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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Ahmet's LiveJournal:

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    Monday, June 21st, 2010
    9:48 pm
    Post Apocalyptic Food for Thought
     My friend recently moved out of the UW dorms and passed on to me a backpack full of emergency supplies that he claimed were given to him when he moved in there.

    The bag contains food and water rations, in addition to first aid accessories - all the typical post apocalyptic survival stuff. Nothing too special, but the food ration did stand out to me:



    It's just a big solid brick. What could be inside, I wonder? What color is it? What's it taste like? How would you eat it? How would you split it amongst fellow survivors? If electricity was still around, could you microwave it? If you had unexpired packets of condiments, would they go well with this mystery substance? How long could you make it last?

    These questions boggled my mind, until I took a walk down Eastlake Ave the other day (not too far from campus) and saw a familiar looking package on the side of the road, flattened by a car:



    I know that the first exposure wasn't meant to be like this, but still, it's pretty safe to say that the apocalypse is not going to be fun for picky eaters such as myself.

    There will be no convenient access to teriyaki or hamburgers in the future.
    There will be no pizza, salad or unlimited breadsticks.
    There will be no late night gyros.

    But there will be a swarm of people fighting like dogs to lick this "food" off the road.
    Monday, January 4th, 2010
    7:00 pm
    Gibberish Languages: Star Fox 64
     When most of your time revolves around linguistics, foreign languages and video games, you tend to take note of the methods of communication utilized in your favorite interactive universes.

    While many games with voice acting just stick to spoken English or Japanese (depending on the country of origin/release), other games go that extra mile to invent their own language for what they hope will provide more immersion. In a lot of cases, this is a practice I am quite fond of.

    Unless it's something high profile and ultra serious like Metal Gear, video game voice acting generally sucks anyway, so the dramatic effect is lost in many games due to unmotivated line reading (of usually unmotivated scripts). If the characters have to verbally utter something, it's best that it's something with no pre-existing frame of reference.

    ( The Diverse Languages in Games )

    ( Star Fox 64 )

    Alright, I'll go back to focusing on real languages now. First day of class and I already have Korean homework!
    Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
    8:11 pm
    Engrish of the Day
     "World is getting smaller each day! Borders are getting disappear!"

    ~From a Facebook page regarding Turkish citizens and Visas.
    Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
    10:47 pm
    Veterans Day
     Drove to the library today and walked up to the front only to see that it was closed for Veterans Day. As I was walking back to my car, another guy was walking towards the library and I told him the it was closed. His reaction?

    "

    BASTARDS!!!

     Veterans don't work at the library! It's just a bunch of old ladies!"

    Maybe you had to be there for this, but it was about the damn funniest thing I'd heard in quite a while.
    Monday, November 2nd, 2009
    2:58 pm
    Most Scenic Air Dusting Ever
     Whenever I have to get the excess dust out of my computer case, I generally clean it outside so as to not make a mess. This time the sun happened to be out and shining relatively bright (for Seattle, anyway) and I never take pictures so I figured what the hell, I'll grab my camera.



    I'm sure with a more recent digital camera this would look a lot better, but ehh, I'm fine with a thousand words as opposed to 3000.
    Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
    9:34 am
    Seattle sucks for arcades, which is why it's always fun to make the occasional trek up to Vancouver in Canada.

    Well, Seattle also happens to suck for Turkish food too...

    But something came to my attention recently: a photo of a supposed Uyghur restaurant in Vancouver, in Richmond of all places!



    It doesn't seem like much but hey, I'll take ANY excuse to leave America for a day :)
    Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
    5:41 pm
    Someone finally questions it:

    "

    GBPackerLuke6 (8 months ago)
    Why don't they use the term "Supervisor" for "Boss" in these games to refer to the big bad guy at the end of a map? Because Andross is the real boss. He's like the CEO and these other guys would be like "supervisors" or "managers" or something like that.

    "
    Monday, August 10th, 2009
    3:27 am
    Random China Photos


    I never bothered asking my friends for the translation; I felt it was better left a mystery as to why she looks so damn happy.
    Friday, August 7th, 2009
    12:53 am
    Rolling Over
     I see Katamari has caught on in my country!

    Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
    11:18 pm
    Shit Storm
     I spent a month in China being heavily reliant on small bottles of hand sanitizer. When you go anywhere you're not familiar with, it's good to have it on you as you're exploring in case you can't find a bathroom, can't ask someone in their language where it is, or in the case of China, want to avoid the public bathrooms all together.

    Why avoid bathrooms in China? A lot of them just don't have soap. Most of the filth that comes into the bathroom stays in the bathroom. It's kinda ironic considering how paranoid the country is about swine flu.

    ( Part 1: Keeping clean in China )

    ( Part 2: The Hurricane Diner )

    So here's the moral of the story: No matter where you are on this planet and what you are doing there,

    ALWAYS CARRY HAND SANITIZER.
    Sunday, April 26th, 2009
    11:40 am
    I finally saw the original "Crank" with Jason Statham.

