[SPOILER][IMG]http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/taylor_read/CIMG2183-1.jpg[/IMG]
[/SPOILER]

As you can see, it isn't the greatest setup ever.

I'm using a 24 inch Dell monitor for my PS3 and 360. It's not huge, but it's 16:9 1080p and it will hold me over until I've saved enough for something [S]a little[/S] much bigger.

I've got a cheap Koss surround sound system. I don't actually have anything to mount the surround speakers with, so they just stay at the bottom. I broke the clip that holds in the wire on the top right speaker, so it only works about half the time. :lol:

[SPOILER][IMG]http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/taylor_read/CIMG2184.jpg[/IMG][/SPOILER]

I was given this lazy boy yesterday by my grandma. It's kind of ugly, but it's comfortable as hell. It makes a great game chair.

[SPOILER][IMG]http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/taylor_read/CIMG2185.jpg[/IMG][/SPOILER]

I've got my computer right next to my gaming stuff, so that I can watch movies I have downloaded on the bigger monitor. The white thing is an air conditioner. My room doesn't have central heat and air, so it's stupid fucking hot in here during the summer without that thing.

I always see you West Coaster's bragging about your In-and-Outs and the like, so I thought it was high time our little Midwest fast food joint got some recognition.

It's home to some of the most unhealthy food in the midwest. Take my lunch today for example. I had the 1/3 pound burger with fries and an iced tea. The burger itself contained 800 calories and 50 grams of fat, but it was damned good.

If you are ever in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, or Arkansas, you have to give Braum's a shot.

[IMG-C=124]4822[/IMG-C]
[I]The burger in all it's half eaten glory.[/I]


[IMG-C=124]4821[/IMG-C]
[I]My face should tell you how good it is.[/I]

Got a nice surprise yesterday. I'd lost my wallet visting my grandparents in texas over thanksgiving. Someone found it and mailed it to me. I didn't have much cash in there, but I did have 50 bucks in hastings giftcards which I used to buy a couple games in this thread. Just goes to show that there are good people left in this world. I'll be sending a thank you note and a little cash to the people that found my wallet.

[SIZE="4"]Hori Real Arcade Pro 3[/SIZE]

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/010.jpg[/IMG]

My second favorite purchase of the month. Spent $95 shipped on it, and it was WELL worth it. Street Fighter HD Remix is about a million times more fun now, and being able to finally [S]play[/S] be addicted to Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is awesome. I'll be modding it with white sanwas, plugging L1 and L2, and throwing on the cover of Weezer's Pinkerton for the art. Shit is going to be $$$$$

[SIZE="4"]iPod Touch 16g (1st Generation)[/SIZE]

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/011.jpg[/IMG]

This is my favorite purchase of the month. Got it for next to nothing thanks to selling my zune, YF360G, and amazon's sales. It's a huge improvement over my old Zune 30, fits in my pocket nicely, has kickass apps, and a great screen. Well worth it.

That is a speck case it's in. Ugly as hell, but it was only 4 bucks at bed bath and beyond. You can't tell, but it has a matte screen protector on it I bought from the apple store.

[SIZE="4"]360 Games: Grand Theft Auto 4, Fallout 3, and Call of Duty World at War
[/SIZE]

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/012.jpg[/IMG]

Grabbed GTA4 along with Dark Sector (see Playstation pickups) for 15 bucks. It's the second time I've purchased it now, but I wanted to have it so I can play the upcoming DLC.

Got Fallout 3 just yesterday actually. Hastings was having a B2G1 free. I wanted RB2 and my stepdad wanted Shawn White, so I got ended up getting it for free! Haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I will soon.

Call of Duty 5 was a christmas present from the folks. In true cheapass fashion, I asked for the gift receipt and went and bought a sealed copy at best buy when it was on sale and returned it to gamestop for a nice 30 bucks. Haven't spend a ton of time on it yet, but from what I've played it's pretty sick.

[SIZE="4"]Playstation Games: Rock Band 2, Dark Sector, Gran Turismo 5 Prolouge, and Persona 4.[/SIZE]

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/013.jpg[/IMG]

Got Rock band 2 at that B2G1 mentioned in the 360 pickups. I've played the shit out of it since I got it yesterday, and have had a blast. I can't believe how hard the drums are in some of the later songs. I could play everything on hard on RB1 drumming, but there are already like 4 songs that are gonna have to take some real effort to beat.

