Positive Reinforcement

I got to campus earlier than normal today to actually get some work done for a change; I can't concentrate at home very well lately. Between my brother staying up late and the baby getting here early, I've lost a decent chunk of my sleeping hours. I'd like things to go back to normal now please TT_TT

Anyway, I hadn't read at all for my Fiction class so I needed the downtime to check over the stories we would be critiquing for the evening (side note; I don't know if it's due to my experience or the computer screen in the way, but I find critique online so much easier to do). Hopefully Amanda finally arrived to grab Russ and give Mimi a break, but all that is neither here nor there. While scribbling all over my pages, Dr. Minnick dropped by the student lounge; that would be the one teaching the class I actually enjoy and who I really, really need to do some papers for.

It's not that he's pushy about getting the work done - in fact I'm genuniely surprised at how patient he's been with me about it. But he did get on my case a touch, though it was more "you are obviously intelligent and far too clever during class discussion to be getting behind like this" than "I'm going to fail you if you don't turn these in asap" XD If it were a movie, I probably would have been hit on the forehead with the stack of papers he was carrying. I know I'll get a docking for being late; I'm not worried about that. And I have the chance to re-write anything with a score I'm unhappy with.

I'm not sure where I was going with this post now, but I kept replaying the scene in my mind all through class and put it here to get it out of my system I guess. I'm oddly pleased by the compliment.

Meanwhile, class itself was all discussion and cupcakes <3 I made cupcakes because Taylor really wanted cupcakes last week. I have apparently been crowned the Cupcake Goddess, a step up from my Cookie Queen days of high school, and am now allowed to demand sacrifice. This pleases me.

Novelty Value

My parents got an XBox so they could play on the Kinect. This amuses me X3

It offers a pretty solid workout, though I've always found motion capture games to be more gimmick-y than anything (give me PLOT). Still, watching my Dad wave all his limbs around trying to catch virtual dodge balls is... I don't know what the word is, mostly because I'm not actually sure how to feel about it XD

Trey and I dropped by their place to check it out for a few hours, and thus that paper of mine has barely been touched even now, three days before the deadline. Gotta do that tomorrow. Or rather, later today.

We left about 11:00 but didn't get home until 1:30 - first we made a detour to try and find this place I need to attend for a class next week (didn't find it). Then we went to Wal-Mart. Yes, we went grocery shopping at one o'clock in the morning. Everything is funnier at one o'clock in the morning. It's hilarious at three o'clock in the morning.

It's not the sleep deprivation or anything; there's simply something ridiculous about going through your daily activities at such an unusual time. The surreality of seeing Wal-Mart totally empty save the employees is worth the novelty value.

The best thing was these two little kids; these two seven year olds walked by us, carrying a 24 case of Dr. Pepper cans. One in front with his arms behind him, the other at the back, like grasping a stretcher. No parents or older sibling - they waltzed right by our cart and waddled off to one of the checkout lanes. Totally adorable <3

Eureka?

I was going to post something last night. But then I remembered; this is not a daily blog. So I went:

And went to bed early instead.

It seems silly, but I needed the kick in the head I suppose. I'm not sure why I'm so determined to post daily, except that perhaps fearing one missed post leads to another and suddenly I haven't updated this thing in a year. All the same, I'd like to try not being so gung-ho about posting every single evening.

Criticism

My day in the hot seat for my Fiction class. Woot.

I have trouble getting solid feedback on my work, so I'm really happy to get the chance in class. I put together some pieces that went with my Technical Romance series. I've been rolling some of them around in my head - I have a sort of idea forming of what I'd like to do, but it's not really there yet. I kind of like the idea of a book of flash fic pieces, loosely connected, maybe all taking place in the same setting? I dunno yet.

I guess I kinda want them to be a sort of yearbook, or like sifting though a box of photographs - all the pieces are seperate, yet together.

I think they enjoyed the pieces for the most part, but wanted a more solid plot, something I don't really do much of. I'll probably try for something more plot heavy on the second round.

