I'm Back! And I'm Taking a Nude Erection!

Woah, that came out wrong ... I need to learn how to enunciate.  Lets try again.  Hi everyone, I'm back! And I'm taking a new direction!  That's better, and don't worry about it, its a common mistake.

Here's Wandai Wrection's new single "Stow Rhea Mile Hive"

So anyways, after approximately forever since my last post (which was admittedly pretty crappy, what a downer) I probably owe you some kind of recap before explaining my gnu direct shun. It turns out that last post, (again, despite being crappy) held true, I didn't ever like to write about happy things  and the last 2 and a half years have reflected that. I'm probably as happy and comfortable as I've ever been.  I finished getting my Masters (Woo!), I met a girl (Woo!), I taught college Calculus (Woo!), I moved to a new state (hint: its size reflects my new direction), I got a real grown-up job (I like money), I gained 15lbs (Boo!), and I still love abusing commas and parentheses.  Are we back up to speed? Yeah? Good.

Okay, so now lets discuss my knew deer ... ection ... 

Yes it was!

I am still going to post sparingly for my own purposes, but now they aren't going to be about my life anymore because I need to protect my identity, and those of everybody I love, from Dr. Octopus!  Instead Doc Oct will need to track down who I am through my random thoughts about baseball (one of those coming soon!), video games, and anything else that comes to mind. So if you like my writing and my value my opinions (don't worry, I don't really either) please continue to tune in and I'll try to do this semi-sporadically!  

The reason I've decided to resurface is due to an interesting series of thoughts I had the other day.  It is the beginning of a new year and there are all kinds of "best of" awards being announced.  Seeing these awards, particularly for video games, got me thinking "what is MY game of the year in 2015," and that doesn't just mean what game from 2015 I thought was best, I wanted to think about which game I played for the first time in 2015 that was best.  I just finished a 3+ day romp in Fallout 4, dug in the time to 100% Batman: Arkham Knight, and had to walk a tightrope for all of late September/October due to Super Mario Maker and the end of the MLB season and playoffs.  Despite all of those games being quality new entries into series that I love, none of them are my top game of the year.  We have to dig back even deeper to play a re-release of a remaster/retooling of a game that was released all the way back in 2002, (i.e. half as old as I was.)  That game was Metroid Prime!

You get to play as a ball that's occasionally a bounty

I've been a fan of the 2-D Metroid games for a little while now, but I was always a little uneasy about the Prime trilogy despite all the praise I had heard.  You see, I am not an FPS fan and I thought surely that seeing Prime take on the FPS genre, that it would lose it's focus on exploration and concentrate on combat.  A rerelease of the Wii's Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii U shop selling for $9.99 its first week was the push I needed to give it a chance.  What I found was exactly what everybody had been telling me that I would find, an extraordinary re-imagining of the Metroid gameplay in 3 dimensions while putting you in the Space Jump Boots of Samus Aran herself!  I don't want to run on too long about my thoughts on this game, I just wanted to officially give it my award for best game I played in 2015 and recommend all others who were wary of this change to give it a chance.

Though you should probably steer clear of the upcoming Federation Force spinoff...

So there you go. I am considering being back.  Stay tuned for a very obscure themed fictional baseball team I am trying to come up with!

That's how it's done!

Who Am I!?

Sorry to everybody who reads this title and thinks that I am going to write about the Jackie Chan classic by the same name.  To make it up to those people I will give you this video (Editor's note, the video is gone!)

Oh my that is quite the awesome fight scene!  Almost as good as the fight in They Live!  But I digress, the point of this post is not Jackie Chan or fight scenes, or anything even remotely close to that.  The point of this post stems from my curiosity the other day when I looked at the stat pages for this blog.  I saw that I have views from all over the world and a decent amount of views on the whole, which is cool even though I think a vast majority of the views are people looking at pictures then leaving the page.  I don't think that I have many readers outside of Toninho (link to his blog, Sycophantic Laughter, is always present on this page) and by that I mean I misplaced an m and meant I don't think I have any readers outside Toninho.  But that day I looked at the search results that have brought people to my blog, and I see this list.

