Delayed Embarassment

This is another page of stories culled from reddit.  Unfortunately, I didn't save the link to post... I'll add in commenters and stuff if someone can find it. I think the topic was "What did you do that you later realized was really embarrassing?"

Warning: Some of these are somewhat inappropriate

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Some ingenious bastard bought and installed a clapper (the thing where you clap and the lights turn on/off) and decided that it was too much of a hassle to clap...so he recorded himself clapping onto his computer so that he could just do it with a mouse click.

I was curious about man parts when I was young. My stepdad was in the shower, so I knocked on the door, said "It's mom" in my lowest voice, and walked in.

We've never had the same relationship.

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I was a little kid on a road trip with the family. My dad had done something to embarrass me in front of all, everyone was laughing at me. I was clearly very upset. He said he was sorry and asked what he could do to make it up to me.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain that I thought "family jewels" were actual jewels and treasure that every family was just given by the government when they became a family, or every family had a bunch of jewels passed on throughout their family line.

So, I told my father that to make it up to me, he had to give me his family jewels. I may have even just said "let me hold your family jewels" :(

There was a distinct pause for about 3 seconds, then everyone burst into laughing at me again, with my brother telling me "haha you just asked to hold dads balls!" I was mortified. My dad actually have to pull over because he was laughing too hard to drive.

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It's not my story but my old roomates, apparently as a kid he would shower with his dad. And his dad happened to be well hung. One shower, mid washing his hair, his dad looked down to see him drinking the shower water as it streamed off his penis.

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I did lots of weird shit. When I was like 9 my friend came over and I made him take a bubble bath with me. He looked uncomfortable. Even when I forgot the bubbles.

An imaginary scenario:
"Haha let's get in the bath!"
"Uh. I don't really think--"
"That wasn't a request, Billy..."

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When I was 6 my dad took me hiking in the woods. I had to piss, but there was no bathroom around. So I asked him where a bathroom was, to which he responded "Just pee on a tree. It's okay, you're a boy." so the next week in kindergarten I was at recess and needed to pee, but I didn't want to go all the way back to class. Besides, there was a tree right there on the playground! So I promptly whipped it out and started to piss in front of everyone. I little girl screamed and that got a teacher's attention. Straight to the principal's office. I was understandibly confused. "My dad said it was okay!" Luckily they called my dad and he took responsibility. Unfortunately he still loves to bring that story up whenever the family gets together.

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When I was six or so I grabbed my dad's penis and talked into it because I thought it looked like a microphone.

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My mom took me and my younger twin sisters to the beach when I was about four (they were two). She had just unpacked the stroller and set up camp when I announced that I had to pee. The bathroom itself was up about eighty concrete stairs, and my mother didn't want to pack everyone back up, so she said "Just pee in the water." I was understandably shocked by this, but she insisted that it was okay, and everyone does it. I was a pretty literal kid, so I walked out into the water (ankle deep) and dropped my shorts and started peeing for all the world to see. My mother was horrified when she realized what was happening but was powerless to stop me. She likes to tell people that had she yelled down to me, it would have just drawn more attention, and I would have just yelled back "YOU TOLD ME TO PEE IN THE WATER" thereby humiliating her further.

She still cringes about it, although I think it's mostly awesome.

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My third grade teacher used to say how fat she was at least once a day. She was actually in Decent shape. Eventually I became conditioned into believing it too.

I sent her a Christmas card that said "Sorry that you're fat."

She cried.

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Had that board game "Operation" where you take tweezers and gently lift out crap from this board game shaped like a human. If you contact the board and don't gently lift up stuff such as bones, an annoying buzzer would go of and the guy's nose would light bright red.

Well, when I was 5 I had enough shit from this annoying pansy ass who would buzz when you simply took out his femur with tweezers so I twisted the bulb on his nose and simply ate it. Well, after I shat blood a day later, my parents figured out why the light bulb on the nose was gone.

Oh, and the same day I threw sand in my own eyes since I wanted to know how it felt like. Yup, also learned the words "fucking" and "retarded" from my father shortly afterwards.

Reply:
You were like the new Dog that eats rocks

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I was taking a group picture of a bunch of people attending the product school we host at my company. At one point, I was trying to get everyone together and said "Uhh, bald guy, I need you to step to the left". I instantly realized what I said.. and he had a sort of defeated look on his face.

The international sales manager was right next to me as I said it.. and he leaned in and told me his name and that he was a higher up at a subsidiary..

ohgodwhy. I apologized to him later and he was really cool about it, but still..

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I masturbated infront of my entire family and several of their friends when I was about 10. I had just discovered that holding the back massager to my penis felt really good if you held it there for long enough, and not knowing that feeling good in that way was meant to be kept private, I decided to do it at a Christmas gathering. I brought the massager downstairs, plugged it into the living room wall, and went on to massage myself on the couch. The worst part was that nobody even cared or said anything; I finished right there in front of everyone and then brought it back upstairs. Later that night, my mom told me not to do it ever again, and I don't remember exactly when, but I remember looking back on that moment years later and cringing.