Winter Town

 by Stephen Emond

Another strike off my book list. And that's pretty much the only reason I kept with it; so I could take it off the list. Read the entire thing in one day. Between classes. That's how simple a read it was.

Summary: Evan - Leave it to Beaver family, upcoming Valedictorian, spineless. Lucy - broken home, comes back to her hometown and Evan for Christmas, comes back one year with a nose ring and black hair.

There are your protaganists - cardboard as they come.

And that would have been fine; tropes are tropes because they work. Yet here they do not work in this instance because the writing is terrible and the characters have no character. Good lord, could this book have been any more monotone? You can have a peaceful, easy atmosphere without being boring. The first chapter is the sort of thing I'd feature as a DLD, maybe, but is not what I want from a professionally published piece. Allow me to open the book at random and type the first paragraph I see:

Lucy came home to a cluttered living room that seemed to be missing a floor. You know, those things for walking on. (Interruption; yes, the narrative actually said this.) In place of the floor were a million tiny fragments of computer guts. In the center of them was Lucy's father, with the shell of the computer opened like a book. Only the living room was lit, and sparsely. The house was barely decorated for the holidays. There was one small Christmas tree that fit on a tabletop Lucy tiptoed through the computer parts to the couch, which she fell onto heavily, flat on her face. She moaned to herself a moment.

Riveting, isn't it? I can just hear the end-stops screaming for relief. All the details are like this; tell, tell, tell, cardinal sin of description.

I wanted to enjoy this book - the summary sounded cliche, but sweet; something nice and familiar for a few hours. But it's just plain old boring. Evan doesn't do anything and Lucy is content to be a bitch to the one person that goes out of the way to be kind to her. Am I getting older, or are teen books just getting worse? Or do I just keep picking up bad adolescent literature of late?

I'm leaning towards that third option because I still really identify and enjoy "teen" books, even if good ones are coming few and far between of late. Though given that my book list is nearly 50 pieces long, there's got to be something on it for me to enjoy in the near future.

In short: don't waste your time. The cover is the best thing about this book.

No really, just look at this gorgeous cover <3

Spiral

Spent the last few hours watching a favorite anime - Spiral. It's a sorta-mystery anime, though as things progress the type of mystery goes from a "whodunnit" sort to something closer to Death Note. The best part is watching the various characters go head to head, attempting to outsmart and kill each other.

But that's getting ahead. The series begins with the attempted murder of a student and out protaganist, Ayumu, is the lead suspect. Thus, the first few episodes are him trying to clear his name. A second murder connected to the first occurs. Ayumu is challenged by a group called the "Blade Children," and thus the larger mystery of the series unfolds - discovering who or what the Blade Children are.

The anime never really gives any answers, whcih is why I prefer the manga by and large. The anime was being made as the books were released, so the divergence is understandable. I do wish the story had managed to get somewhere though. But the anime never really gained any popularity, so it's unlikely anyone will ever return to it, or try to remake it with the manga in mind. Which is sad because it really does deserve more love.

It's a very intelligent show, more about characters and strategy, like watching a chess game. With explosives. It's difficult to describe it without giving too much away, but it's also difficult due to how different the manga and anime really are. If you like a show with some brain, I recommend either one. The action scenes/ challenges are fantastic - my personal favorite involves a bomb around our protaganists' neck while he attempts to secure the safety of a hostage and a tape containing incriminating evidence against his challenger. And that sounds really boring when I put it that way. Trust me, it's all kinds of amazing, especially in the last two minutes <3

Out of the Dust

Book Three for Adolescent Literature. Yay.

First impression: Newbery Medal on the cover; someone dies.

Later: Yep. Called it.

But really, if you get a chance to read this book, do so. It's a verse novel, so the story is told through poetry, which is an interesting effect to say the least. There were quite a few poems I genuinely enjoyed.

The story is narrated by teenaged Billie Jo during the Dust Bowl of the 30's. The cover is about as boring as they come, which was what probably kept me picking it up before, but is probably a good thing - I remember this book being in my elementary school library. If I'd read it then, it would have messed me up. It's not that it's paticularly horrific or anything, but some of the passages just hurt to read. Eeeeugh.

