Delusions of Grandeur

I live!

So it’s about time I got some photos up here. ACEN was a few weeks ago, and yours truly attended as Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, one of the best anime series ever. So without further ado, on to the photos!

Kamina has quite the elaborate tattoo job, so I had to recreate that myself. Phoebe did an amazing job I think. That’s blue latex paint by the way, good stuff and resistant to sweat and water, but it hurts like hell coming off if you have any body hair, and for a man of German descent with great wolf-man arms, it was pretty darn painful.

The back of the design. The flame took quite a bit of work according to Phoebe, but I think it turned out great!

Here’s me all gussied up with my good friend Nicholas Wolfwood. The glasses came out especially well. People kept asking me where I bought them. In reality I made them myself out of red sheet plexiglass and a cheap pair of reading glasses. I was very happy with how the whole costume came together, got asked for lots of photo ops.

Always great to see a fellow Gurren Lagann cosplayer! Spin on, blood brother!

I have no words. This guy is without a doubt the best Cloud cosplayer I have ever seen! He looks exactly like he did in the game!

This was the Gurren Lagann cosplay photoshoot. These area always fun, you get to see everyone from the same series, allowing you to reenact various scenes, and to see how you did in comparison to the other cosplayers. I’m on the far right there if you cant already tell from how awesome I look.

Overall, it was a great time. The costume turned out amazing, especially the cape, major props to Phoebe for all the work she put into it. I’ll be bringing this costume out again at Connecticon in July, hopefully it will look just as awesome then!

Long time no update, I know.

I have no idea why, but whenever something happens, it just doesn’t occur to me to post it here anymore. See my previous post for other reasons for my spotty update schedule.

Some depressing news that I learned today was that Ace Attorney Investigations 2 has no plans to be localized here to the US, so its looking like I wont be getting a new Ace Attorney fix for a long, long time. Much sadness there.

I recently watched the 1995 film Outbreak for the first time. For all my interest in infectious diseases and viruses, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of this movie before. It was an awesome thriller film that really touched on many of my interests, even if the movie was cranked up to 11 in terms of the possible drama and dangers involved in that field of science.

It always amazes me just how many movies, books, games, and shows are out there in the world. It should be impossible for anyone to ever get bored in this day and age. For myself, every time I discover a new movie or book, I continue to be entertained by things I saw years ago. The best movies and books continue to be entertaining over the course of many years of re-watching. Though as much as I enjoy them, it sometimes keeps me from discovering new things.

I’m not sure if there was a point to all that, I just kind of thought it needed to be said.

This makes me facepalm. So hard.

http://live.psu.edu/story/51840

Cutting funding to universities, the institutions of higher education that train the next generation of our workforce, is reckless and short-sighted at best. Cutting funding by more than 50 percent is downright imbecilic!

How on earth do you justify this? Oh of course, its all in the name of balancing the budget and all that jazz. Certainly you can take the money from somewhere else other than the schools for gods sake! Republicans spout on and on about how they’re helping create jobs and restore economy, but at what cost? Making it more difficult for the students of today to get an education that will allow them to live decent lives in our society? How is it helping to create jobs when you cut off the institutions that train people to go into the workforce? How does that even begin to make one iota of sense?!

I really hate the political climate of modern America. I hate how we have to be divided by party lines, where Republicans and Democrats can’t be bothered to cooperate together because of rigid partisan loyalties. I want to try to see things from the opposite point of view and try to see where they’re coming from, but sometimes things like this just make it incredibly difficult.

I hope the voters of Pennsylvania enjoy the decision they’ve made, wallowing in their own ignorance because they can’t go to a decent school.

If you get the reference in the title, congratulations, you have earned your nerd certification for the coming year.

Yes, I know I haven’t been keeping up lately. A lot has been happening, and for some reason or another I just haven’t felt the need to write any of it down. There was Valentine’s day and the wonderful things that happened then, the continued shenanigans of the anime club as we plan for ACEN 2010, the long quest to the fabric store so that I can get all the stuff I need for my ACEN cosplay, my saga to finish Kamina’s sword so that I can focus on other things, the looming doom of finals week. All of these things and more have been going on in my life lately. I suppose I just didn’t feel the need to share them.

I started this blog so that I could put my thoughts down somewhere, so that I had somewhere I could write out my feelings if there was no one I could talk to. So that I always had an outlet for anything I was feeling at the time. Earlier on this year I felt like it was something I needed. Coming out of the emotional drama of last summer and a combination of other things I felt that my list of emotional confidants was quickly growing short.

Now things are much different. I feel like no matter what happens there is always someone I can talk to, no matter what time it is. I always have my mother, who I care about very much, and whose advice I treasure above anyone else. Now, I also have Phoebe, and we continue to stay in nothing but the best of spirits when it comes to our relationship together. I can’t put into words how wonderful it is to feel this close to someone again.

Quite simply, I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time. Perhaps this is the reason why I don’t write as often as I used to. It feels sort of redundant to write everything down somewhere else when I can talk to people I care deeply about.

I still want to keep this blog around should things take a turn for the worse, and to post interesting things I find over the course of my free time. I just wanted to provide a brief explanation for why I have been so absent from this part of cyberspace for so long.

Back in my hometown, the students of the PSU anime club put on a show every year known as Setsucon 2011. Since PSU is waaaaay bigger than Uchicago and they have access to larger facilities, Setsucon is a bit bigger than Uchicon was. My friend Mike got the opportunity to attend this year, and boy did it look wild! Here he is as Vash the Stampede from Trigun!

I cannot believe they got his hair to stand up like that…I wonder how much hair gel that took.

All he needs is the gun and he’s good to go!

This was his first time cosplaying at a convention, what a debut!