AA's LJ

Birthday/Thanksgiving

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:18:16 GMT

My birthday was just yesterday. I've turned 26. I got the original Star-Wars Trilogy on DVD, an X-Men Origins: Wolverine game for the PS2, and Transformers 2 on DVD. Nana and Aunt Lanette both came down for Thanksgiving, so it was nice having them around for my birthday. They were going to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra Live tonight, though I wasn't included. Mom says that she thought I was going to be working when she bought the tickets, though frankly I'm kind of miffed that she just assumed that I wouldn't have been able to go. I'm also jealous since learning that Jeff Scott-Soto is touring with the Orchestra this year. He's apparently lent his vocals to some tracks on their new album "Night Castle". Grandma and Aunt Lanette got me a copy of the album for my birthday though, so that's cool.

Today I did a ton of Black Friday Shopping. My initial plan for a computer upgrade ballooned out of control, much like I was fearing it would. I settled on getting an NVIDIA GeForce 9xxx video card, which required a power supply of at least 350 watts, when my current supply is only 300. So then I purchased a 400 watt supply, and an anti-static wrist strap so that I can install the components without worry. After that, I went out and bought Fallout 3 for the PC in anticipation of my pending upgrades, and I also ordered "Crystal Empires" by Freedom Call and an 80's Metal Tribute to Journey. When I got back home, I found out that my DVD drive won't read Fallout 3 at all. If you will remember, I had been having problems with it reading video DVD's for a while now. RW DVD's and most games I usually don't have a problem with, though Fallout 3 clocks in at a whopping 5 GB, so the DVD is probably in a non-standard format. I ended up going back to Newegg and purchasing an uber cheap basic DVD optical drive, choosing the cheapest one that had the best user reviews. I'm hoping that it will fit in my HP Pavilion. If not, it's likely I might have to send it back in exchange for an external drive.

Things are quiet now with the folks gone to the concert. I had a nice Thanksgiving and Birthday holiday, and now that the Christmas season is here, my spending is essentially done with (except when it comes to gifts for others!). I already know what I'm going to get the family for Christmas this year. I'm just going to wait until December before I start making those orders though.

----------------
Now playing: Foreigner - Waiting for a Girl like You
via FoxyTunes

Five sets of Star-Wars Facebook status updates. Hilarious!

According to the British diplomat to America, the United States was "hell bent" on starting a war in Iraq. Seems the rumors that even before 2003, the administration was steering in that direction might be true.

Four states have adopted a "no smiles" policy when it comes to making driver's licenses. They say that it helps deter fraud, but I think it is an example of frivolous policy.

Halloween

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:09:51 GMT

Well this year's halloween was a little bit different, but I've gotten good at learning how to celebrate the holiday by myself. I went out on the town and had an impromptu lunch at this Mexican joint called the "El Patron", purchased the extended-cut boxed set of Hellboy and exchanged my "normal" double dvd edition of Hellboy for a Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th Part 2 double feature. Then I had pizza and beer while experiencing Halloween festivities in Second Life and later on I went to a local tour through the woods. In the past, you might recall that our college group used to visit Wompus Woods, which is supposedly one of the largest haunted tours in the state come Halloween time. Well, out here in the boondocks of Anderson, we have something called "Butcher Holler", and their woods are a lot more claustrophobic. They also aren't so heavily dependent on movie themes, so It is quite a bit more...invigorating. I jumped a few times. The atmosphere was perfect, with a light, sprinkling rain. Even better, the place is within walking distance from my house, so I should have no problem coming back another year. Got a handfull of candy...we never have trick-or-treaters out here, but the parents always get some, just in case. Too many years spent in suburbia, I guess, although I wouldn't have had it any other way.

I also splurged a bit and got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on discount over Steam. It's a game about mutants coming out of Chernobyl in the year 2012. A first-person shooter with Oblivion style graphics. What I find most shocking is that my computer runs it perfectly. Even Oblivion is prone to slowdown sometimes, and this game seems more demanding. My computer can hardly run Half-Life: Episode 2 at all, and that came out before this game.

So, yeah. I had a good Halloween weekend, and it is now my birth month; November. Not used to it getting dark so early but I'm oh so grateful for the extra hour today. Looking forward to Rob Zombie's new album due out this month, other than that, it should be a relatively quiet month I think. At least, I hope. In a week or two, I should find out whether or not I make the grade at Walgreens.

My second review is for the movie Max Payne. Based off of the noir shooter video game of the same name, it's a gritty drama that is both predictable and confusing. It doesn't seem to want to know what to do with itself.

----------------
Now playing: Men at Work - Blue for You
via FoxyTunes

Which electronics make the grade when it comes to saving energy?

Some careers are still strong, in spite of the economic downturn. Here's 6 of them.

Some money experts share the mistakes they've made in their careers. Don't fall for these!

Been Busy

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:55:18 GMT

Yeah, it's been about a week now since I started working cleaning up transmission fluid at this warehouse. It's not a bad job at all, though maybe I am just more tolerant of it than some people; I got a lot of sympathy comments from the coworkers my mom introduced me to. Speaking of which, working at the same place as one's parents is...interesting. I wouldn't recommend it, but it is nice sometimes to have an "insider hand" when you are new. Already had some interesting events happen. Like today, when I saved one of the company machines. There was a guy working on one and he was testing the hydraulic systems that lift the wheels up off the floor. One side of the system wasn't working so instead of lifting straight up, the machine started to topple over. I was mopping in the next lane and saw it, so I came over to hold the machine up so that the guy could stop the hydraulics. That thing was much heavier than a vending machine...It's a good thing I got to it before the machine's weight lifted it's legs off the floor. One of the senior cleaning guys tells me that they haven't been doing as much maintenance as they used to because the machines have all been running non-stop. I suppose they'll probably have to lose some equipment or have someone get injured before they'll fall back into their old routines again. The recession has had a lot of far-reaching effects like that.

It's nice to have money though. While most of it will be going into my student loans and toward a car, I do spend some occasionally on myself when I find a good deal. The Blockbuster at the old Wal-Mart plaza was going out of business, so I took advantage of some of their super last-minute specials to score three DVD's for the price of a single new one. None of the films are ones that I have seen before, so hopefully they will pan out ok. I got The Rocker, The Spirit, and the Max Paine film. They didn't have very many others that interested me; maybe only two or three more. They were about out of stuff by the time they put up these deals...I had checked on them one week earlier and even their markdowns were too expensive. What a difference a week makes, huh? I haven't seen any of them yet, and it will probably be a while before I do; I'm still writing reviews and I don't want to have a glut of nothing but reviews for movies over the rest of the month. Got to change things up every now and then. Speaking of which, my latest review for the computer game Half-Life is up.

I also got Journey's new Manila DVD, and let me tell you, it is freakin' awesome. They used a new technology to film it, so that it has the best resolution out of any film on the market right now. The audio is good too, although my hearing aids have been behaving strangely lately, so I can't really speak much on the quality of the sound. Lately it sounds like everything is being relayed to me through a CB Radio. They didn't start acting like this until I started going to work, but I don't think the environment is that hazardous. There isn't an excessive amount of moisture in the air, I'm careful not to touch them when my hands are greasy with transmission fluid, and there aren't any other ways they can be damaged. Noises in the factory are loud though, and frequently overload the sound dampeners so I am thinking that maybe the hearing aids are having a difficult time readjusting after coming out of all that noise. I've never been a fan of sound dampeners, but it seems like all the good hearing aids come with them automatically; ever since the late 90's. Yes, they protect you from getting smacked upside the head by loud noises, but they tend to mess up music, garble everything when there are too many sounds at once, and make inorganic speech like from the television ineligible.

----------------
Now playing: Sonic Team - Sonic The Hedgehog: Green Hill Zone
via FoxyTunes

So apparently that Prince Of Persia film they had in the works will be out before too long. I wonder how that will go?

And you remember back when I said that I occasionally made predictions that came true? Well, do you also remember that dream I had for Pirates of the Caribbean 4? I was recently shown an announcement that the film is being made, and that it will involve elements of steampunk.

Oops! I know Texas is a pretty backwards place, but they haven't quite seceded yet. However, that didn't stop a flag manufacturer from sending a flag with only 43 stars to a location in San Antonio.