That said, there are also several beautiful passages, more than I would have expected from a story about the Dust Bowl (hell, more than I would expect from a story that takes place in Oklahoma XD). The sections concerning infants and birth were especially poignant and the single poem about World War I stick in my mind more than others.

I've read Karen Hesse before, so I did know a little of what I was getting into; judging from this book and The Music of Dolphins, she seems to enjoy "experimental" styles - while this one was pure poetry, the latter was semi-poetic but for a different reason; the narrator is speaking mostly through Translation Convention. The prose is intersting to me because as the narrator learns more about the human world and how to speak "properly," the level of difficulty increases - from about a first grade level complete with larger print to about a fifth grade level as the text shrinks - and decreases again with her longing for home until finally being released to the sea where Translation Convention once again takes full effect.

But that's neither here nor there. More than anything, I think I'm left wondering why this book was in my elementary school - granted it is for younger readers, but fifth grade seems a little too young. While heavy on atmosphere and character, I think much of it would go right over the head of a ten year old. I could see it being one of those books you read, forget about, and then come back to years later with a fresh understanding of what was really going on within.

Not to say younger readers won't appreciate it at all of course - I think grasping the plot and meaning is easy enough, but some of the undertones, of distance between parent and child and the sort-of relationship with another character for example, that aren't quite as explicit might be lost.

When all's said and done, historical fiction isn't really my forte - loved the book anyway.

Flesh and Bone

I have no idea why I felt so awkward in Antropology today. Or maybe awkward is the wrong word - just plain wrong.

Today was all about bones, and for some reason the lecture just made me uncomfortable. Any other day I would have been psyched to get to play with human remains. Instead I spent the entire class feeling very aware of the various pieces in my appendages. Granted, I do that with some frequency anyway because I'm a sensualist, but it's always been with fascination, not discomfort.

Seriously though, have you ever really taken the time to notice how well put together a body is? It's weird - the putting a hand on your elbow or knee and moving the joint around. You can just feel how smooth the flow is, especially in the elbow. Similar thing with fingers - the anatomy is ridiculously well packaged into such a tiny space. When you go to bed, just be still and notice it all; the way gravity pulls down and you sink into the mattress and when you get really still the bloodflow is stronger than if you had been running. You'd be surprised at what you notice in the quiet moments.

Random post is random.

Topics?

You may have gathered this for yourself already, but my day to day life isn't all that riveting. On occasion, I have something worth blogging about.

Those days are few and far between.

What do people actually like reading about on blogs? What's really worth talking about? The things on my mind during the day tend to be long forgotten by the time I get to sit down with my account here. Thus, an appeal to the few people out there keeping up; what do you want to hear about? I'm nothing if not flexible with what I do.

Unrelated, but awesome:

Break Over

The bad weather seems to have passed us by for now and that means I'm right back to classes as normal. Anthropology was a test - not too sure how that went. I could eliminate at least hafl the answers on most of the multiple choice questions, but that's hardly much comfort. And wft, an essay question? Where the heck did that come from?

Even with that though, I finished in about thirty minutes (it's a two hour class). I actually had enough time to leave campus and go eat some lunch for a change. I almost never get to eat on school days, so I took advantage. Chinese <3

When I got back I realized I could have hit the bookstore as well; my Poetry class had been cancelled. So there I was with three hours to kill. I might have gone back out if not for the long walk to and from my car. And the rain.

But Adolescent Literature did eventually come around and I loved it as much as always <3 He didn't drag out "The Red Pony" nearly as much as "The Outsiders," which was a huge relief. I'm not sure how much longer I could have dwelled on such a boring book. I'll conceed it's well written; that doesn't make it exciting.

The rest of us got a taste of what was going to be expected of our presentations - everyone has to give one on one of the books we'll be reading. The first group went today; it's really more for the people that are planning to be education majors, but that doesn't exempt the people who aren't. Today's group tried their hand at guiding a class discussion, which is more or less what every class is. They kicked off with a writing prompt and then put us into groups to discuss what we'd come up with.