It is more than obvious from the top 7 results of those 8 that those views are people searching unrelated things and stumbling upon pictures I have featured on my blog before.  But the last one gets me a little excited, if I can say myself.  To you, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Curiosity-Pants, if you are searching that on Google, you have read my blog enough to know that I try to hide who I really am to not have any personal backlash, although if you know me personally, it would be a little obvious.  So my question to you is, why did you think Google would give you this information?  I also want to know why you would think that knowing my real name would make any difference from knowing my pseudonym?  Lastly I just feel a little sad that you would ask Google who I am, when there is a comment box at the bottom of each of my posts  that I would love to see filled with your questions!  So if whoever you are that searched that, and you see this, make use of the comment box and I'll try to write about anything you want to know.  I do ask that you allow me to keep this curtain of anonymity, if it wouldn't be too much to ask.

Fill that thing up!

I'll try to give you some help by consolidating some of the information I have thrown about on this blog before.  I recently graduated college and am going to graduate school for an applied math masters.  My real name is not Chase Robertson, and people have been redirected here by searching "Chase Robertson Houston" and I would like to apologize to Chase Robertson from Houston if my blog using his name as my fake name is a problem, I would see what I could do to change the name of the blog and use a nickname instead.  I am mostly a kid at heart and still have a fondness for Spongebob Squarepants, Doug and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I enjoy cult movies, I like video games (that aren't online first person shooters) and apparently Jackie Chan.  I am a huge baseball fan (particularly the Red Sox and Braves, and since the middle of last year I've added the Nationals to that list.)  I guess that is a lot of the personal information I have given over the time, feel free to dig through the archives to find what I forgot I wrote.  Anybody who reads this, I urge you to make use of the comment box, especially since I haven't had a whole lot of ideas to write about lately, and I would love to have enough questions to do some sort of mailbag.  Since my reader(s) has (have) been so kind to me, I will grant you a single picture of myself.

Who doesn't want to know more about this guy!

Return of the Prodigal Son! (Again)

Hello all of my faithful readers (read: Toninho), I have taken a short hiatus from blogging for about a month, and there is so much I have learned!  Actually, not really, I have just stopped blogging because I had better things to be doing with my life than sitting in front of a computer discussing the better things I could be doing with my life instead.  So let us get busy describing and going into gruesome detail about the month that was.  This video will give you a good idea.


A few days after the last time I posted anything to this site I took the GRE (Graduate Record Exams), the test was more or less a repeat of the SAT and was just as easy.  After breezing through the entire test and likely doing just as good as I knew I should have, I was able to officially enter the life of a true adult.  And this new life as an adult meant beers, beers, beers, golf and beers.  It was a deliciously fun time for the next week or so, as I was not only trying as hard as I could to enjoy my life, but I was also preparing to move back in for my last year at college!  Instead of the packing that it is usually expected to be, my preparing was saying goodbye to all of my great friends back home and trying to follow through with as many fake plans as possible.  But time truly flies when you were having fun and the next thing I knew I was back in my parent's car getting a ride back to school (my car died so I couldn't drive it).

We there yet?  My Teddy has to pee!

This year is much more special than any other year of college though, because this year I am living off campus with some friends of mine and do not have a meal plan, so in short, I am responsible for not letting myself die.  To do this I have had to learn how to cook, and how to eat smaller portions because I don't have the money to feed my fat ass (I am actually quite thin).  This is going surprisingly well as I have yet to go hungry for a day since moving in!  But it also has the unintended consequence of limiting my blogging time (frowny face) because for some strange reason, survival takes precedence over sharing my life with millions of strangers via their computer screens.  Hopefully, I will become so adept at not dying that I will be able to return to form and put a few sets of ideas out, and I also have office hours for a Calculus on Tuesday's and since I don't expect many visitors I will try to get some writing done during that block.  Living on my own has been a blast, I have continued my trend of drinking a moderate amount every night that remains from the week after the GRE, which sucks because it is costing me a lot of money, and I am not exactly made out of 20 dollar bills.

