Zorua

So I'm at an outlet mall. One of the stores is a little snack shop that sells stuff like soda and giant pretzels. They sell pizza pretzels. As in, it's made of pizza crust and has pepperoni slices. Yum.

The DMV.

And just when you think things aren't urgent, waBam! Stiff sore lump on the right testic[wait, is that word on the censor list?]. I smell another medical bill in my near future.

So me and Mom finally got new box springs for our beds. Free under warranty. And mine breaks less than twelve hours later. All I did was sit down! This is standard use of beds! It should not break during standard use! Maybe Macy's should get their box springs somewhere else. Somewhere that actually uses quality materials and sturdy construction.

Is there any disease that causes red spots all over? No swelling, so it's not an allergy. No itching, so not chicken pox or similar. No nausea. Just spots. My youngest brother got it last week, and the lack of other symptoms had the doctor baffled. Now I got 'em too. Any ideas?

So the other day I did something incredible. I was using the N-Zap '89 in Turf Wars as usual. Between the decent coverage, the Sprinkler, and the Inkstrikes, usually I get something like 800 to 1100 points of turf with that weapon kit (not counting the victory bonus). ...1700. I don't know how, but somehow I got 1700 points. And I won, too, so with the victory bonus I came out of there with 2700 points. That's gotta be a record, or close to one. (I mean in ranked you get more points from victory bonuses alone, but for Turf Wars? Inconceivable!) In an unrelated match, I saw my first hacker. It was a minor thing--she got going before the match officially began and otherwise played fair--but still, that's a hack.

So my eyes kinda hurt to look around. Then there's a lump under my skin on the back of my neck at the hairline, and another one in that little divot behind my ear, both on the right side. I did have a headache yesterday. The lumps and eye soreness weren't there at three this morning, but they were when I woke up at about eleven. Anyone know if this combination is hospital-worthy? Should I get it looked at anyway, just in case?

"Diseased Man Snatches Madonna's Purse! More on page A5." I was on an episode of The Ramblin' Rod Show once...

So about a week ago, Nintendo released another Nintendo Direct, focusing on Splatoon 2. Changes to expect are: In character customization, there are a lot more options for eye color, four hairstyles per gender instead of one, and an option for legwear as well. Rollers have a vertical ink fling now, used when jumping. The vertical fling sends ink farther but not as wide spread. Before, if you had a charged Charger and turned into a squid to move or reload, you lost your charge. Now, you keep your charge for a few seconds; however this does leave a glowing indicator on your person, so swimming with a charge isn't very stealthy. The Goo Tuber is a new type of Charger that lets you hold your charge for what looks like three times as long as the Splat Charger. It doesn't look like it'll be in the initial release, but a new weapon class will be added soon, called the Brella. It's an umbrella with some kind of rifle or shotgun type weapon in the handle. Holding the fire button after shooting will open the umbrella, acting as a shield. Continuing to hold the fire button will launch the umbrella, leaving a trail of ink and letting you swim up close while behind cover; however you won't have that shield for a bit. Some returning weapons have new sub weapons. ALL of the special weapons are new. This is gonna change how many weapons are played, big time. It also means no more Inkstrikes for me, so there goes my favorite thirty weapons. The Rainmaker's shot is different. Instead of firing a tornado of ink, it fires what looks like a glorified grenade. Previously, your rank in Ranked Battles was graded for all rank battle types put together. Now, each rank battle type gets its own separate rank grade. There looks like a spot for a fourth rank battle type to be added later. No confirmation, though. The new Salmon Run mode (four-versus-horde) will only be available to play at set times. At least for playing with random people, that is; private battles let you host a Salmon Run game whenever, from what I can tell. New abilities, which give you buffs or nerfs depending on what gear you're wearing. When you Super Jump, there's an icon that indicates where you land. This icon is visible to all players, including the enemy team. Camping the landing icon is a very annoying tactic (unless you're the one using it, natch). Now, there's a new ability that lets you do a quick dodge roll when you land, letting you avoid getting killed by a respawn-camper. In both games, as you battle in multiplayer, your gear gains experience just as you do. Gear has one main ability and up to three sub abilities; three sub abilities is just slightly less potent as one main ability. When your gear levels up, it rolls an empty slot for a sub ability, picking at random. There's a rather literal street urchin character (Spyke in the first game, Murch in the second) that will give your gear more slots for sub abilities if there's room, and will re-roll them if they're all full. In Splatoon 2, however, Murch can also remove a sub ability, and can add one of your choosing if you can afford it. Sub abilities are no longer dependent on winning the Random Number God's favor! In Splatoon 1, by completing enough challenges with the Inkling Squid amiibo, you could play back any song in the game at the arcade, and even play a rhythm game to it. In Splatoon 2, this can be done at any time, without the amiibo. Since the game's in-game hosts, the Squid Sisters, aren't taking the role of stage announcers anymore, we have a new duo taking the stage. Pearl and Marina, the musical duo called Off The Hook, now announce the stages, perform musical numbers, and host Splatfests (glorified popularity contests). Initial reaction greatly prefers Marina over Pearl. Probably because Marina is the first ever Octarian that's not trying to kill you. Speaking of Splatfests, the theme for the first one has been announced. Do you prefer cake, or ice cream? Splatfests are popularity contests, where you pick a side and play Turf Wars to get your side points. The game comes out on the 21st, so when's the Splatfest? The 15th. BEFORE THE GAME COMES OUT! Download the demo on the Nintendo eShop and battle it out to see which is the more popular treat!