Dark Sector was free with GTA4 thanks to Blockbuster's awesome B1G1 sale. Only played a little so far, but it seems to be a pretty decent game.

Gran Turismo was 10 bucks at Radioshack. I'm not really a big fan of racing sims, more of an arcade racing guy, but I figured my stepdad would have fun with it and we needed a good new two player game.

Persona 4 was also a present from the folks. I've put about 5 hours in so far, and I absolutely love it. I'll be putting some serious time in it over the next few weeks.

[SIZE="4"]Blu Rays: The Dark Knight[/SIZE]

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/014.jpg[/IMG]

Got a giftcard to BB for christmas, so I grabbed this. Love the movie. It's great to put on when you have people over.

I also signed up for Netflix today, for a YF360G offer.

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/12-07-08_1030.jpg[/IMG]


[CENTER][SIZE="5"]Street Fighter Alpha Anthology [/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: $7
Bought from the lovely Mojimbo. No manual, and the rest of the case is generic, but the game is hella fun.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]Gears of War 2 +$10 Amazon giftcard[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: $60
My new addiction. If you ever want to play, the tag is Darth Puma.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]In Bruges[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: Free
My mom was buying movies for our thanksgiving trip. They were doing a B2G1 free and she could only find two for my sisters so I grabbed it. Haven't watched it all yet but it seems pretty good.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]Skullcandy Ink'd Earbuds[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: $7 ish
Yes, they are pink, but they were cheap and I needed some buds. Decent sound quality actually.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]Left For Dead[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: $40 (paid for in credit, thanks COD4!)
Kickass game. My steam is MatthewPerryLookingBitch if you want to play.

[SIZE="5"][CENTER]Fossil Watch[/CENTER][/SIZE]

Cost: Birthday Present
My parents got me this along with a dick load of clothes for my birthday. Can't really tell from the pic, but the face is really big.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]Music Power Solo[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: $13 w/1 day shipping (paid for in credit, thanks Gears 2 and LBP!)
Need a zune charger for that damned thanksgiving trip. It's actually pretty cool, powers any USB device.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]Animal Crossing: Wild World[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: $25 (paid for in credit, thanks Alone in the Dark!)
Needed a game for the 5 hour drive to the step family's for thanksgiving. It's since been stolen from me by one of my sisters. I'll steal it back a few days for christmas and just give it to her as a present.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]The Clash London Calling[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Cost: $6
Ridiculously good cd, I suck for just now getting it.

[CENTER][SIZE="5"]Total real money spent:
$79

Total spent:
$157[/SIZE][/CENTER]

[SIZE="1"]Was hoping my iPod touch would be added to this list, but I'm not getting paid for my zune till tomorrow.[/SIZE]

I need a hobby. Bad. Been thinking about things I could do over the past couple days and I keep coming back to learning the guitar.

Deciding to learn was the easy part. Now I have to find a decent guitar, figure if I should take lessons or teach myself, acoustic or electric, etc.

So, cheap ass guitarists, what do you recommend? I think I want to go acoustic, so I can learn Neutral Milk Hotel songs. However, I have no idea what kind of guitar to buy. I went to a local shop, and pretty much all they sold acoustic wise was Fender's that were like 250 bucks. I don't want to spend that much starting out. What are some good, decently priced guitars for a beginner?

Do you guys recommend doing the lesson thing? It's like 60 bucks a month for a 30 minute lesson a week at the place I went to, which is crazy. Now, if they're worth it, I don't mind spending it, but if it won't be much of a difference I'd like to save my money.

[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/08-28-08_1712.jpg[/IMG]

As I posted in a previous blog, I won the painting from Kotaku. It's concept art for the video game Mushroom Men. It's an actual Oil Painting on canvas, not a print.

A couple weeks ago I put it up on my tradelist, and no one seems to be interested. The few offers I got weren't even worth the immense cost of shipping this thing.

I really don't know where I can sell it other than here. I absolutely loathe ebay, and it's not really fit for Craigslist.

So, are there any sites that specialize in the buying and selling of paintings?

Got a lot to cover in the ole blog today, but first up, any cags have experience with the Moto Q? My Razr 2 recently took a turn for the worse after being dropped into the toilet a few weeks ago (won't charge without serious jerry rigging), so I need a new phone. I'm trying to decide whether I want to just pay the 50 dollar deductible on my insurance, or trade the phone for a friend's Moto Q. He said he'd pay the deductible if I'd trade him phones. I don't know much about the Q, but I do like that it has a keyboard, it would make texting much easier. Opinions on what I should do?