I ended up paired with the actual instructor, Dr. Minnick. Normally, that would make me nervous. Fourtunately, I'm both good at literature and I actually like this guy. He's awesome. He's one of those professors that genuinely loves what he teaches and makes that enthusiasm carry over. My first Art History teacher had a similar attitude towards her subject, so much so that I nearly went down that road myself XD

Anyone Out There?

Haven't heard from anyone else in a while - not many new posts, no comments - am I the only one in my circle still blogging? Because seriously, it's way easier to keep up with others than going it alone.

Have a song, becuase I don't have much else today.

 

This song is infinitely more awesome with the backstory. And it's already pretty awesome to begin with.

Have two, because it's a travesty this band is as unknown as it is. You may know them better as the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The members of Savatage would become the core members of TSO later. I like both, but Savatage is far superior in my opinion; they have some fantastic rock operas and the stories are much better than their TSO counterparts, which have to be more family friendly for the Christmas theme.

 

Again, backstory is everything. See; Chiune Sugihara

I have met two other people who have heard of this band. One was a big fan of TSO, a love she and her Dad shared. The other was introduced to the band by me =P Hardly counts.

 

This album is supposed to get the Broadway treatment. Eventually.

I think I may be bored. Or just felt I needed to use the video feature more often. Maybe I should start linking more songs; I have some rather obscure stuff in my library o_O

Addicted

I suddenly have a metric ton of games to play.

Basically, my brother owed me some cash and instead of paying in cash, he offered to pay in store credit. I accepted. Thus, I have quite a catalog to get through.

I have the last Spyro reboot for my PS2, but the rest are DS games. Pokmon Mystery Dungeon, Phoenix Wright; Ace Attorney, and Jake Hunter: Detective Story: Memories of the Past. Adding that to the Professor Layton I have yet to play and the Hotel Dusk: Room 215 I bought yesterday before I knew about all this, and I have six new games.

Also, I downloaded Ever17 last night, so there's also that. 999 has effectively converted me to visual novels; I have an addiction. I want MOAR. My weakness for a good story <3 I'll try to review these as I play.

Aside from all that thoguh, I skipped classes today - I was afraid the snow would trap me at college. It wouldn't have, but hindsight and all. I'm only sad to have missed Adolescent Literature.

Long Day Was Long

Which is why I nearly forgot about blogging for the night.

Long story short - woke up at 9:30, grabbed the baby, went to my brother's birthday lunch with the family, went out to my parent's house, took part in a dA chat/ was interviewed there, played with the baby, had to go out to the city to pick up some stuff, dropped the baby off, dropped off stuff we had to pick up, came home, broke my Internet, fixed my Internet, currently waiting for my visual novel download to finish so I can go to bed.

I have about thirty minutes left, but I'm too tired to write a city like I should right now.

Oh, I also wrote a DLD article tonight. That too. Yeah.

My eyelids are so heavy TT_TT

Ranting is Cathartic...

... but I don't get to detox my system here because if I know two things about the Internet, it is thus:

- The Internet is forever.
-The Internet is public.

So I will instead aim a long list of obscenties towards an unnamed person and take what pleasure I can from being vague.

Lazy, entitled, spoiled, pikey, churlish, half-witted, doghearted, fustilarian, ruttish, gormless, harpy, salacious, scummy, craven, idle-headed, buncombing, backstabbing little Cailleach. AND I'll probably never see the $200 she owes me.

You may notice my vocabulary extends to insults as well. For maximum enjoyment, please read as you might Shakespeare.

Four More to My Collection

A bunch of postcards came in a rush this week XD Here are the latest four;

 This one is the biggest one I've received yet. I couldn't get a decent picture though, so I had to do some cropping in editing. The sender is Kaat from the Netherlands, a 30 year old store manager.

 From Poland! The Tatras Mountains and Belianska Cave, the largest cave and only open one in the Tatras. The entrance is 890 miles above sea level. The sender is Komad, who lives near the border of Slovakia, where this card is from.

 This one had no words :/ It's from Belarus, but that's all I got aside from some nice animal stamps on the backside (an otter, a wolf, a mongoose, and some daffodils if you're interested). It appears to be a stadium of some sort, though it could be an amusement park for all I know.