Currently in my fridge.

I have also found myself becoming obsessed with video games that were made over a decade ago.  The recent three games I have been playing since moving back into school are Banjo-Tooie (remake on the Xbox 360), Jet Grind Radio (DREAMCAST!) and the original Metal Gear Solid.  I think video games are much like music and art, the new stuff is good, but there are many times when you need to look into the past and experience what came before to get a true appreciation for how things were meant to be (especially for video games since the technology of games directly influences what they are able to do.)  I am planning on following this paragraph with a few images you need to see, the first will probably be some picture from Jet Grind Radio, and the latter will be a video display of the psychic powers of Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid.

On the next episode of Gangland we look into the GGs of Tokyo-to 

So, I am sorry there really wasn't much of a logical train of thoughts going into this post, it was really me just typing random things as they came to my mind so I could get back into the habit of blogging again, and to say things.  There are more things that I need to say that I hopefully will be able to get off my chest within the next few weeks.  But until then, enjoy my ideas and thoughts and appreciate the fact that this post was just me trying to waste an hour.

I Got Some New Digs

Check out the revamped page for I Sometimes Call Myself Chase Robertson (or ISCMCR for all you cool kids out there), they always say you need to keep up with the Jones's but in this case I'm keeping up with the Tonino and I didn't want it to look like I put more effort into Retentive Gibberish (even though it is fantastic and you should bring yourself over to that link which is now conveniently on your left!)

Oh, I'm keeping up Fox!

The first change you should notice is the vomit-inducing pattern in the background, it is a series of bullseyes something, but I liked the way it looked and it sure beats the plain black.  I have also changed the fonts for a few things, both the font for the blog title, and for each of the post titles have been changed from generic-brand font, to looking like it was written by a 7 year-old.  I also set up a new right-side and left-side design so you don't have to strain yourself to scroll down a little further to see my massive set of labels on the right.  My last big change is adding a little excerpt about me in case if you are one of those people just discovering this awesome page now and don't want to read all the nice autobiographical posts leading up to this moment.  Well I just wanted to show and acquaint you with my new look, and don't be scared of change, most of the time its only superficial, just like every one of you out there!

I did this for you sir!

Things I Want (Because I'm Needy Like That)

I want to have more time and more ideas to write on this blog with.
I want to have more free time for myself as I have all of these hobbies and projects that are in progress and I never have time to get around to all of them.
I want to get a time machine that will send me back to the early to mid-90s at the age I'm at now, it sometimes feels like I'm an anachronism.

Oh Hell Yeah!!!

I want music to come back to the way it used to be where the artists put their heart into it and you could hear and feel it.
I want video game makers to stop taking the fun out of games, either that or just make Nintendo and Remedy make more games (Bethesda and Ubisoft can come too).
I want to like money as much as the other people that are out there, I just don't see the point in working so many hours when you have no leisure time to enjoy it, and I don't even have a girlfriend or anything better to do with my time.
I want to know what the appeal is to sexting, at no point in my life have I considered a picture of my penis to be either a fitting or appealing response to any text message.  Maybe it's a rich people thing.
I want to try doing stand-up comedy at least once in my life, Dave Chappelle just made it look like so much fun.

Man mastered his craft like nobody ever can or will.