Celebrating what's left of America

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:46:14 GMT

I hope you all had a happy and safe 4th of July holiday, for those of you who were able to celebrate it. I read in the news that many places in the states had to cancel their fireworks shows because of the depression. We were planning to go to one here in Anderson, but the parents got into another one of their moods in which they'll make plans for something and then not do it. Instead, we went down to Iva to buy fireworks of our own to shoot off, and got probably more than we ever have because they were so cheap. I was startled by how wildly the prices of fireworks varied this year. Earlier in the week, I was able to pick up a bargain bag at the fireworks stand in the Wal-Mart parking lot for $20. That same $20 got me a whole shrink wrapped set of various fireworks, and then some in Iva. We had a lot of fun, and even the parents got involved in actually shooting off the fireworks, something they've been doing rather infrequently since my brother and I have gotten older. To help celebrate, we also saw the new Transformers movie, Revenge Of The Fallen.

Now, Revenge got lambasted by reviewers, globally. I do not think I can remember a film that was so universally hated by critics (I'm pretty sure that the Star-Wars prequels had some decent reviews, though it probably depended on where you looked). Honestly, I can see why the critics hated this film...but I still found the movie to be rather enjoyable. Micheal Bay makes some really odd, questionable directing decisions in this film, and they will be immediately obvious to anyone who takes their movies seriously. But if you can look past the editing decisions and other mistakes of filmmaking, it's still a pretty awesome sequel to a movie that blew all the expectations right out of the water. Transformers fans will probably love it, and casual viewers will most likely enjoy it too. Serious movie watchers, on the other hand, are probably better off seeing something else.

Oh, and by the way...Linkin Park? They're definitely going alternative.

Not sure if I mentioned it in a recent post, but I've been told that I can work at the Vocational Rehab indefinitely. This is good in the way that I'll be earning money until X time in the future. It's bad in the way that it isn't an actual job; no benefits, no vacation, not enough pay to really live on...Just enough to get me by. I really need to try and do better than this, but I don't have much of a choice right now.

And the depression just keeps getting worse. I'm hearing now that the US Postal Service will be the next business that we'll lose. They're closing thousands of post offices, and if Federal Express and other mail transport services can't shoulder the load, in the coming months we'll probably be looking at a shipping crisis. That'll be fun to live through. :/ You know, when I was a little kid, I once predicted that we'd have another Great Depression, although I never dreamed that it'd ever actually happen. Come to think of it, I did make other predictions too, which also came true, but none of those were of any great significance. In any case, I know that the one we're going through now is not on the same level as the first one was, if only because for having lived through the first one, we made legislation to prevent such a thing from happening at the same extent. The system may be horribly broken, but we've still got those safety nets.

Anyhow, I'm doing ok, and actually having some fun out here. The situation isn't progressing so much as it is changing. Things are changing. Hopefully for the eventual better.

----------------
Now playing: Air Supply - The Vanishing Race
via FoxyTunes

Rhode Island is getting ready to change its name because of slavery.

It's the bullet Americans never knew they dodged: How the transition to digital television nearly cost Americans their technological freedom. Big producers and studios were going to use it as an excuse to put DRM in everything...at least, until the government intervened.

Arizona lawmakers recently made an ammendment to existing law so that for the first time since the days of the old west, firearms will now be allowed inside of bars.

The End of FurNation

Tue, 12 May 2009 00:45:31 GMT

One of the oldest and largest furry sites on the web, FurNation, has ended today. I was never a part of it, but I used to always remember hearing something about it back when I was first looking into the fandom. I was given the impression that it was good at organizing events, always had a presence at most cons, acted as a publisher for comics or magazines at one point, and simply became one of the points around which the furry fandom gathered around. The website logo became distinctive and familiar. They had a presence in Second Life too, and were responsible for helping to create what has pretty much become the largest group of sims owned by furries.

Today I hung out in Second Life, on what would be FurNation Prime's final day. At around noon, a tour group went through the sim, going over all the establishments on the land. Then Nexxus Ambassador appeared along with the site owners, who stood at all of the places they owned. I stood with one of them and watched as Nexxus flew around the sim along with a small entourage of followers, returning everything on the land until there was nothing left. It was surreal. First the went the freaking Luxor Pyramid at the heart of FurNation worlds, and then the other establishments where pulled up in order from largest to smallest. Trees and paving where taken away too. It all took around a minute and then there was simply a wasteland, and nothing more. Then Nexxus Ambassador himself left for good; one of his friends told me he was going to stop using the account because of all the debt attached to it. FurNation Prime would be returned to the Lindens, and the server sold.

Fortunately Prime is the only sim that is closing down for now, otherwise it'd be the Second Life equivalent of having the furry home planet destroyed. There are other furry sims that are not attatched to FurNation, but FN is the largest furry owned landmass on the grid. Nexxuss himself only owned Prime, so that is the only one that is going. Heroes, Hell, Fusion, Gryphon, ect. will all remain. And the website itself, which has been running since around 1996, will also be taken down. Beyond Second Life, I never really took part in it. In the early days, the few times I'd go to look at it, the interface would be confusing or the site map wouldn't work or perhaps it just wasn't compatible with my browser at all. I eventually gave up on it, but FurNation Prime was one of the first places that I visited when I signed onto Second Life, and I'm a little sad to see it go.

So the recession claims two more losses. Chrysler and FurNation. Is the end in sight?

On Mother's day I saw Star Trek. You can read what I think of it here.

Still don't believe in Global Warming? The World's Highest Ski Run has completely melted away.

Also, a discussion with a friend of mine recently turned up with this. Doesn't it bring back the memories? The Nineties really was the decade of awesome. Someone aught to petition Pepsi to bring this stuff back. I miss it as much as I miss Ghostbusters cereal-terribly. ;_;

Despite the fact that no one can deny that Global Warming is happening, there are still many debates as to the hows and whys. In fact, there is so much conflicting information that no one knows anything about what we can possibly do about it. One of the theories is that the Earth warms and cools over natural, million-year cycles, and that we are experiencing the first one in human history. However, even this is complicated by the fact that such cycles are usually triggered by changes in the Earth's tilt, which isn't happening now.

"Wolverine! Pull back!"

Mon, 04 May 2009 21:31:09 GMT

Not much to write about today, other than the fact that I saw the movie this weekend. It was good. And more surprisingly, it was accurate (to a degree). Hugh Jackman has never looked better as Wolverine, and with this film, he puts himself up there with Christopher Reeve as "most appearances in film as a single character". I think they're both tied. Anyhow, early reports that the film sucked where largely overrated; I don't know about the unfinished bootleg, but the theatrical release was very entertaining. Also, I just got finished watching X2, and I was surprised to discover that there weren't any continuity conflicts! Yeah, that must be a first, especially for 20th Century Fox. Although I hear that this movie was put together by people who where fans of the comic, as opposed to people who where beholden to hollywood, so it didn't turn out nearly as bad as X-3 did. Anyhow, I wrote a full review of it here, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

I called into work this morning and was told that they didn't have any work in yet. He told me to call back tomorrow; apparently they need to go over the schedule and see when they are getting new shipments in. I'm hoping Walgreens is going to call this month; I'm not terribly concerned about there not being work at the Vocational Rehab...

It's just a blah day.

----------------
Now playing: CasteVania: Symphony Of The Night OST - The Tragic Prince
via FoxyTunes

Apparently, there is another Spawn movie in the works.

During the Bush administration, most people where worried about government wiretapping. But the truth is, anyone can do it. This investigative report shows just how easy it is to wiretap any kind of cell phone, and what exactly can be done with them once they are bugged.

Oh yeah, and here's a 12 year old kid who can approach Steve Perry in his singing voice. Listen to him do "Don't Stop Believing".

graveyardgreg cameod in my dreams last night

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:38:22 GMT

I had a weird dream last night.

In it, I was in school again, and it was "Wear A Crazy Hat Day"...you know, one of those things they do for spirit week? I was wearing a sailor hat, but there where all kinds of students, some of which where even in full costume with chef hats, pirate hats, ect. After one of my classes, some students where handing out foam and plastic pirate hats, and I picked up a foam bandanna.

Now here's where it gets weird. In my class immediately after that, we had a special guest, who was showing us slides on a projector. One of the slides came across the screen and I recognized it immediately. It was an Ah-ha style sketch drawing of Brahma grappling with Radu-Radu, with the heads of Graveyard Greg, Radical, Lugzan, Tizak, and some others in the background. I said. "Hey, go back...isn't that graveyardgreg ?" and the mystery guest says "Why yes, it is!" And then the lights come on and the special guest was actually Brahma the minotaur.