This one is (obviously) from Ukraine. There's a lot of writing on the back, but I can't read it. Partly because it's in shiny green gel pen, but the writing is also in cursive. The combination of the two is difficult to make out.

From what I can make out, the sender is a student and just finished taking exams. They enjoy music and drinking warm tea.

Like You Didn't See the End Coming

Library night <3 Did not manage to find a copy of The Red Pony. Wat.

Thus far I've gotten away with doing a lot of disscussion in my Adolescent Literature class without actually don't any reading, but that won't last much longer; we're only on the second book in the syllabus, and the first one was The Outsiders, a book I'm extremely familiar with. But that's neither here nor there. I'm rather happy with how my library character prompt turned out.

Eliza slapped her library card on to the faux-wood counter. "I want this one!"

Patrons usually rang the little silver bell when no one was attending to the checkout, but Eliza couldn't see it; the bell was kept out of the reach of five year olds for a reason. She was about to yell again when the librarian bustled around the corner; the autographed Hemingway would have to wait.

"Well hello dearie. Don't you look cute in your karate uniform."

Eliza squeezed her doll in one arm and put the other one on her hip. "I want that one," she said pointing to the book while tossing her blonde ringlets.

"Quantum Immortality," the librarian read. "An Observational Study of Universal Mechanations. Are you sure you want this one love?"

"I want that one!"

"Well alright then," she scanned the idle card. Then scanned it again just to be sure.

"I'm afraid you can't have this one dearie."

"Why?"

"Is your mother nearby?"

"Why?"

"Well it says here," she indicated the screen. "That your card has a thirty dollar fine."

"Why?"

"I don't know - five year olds aren't allowed to check out the DVD's, and certainly not R-rated ones."

"Why?"

"Are you sure your mother isn't nearby?" she began to turn to the back. Eliza slapped the counter again. "I want that one!" Her blue eyes glared.

"I know sweetie, I know," the librarian was quick to placate her. "But we've got to get this fine taken care of first."

The girl relaxed suddenly, loosening her hunched shoulders. "That's okay," she hugged her doll. "I didn't want it anyway," and skipped off to the door before another word could be said.

The librarian shook her head. "What an odd child," she murmured to herself, rounding the corner before coming to a dead halt.

The Hemingway was gone.


Hee.

100 To Go

Logged in today and found I had 900 views. Yay? XD I like round numbers, so it felt like an achievement to me I guess.

I haven't talked much about it here yet, but that tooth that had been giving me problems broke off a few days ago - I wouldn't have even noticed had I not chomped on it while eating. It didn't hurt, didn't bleed - just came off. It was a bit of a surprise, but it's not like I wasn't expecting it; that tooth was going to come out one way or another.

It felt odd for about an hour and then I could more or less forget about it. It's still odd when I run my tongue over the area, but otherwise it's life as normal really. I've got a dentist appointment for next Thursday so I can get some second opinions before doing anything terribly drastic with my mouth XD I should probably be more worried about it than I am all things considered. But according to grandpa, this has happened to most of the females on his side of the family. I don't know what genetic disease they had, but apparently I ended up with it :/

Class Cut Short

Do I alternate between short and long posts or what? XD

Not much to say tonight - some things have been happening, but I'm not really at leasure to talk much about it. So let's pull from my hat of random topics.....

Actually, never mind. It's about time to put up a new passage for my dA mini-project. I think I'll be choosing some things from The Little Prince this week, one of my favorite books ever <3

If you've never read it, you really need to. It's a wonderfully bittersweet book. It's a sort of fairy tale for adults as it were - like an instruction book for life. There are some fantastic one liners that I would type here, but I'm afraid to do so would lessen their emotional impact later. I don't really want to say much here for the people that haven't read it >.<

Mind = Blown

February is apparently going to be a month of erratic posting.

I skipped posting yesterday for two reasons: one, approaching midnight I realized I hadn't posted the DLD article. You can tell I was tired because I put the wrong date. Two, I finished 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors last night and now you get the offical review I started way back in this post.