Short Stories

I made a list of (mostly free and online) short stories I enjoyed.  They're all in the science fiction/fantasy/speculative realm of fiction.  I'll try to keep it updated as I find new stuff.  The entries are listed by date added rather than title.  Since they're short stories (and all generally free), you can easily just step in and read without any synopsis.  Enjoy!

Pillowman - http://www.taghawaii.net/The_Pillowman_clean.pdf
Cambist and Lord Iron - http://www.freesfonline.de/content/Abraham1.pdf
Impossible Dreams - http://web.archive.org/web/20070422075939/http://www.asi...
Eight Episodes - http://web.archive.org/web/20080610031054/http://www.asi...
Magic For Beginners - http://smallbeerpress.com/wp-content/uploads/Kelly_Link_Magic_for.pdf
Magic For Beginners - http://web.archive.org/web/20060111060529/http://www.sfsite...
Faery Handbag - http://smallbeerpress.com/free-stuff-to-read/2005/07/01/the-faery-handbag-by-kelly-link/
The Ray Gun: A Love Story - http://www.thinkage.ca/~jim/raygun.htm
26 Monkeys - http://www.kijjohnson.com/26_monkeys.htm
Exhalation - http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.html
Lost Odyssey - http://lostodyssey.wikia.com/wiki/A_Thou...
Neal Stephenson - http://errantcluster.blogspot.com/2011/05/free-neal-stephenson-stuff.html
Great Simolean Caper - http://kuoi.com/~kamikaze/Text/simoleon.html
Occupation - http://www.abelard.org/asimov.php
Orson Scott Card Short Stories - http://errantcluster.blogspot.com/2008/09/orson-scott-card-reads.html
Maps In A Mirror - http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Mirror-O...
Sword of the Yue Maiden - http://errantcluster.blogspot.com/2011/05/sword-of-yue-maiden.html
What's Expected of Us - http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/whats_expected.html
Understand - http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm
The Last Question - http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate - http://www.amazon.com/The-Merchant-...
The Last Wish - http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Wish...
Nanny's Day - http://www.asimovs.com/pdfs/Stories/NannysDay.pdf

One Shot Manga: Hotel, Island, Koe no Katachi

Japanese Light Novels: Fate/Zero, 1/2 Prince, Tora Dora, Haruhi, Spice and Wolf

Manga In the US

So, I went on a myanimelist bender, obsessively creating manga/anime lists and eventually adding lots of titles to my plan-to-read lists.  So naturally that was followed by a manga reading bender.  It's been a long time since I'd looked for new series to read.  I normally read manga on my desktop computer using MangaMeeya, which nicely opens local archived files.  Nowadays, it's difficult to download manga, especially older chapter releases.  The easiest way to read manga is using an online reader, which I generally dislike because it slows my reading process down.  I use the "All Mangas Reader" plugin for Chrome, which keeps track of new releases and preloads pages.  Preloading lets you read a whole chapter vertically on one webpage instead of relying on paginating.  However, the plugin has recently slowed my browser down considerably, so I uninstalled it.  Even when it wasn't killing my browser, I didn't enjoy long reading sessions using the page down button.

I picked up an old iPad1 my friend wasn't using anymore and decided to try using it to read manga.  Using the safari browser was unpleasant.  So I tried two apps that provide a much nicer interface to online manga readers: Manga Storm and Manga Rock 2.  They were both awesome apps with very nice interfaces and both offered free versions with slightly limited features.  Using these apps really makes reading manga on the iPad easy and pleasant.  The size of an iPad suits manga much better than a smartphone.  I might even enjoy reading on a tablet more than reading an actual book.

The paid versions of those two apps allow you to pre-download chapters, which allows a smooth, internet-less free reading experience later.  Unfortunately, the downloads aren't perfect.  This was a critical problem for Manga Rock 2 because the downloads would often silently fail.  Manga Storm downloads were much more consistently successful and still let me read the successfully downloaded pages for chapters, even if some pages failed to download.  Maybe the problem was due to memory issues from using an iPad 1, but I was disappointed to have spent money on Manga Rock 2.  I recommend Manga Storm, even though its list of available titles is slightly smaller.

I fully expect these apps to be unusable some day.  Either Apple will take the apps down, the apps will cease to be maintained, or the websites these apps scrape will go away, by being shutdown or otherwise made inaccessible to the apps.  Note that neither app supports reading most licensed titles (which I 100% agree with.)  There's still plenty of unlicensed titles to read.