I woke up just in time to see my alarm clock unplug itself from the wall. Was nearly 30 minutes behind because of that. I think I am going to be getting a new one soon; even when properly plugged in it does not work half the time. Fortunately, I have a really spastic internal clock, that wakes me up several times with full lucidity starting at least an hour before I actually need to be awake. :/

Also...you gotta check this out. (especially you, scltspider )

----------------
Now playing: "Weird Al" Yankovic - The White Stuff
via FoxyTunes

Check out this list of the 13 most iconic horror villains in film history.

After September 11th, there was much spectulation and rhetoric regarding when and where the terrorists would strike next. Another terrorist attack on the United States was not seen as a possibility, but an eventuality. But nothing happened, at least not on the scale promised by Osama Bin Laden. How come? Slate goes over the possibilities.

There is much debate regarding whether or not our country is in the grips of another depression. The problem is that there is no true definition for a depression as one is occuring now. There are no firm rules that state where a recession ends and when a depression begins.

The Worst Film Ever Made: Turkish Star Wars

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:44:39 GMT

So a friend of mine mentioned to me the other day that they where coming out with a new Street Fighter film. When I went to tell my other friends about it in Gaming Guardians chat to troll for opinions, I mentioned that I thought Street Fighter held a high rank on the list of candidates for "Worst Film Ever".

tahngarth was to give me a quick rebuke.

<Tellana> "Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World) is a Turkish-made cult film commonly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious use of stolen Star Wars footage worked into the film."
<Jennifer[Sith]> omg XD
<Tellana> "Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam was released in 1982 in the midst of massive political upheaval. As a result, American-made films weren't easily acquired and were often remade with a Turkish cast and setting. The four most notable films to be so bootlegged are Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, The Exorcist and E.T., all of which have Turkish variations"

"The musical soundtrack is entirely lifted from Western film hits of the time, primarily using Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are also scenes incorporating the music of Moonraker, Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes and Disney's The Black Hole. "

Ladies and gentlemen, this film has to be seen to be believed, so I have provided it below. Do not eat or drink and watch this film at the same time. Film best viewed drunk. If you have any problems with laughing too hard, please consult your doctor before you watch this film.
Also, be warned that at 1:30:41, the film is feature-length, so time will be needed to watch this. Film is probably PG-13; there's lots of violence, but it's so corny, you can't help but to laugh at it.

So there you have it. In case you don't have time for the video at the moment, allow me to give you my review...

To give you an idea of how bad the film is, I was laughing at the opening credits, which you can tell are simply manipulated pieces of paper. This, combined with the absolutely uncharacteristic music was just too much for me, and the film hadn't even begun yet. Once you survive the credits, the film throws you into a looooong introductory diologue. In fact, there is so much narrative dialog smattered throughout this film, that it gives you the impression that you are watching a movie based on fan fiction. And the writing isn't much better either. A turkish man drones on and on while pirated clips from Star Wars play, and the writer goes out of his way to describe how the Death Star is actually Earth. In my mind's eye, I picture a sweaty Turkish screenwriter, hunched over his desk, with his apprentice film jockeys standing sheepishly aside. "You put in too much from the American films! How am I going to write around this?!" The result is an opium fueled mash-up in which sorcerers, zombies, starfighters, monsters, martial arts, mummies and other undead, and robots all exist in the same world. There will be times when you will have no idea what is going on, as one plot point jumps to another in true fan-fiction fashion.

The Galactic Empire are manipulated into being the good guys in this film. After atomic war caused the Earth to split up into chunks, human beings took their brainpower and made a psychic shield around the largest part of the planet (The Death Star). The bad guy in this is a billions year old sorcerer. Since none of them have any brains (this is a major plot point; I'm serious!), they are unable to figure out how to get through the human's sheild, which can only be breached by willpower. Two tie fighter pilots are shot down while repelling the sorcerer's latest attack, and apparently land on one of the old free floating chunks of Earth. The sorcerer decides to follow them, realizing that this could be his best chance yet to collect some human brains so he can figure out how to breach the sheild. That's the opening plot, in a nutshell. What's weird is how the film devolves into a martial-arts fragfest, as if the Turkish filmmakers didn't think Luke kicked enough ass in the original.

At all times, it feels like you're watching a LARP. The fight scenes are desperately trying to be badass, but look fake every time. The costumes look like Power Rangers ripoffs, and you will laugh when the hero finds the OMG Fake! looking Master Sword. Toward the end of the movie, the hero is ripping heads off the bad guys; but this ultraviolence is so poorly done, it might as well be Scooby Doo unmaskings. With the exception of the explosions ripped from Star Wars, most of the film's special effects are amateur at best. We're talking simple fireworks, simple superimposed animations, colored smoke screens that you can buy from any fireworks place...The film editer's favorite trick is cutting. This is poorly done too. On top of recycling stolen Star Wars (and scenes from other films) cuts, they recycle their own, original footage at points throughout the film. Bad! The only thing that impressed me in this film was the characterization of one of the heroes, who was written very similarly to Han Solo. That was the only thing they got right.

So...This film is by far the worst film I have ever seen. It's more like a LARP of a fanfiction than a feature film. After watching this footage, I want you to name me a film worse than this.

VideoLAN on the other side of the fence

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:48:55 GMT

So, some time ago I reached out to the community asking about how I could fix the problem with my computer's DVD player (it had stopped recognizing DVD video, but plays games and music just fine), and someone suggested to me that I try switching from WinAmp to VideoLAN player, which could recognize files in just about any codec. This didn't fix my problem (as it lies with my player and not the codecs) but I did find VideoLAN to be a robust little player, full of hidden surprises.

One of those surprises is that it can use things called subtitle files to add captioning to any movie you play though it! This was my major gripe with some of the movies, especially older ones; they don't come with captions built in. And the same goes with movies you can download from the internet.

But thanks to this website, I was able to find captions for a movie I had downloaded years ago when the only movie rental store in Roebuck (the area of Spartanburg where I lived) went out of business; so I was finally able to watch it.

The film was Over The Hedge, which had been recommended to me by a furry friend.

It was a very cute movie. It came out during a period of time where all of the 3D Animation films where closely aping each other, so it doesn't feel particularly inspired compared to some of the films in the category you can find today, but that doesn't detract from it's cuteness, wit, or charm. The movie follows the plight of R.J., a plucky Raccoon who's too clever for his own good when he tries to steal from a bear's hoard and lets his greed get the best of him. To get out of being eaten, R.J. promises to replace the bear's food stores within a week's time, and his quest leads him to a human suburbia, where he falls in with a ragtag group of woodland animals who are waking up from winter to discover themselves walled in by the humans. Hijinks ensue, and R.J. learns a thing or two about friendship. Perhaps the most amusing thing about the movie is how the animals percieve human beings. As R.J. leads them through the suburban jungle, he educates them rather amusingly in the habits of human beings, to whom food flows in a neverending supply! The animals are fascinated by things like pizza delivery and advertisements. Overall, it's a great family film with some real charm.

Now Imma delete the file, because I'm not a pirate. x3
VideoLAN's ability to use caption files is really great though, and I'm eager to try it with other films. Which films, I'm not sure yet, though I do have a bunch of poorly dubbed Japanese films I want to try it with (Bruce Lee! Sonny Chiba! You kick ass, but I cannae understand what you're saying!). Got any suggestions?

I'm feeling a little discouraged about my DJing in Second Life. A long time ago, I mentioned something in my journal about being hired on at PlayFurry club; well, that one fell apart when the club uprooted and noone told me where it transferred to. (I just recently got ahold of the manager. He's been unable to play Second Life for at least a year, and the guy he left in charge let the club tank; it no longer exists.) I got another DJ job at the private club of a friend of mine, but he is chronically missing from Second Life, and I end up never having a clue where the club is or whether or not I have permission to take the stream. Now I have a DJ offer at two clubs that are literally right next door to each other. The first one I am waiting on the lead DJ to get back to me on, and it seems she is on only very rarely. The second gig I got...

...but noone seems interested in hearing me play. I don't get it. When I request music from other DJ's that I like, I often get complimented on my musical tastes; but when I play music from my private collection noone wants to hear it? It's really aggravating, and I may just drop that job if I end up continuing to play to an empty club. It's like the rest of the staff doesn't care.

----------------
Now playing: Harold Faltermeyer - Axel F
via FoxyTunes

Here's a website that proves that no matter how bad you've got it, someone's always got it worse than you.

For a brief period of time several days ago, Google's filters had a glitch that flagged every single website that came up in it's search as containing malware.