9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors is a beautiful game. Not beautiful in the traditional sense - not oh look at the pretty graphics nd what a touching, meaningful story no - beautiful in the same way a finely made watch is beautiful. Each gear meshes with the other components so perfectly; to remove a single piece is to bring the entire mechanism to a halt, breaking it irrevocably. I haven't played a game ending so satifying since Braid.

999 is the story of nine strangers who awaken on a ship - they have nine hours to play "The Nonary Game," find the ninth door and get out before the boat sinks. The rules are very specific and set up in such a way that, if broken, a bomb will detonated by the bracelet on their wrist, said bomb having been placed inside their intestines. The group is forced to work together to escape and discover the mystery of why they were picked to play this twisted game.

At its core, 999 is a visual novel combined with an escape the room game and a dash of Choose Your Own Adventure. If you don't like those types of games, you probably won't like this one, much in the same way that I don't like FPS game, no matter how good they supposedly are. But for what it is, 999 is a perfect video game. It combines the very best of those two genres so if you're a fan of either you NEED this game.

One of the best things about it for me was the everything was justified - justified in the trope sense of the word I mean. That is to say, everything you did in the game had a reason for being done. I've often found the puzzles of Escape the Room games to be totally arbitrary - who put you in that room? Why? Why is it necessary to microwave the goldfish to get the key to unlock the safe to get the piece of paper to decode the bloody letters on the wall that will tell you where the key is hidden? If you captor is that big of a douche, why would there be a key to find at all for that matter? But I digress - the point is, there is none of that here. There is a concrete reason you have to solve puzzles to get out of here and the discovery of why is the plot. Even the use of multiple endings is justified! I've never even heard of anyone doing that! They aren't a gimmick to tack on more hours. There is a 100% valid reason that you HAVE to play through the game multiple times - the true ending would completely fall apart if you couldn't. That is fantastic.

Much of this is just icing on the cake for me. what kept me coming back was the plot. The writing is fantastically done and twisting out the mystery is the real fun. I hate to spoil anything, so forgive me if I ramble of become unclear XD Let me run through the various other things first:

Graphics - Solid. Mostly made of still pictures and characters while the rooms themselves are richly detailed. You won't get lost; each room has its own distinct flavor and personality and you'll always know where you are by them.

Music - It's hard to explain how much this contributes to the atmosphere, so I'll just leave this here. This is the song that plays when something bad happens. I've come to hate it as it makes my spine tense up like you wouldn't believe, but that's rather the point isn't it? I'd recommend trying out the other tunes on that account though, as many are quite good.

Puzzles - I said it before, but everything is justified. Some of the puzzles will appear strange and require some out of the box thinking, but they ARE solveable. There were only two or three I just could not figure out for myself, and most of those were math problems, something I'm bad at anyway. You will learn hexadecimal. You will use music scores. You will decipher codes. You will do quite a lot of things - there's a lot of variety to go around.

Characters - There is no voice acting in this game - all the cutscenes have to be read. Personally I feel that's an advantage as acting out a few key scenes would have ended up looking hammy to say the least and ruined the feel. Like the settings, you won't have any trouble differentiating one person from another (spoiler?). The process of getting to know the characters and how everyone is connected is one of the best parts of the game - I know it's a cliche, but by the end, you really do feel like you know most of them personally.

Writing - The writing better be fucking amazing if it's going to run over an hour in places; don't get me wrong - I'm sure everyone who knows me knows how much I like to read. But that's not really what I come to video games for, ya know? Luckily, the writing more than delivers. I'd might even go so far as to say it does its job too well in the gorier scenes in which nothing more than blood splatters are ever shown, but are described in loving, sickening detail. Between that and the tension building in both plot and music, I was often torn between wanting to put it down for a while and let my heart rate et back to a normal level and continuing on until dawn broke, eager to know what happened next (staying up 'til 5AM tended to win).

Plot - . . .

. . . . . .

Holy.

Fudge.