I want to find a stroke of good luck, it seems like its been quite some time since Lady Luck has smiled at me.  To quote Max Payne (game, not movie),"Sooner or later it was going to catch up with you...You'd find that Lady Luck was really a hooker, and you were fresh out of cash."
I want to track down the person who first suggested that you don't write how you speak, it is just a plain stupid thing to say, let my writing be living proof of that.
I want to know why only writers, musicians and artists are allowed to have muses, a math muse would kick ass and probably help.
I want the rest of the world to enjoy weirdness as much as I do, there is plenty of it and you really need to enjoy it.
I want everyone to stop taking themselves so fucking seriously, the world is a scary place as it is, why do you have to keep making yourself miserable being so serious?
I want to point out that I enjoy peculiarities, I tend to like things that people don't expect me to like.
I want to hear some news on whether or not there actually are going to be sequels to Sin City, I loved that film.
I want to stay a child, my short time with being semi-grown up isn't what its cracked up to be.
I want to want more things but I suppose this is all I want.

What do YOU want for Christmas little boy?

Random Thoughts (I'm Not Tired Yet)

I should be asleep at this time, but I am not tired.  Working a full-time job on the summers is murder on your sleep schedule when you are in college, at least 75% of the year is spent in a situation where I would be able to consider midnight an early bedtime and 10am a typical waking time.  The last couple weeks since I've started working I have had to be in at work between 7am and 7:30am, this means waking up around 6:30ish and to get enough sleep to be functional on the next day I'll have to get to bed well before midnight and even 11pm seems like a late bedtime.  That brings us on back to our current time of 10:21pm, and my bedtime rapidly approaching.  The only problem is as you all can see is that it is Sunday night and I still live the college schedule on weekends.  This isn't a new problem as I have already stated it has been several weeks since I have been working this job, but the difference that makes me write about it tonight is the simple fact that Netflix is not working for me at this particular moment so I stumbled back upon this blog and realized it has been a really long time since I have contributed anything to it.

2894328423032

To continue the monologue until I get tired enough to attempt to sleep I figure it would be nice to think back on my previous job at the local grocery store and see what I was able to take out of that.  I was a bagger or a sacker depending on what you wanted to call me on any given day, and I worked there for a solid 4 years at least, so let us examine how much different every year was for me.  The first year was by far the worst of it, I was a newbie (no0b) and I also couldn't drive so not only did I not work a lot of hours because of that, but I also had to get a ride to and from the store every time I did have to work a menial 3 hour shift.  To make matters more interesting that year was the only one that I worked with my brother, who had already worked there about a year and a half and he basically set my intentions at work as keeping to myself and doing my time.  This was terrible advice as I didn't really make any friends in the store and time goes by a lot slower when you are just alone with your own thoughts.  That first year really was unnecessary and only helped to accentuate what was at that time an awkward stage of my life.

Paper or Plastic  Mother Trucker?

Six months in found me a Senior in high school, and I was able to drive and my brother was gone from the picture.  This is around the time that I met my first good friend from the store, but not through the store itself, but rather from a mix of mutual friends and a shared journalism class in which I feel we became really good friends and still are to this day.  At this point things started to change for the better in my world, as not only did I now have a good friend to kill time with in the store but also through him and my overall change of attitude I became more outgoing and made the right friends to help me get by at work.  I started to have friendships with most of the people I would have to deal with on a regular shift, but I also found myself befriending the Assistant Managers and from that I was given some of the easier jobs and overall just made my life easier (Note: I did not make friends with them to make my life easier, it was just a side effect from them being good people).  Towards the end of my high school career I was good friends with a good portion of the people I worked with and even had a girl really flirting hard with me but I was eventually repelled by a friend of mine telling the story of she and one of his friends having "relations" by simply asking me if I have ever seen The Descent, when I eventually realized what he was getting at things changed and mostly stayed similar for the rest of year 2.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Break to a full year of college under my belt (nothing notable happened in that month I came back during the winter) and I returned as an elder in the store.  As an elder I pretty much had the right to abuse my friendships with the Assistants and I have always thought, girls are attracted to older men, so I felt I was a little bit of a novelty as the college student to the high school juniors and seniors (more on this later?).  So things became slightly different not only because of this but also because things always change over the course of a year, I was broke and needed money so I worked a considerable amount of hours more than I did when I was in high school, and I had friends who I hadn't seen in months so there was a lot of catching up and storytelling to do, and there were also a whole new wave of new employees I had yet to meet.  One of which was more or less my replacement as far as my in-store clique went, and I don't disagree at all, when I finally met him it turned out that we were very much alike, mostly that he was who I wanted to be when I was his age.  We went on to become friends and he was the man I had previously mentioned in a Project Yancey story (for the record I have more or less scrapped the idea of finishing Project Yancey :( ).  It was also a shame that my great friend who helped me open up in the store had since moved into the deli so I rarely saw him while working, but we would have times when we would have our breaks together, most notably the one where we ate an entire package of Hoodsie Ice Creams in 15 minutes.  This summer followed along in a similar vein as what I have already said, and included a night where I couldn't sleep and wrote about the summer in a J.D. Salinger-esque form, but I don't think that will be posted any time soon.  Since I figured I was going to be halfway through college by the time the next summer came along I wished all my friends the best wishes going forward as I would likely not see them much in the future.