Here's a scary article. It says the US has already been using illegal cell phone jamming technology on the public. In fact, it's gotten to the point now that many other agencies want to get in on the technology, including local police agencies, prisons, and churches. As outlandish as this may sound, they used the technology in Washington during Obama's inaugeration, and have been utilizing it in volitile locations in the middle east to distrupt communications and signals that might be used to trigger bombs. ETA: The article appears to have already been taken down...very suspicious...I wonder sometimes where this country is heading.

I have a place to sleep, but it doesn't feel like home...

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:37:47 GMT

So like, my parents totally let me down. No surprise there. They where supposed to have gotten my room finished before I moved back home, but it doesn't seem like they've even touched it since I was last back here. There are still wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling boxes taking up half of the room, and to make matters worse, my parents aren't going to let me move in until they've painted the place. As of right now, all my stuff is sitting in the living room, right next to my parent's boxes of packed furniture, meaning now there is only a small aisle to walk through in order to get to the kitchen (which is a complete mess, by the way, also half blocked with boxes); the living room is entirely filled with boxes and furniture.

When did my parents buy this house and move in? Two years ago. We've been living here for two years and we still aren't unpacked. Mom seems more apathetic than ever. She told me we weren't even going to have Christmas this year. I feel like I am now charged with motivating my parents, and that it's going to be an uphill battle.

To be quite honest, the move home was something I was both looking forward to and dreading. It means that I can work towards starting my life in earnest now that I've got some college under my belt, but it also presents me with a lot of small hurdles like this one, mixed in with the large.

I feels like I've gone from living in a nice apartment to a storage shed, with all my stuff packed outside because I have no place to put it. e_e

Mom gave us an estimate that the room would be done by Wednesday. I'm going to make that my deadline before I take matters into my own hands and start putting stuff in the attic or the tiny room/hallway outside my door.

On the other hand, I can now see why my parents all but forced me to leave all of my kitchen supplies to my roommate. With every room in the house filled with boxes, we probably would not have had the room for just one box more.

On the bright side, my roommate did leave all of his DVD's behind (which he usually doesn't do), so I was able to watch one while I was waiting on my parents to come help me move. The one I chose to watch was Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds. Guess what kind of film it is. Seriously though, it has to have been one of the most amusing splatterhouse films I've had the priveledge to watch. Sure, there was the gore, the nudity, the violence and lowbrow humor, but I swear the plot played out like a roleplaying game. Watching Feast 2 was like listening to someone recount what happened to the characters in a game of All Flesh Must Be Eaten. And what characters! The actors here really played up the camp, and it looks like they had a hell of a good time doing it. They did it so well that even the horrific and discusting scenes seemed somehow amusing. Case in point being when the town ne'er-do-well utterly botches an attempt at rescuing a baby. And the grizzled old barkeep goes "That's bad, even for this bunch." Maybe you have to be a roleplayer to understand it, but looking at the movie from that angle, you can see just who the players and the NPCs are, and just how the dice falls for each action as the film progresses. If that wasn't good enough, the film seems to be a direct continuation of events in the first film, which makes me wonder if Feast 1 had the same kind of zany character antics.

Stephen Colbert's becoming a Marvel character is old news by now, but whatever became of him? Apparently, after running for president, he lost to Barak Obama. Will this be the last we see of Stephen Colbert?

Scientists are attempting to make an ambituous census of the ocean, and are discovering loads of new wonders in the process.

2008 was, without question, a year of economic collapse. MSN takes a look back at the seven "deadly sins" we are paying for.

DOOM SPEAKS!

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:33:46 GMT

TALK LIKE DOOM DAY

Doom as taken control of he vast lands of these interwebs and all citizens should show their thanks for the greatness that Doom bestows on them by ruling their lives!

Doom commands all of his beloved ~~slaves~~ subjects shall write a post in Doomspeak!

You may give your thanks to DOOM!!

Doom, has decided to grace his worthless subjects with a post! Bask in the glory of DOOM!

Today is the last day DOOM will spend in this miserable hovel, though it has served the plans of Doom handily these past two years. Thanks to that fool, Reed Richards, DOOM will now have to move to another location while gathering resources to build a new castle! Dare not make light of DOOM, lest you find yourself a pile of ash in the very chair on which you sit! DOOM would be pleased, in fact, if all you peasants worked overtime to make living in his own castle a reality! DOOM demands it!

Keeping the affairs of a kingdom in order is no easy task. Only fools think as such! But even monarchs such as DOOM need repast, and DOOM took one last night. DOOM chose to watch the film Breathing Room, and Doom reports to the world, here in this very journal, that it was not worth his time. Some peasants who think themselves wise say that "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". Doom can tell his subjects from experience; as DOOM has had many imitators, that Imitations always fall short...Especially of the glory of DOOM! This insufferable film was little more than an imitation of Saw, which DOOM declares he enjoyed muchly. Those who have not seen the Saw films may yet derive some enjoyment from this miserable attempt at psychological suspense, but DOOM took no pleasure in this travesty. DOOM intends to punish the director once Richards is out of the way. Tremble in fear, for DOOM has spoken!

Now get back to work, citizens of the interwebs! You are charged with building DOOM a grand castle, and DOOM will not tolerate productivity less than 100%!

So Speaks
-DR. DOOM, Monarch of Lavertia
Grand Enemy of the Fantastic Four
Feared by all who stand in his way

It's not cancelled after all!

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:32:48 GMT

Oh hell yes!!!

----------------
Now playing: Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters
via FoxyTunes

Scientists believe that a mutant breed of giant catfish has been eating people in India. Sounds like some kind of horror film premise, but it's the real deal. They think it developed a taste for human flesh feeding off corpses from Indian river funeral ceremonies.

How to survive the next Great Depression. Some practical tips for weathering a disaster-economy.

A town in Switzerland turned an unused military bunker into the world's first zero star hotel. The price for staying the night is estimated to be somewhere between $9 and $13. In compliance with Swiss Law, it can be converted back into a nuclear bunker within 24 hours in an emergency.

The last of the Con wrap-up...

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:12:12 GMT

I've been having a few set-backs this week, but hopefully it won't lead to any major ones. Yesterday I was unable to go to school because my alarm clock didn't get me up, and the school is trying to cut back on emergency transportation. This also means I am going to have to take a zero in my deaf culture project, for not having any transportation to any events. Anyhow, this being my second "unexcused" absence, I'm now wondering if they are going to kick me out of tutoring. I desperately need it, but I am beginning to think that I am past the point where it will help me pass. I'm trying not to fret about it...It's only three years or so...And if I stick with Wal-Mart long enough, maybe I can get a better position than just cart pusher for the rest of my life.

So, at last summer's con in Chicago, I went back with scltspider to see his hometown of Madison, Winsconsin, and the gaming store he worked at. At his recommendation, I purchased a copy of the Universalis game. I finally got through the book. Now, before I say anything, Universalis is not an RPG. At least, not in the conventional sense of the term. No, it is more like a loosely structured storytelling game in which everyone can contribute to the direction the game takes-there is no GM. The rules are set up to allow the players access to a free environment without utterly breaking the flow of the game. You use "coins" to pay for concepts you want to introduce to the story, or for modifications to currently existing concepts. At any point, another player may challenge you if concepts you introduce seem to go against existing game tennants, and if enough players agree with the challenger, you will be unable to pay for what you want. In this way the story retains core concepts; a player cannot introduce something that contradicts something already established without having a good reason for it; otherwise he is likely to be challenged. To keep things unpredictable, players with coins can interrupt the narration to pay for complications, or conflict between some things in narrative. In normal RPGs, complications would be the combat rounds-rolling the dice and comparing the stats. In Universalis, you compare the traits currently purchased for the concepts in conflict and assign dice to a side's pool based on which traits can be said to help and hinder that side in the proposed situation. The side with the most successes gets to narrate the outcome of the conflict, while the losing side gets to narrate the aftermath. It is a really unique system, and scltspider was right in calling it structured freeform. I imagine a game of Universalis may function similar to what we're doing in GamingGuardians, or in gebohq's Neverending Story thread.

I also got to see Ben Stiller's "A Night At The Museum", since my roommate had the DVD. The film was pretty much exactly what I was expecting, but still very enjoyable as well as decently amusing. Ben Stiller plays a divorced father, a man with a lot of dreams, but not enough substance. After his latest attempt to make it big fails, he comes to realize that his son sees him as a joke, so he tries to get a more steady job. He ends up as the night watchman at the city museum, where a cursed artifact in one of the exhibits has the curious side effect of bringing all of the exhibits to life after sunset. The movie is about how Stiller's character must come to terms with himself to deal with this unexpected madness, and rise up to the challenge of staving off a threat to the museum from outside. It was a wonderful, feel-good film, and I thought it was worth it just to see Robin Williams as Theodore Rosevelt.