I'm sorry, but that's about all I can say without ruining it. Just... wow. I don't even -

The plot is amazing. It twists and turns and keeps you guessing and OMG the last puzzle was fucking brilliant you have no idea. It was SO- . . . .

I don't have the words for it. I really don't. The closest thing I can come up with is "satisfying," but that doesn't really get to the heart of it. It was a culmination of everything that I went through and learned on the five playthroughs I passed along. Somehow the experience of doing the same things over and over but with different choices along the way made the ending that much more powerful. It's been a while since I felt this effected over a video game. I honestly don't know how to explain it. Someone buy this game so I'll have someone else to talk about it with.

My Dad Trolled Me?

Spent most of the night in the TWR chatroom :D Just got finished playing a game of GoogleWhacking, which sounds like an awful innuendo but is actually a sport of nerds XD

GoogleWhacking is attmpting to get the fewest search results from two search terms. Ideally, the goal is to get zero though the lowest number wins. I've gotten zero three times, but I no longer remember what terms I used >.< Two were from my first game some time ago, one more tonight.

Also did some flashlit challenges for a while, though I myself only did one - at some point in the chat my Dad got on Facebook and started trolling me through the Skype connection which was distracting to say the least o_O

Synesthesia

So I'm driving home with my brother in the passenger seat last night and he mentions something about needing to see an optometrist. And I'm all like "huh? why?" He tells me about this conversation with his mother-in-law a few days ago; he told her he had a headache and "the spots were bigger than usual" or something like that. Of course, Lisa doesn't know what the hell he's talking about with the spots - it's something Trey's seen his entire life and just assumed it was a normal thing. And now he thinks maybe he should see an eye doctor.

Of course, I knew what it was right away - I asked if the dot patterns ever corresponded or got stronger with music. Turns out my brother probably has synesthesia, which is the most awesome medical condition I've ever heard of. It's something I've been fascinated with for years; finding out that Trey has it is surreal to say the least.

It's still probably best to get a confirmation that those spots actually are the result of synesthesia and not something more serious, but I'd bet everything in my bank account that's what it is. His descriptions are way to specific and correlate with the symptoms far too perfectly XD

Synesthesia is a harmless condition in which the sensory wires of the brain as it were have somehow gotten crossed - like in Trey's case, it appears to be vision and sound. He can "see" sound. There are at least 60 known variants though. Graphmeme-Color is the most common; it involves assigning colors, tastes, or personalities (or any combination of) to letters, numbers, days of the week, etc. So some synesthetes know what nine tastes like or find J to be a very angry letter. It varies from person to person, but that's the general idea.

He also mentioned that hearing the number 14 gives him a sour taste in his mouth which is rather odd - nothing else correspondes to any taste and reading the number is perfectly fine; only hearing it provokes the sensation. Being able to put a name to it also let some other things click in his head; Trey has always found Valentine's candy to be bitter, possibly due to that association with the number 14 XD

I've used the condition as a motif in my writing in the past, most notably in Sound Bubble, but in a few other places as well. If I got to chose my mental disorder, I'd go with this one XD

Word Collection

By no means a complete list XD Some I enjoy the definition of, others just the sound. Provided definitions for some of the more obscure ones.

flibbertigibbet - flighty, whimsical
kerfluffle
persnickity
enigma
ringlets
xerophagy - a diet of bread and water
verdigris
synaptic
counterpoint
locupletative - tending to enrich
vacivity - emptiness
stiricide - falling of icicles
loreli
amarulence - bitterness, spite, scorn
orchard
wanweird - a strange or unhappy fate
gargalesthesia - sensation caused by tickling
dysania - having trouble getting out of bed in the morning
elegy
sonorus
petrichor - the smell of rain on dry ground
asymptote
phosphenes - the lights when you close your eyes
melliflous
ferrofluid
ripple
palimpsest - paper used after previous writing has been erased
sesquipedelan - prose to using long words
paresthesia - the tingling feeling when a limb falls asleep
cathedral
undulate - tofluctuate, flow
metallic
verdant - bright green
serene
muntin - the strip seperating window panes
lunule - white, crescent-shaped part of nail
absolution
bajulate - to carry a heavy burden
liquify