I just learned Hoodsies are a regional thing

Fast-forward to the next summer and I was wrong.  After a little original ribbing from a few friends about how I wasn't supposed to be there anymore things went mostly back to normal.  This summer was once again quite different from my other spells at the store, and I worked a lot more morning shifts which is a completely different crowd as it is the adult workers rather than the teenage wasteland the store usually is at nights.  It was also different when I would work the nights because instead of going out of my way to become friendly with almost everyone in the store I tried to ignore the younger kids, although I would still take my time to make friends with all the attractive ladies in the store.  I was coming off a situation with my personal life which didn't pan out for one reason or another, so I was actually quite eager to throw myself back into the mix and that became the most of my interest.  As the older kids ended up banding together into a posse, we had our fun when we could even though I don't believe that I hung out with anybody outside the store save for a "retirement party" at a local Chinese restaurant/bar, when I noticed something that I still need to follow up on (and should soon).  I went all out to make sure that this time it would be my last hurrah, and even went as far as asking if I could get pictures from the security cameras as I walked out on my last day doing my traditional punch-out derobing (unbutton that shirt and put the tie hanging halfway out of your pocket).

Sorry, not clever enough

The next winter I had enough money to take an entire month off and manage to get through my spring semester, and I also grew a beard as another excuse to stay away (rules say no facial hair).  Even though it was not easy and I thought I would have to go back I ended up having my current job fall on me and I am very happy about it.  In retrospect, as much as the work was monotonous and I disliked it, I liked the people I met and I still make appearances to go in and catch up with those who remain at the store (there aren't many).  I also realized one other thing, I spent those last two summers almost exclusively flirting with girls, and unfortunately due to the fact I am in my own way a very shy guy, I didn't jump on opportunities that I am very sure were there and maybe this should be a lesson to me.  I have now killed over 40 minutes reminiscing over 4 years at a grocery store, and I am beginning to get tired enough to try to sleep.  I hope someone learned something of benefits in some way from my stories (maybe one day I will get more in depth with specific stories and moments and make a comedic screenplay or something... Not likely).  Goodnight folks.  

Sums it up!