----------------
Now playing: 2, The Ranting Gryphon - Coyena
via FoxyTunes

Everyone knows PETA members are a few cards shy of a full deck, but it seems their organisation is guilty of the ultimate hypocrisy. The organisation famous for crusading for animal rights was forced to divulge their records recently, which show that they killed 90% of the animals left in their care during 2007, a record worse than the local animal shelter in PETA's home city, which managed to adopt out 70% of the animals in their care.

Speaking of animals, Dog Armor!

It's been 30 years since the biggest religiously led mass murder/suicide to ever grip the United States. As many as 900 people died during the Jonestown Massacre, but there were survivors, through happenstance and fate. These are their stories.

If you die in Canada, you die in REAL LIFE!

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:18:21 GMT

So, it took me a lot longer than I intended, but I did manage to get a copy of those photos that were taken during the Fall Fest at my local college. Check it out:

It's my 70's Rocker getup, which I wore my senior year of High School as well as part of Homecoming. Had to buy a new wig and shades this year, as the old ensemble is still boxed up. Oh, and that shirt? It was being sold as a normal garment at the navy exchange, and was actually bought when I was in middle school. Yes, I can still wear my old clothes! (sizes XL and L both fit me, though XL fits better depending on the make.)

Outfit may or may not have been inspired by an actual 70's rocker. ;) ----------------------------------------------------------------------->

Here's me trying to tackle the climbing wall. Didn't think she'd take so many pictures of that. It certainly was a challenge.

So today I watched the movie "Stay Alive". You know, the one about the video game that kills people? I went into it with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I was surprised at how well done the movie was. For one thing, these people did their research. The video-game portions look like an actual video-game, not a series of CGI mash-ups like I was expecting. The acting was pretty good too; nobody felt flat. There was even an unexpected shout-out to Air Supply (which was really unexpected). In the movie, the protagonist's best friend is beta-testing a mysterious game, called "Stay Alive". After his friend's unexpected death, he comes into possession of his friend's games, including this mysterious title, which he decides to play in his friend's honor with a bunch of other gamer pals. As more deaths follow from people getting killed in the game, they realize there is more than just coincidence involved, and they find themselves having to work both in the game and in the real world to discover the shocking secret of the video game. It sounds corny, but the story is very well written, and the end result is more clever than corny (or at least I thought so. Your mileage may vary). If you are a gamer, I urge you to see this movie. it practically panders to our subculture; this is our film. People who don't understand gaming will probably still enjoy it for its suspenseful moments and the interesting direction the story takes. Of the films I've watched in my roommate's cache, this is one of the few I've seen that I may wish to own myself.

----------------
Now playing: Alex C - Du Hast Den Schonsten Arsch Der Welt (Basshunters Bass My Ass Mix)
via FoxyTunes

Here's a story about a man who beat up a shark to save his dog.

The awesome extreme Jack o'Lantern.

Would you eat the Krispy Kreme Cheddar Bacon Cheeseburger of Delight?

Halloween

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:11:59 GMT

You know your day is going to be interesting when the first word out of your mouth when you wake up is "Fuck"... Yesterday morning, I woke up only to discover that my alarm clock had failed to wake me (as it is wont to do occasionally). I had missed the bus, and I had a tutoring session at 8:00 that morning, before a big test in Statistics. It was around 7:30 when I got up, so I did not have time to even grab a bite, I just ran all the way down to the school's transportation department. Luckily, they were able to get someone to take me in a short amount of time. I ended up getting there at 8:15, and the Success Network was calling me just as I walked in the door. I made it to my tutoring session, and hopefully, it helped me work out the kinks before the test. I think I did fairly well on it, though I took way too much time on it, and was late for the next class. I don't care though, I don't need the grades for that one...I am currently doing well in it. It's Statistics that I need the grades in, and I am starting to become desparate. Asked the teacher if there was anything I could do for possible extra credit after the test, and he said he'd see how my grade turned out first. He is aware of my situation now though, so maybe I will get an opportunity to scrape by if I need it.

That evening, my Halloween commenced, starting with the school's annual Fall Fest. I won the first prize of the fest for my costume (a funky 70's rocker getup...I'll get the picture from the woman in admissions next week), a deluxe container of bite-sized brownies and a glitzy decorative pumpkin. They had a ton of prizes, but ended up not giving out very many; I was one of the only students decked out, but many of the faculty participated, so I was not all alone. I purchased most of their pizza (they were woefully understocked this time around), and got talked into climbing the wall that the army had brought. Now, I've never done a wall climb, and I knew that I didn't have the upper arm strength to just jump up and do free climbing like that. But I was unprepared for just how difficult it was to get even beyond the first few steps. The reason for this is that the hand and foot holds, despite being clearly marked, are shaped in such a way that you can barely use them. I remember standing on one, with just the edge of my shoe in contact with it, while I struggled to grab a handhold just beyond my reach. That and the fact that you are gripping handholds with just the tips of your fingers, with the entire weight of your body against you...I think the key to it is to literally tackle the wall. To climb upwards without pause, pushing yourself up with your legs, and only using your arms briefly. Trying to take it slowly or pausing at all, even just to strengthen your grip, seems like folly. I didn't make it up very far, but I did gain a t-shirt for my efforts...one that actually looks nice, despite being an Army advert. Their designs are clearly improving.

Today I did not do much, aside from finishing up a rediculously massive ghost hunt on Second Life. I managed to find all 114 ghosts, without knowing how many there where exactly they were. Most of them were easy to find, but it was definitely an endurance hunt, to be sure. Also, I discovered that freebies that cost a single lindon are not actually free when you are faced with a lot of them. Say, over 300. >_< It seems like common sense, but freebies used to be rare enough that I could get away with spending 1$L on them with impunity. Now, ever since copybots and their ilk introduced theft into the world of Second Life, it seems that the number of freebies have exploded, even legitimate ones. Sometimes a retailer will release something that someone else has stolen as a freebie, to discourage the theif from reselling it. Sometimes, freebies are released out of spite because of personal disputes between creators. Sometimes they are released just for promotional purposes. I don't know why it is, but it seems that after that point, there are just more of them. I'm going to dub October official SL freebie month, because my inventory has to have jumped by another 1k after all that.

Today I watched "JoyRide 2: Dead Ahead" .
Now, there is a certain perception some people have about a certain group of people...I hesitate to call it a stereotype because it is so universal. What I am talking about are truckers. They are commonly percieved as big, tough, lawless men with their own ways of doing things, who are likely to crack your skull open if you slight them in some way. This same stereotype applies to bikers, bouncers, lumberjacks, and rednecks. The atagonist in the JoyRide series, a trucker who goes by the handle Rusty Nail, takes this stereotype to a bloody extreme. The clincher is that he is portrayed as a real person. He isn't some Jason Vorhees or Mike Myers of the open road; just a bored redneck trucker who makes his stomping grounds the back roads of America. But that doesn't stop him from coming across with just the same measure of methodical creepiness. When a (soon to be) family has their car break down on a bachelor party trip to Las Vegas, they stumble across the abode of Rusty Nail. One thing leads to another, and they end up breaking in and "borrowing" his car, having no cell-phone cervice or any other way to find help out in the middle of nowhere. Being the kind of person who doesn't take even getting flipped off sitting down, Rusty Nail decides to even the score by "borrowing" the female lead's fiance. Things pretty much go downhill from there. Rusty Nail seems to take great pleasure in torturing the city folk, blackmailing them to greater extremes just to fix injustices against him, percieved or real. We only get the barest glimpses of Rusty Nail's face, and his voice is very creepy...a slow, gravelly drawl. I only had two problems with this movie, the first being that you had to suspend beleif quite a bit if you wanted to be thrilled by the movie. Rusty Nail is said to have "eyes everywhere". This is portrayed by his seemingly being buddies with every other trucker in the state, which is directly contradictory with his "lone wolf" attitude (not to mention that it begs the question of all truckers being psychos). Another problem I had was that the film portrayed Rusty Nail and his big rig as being practically the same entity. There's a scene in the film that is particularly amusing because of this. When he first discovers that his house was broken into, he doesn't even get out of his truck. It shows his rig park in front of the house, and he shines a light, panning from the broken window to the knocked-down door, and the truck's engine "revs angrily". In fact, I'm pretty sure they only give him two scenes in which he is separated from his truck. It is subtle, but it definitely impacts the character's beleivability, because it limits the ways in which he can realistically react to things. Despite these failings, I enjoyed the film. I felt it was interesting to see a horror movie with an "average" antagonist; a messed-up dude who just takes road rage to an extreme, as opposed to the undead vengeance or psychotic mastermind types. (Also, I wonder what own buddy kindar would make of this film, being a trucker himself. :o )

My Halloween is rapidly falling apart

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:19:18 GMT

So the party we were having was today, and it has been canceled. The other students failed to pay the prerequisite $5 for it, even if I would have (I didn't know it was today...I thought it was going to be this Friday). So now I don't have any use for the costume I just bought except for attempting to win prizes at the Fall Fest...I think after the Fall Fest, I might just take it back to Party City and try to get my money back...