Anyways, this is all besides the point.  Manga is a huge hobby of mine and I prefer it to most other forms of solitary entertainment.  It was exciting to see its popularity surge 2000-2005, but a lot of that excitement seems gone now.  The manga sections in bookstores steadily dwindles and its not surprising to guess why.  Manga is a very niche market targeted largely to people without the money to buy it.  US versions are expensive and manga is easily pirated.  I've always believed in supporting the industries I love.  Manga is harder to support because books take up so much space and I feel really bad throwing a book away.  I've always been on the fence about purchasing manga that I'd never consider lending to someone or reading more than once, even moreso if I think the manga set looks ugly.  But nowadays, legal digital manga is an option and I loudly embrace it.  I think Viz is especially forward thinking.  The Digital Manga reader is nice, downloads are fast, and the prices are at least half of the printed versions.

I recently subscribed to Weekly Shonen Jump, mainly to read Rurouni Kenshin Restoration.  I think they're doing everything right with Jump.  The printed version always seemed wasteful, but the digital version is perfect.  New chapters come out at the same time as the legal release of the Japanese chapters.  There are lots of fun bonus one-shots, series that aren't being scanlated, and interesting interviews, so there's new content even if you prefer illegally obtaining manga.  Last of all, it's really cheap.  The only downside is that there's no way to get back issues. But that's a legal issue, not a technical one.  If you read Shonen comics, you should definitely subscribe.  If you have the money to spare and want to support the industry, you should consider it.

My main concern with Viz's digital manga isn't the quality of translations.  I'm not too anal about liberties taken in translations as long as I feel the spirit is preserved.  I'm concerned about what will happen when Viz either goes out of business or otherwise closes its digital manga division.  Will the things I've bought still be readable?  Or will it go the way of jmanga?  Secondly, I wonder about the fate of printed manga.  I love having hard copies of my favorite manga.  But if they end up being unprofitable, will will printed manga one day cease to exist?  There really aren't enough series I want to dedicate my space to.  Time will tell, but for now, I'm happy to be supporting an industry I love for a cost I find incredibly reasonable.

Lastly, I'd like to end today's meandering rant by providing a link to The History of Scanlation, which I found to be very interesting and personally nostalgic.

Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy is my favorite video game franchise for mindless gaming.  The concept is really simple: As the early games were quick to point out, it's the video game version of rolling around a snowball.  Instead of collecting snow, you collect whatever you roll over: dirt, rocks, toys, animals, children, houses, continents, planets... The bigger you are, the bigger the items you can roll up.  Although the objective of each stage can vary, you're usually simply given a time limit to reach a certain size.  Each stage's layout is fixed, so the challenge is finding the most efficient path to getting big.  It's not very difficult to reach the target size, so the player is given a lot of freedom in whether they want to relaxing roll or intensely try to reach a huge size.  Lots of collectables, gameplay options (untimed mode, speed up mode), and stage mixups (become as big as possible only collecting 50 items, avoid this item) add a lot of variety.

The second aspect to the series, which in this case is just as important as the gameplay, is the presentation.  The graphics are purposefully blocky, which is probably primarily a performance constraint, but ultimately creates a distinct style.  Katamari Damacy relies on being goofy and absurd.  The story is generally your tiny character's father, the King of All Cosmos, rudely ordering you to do this or that.  The music is relaxing, kind of folksy, video game tunes that are a crucial part of the Katamari Damacy experience to most people.  To quickly sum it up, this is a game that personifies the eccentric, weird side of Japanese pop culture.

For me, I love the feeling of getting big enough to swallow the galaxy while listening to relaxing music in a cartoonish world.  And while the series definitely peaked early on, I still play through each incarnation of the game.  This post is really about providing a quick review each game in the series.

My Projects

Well, I wanted an easy place to track all the random things I work on.  I was hoping to use about.me, but it doesn't let me use enough characters.  So I'm just going to plop a full list it all here.

I pronounce my username Relic Enn-Tee. Depending on the user requirements of the site, I usually use relic.nt, relic-nt, or relicnt.

Blogs

• Errant Cluster Blogspot
• Errant Cluster Tumblr (Image Blog)
• Adventure Time Tumblr
• Half Minute Hero Tumblr

Recommendations

• My Anime List
• My Manga List
• Youtube Videos
• Metacritic

Projects

• Gremlin World
• Shimeji-ee
• Dragon Half Scanlation
• Half Minute Hero 2 Translation
• Ukulele Adventure Time

Others

• About.me
• MyAnimeList
• Reddit
• Raptr
• DeviantArt
• Gamefaqs

Aivi Tran

I've been really enjoying listening to Aivi Tran (youtube channel waltzforluma) recently.  It's not a surprise, I'm a sucker for anyone who does Link's Awakening covers.





She recently released a new album with surasshu.  It's awesome and comes with a pretty comic.

Merry Christmas from One Piece