Now on to Bass guitars. I need a new hobby since I won't be golfing for the school this year. I've always wanted to learn to play the guitar, and I've always thought basses sounded cool as hell. A friend said it would be easier to learn guitar if you started on the bass, for reasons I can't recall. Any bassists on the board that want to visit with me about learning it? Recommendations on a good starter bass?

And now, oil paintings. A couple weeks ago, I got sent a mushroom men concept art painting from Kotaku. Apparently I'd won one of the E3 liveblogging contests, and didnt' see the email. I've had it hanging up since then, trying to figure out what to do with it. Thought about selling it, but I have no clue what kind of cash it would bring in. Also thought about donating it to Penny Arcade for one of the Child's Play auctions. Does anyone have any clue what I could get off this thing? Here's a pic:
[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/08-28-08_1712.jpg[/IMG]


And lastly, does anyone know what is considered to be the best DVD release for To Kill a Mockingbird? We recently read it for english, and I've absolutely fallen in love with the story. We watched the movie and class, and I want to get the DVD for my collection, just don't know which one to get.

Tryouts were today. I managed to contract a cold late this week, leading to my voice being fucked. Because of the cold I could not hit a high note to save my life, which is bad because for a bass 1 songs this shit was high.

I might have still been okay had our music not been so hard this year. Of the four songs we learned, the easiest was cut and the one we barely new was left in.

So, we arrived at the school around 12 30 ish. As soon as we got there I went straight to the practice room, and stayed there until it was time for me to audition. I knew I was boned as soon as I started warming up though. Couldn't match pitch to save my life thanks to the stupid cold.

An hour later I was up to audition. I go to the room, get my music ready, and all of the sudden get terrible stage fright. It's completely ridiculous for me to be getting stage fright when I've done this shit a thousand times.

I think I maybe sang six notes during the whole audition. The first two songs start of high, and I couldn't hit it. After I fucked up those notes I just couldn't get back on with it and stood there like a dumbass for the rest of the songs. I didn't even sing any of the last song.

Luckily, you don't have to make All Region to make All State, so I've got a couple months to practice and hopefully make that.

It seems like over this past year and a half or so I've really gotten big into music. I've always liked music, but it's just now becoming a major part of my life.

In the year and a half since I started building a collection, I've listened to a lot of stuff, good and bad. Here are my absolute favorites:

1. Neutral Milk Hotel-In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
This is the greatest album of all time. If you feel differently, fuck you. [spoiler]I keed[/spoiler]. It was the first and only album beautiful enough to move me to tears. Jeff Mangum has such a passionate voice, and such a wonderful way with words. If you haven't heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, stop what you are doing right now and go do it. Buy it. Torrent it. I don't give a shit as long as you hear it.

[URL]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iipO9Tvk1EI[/URL]

2. Weezer-Pinkerton
El Schorcho. Enough said.

[URL]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzxwGazkLWU[/URL]

3. Death-Symbolic
This was a hard choice. I love Spiritual Healing and Symbolic almost equally, but I had to give symbolic the edge simply because I like Chuck's vocal style better on it. Death's penultimate album is easily my favorite metal album of all time (granted, I'm not huge into the metal scene). Sick guitar solo's, the best vocal style Chuck ever used, and the epicness of Crystal Mountain gave this album the number 3 spot on my list.

[URL]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKxvIx6lTYc[/URL]

4. Catch 22-Keasbey Nights
This is the most recent album on my list. Not recent as in when it came out, but recent in the fact that I heard it for the first time just this summer. My favorite ska album, and the album I find myself coming back to most. It's title track, Keasbey Nights, is an incredibly song, with a chorus that will stick in your head for days. My favorite song on the album, however, is As the Footsteps Fade Away. It's a fantastic song about a person diagnosed with cancer and given 3 weeks to live. The song features more "clean" vocals than any other song on the album and the chorus is awesome.

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8SSoJQB5Mk[/url] Sorry for the Naruto, it was the best not live video I could find.

5. Arcade Fire-Funeral
Win Butler's insanely passionate voice, the use of a ton of different instruments, and the overall originality of Funeral landed it at the number 5 spot in my list.