Today I watched Saw 2. The original psychological thriller was a one-of-a kind movie, and in my opinion, this sequel doesn't quite live up to the same standing, though it does come close. The twists in the plot weren't as surprising this time around, and there were a few plotholes that the movie sort of touched on, but didn't really tie together properly before the end. In the first movie, we are introduced to Jigsaw, the serial killer who locks victims inside twisted death traps with only one avenue of escape. In this film, we see the man, behind the puppet, Jigsaw himself; an ailing cancer patient. A detective finally captures him, only to learn that Jigsaw allowed himself to be captured and that he is a part of Jigsaw's twisted game. The movie is about torture, and is not for the squemish. To Jigsaw, it is all just one big experiment to see what the human psyche will do to survive, and to make his victims come out with a new appreciation for life. The scenes between Jigsaw and the detective are well played, and we learn the truth behind his motives a lot better than in the first film. It's still worth a watch.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that Sunday night featured our very first session of Jadeclaw. I am playing Coon there as a kuinoichi orphan, which was how I originally intended her. There are only three players including myself, but they are both really good, including one fellow who plays a well-spoken but squeamish and cowardly rat. His character is super awesome, and a lot of fun to be around, even if he tends to slow down the rest of the party. But that's all IC. x3

I lucked out in Second Life and found a whole bunch of freebies, including pumpkin hunt locations for several places. I'm debating sharing them with some of the second life communities I'm on. Definitely going to be adding the freebie blogs someone showed me to the sidebar.

Also, I went to get my hearing aids looked at today. Turns out they were malfunctioning. again. I hate this model.

----------------
Now playing: Sir Nuts - Introduction to Heaven
via FoxyTunes

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that you should always eat it. But are most of your breakfast choices truly healthy? Here is an article that looks at some of the worst breakfast choices that are commonly made, and what you should eat instead.

A recent look at the list of jobs with the highest fatality rates, and what kills the people working in them.

The director makes excuses for Oh Chihuahua, the recent film about a Beverly Hills pet. They say the movie trailor was rife with scenes that were not even included in the movie. You know a movie is lame when you have to resort to false marketing to sell it.

A Weekend Spent

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:53:17 GMT

I went home last weekend. Instead of going to the School for the Deaf and Blind's homecoming game for a possible grade in ASL class, I had to go home to drop off my DS so that I could get it fixed before my birthday. Knowing how things run, if I don't take care of it as soon as possible, I'd be better off just getting a new one.

So anyhow, instead of taking part in school festivities, I stayed home and watched Blood, The Last Vampire. I thought it would make suitable Halloween fare, but I don't recall ever being more dissapointed by an anime film before. The art is great for one thing, but the production is absolutely dismal. The entire film seems very half-assed. For one thing, only maybe four conversations total are captioned. Out of the entire movie. I've never seen such lazy production. Also, the film fails to account for any story. It is about this young girl, who happens to be the last original vampire, and her vendetta against modern vampires, which are different for some reason. All this information I got from the back of the box. We are never told why they are different, what the source of her vendetta is, any of the protagonist's backstory at all, what the modern vampires are trying to accomplish...nothing. All we know is that this girl is there to fight them, we see the fight, and then the movie ends. wut? It had such potential too, because unlike in so many other vampire films, the vampires in this one were actually creepy. They seemed much closer to Nosferatu than actual vampires in the traditional sense, which would probably explain the differences between this girl and them. But was that ever mentioned in the movie? No! In the end, we are left with a film that focuses on nothing but the (immediate) buildup to the confrontation, and then an abrubt ending when the fight is over. Lame! Even if you like anime, I suggest you pass on this one.

Aside from that, we ate dinner at Hooters. I made an interesting discovery: Their 25th anniversary is on my Birthday, and I will be turning 25 this year. I am literally the same age as this resteraunt. I suggested eating dinner there on my Birthday to my father; maybe they will give me a discount or some free merchandise because of this special coincidince? I think it is worth trying.

Also, this year I went and got a Halloween costume. Well, really, I already had one, but the other key component was still in storage, and my parents are too lazy to bother unpacking (dollars to doughnuts I'm going to have to unpack for them when I am forced to move back home after college, a fact that I am not happy about). Anyways, I got another afro wig and some "rock star" glasses to match my 70's tie-die shirt (which is a normal shirt, btw, it wasn't bought as part of a costume). I feel a little guilty about my purchases now, because I'm not sure how much mileage I'm actually going to be getting out of them. There is a "silly hat" contest going on at the school on Wednesday, which I had intended the costume for...I don't know if it will count though, since it does not seem to be a "costume" contest. I'd like to be eligible to win prizes, and I'm going to feel silly if I'm the only one there with a cohesive costume, especially if it isn't eligible. Blah. And that was $20 I didn't have to spend...

Also, my entire schooling is in jeapordy now, because my tutor broke his knee, and I am not doing very well in Statistics (I've got like a 64 as the total class grade right now, mid-semester). He's going to be out for the rest of the semester! I can't say I didn't try, but if I end up flunking out of college because Success Network for one course let me down, I am not going to be very happy. They did manage to find a replacement tutor, so I have no idea how that will go. If I don't do well on this upcoming test, desperation will set in. I need to somehow scrape by with a passing grade, but I've needed to re-take all my previous math classes. I cannot re-take this one if I fail, because I don't have enough money for food or housing for another semester. If I can get an extension on my student loan, there is a possibility...but that is pretty doubtful.

Time for me to step up my game.

This happened a while ago, but apparently Apple CEO Steve Jobs had his obituary published early by Bloomberg News. It seems that at any given time, major news organizations have obituaries for important and famous people already written and ready to go. Does this seem at all creepy to you? According to this article, Mark Twain, Bob Hope, and Pope John Paul 2 were all able to see their obituaries before they died, thanks to publishing mishaps like this one.

So you say America is the land of plenty? Did you know that more than 1,000 species of food are on the verge of extinction, some of which are already gone? A century ago, Americans ate 15,000 named varieties of apples, for example. Today, there are maybe 1,500. Apples. We aren't talking about rare fruits here, people.

How to date when you live with your parents.

Public Speaking 2: How To Care For Your Media

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:01:53 GMT

The second in a series. I need to work on making my speeches shorter. The teacher took off points on my last one because it was so long. No, I do not like making speeches, but when you set me up there behind the podium, I am going to give a speech; I am not there to mince words.
Made this one a lot shorter, but I still think it may not be short enough. Whatever.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1544981/

----------------
Now playing: Dschinghis Khan - Moskau
via FoxyTunes

Here's a list of the top 10 weakest superheroes. Now with more profanity!

Sign the petition! Stop Fox from releasing the DragonBall Z movie!

Also, here's a weird video of a prehistoric shark that was found alive off the coast of Japan. It's dead now though.

Prehistoric Shark Alive This bizarre-looking Goblin Shark was recently found off the coast of Japan. Also, I think I just lost my dinner.

Fuck All

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:20:22 GMT

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/6163648.html?view=231922112#t231922112

That's it. I can no longer just sit here on my ass and just let them do this.

I'm going to start sending letters to Fox.

I'm going to do whatever it takes to get them to cancel this movie.

Who's with me? And furthermore...got any good ideas how to get to 'em?

Little oddities

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:54:39 GMT

It's the Labor Day Weekend here, which means I don't have school on Monday. Yay! This gives me an extra day to work on my homework, which is quite useful, since I've been using the extra time to slack off a little. :B

Yesterday evening, at around noon, we had a pizza delivery at our apartment. A woman representing Papa Johns was at the door with what looked like two pizzas and a bag of extra stuff. The odd part was that I had not ordered a pizza, and neither had my roommate. She asked if ours was the correct apartment, and it seemed as though she had been sent to the right address. Weird, huh? I wonder now if maybe she misheard the apartment number. Maybe it was 10 instead of 2?