Aaaand that's pretty much everything Mr. Verres told Nanase not to tell Tedd under any circumstances ever.

From the commentary... "None of this recolor your outfit nonsense. Let's get forms totally changing to use abilities, darn it!" I swear I've seen that idea somewhere before, but I just can't put my finger on it.

So I decided to restart my Breath of the Wild save file, just for the heck of it. Prioritizing story (going around the map counterclockwise and hitting all the plot points) above exploration (zero Korok Seeds (and thus, default inventory space), for instance, until all the bosses were defeated, not to mention five sections of the map are still blank). Last week, my brother (the middle sibling) decided to play Splatoon with his friend online; you can play with anyone you have on your Friends List, and they'll be in the match with you. Now, as of this writing, our character in Splatoon is Level 45 (level is a product of turf covered in matches, with wins helping level rise faster but not being required), rank A (rank is increased by winning Ranked Battles, and is lowered by losing them; lowest rank is C-, highest is S+). You wanna know who's played enough to get our level and rank that high? Me. Also our younger brother, to a lesser extent. Mid-bro technically owns both the Wii U and Splatoon, but he barely plays it at all. Take a guess as to how well he did. ...he did somewhat decent, I'll admit. Not great, but he did okay. I attribute that to him playing other shooter games like Rainbow Six; he's not bad at shooter games, but he's sorely out of practice for Splatoon and any of its weapon sets. He didn't make use of the subs and specials as much as he could've, for one. His weapon of choice was the Jet Squelcher and the Dual Squelcher. The Jet Squelcher (sub: Splash Wall; special: Inkstrike) is the longest-range Shooter in the game, even outranging two Charger weapons. The drawbacks are a comparatively low firing rate and low turf coverage. The Dual Squelcher (sub: Splat Bomb; special: Echolocator1) isn't too much better. Shorter range yet faster firing rate, but the coverage isn't the best either. It's a big comparison between n00bs and veterans2, it is. It's also a lesson in frustration, what with him shooting the floor to cover turf instead of arcing the shot to get more range and coverage and me having to watch him do so. 1The Echolocator is a special that serves as support. Using it reveals the locations of every member of the enemy team that's alive when it's activated, to every member of your team, for about 9 seconds. Not only does it show their locations on the map, it also gives an icon on their characters that is visible through walls, and gives a visual indicator line between you and them so you can tell where they are even if they're behind you. This is great for long-ranged weapons, attacks that can go around corners / over walls, and offensive specials. Another benefit of the Echolocator is that upon using your special (ANY special), your ink tank is instantly refilled, so just throwing an Echolocator out there when you're low on ink won't hurt you. 2Veterans, not pros. I'm not even close to pro.

I would've thought the TF-Gun ones qualified as EGS emoticons. They certainly fit the "EGS" category better than the "Smileys" category.

Word of advice: If you need to buy a vacuum cleaner, don't buy the Dirt Devil Power Max Pet. The belt comes off alarmingly frequently.

In shooter games and real-life alike, there is no firearm that is more fearsome or annoying than the sniper rifle, and Splatoon is no different. This weapon class is called the "Charger" since you have to charge the shot. Hold the fire button to charge the shot, and release it to fire. The longer the charge, the more damage dealt on impact and the farther the shot travels. A full charge is an instant kill. However, your movement speed is reduced while charging or fully charged, and you lose the charge completely if you reload (though this is changed in Splatoon 2 to an extent). Two charger types have scoped variants that increase range (slightly) while reducing both visibility (to first-person mode, while fully charged) and mobility (slightly). Chargers also have a laser light that reveals where your shot is going to go to the enemy team, giving away your position. The average charger is the Splat Charger. It has three variants with different sub/special kits, and I tried out the Kelp Splat Charger. This one comes with a Sprinkler and a Killer Wail. I chose it over the other two and over the scoped variant because it has the sub/special combo that I'm most comfortable with, has good turf coverage, and doesn't trap me in first-person mode with zero mobility. Despite the fact that I'm fairly bad at snipers against any moving target whatsoever, I'd like to think I didn't do too bad. Turf coverage was decent at least (yay Sprinklers and good vantage points), comparable to my usual Shooter-class scores. My K-D ratio, however, leaves something to be desired; I've gotten more kills per match with the Sprinkler than the Charger, and Sprinklers do like 2 damage! I think the reason I'm not better at getting kills with Chargers is aiming. You can adjust the movement sensitivity in the game's options menu, and for Chargers, lower sensitivity is good for making the right tiny adjustments that could spell the difference between a kill and just grazing their hair. But even on the lowest sensitivity aiming that tiny amount is tricky. However, there's also an option to turn motion controls on, using the control stick for larger turns and the Wii U gamepad's internal gyro for more precise aiming. Trouble is I suck at using motion controls against stationary targets, let alone moving ones, to say nothing about human-controlled ones. And there's no way of practicing against second category (to train for the third, of course) without buying an amiibo.