[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWgmRvwR0a8[/url]



Would have made the cut had the list been bigger: Streetlight Manifesto-Everything Goes Numb, Goldfinger-Hang ups, Death Cab for Cutie-Plans (I realize it wasn't their best, but it was my first Death Cab album so it is my favorite), Big D and the Kids Table-Strictly Rude.

Ever since school started, I've felt bad pretty much all the time. I'm always exhausted, my allergies worsen, and right now I have a bitch of a cold.

I consider myself pretty healthy. I'm 15, almost 16. I'm about 5'6", 120 pounds. I drink a ton of water, usually 6 or 7 bottles a day, I have maybe one soda a month, I don't over eat (usually 2000 calories or less a day, lately it's been higher because puberty is raping my body and I'm hungry all the time). I eat fruits and veggies. I get a decent ammount of sleep, generally out by 11:30 and up at 6:30.

The only "bad" that I do is lead a relatively in active life. My only real excercise comes from the 100 pushup program I'm on, and my 100 crunches a night. I golf like once a week, but other than that I don't do a ton. I'm going to start lifting weights within the next few weeks, and I'll try to make myself run at least a mile every day or so.


Why do I feel so crappy all the time. Is it just that I'm growing? That I'm sedentary?

[IMG]http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs24/f/2008/011/0/2/Hardcore_Dancing_by_Crimian.jpg[/IMG]

95 percent of the bands that come down to are little Oklahoma town are of the HxC variety. There's nothing wrong with that, I enjoy the music. The problem is, that's pretty much all there is around. There's a couple pop punk bands, but they're few and far between.

I guess I really shouldn't complain because it would certainly be worse, I just hate that there is hardly any diversity in the local scene. I would love to see some Ska bands come down, or even just more pop punk bands. Hardcore gets old after a while, especially when you can't hardcore dance.

How's your local music scene?

(note, easily the worst picture I could have used for comparison, but it's the only recent one of myself that I have)

So, this big black kid named Peter Chase decided one day that I looked like Freddy from I-Carly. His nickname for me is now Freddy, of course.


So I ask you, CAG, do you bear a resemblance to any celebrities?



Picture after the jump!



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.....


[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c49/Darth_Puma/Untitled-2.jpg[/IMG]



Before the questions are even asked, I'm 15, 16 in November. I look young because I didn't start puberty till I was in like the 8th grade. Yes, I have testicles, and if you make a comment they very may well end up on your chin.

I absolutely hate the dentist. The little metal poky shit, the taste of the rubber gloves and strawberry teeth cleaner, all of it. My bi annual trips to the bastard are my least favorite two days of the year.









....

So of course I have a teeth cleaning scheduled for today out of no where.

I went, they did the usual shit, and then instead of telling my "your teeth are perfect, yadda yadda yadda", I'm informed that I have two cavities. They decided since I hadn't had any changes to my diet it had to be because of the three packs of Double Mint I chew a day. Now all my gum has to be sugar free. Balls.

Of course, on the way to the car my mom got all freaked out and asked me if I was becoming bullimic (granted, she had reason, I've lost a lot of weight over the years, my father was in high school, and I had two cavities out of no where). When I finally got her to shut the fuck up about it she decided that I need to take vitamins. Because she totally knows what she's talking about.

In conclusion, fuck you and your practice Dr. Henry.

Thanks to the amazing deal that is the Zune pass, I'm sitting at a little over 23 gigs of music after just 3 months with my Zune. At the rate I'm going, it will be full by the end of October. I go one crazy genre binges often. Last night I had a punk fever and ended up with like 500 songs.

I haven't decided what to do when I fill it. I know I could always delete songs, but I'm kind of obsessive and like to have bands I like entire discographies. I'll probably just sell it and upgrade. The trouble with that is deciding what I want to upgrade to. I'm sticking with Zune's so I don't have to mess with stripping the DRM from my songs; I just can't decide which model to go with. I doubt I'd fill the 80 with just music, but I start putting videos on I can see it filling up quickly. Do you guys think it would be worth the extra 50 bucks to get the new 120 gigs they have out?

My father abused my mother, always yelled, was bipolar, and was pretty much an asshole. I would beg my mother not to leave me alone with him, for fear that I would spill something, or break something, or just do something to set him off and get me screamed at. My parent's divorced when I was seven, but that's all for another blog.