Last night, my roommate left the television long enough for me to watch the movie he borrowed, Open Water. It's a movie about this couple of enterpreneurs who take a vacation to a tropical seaside place and get left behind while on a diving tour. Based on a true story, it gets pretty gripping at times. I do not envy the director, who's task here was basically to film a whole lot of nothing. He fills the spaces in between by getting different shots of the waves or the ever-changing sky, but out in the middle of the ocean, there really isn't much to see. The actors convey the desperation of their situation well, though the movie feels like a low-budget indy flick. A word of warning: This isn't the kind of film you want to see if you are seeking uplifted spirits. There's no message or reason behind this film, it's just a tale of life and how a young couple comes in danger of losing theirs.

I need to go grocery shopping, which I am dreading because of my lack of cash. I found out I'm only going to be getting $200 back from my student loan, and I need to somehow survive on that until December. Fortunately, I still have $900 left in my account, but my original estimates of being completely wiped once I get out of school seem to be proving correct. By the time I graduate, I'm wondering if I'll even have enough to my name to post bus fare. It doesn't help that small things keep adding up, like how this morning I opened the freezer door to find that my roomie had stuck my pitcher in there, full of water. The entire bottom end had busted open. I don't know why, but he likes to stick odd things in the freezer, as if to compound his desire to leave food sitting in the microwave or oven instead of refridgerating it. He's really not a bad roommate, he's just got these really odd habits...

A while back a story ran about a real life occurrence of the situation in Home Alone. A Jerusalem family accidentally left their youngest daughter at the airport while they took a flight to Paris. The family of five passed through the duty free, and nearly became late for their plane; The daughter was separated from her family and nobody realized it until they were already in the air. Fortunately, the staff were able to escort her on a separate plane back to Paris.

Spider-Man 4 is slated for release in 2011, but I hear tell they are also thinking about making a movie for Venom.

Researchers have discovered a way to keep solar energy working when the sun isn't out.

I had a post all typed up two days ago, but Livejournal ate it

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:07:05 GMT

So instead, you all are going to get a brief run down of my weekend:

The Dark Knight Returns: Awesome movie. Any misgivings I initially had about their portrayal of the Joker were totally off-base. Heath Ledger did a great job making the Joker seem believable and creepy. I'm very glad the director has chosen to take this Batman seriously. Batman actor was more menacing in this film, and Two Face actor played his roll with a lot of heart. It feels great to see the character in a film where he isn't treated as a clown. Gotham City seems as real as ever, and in spite of a few plot holes, the film really hits it off. Go see it.

Hellboy 2 - The Golden Army: Not a bad film, but I'm not sure if it was as good as the first one. This film is lacking a lot of the menace and sense of urgency, and the plot seems to ramble at some points. Great visual experience, good acting from the main characters. Hellboy seems to be moving in an unexpected direction in the movies, which makes me think that any third installment will run the risk of totally sucking.

My Mom has gone batshit. Usually an animal lover, she is thinking of putting the family cat down simply because she does not want to keep it any longer. I told her that there were all sorts of places that would take her, but she doesn't seem to think that Kadayshi would do very well in a shelter. Well, that does not include all the animal rescue organizations in South Carolina alone, not to mention North Carolina and Georgia. I did some research and gave her a whole list of web site links to these places. In the end, she only sent an e-mail to one of them, in Seneca. She says if she doesnt' hear back from them in a week, she'll have the cat put down. I told her if she goes through with it, I will do everything in my power to make sure she never got another pet as long as she lived.

PS: Livejournal fucking sucks sometimes.

----------------
Now playing: Journey - Intro: Red 13 / State of Grace
via FoxyTunes

A teenager used the internet to gather up a collaboration of people to make the world's largest peace sign.

Here's a look back at the storied history of Mega Man.

Scientists have recently made a breakthrough in Autism research, discovering new genes that may be responsible for the condition.

Summer Semester = Complete

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:39:15 GMT

Today was the last day of the Summer Semester here at my college. The two classes I were taking both came to decent conclusions, and I'm satisfied with how it all turned out. The final exam in Web Server Administration class went over very well, I think. There were only a few multiple choice questions that I wasn't very sure of; I was able to fill out all of the short answer questions, which are usually the ones I have trouble with. The final project (a research paper), also got high marks, and I'm a little proud of that. I think the teacher likes my writing, since I haven't gotten any poor marks on any of the heavy writing assignments...and this clas had quite a bit more of that compared to the last few computer centric courses. In the Web Site Publishing working class, we finished our group project of making a Web site for the school coffee shop. It's a simple series of linked pages, none too heavy on the dynamic programming. We did a lot of photoshop work, and I made some awesome animated .gifs using Paint Shop Pro's Animation Shop here at home. I've stumbled my way through it before, making some animated icons for some folks in the Gaming Guardians, but I have since taught myself how to do it better; my animation skills are a lot more refined now, as long as I have the proper images to string together in a frame.

So if any of you want me to help you make like animated icons or anything, feel free to ask. I just need the pictures you'd want me to animate.

In other news, since Anarchy Online isn't working out any more, I decided to take a look at an MMO that I had been sitting on for a while: Skyrates! This one is pretty unique. For starters, it is a furry themed MMO, but anyone can play and enjoy it. It is based loosely on the old Disney cartoon TailSpin, what with the whole retro flight schtick going. It's a pretty simple browser-based game; there's nothing to download, you just sign up for it. Perhaps it's most unique feature is the fact that the game is designed for you to play just a little bit at a time. If you have a busy schedule, this is a great game for you, since you can set up your trade route and then log out of the system: flight occurs in real-time and typically takes about an hour to resolve, allowing you to set the game down and work on other things for a while. When you have time to burn, there are chat channels for roleplay or ooc conversation, and occasionally combat rounds against pirates will pop up. Combat in this game is handled like an advanced version of Asteroids: Your plane moves in each of the four directions, with a firing arc. When the enemy crafts come within the arc, you can hit them, though you have limited ammunition you have to be careful not to burn through. Some planes have really weird arcs, incuding ones that fire backwards instead of forwards, or off to the sides. Some even have multiple arcs. All of this makes combat more challenging and a lot less simplistic than it would give you to beleive at first. The planes are marginally upgradeable, and can be better outfitted for trade, combat, or maneuverability depending on how you like it. Your character also gains skill points to use for unlocking better abilities in each of the aforementioned categories. There are also different factions to join and missions to accomplish for each one, so it's pretty deep for a mere flash game. By pure coincidence, rhanlav and I joined on the same day, almost within an hour of each other! I have also met dewhitton , and I think roycalbeck plays the game too, since he made a Caramelldansen of one of the game's pirate characters. Quite ironic. rhanlav and I are thinking of forming a wing once we advance in the game, so we'll probably invite the other Guardians when we get there. I'm Janessa in the game.

Anyhow, This weekend, I am going back home to catch The Dark Knight Returns in theater. It will be my first time seeing it, so I'm really excited, especially after reading all the positive reviews Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker recieved. I was a little leery at first, I admit, since preliminary looks seemed to appear half-assed to say the least; but everyone says this Joker is creepy and realistic, so we shall see. Fall semester doesn't begin until Aug. 18th, but I won't stay at my parent's house for the rest of the summer; there is still very little for me there, and my folks still have me crammed in the room they're using for storage. Depending on how things work out, I might stay however long it takes for me to also attend a screening of Hellboy 2, which should definitely happen before next weekend. I think.

Here's some advice on how to expand your social circle. I'm putting this up here mostly for myself, but it does contain some good advice.

A while back, they found a perfectly intact Revolutionary War battleship at the bottom of Lake Ontario. The ship was the British HMS Ontario, which vanished without a trace in 1780 during a storm.

A 16 year old girl from Michigan had an extreme bout of luck - She got struck by lightning and survived only to win the lottery the next day.

Just the state of things...

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:39:23 GMT

I've just been feeling kind of down lately.