    JESUS CHRIST



    I'm convinced that more of the budget was spent on drugs than on the actual film and crew.
    Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
    12:25 pm
    Friday, March 13th, 2009
    10:41 pm
    MST3K madness
     When I was in high school, MST3K and They Might Be Giants were my two biggest fandoms (my car is proof of this)

    I always wanted to see a MSTing live. Sure, the guys at Alamo Drafthouse are pretty funny, but they take their style after the Best Brains crew. I wanted to see the ACTUAL Brains live...

    And tonight I did, at Cinematic Titanic... a vampire film set in 1920s Mexico but shot entirely in the Philippines with Filipino actors, badly dubbed into English with generic Mexican accents.

    The crew was stellar... they riffed it just like the old days, with great timing and wit all around.

    And as the show ended, with the lights coming on and everyone exiting, the speakers for the theater started to play Birdhouse In Your Soul, arguably my favorite TMBG song.

    Both fandoms are still alive to this day and I love it!

    I could say a lot more about past and present and all that mumbo jumbo... but I'll just end it with my meeting of Joel at Scarecrow Video:




    From IRC:
    [21:03] [rattran] Joel's not the stoned looking one for a change
    Saturday, February 28th, 2009
    4:26 am
    Weekend's off to a good start... I wanna enjoy myself cause next week does not look very fun...

    Saw the god-awful Street Fighter movie tonight. The new one, with Chun-Li... Who looks more Uyghur than she looks Chinese, not that it would have really made a difference. The flick was terrible... honest to god, fucking terrible. Not that I was expecting a good movie, no not at all; we all saw this because it was bad... but seriously, it does make the original movie adaptation from the '90s look amazing in comparison.

    Hung out with some friends afterwards till the wee hours of the night...

    Got home at 4 AM and played Pop'n Music for a bit...

    [yawn]

    Let's try for an equally awesome tomorrow!
    Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
    11:03 pm
    FARK Extended
     FARK has been the greatest time killer for me since 2002 or so. It's the best way to fill in those short but empty gaps between classes.

    This time however, the site took me much further than it usually does.

    I was on campus today, and the FARK main page had a link to a local news story:

    http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/ae/401081_yarmulke23.html

    Interesting story, but the kicker was the article mentioned that this guy's collection was on display in one of the campus libraries a couple buildings away from me!

    I logged off, walked 5 minutes and there it was. It was worth checking out as strange as it was, and the whole ordeal killed even more time...

    Thank you, FARK!
    Friday, January 16th, 2009
    10:06 am
    911 results found
     Proof that Google is run by a bunch of paranoid white people:

    Thursday, December 25th, 2008
    4:02 pm
    My December 25th
     About 3 weeks ago, the Friday before my finals, I got rear-ended and sandwiched between an SUV and a gigantic pick up truck while waiting to get on to I-5.

    The guy who hit me was a (presumably drunk) old white guy who just sped off in his SUV (in quite a despicable way), leaving me with no info to go by.

    ( cont'd )


    I guess it could have been worse. I could have been paralyzed or decapitated. I'm thankful to still be here, despite the constant neck, back, arm and leg pain... but I did learn one very valuable lesson about the holiday season:

    In Christianity, an old white guy comes by to spread joy and bring gifts.

    But I guess me, coming from an Islamic background am only entitled to the old white guy who fucks you in the ass and runs off.

    So if you didn't get what you wanted this holiday season, at least be thankful that you didn't get what you DIDN'T want.

    My ice pack is calling me. Maybe I should go and lay out in the snow...

    Current Mood: frustrated
    Monday, October 20th, 2008
    7:42 pm
    Friday, October 17th, 2008
    1:11 am
    Max Pain
     UW students were given free passes to an advance screening of the Max Payne movie today.

    Considering it looked laughably bad and it was FREE, I went.

    And I have to say MAN... whether you are a Max Payne fan or not, avoid this movie... or at least, wait until it's on cable.

    But here's my 2 cents because the admission was free:

    I think by now we all know video game movies are going to suck. This movie, while very loosely following the plot (I mean, the Valkyr thing is still there) just took out EVERYTHING that made Max Payne what it was and left us with a generic, empty shell of an action movie.

    The original game was more or less a tribute to pre-Hollywood John Woo flicks and American film-noir with very witty dialogue and voice over commentary from the main character.

    This movie lacked all 3 of those elements, so already it was downhill from there.

    There was no depth to Max and therefore no reason to care about his drama.

    No Vinnie, No Vlad, No Captain Baseball Bat Boy, No John Myrrh, No Address Unknown

    The style of this movie was that of any other generic action/thriller. Fast cuts, unnecessary special effects. An entirely shallow atmosphere. Even the surface of my mouse pad that came with the game is grittier.

    And Mila Kunis as Mona... you know what, I'm just gonna stop here.

    It's pointless to write anymore.

    The movie is fucking terrible, and I know some of you may have looked forward to it, but here's what I say to that: If you want a really good action game with a pretty good story (as far as video games go), you can spend the $8 on a bargain bin copy of the game. Hell, for $8 you'd probably be able to get the sequel as well.


    Nonetheless, I got a good laugh out of the flick, and proceeded to spend my 8 bucks at Pagliacci's up the street afterwards.
    Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
    1:46 am
    Happy Birthday, [info]ryuentran!

    May the next brick that hits you bring you a quick, painless death.
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