My mom got remarried (for the third time, again for another blog post) last december. My stepdad is generally a cool guy, though he has his dick moments.

We were on vacation this past week, at corpus cristi. We were eating lunch at subway. I'm kinda fuzzy on exactly what happened, but it was something along the lines of my little sister wouldn't decide on what she wanted and I stepped up and ordered. My stepdad got pissed and smarted off, and I smarted off back. He grabbed me hard on the shoulder and said something along the lines of "don't start with me boy".

Now for most people, this wouldn't be a big deal, but when he did this I flashed back to the days with my dad, something snapped, and then just completely fucking lost it. I started shaking, and got really weak and dizzy. I walked out of the building and started stumbling down the street, punching everything in my reach in a blind rage. It's really a wonder my hand isn't broken right now. I ended up in a field about 100 yards away. Some drunk college kid on vacation came over to me and tried to calm me down. I got so weak I couldn't stand. I told the kid what happened as his friends came over to us. They got me calmed down quite a bit;told me they'd been through it all too, abusive fathers, meth addict mothers, you name it, and that I should just go get drunk and say yes sir yes maam when my family got to being assholes.

It really kind of scared me how I lost control like that, because that's the kind of shit my father would do.

My stepdad and I are cool now, we talked it out, he told me he wasn't my father and even if we have are differences he would never hurt me or my mom.

Sorry if this was a little scattered or hard to read, I'm tired and finding it hard putting this all into words.

I was just chilling at home by myself. Mom was at school working and my stepdad was supposed to be out of town. I was blasting some goldfinger and singing along at the top of my lungs having a hell of a time.

Then my stepdad walks in and was like wtf.

So now I'm sitting here thoroughly embarrassed laughing my ass off.

What embarrassing situations have you been caught in fellow CAGs?

I've got an 8 hour drive to Kansas City for a damn wedding tomorrow. Hopefully I can run by the library and finally get Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for something to do on the drive.

Downloaded a couple hundred new songs for the drive. Gotta love the Zune pass.

I just bought Space Invaders Extreme and Civ Rev for ds for the drive today. Loving Space Invaders, but I'm not so sure about Civ. I guess I'm just used to playing it on PC. Hopefully I can get into it, if not I'm taking it back to gamestop as new (their own goddamn fault for selling me a gutted game)

I just realized that I'm going to have to spend at least 250 bucks on music games this coming fall. I have Rock Band on PS3, but the instruments are crap compared to the new ones for RB2 and GHWT. Getting both, I just have to decide which instrument set I want.

I'm a little confused about RB's drum set. Does the one that will come with the package have detachable symbols and the ability to use it as a realy drum set too?

So, lately I've been expanding my musical tastes, and have gotten heavily into punk/ska.
I used my Zune Pass to get a bunch of Goldfinger. Yesterday I was listening to their album "Hang Ups"
The song "This Lonely Place" came on. I had my headphones in and I had them cranked. The intro starts playing, and all of the sudden I hear Jeff Mangum (NMH) singing, very faintly in the background. It only lasted for a second, but I'm positive I heard it, and I'm almost Positive it was him. I believe he was saying, "Where are you"
Of course, after hearing this I scoured the internet for any information on it. And, of course, there wasn't any. At this point, I was getting excited. Did I discover something new about Neutral Milk Hotel? That's every fans wet dream!
I posted my discovery on IGN and got no response. I was afraid to bump the thread because I'm technically circumventing if I post over there.

So fellow CAG'ers, I ask you to listen to this song for me. Put in headphones, put the speakers close to your ear, whatever it takes for you to hear it. This is the best video I could find with the song on Youtube, so I'm sorry if you dislike pokemon. The alleged Jeff Mangum singing is at the very beginning of the song so you won't have to watch much of it.

[URL]http://youtube.com/watch?v=zl9ghHwB56o[/URL]

Did you hear it, or am I crazy?

I was so incredibly hyped for it. I just knew it would blow me away.

I'm only an hour or so into the first act. I can't get into this game at all. It doesn't feel like Metal Gear Solid to me, it feels like generic action game #4840280. Hell, x and o aren't even reversed!

I know that if I just sit down and force myself to play it, I'll get into it and love the hell out of it. But I don't have the will to do that. Everytime I start it up I think "I should go beat Subsistence again" or I play for five minutes and go back to MGO.

Please tell me the game gets significantly better.