converted to the side of "Bring Back Roy!" for the sole reason that advocates of Sigurd, Lyndis, and random Tellius characters have driven me to it.

[Well, that and I understand Roy and his significance to Elibe and Fire Emblem now, and didn't in 2008.]

I mean, the sole reason I got a GameFuqs account is to screw with people who still parrot the hivemind assertion that Sigurd is the most popular and beloved Lord in Japan.  I think the evidence stacked against that claim is bleedingly obvious at this point, so I'll just point out that fan polling indicates that, the last anyone checked, Sigurd wasn't even the most popular blue-haired mounted lance user in his own game, much less more beloved than, uh, Marth.

Also, I've soured on Krom and FE13, so I kind of hope Sigurd 2.0 doesn't make it in, either.  :/

-x-

How 'bout them Tigers?  Right now it's 6-0.

Can't gloat in advance, but I will point out that the Yankees with their bloated zillion-year contracts have the oldest average age of any major league baseball team (33) and that most of the Yanks' stars are quite a few years above that.  So you've got a team made up of broken-down warhorses who can't do what they did five years ago (especially now that some of 'em aren't juicing), and these no-name kiddies who've been brought into the playoff roster now that the big names are benched, injured, or out to lunch.

The wheels were gonna fall off sooner or later, and this turned out to be the year.  Even Boston's laughing now, fercryingoutloud... mostly because A-Rod ain't on their payroll.

I'm not gonna laugh until nine innings are over.  Mercy rule, anyone?

I have to seriously side-eye anyone who praises the writing in this game.  So many of the second-gen characters are just ridiculously incoherent.

Let's say I have a plot-bunny about Arthur, and since it's not pairingfic and doesn't revolve around the oh-so-important issue of his paternity[*], I decide it's worth writing.  So let's delve into Arthur.  He doesn't have all that much dialogue, so let's just skim over his handful of scenes to get a feel for the guy.

( This really isn't fun )

These are not the big, meaningful headscratchers or Deep Meta wibbles. Nothing like, "Is Ethnia the Earth Goddess of Thracia a renegade, people-friendly Earth Dragon?"

I'd kind of like the next FE to be a "small scale" guerilla-style war instead of "continental/intercontinental epic" warfare.

But not like FE7, because having to hew to FE6's canon AND GBA-era gameplay opened too many plotholes and gameplay moments of silly, IMO.

Also, while I'm not bowled over by FE7, this has to be the most amazing, incredible, astonishing piece of wank in FE meta.  I think the TC usually has his head up his ass, but GOOD LORD, people.

So, I've been watching some of the FE4 fan-hack playthroughs on NicoNico; you need an account to watch the videos but it's worth it.

Unlike Genealogy of Narga, Genealogy of Fala ( ファラの系譜, thanks Ammie!) is easy to follow.  

( Cut for weirdo spoilers )