Project Yancey: Episode 21: Doud's Runaway Journal

This episode starts off rather strangely, it doesn't apply the typical Doug formula of Doug's voice narrating his journal passage as he writes it, why is this?  Because he cannot find his journal, and the beginning scene features him searching every nook and cranny of his room trying to find it but no cigar.  As he begins searching the house beyond his room, Judy hears him and peeks out of her room to see what is going on, and sees a crazed Doug searching around.  He notices her and asks if she's seen it but she hasn't seen his diary (JOURNAL!), and proceeds to watch Doug go completely berserk, even checking for it in the toilet.  She advises Doug to sleep on it, but we find this advice wasn't very helpful as Doug has nightmares about his journal getting destroyed and wakes up in a cold sweat.  His next idea is to retrace his steps, a phrase in which he takes too literally as he walks the same path he walked yesterday, except walking backwards and inspecting the ground under every step he took.  This first takes him to the Honker Burger drive-thru, who he asks but they haven't seen the diary either (IT'S A JOURNAL!), so he proceeds to walk backwards to his previous(?) location.  Next he finds himself in the library talking to the librarian, after making a poor choice of words and asking if anybody found a book the day before, he refines his question and asks if anybody found his journal, and no diary (JOURNALLLLLL!!!) was found.  Finally he ends up at school, and realizes the possibility that somebody found and read his journal.  Knowing Doug's nature, he hears people laughing and assumes they are discussing his personal matters from his journal, which he assumes everyone had read.  These matters include (but are not limited to): Doug thinking he got a pimple only for it to actually be a mosquito bite, Doug being afraid of taking the trash out at night, and his thinking that Mr. Bone's ears wiggle when he gets angry.  Mrs. Wingo asks Doug what is wrong and shortly puts his mind at ease by pointing out that many famous authors journals have been published and successful.  After fantasizing about being a smug writer, Doug realizes the dangers of somebody finding out he loves Patti.  And right on cue, Patti comes over and asks Doug whats wrong, he tells her his journal is missing, and she makes the worst reaction ever, "Aren't you afraid someone will read it and find out all your personal stuff?"  He finally takes initiative to post fliers around town.  After this is over, Doug returns to his room and feels the need to try to write about the day somewhere else, attempts on writing on "Multicolored Loose-leaf Paper" and toilet paper fail.  As things always happen at perfect times for Doug, Judy informs Doug someone called about finding his journal, but unfortunately the caller is none other than Roger Klotz.  Doug imagines Roger would use the journal to make a joke out of Doug and even daydreams about Roger with his journal on stage at a comedy club.  Roger tells stories such as, Doug thinking he grew hair under his arms but it was just grass from mowing the lawn, how Doug ripped the seat of his pants and had to staple them together, and finally telling everyone about his love for Patti, (this scene is absolutely perfect, because not only are these funny stories, but they made Roger deliver them perfectly, even giving him the same comedy stylings as Andrew Dice Clay.  I was gonna link to something actually by Dice Clay, but this is much funnier and gets the point across.)  Doug finds Roger at the Honker Burger, and finds out that he didn't read any of the journal, not because hes a good person, but because Doug's handwriting sucks (comes in handy), so Doug was reunited with his journal and life is back to normal.

That's what I call front page news!

This is a really ironic (is it ironic, the definition for irony sucks because apparently nothing in Alanis Morisette's song is ironic at all, just unforunate) because I am writing about what it would be like if somebody found my journal and read it, on my blog, which is basically a journal open to all the public should they be able to stumble upon it.  So obviously you should be able to figure out that I don't mind people reading what I think about myself, my experiences, and various other topics, but there are a few other things to discuss.  First is anonymity, a certain amount of people do know that it is indeed myself who writes this, but other than those who know already my name may or may not actually be Chase Robertson, and I could be from anywhere and know anyone, I've tried quite hard to be ambiguous enough that nobody would be able to ascertain who I am without already knowing, but at least have their ideas.  This aspect will probably become much more necessary in the cases where I am talking about my personal life and the various conquests I have partaken in, because those include more than just myself and I don't think the parties involved would appreciate being mentioned by name.  Another thing is when or not to conceal information, there have already been a few instances in which I have left out details that would not sabotage the story, but would rather skew the story slightly to make myself look like less of a freak/jerk/mess/weirdo, take your pick at which one(s).  So keep this stuff in mind if you continue reading my mindless ramblings, maybe you will be able to pick out the minute details that give me away, hide me, or be able to make the inferences about what I decide not to say.  Best of luck with that, cause now I'm gonna make sure not to give anything out

Self-portait (as far as you know)