It's the last week of the Summer Semester at my school, so we're going through our final projects and stuff right now. My team finished the website and it looks really good, though I don't feel as though I contributed enough to it. Technically, I helped a lot with the web site's design, but all I physically did for it was create two animated .gifs in Paint Shop Pro's Animation Shop, which took no time at all using the wizard. Oh well; as long as I get the credit, I suppose I shouldn't complain. Our final exam in Web Administration is next Wednesday, and the SCSDB made a huge blunder by believing that school ended this week; so naturally, they told all their staff to go home. This wouldn't be a problem if I weren't relying on their staff to transport me to school. Fortunately, the administrator realized their mistake and managed to get someone back on for that week, so I'm no longer in a bind.

I was originally supposed to go home this weekend so I could see The Dark Knight Returns, but my Mom informed me that if I did come home, I'd be stuck at the house; The van's transmission went out, Dad is going to another fishing tournament, and my brother is going to be out doing his own thing...so I opted to stay here for the weekend. I have things I need to work on anyways, but I still wish I could have gone back home this time around instead of having to wait until next week.

So I have been kind of bouncing around on the rp front lately. I'm really enjoying my time in ceg_lylat, and though I don't spend as much time as I used to in gamingguardians, I still enjoy participating in rp there too. However....I have been more than just a little absent from Silver Knights rpg, and I am starting to feel guilty about it. Granted, it was never very active in the first place, but since moving to the forums, it has slowed to a crawl. I've been trying to get back into it, but I'm finding it really difficult. At this point, I'm not sure if making that effort would be particularly worth it. Certainly tjhyper and ludovm are great guys and are still down with the game, but I'd like to talk about just where this thing is going because I realize I no longer have like, any motivation for doing this, at all. I'm calling you out; consider this my invitation for open discussion.

Another game I'm fed up with, though for different reasons, is Anarchy Online. andrewmccloud is guilty for getting me into this one, but after getting through the introductory zone, I'm encountering a few bugs that are keeping me from player content. In particular, I'm speaking of a bug that prevents me from entering the player apartment that the game gives to all of it's players. It is seemingly important, but after not playing the game for several months, the error still has not corrected itself. So I'm thinking I'm going to say goodbye to this MMO and dump it in the recycle bin. Sorry andrewmccloud...It just wasn't working out. So now I'm in the market for another free MMO. I didn't get very many responses from my readers last time, so I think I'm just going to go with whatever seems interesting. Or maybe I'll go without and just play console games or all the legacy emulators I've amassed. God knows they're just taking up space on my hard drive...

I think things are beginning to sour between my roommate and I. Lately he has been largely unresponsive to me; this after I tried to talk to him about some things that have been bugging me. He still has a variety of annoying habits, but nowhere near housematehorror matereal. His latest habit is getting after me for not cleaning even though I'm already the one who does most of the work. I know exactly how he sees me: to him, I'm the guy that stays upstairs on the internet all the time instead of doing household chores. The end result of which is; when I do clean up, he doesn't seem to notice. Lately, there have been times when the sink has been getting full of dishes, and I will make a note to do them, only I'll come downstairs when I'm ready, and I'll find that he has already done them, and he will get after me for it. But he won't clean up the sauce stains on the wall (not even after I pointed them out in the process of killing a spider), he won't mop the floors (soda spillage made the front entrance sticky for several days. After this happened, he got a mop and left it out; he never used it), he won't clean the restrooms, and he won't contribute to the cleaning supplies or household neccessities (when we ran out of toilet paper last week, the illegal third roommates came to me about it instead of talking with Avery. It makes me wonder if they knew he wasn't going to buy more, or if they knew that I would.) He said something offhand the other day about trying to find another roomate. I don't care what he does, just as long as he doesn't try making me look bad in the process. If anything doesn't get done around here, it's both our faults, not mine alone.

On an unrelated note, I finally finished Disc 1 of the Gargoyles Volume 2 DVD set. Watching these old shows really brought back old memories, especially the holloween special. I know there's another one on Disc 2 in the City Of Stone series. I've noticed that the series follows a particular formula: show opens with menacing intro, intro rapidly devolves into a major problem, gargoyles wake up and are introduced to problem, gargoyles solve the problem - usually by knocking it around, Xanatos is behind it all no matter how absurd the scheme - he always finds a way to be "ingeniously" behind it. Anyhow, good series. The animation quality is expressive, and the visual style of the show is appropriate. Good character design. Memorable situations and characters...well, of course they are memorable. There wouldn't be a Gathering if they weren't.

That sounds like something Puck would say.

----------------
Now playing: Basshunter - Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA
via FoxyTunes

A remake of Friday the 13th is in the works.

A while back, Photobucket had their DNS records hijacked by a professional Turkish hacking group. This was a while ago, so things have been cleared up by now, but if you haven't checked your photobucket in a while, now might be a good time to look in on your account.

Are these celebrities nerds? Or not! You decide!

Movies I've Seen So Far This Month:

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:36:24 GMT

I Am Legend. I saw this one quite a while back, when my roommate rented a copy. In all honesty, I thought it was a good movie and one in which Will Smith did well with what he was given; but I don't particularly believe that the movie lived up to the hype. There were several things wrong with how they went about conveying the story that made it seem terribly disjointed. In some places it felt like Will Smith wasn't given a whole lot to work with at all, which is why I stated earlier that he did admirably with what he had. The movie is about a bio-engineered virus originally designed to cure cancer, but instead it infects everyone, turning them into little more than rabid shells of their former selves. The virus transforms everyone, except for a select few people with an inexplainable immunity. Will Smith's character is one of these people, and as a survivalist, has become the "last living person" in New York City. The film follows his exploits as he lives day to day in a world populated entirely by himself, surrounded by the decaying trappings of civilization, all the while trying to devise a cure for the illness that will turn the population back into normal people again (his character also just happens to be a bio-physicist contracted by the military). The so called "zombies" and many of the other creatures and special effects are obviously CGI'd, which took away from the movie a bit, but since the focus is more on the story than the CGI effects, it is easier to swallow the fakeness. That said, the story focuses more on Smith's day-to-day routine and how he supports itself, which gives the feeling of a story being told from the middle instead of the beginning (we get flashbacks that explain things throughout the story, but it doesn't help to alleviate these feelings). The ending feels a little forced in light of this.

Overall, I'd say they tried with this one, but the way they went about it was all wrong. It could have been a lot better than this, for what story was there. The overall theme of the movie was how everything happens for a reason, and that even in times of darkness no one is ever truly alone. Towards the end, there are things in there about trusting in God and His plan for things, but these themes are absent throughout the rest of the film, so it feels kind of foistered on you. I really wish they had spread that out more; it would have given the film a lot more cohesion.

Journey - Revelation DVD. This is the DVD Journey included with the US release of their Revelation album. The Wal-Mart exclusive feature that makes it a three disk set for just $11 at best. This is concert footage from their second gig with lead singer Arnel Pineda, after they have had plenty of time to practice, and had recorded the bulk of their new songs. As far as live DVD's go, it is an awesome experience. You really get a feel for how the new guy handles the songs, and Journey ships three new ones this time around, which is really awesome (historical note: this concert was actually the first unveiling these three of the new songs). Arnel has boundless energy as a lead singer, and is literally running all over the stage and interacting with the fans, while nailing each of these songs. The only gripe I have about this disk are the poor production values; the DVD seems thrown together....the programming (menus, ect) isn't as extensive as it was on their stand-alone DVD releases (Escape Tour Re-Release, Arrival Concert 2001), but that could be part of the reason why the three disk package is so cheap. Several footage cuts are obvious (The band had to re-do some songs thanks to technical difficulties and Arnel tiring himself out), and the encore songs weren't included, which seems weird knowing how Journey always do encores. Usually they preform in one take, so this DVD has a little different feeling to it compared to the others. Not to imply that the band is slowing down, or anything!

Hitman. This film is based off of the popular video game series Hitman, the shooter games that emphasize striking with style and stealth...From what I hear, it's in the same veign as games like Splinter Cell, Metal Gear, and the Tom Clancy games; stealth strike and tactical ops...those sorts of games. You'd think a shooter wouldn't make a very good movie after what happened with Doom (which was ok, but also pretty corny), but Hitman does a really great job of coming across as believable and real. The story follows the unnamed Hitman (number 47 was it?), who was raised as an orphan by a secret agency that does nothing but train the world's best assassins. Many orphans didn't survive the brutal program, but our hero did, and he became one of the best. In the movie, a high profile mission seems to go wrong, resulting in his being cut off from his overseers and marked with a bounty on his own head. On his own for the first time in his life, the Hitman has to figure out what went wrong with his hit and who has it in for him, all the while dodging police who are hot on his trail. It may not sound like the premise of a very good movie, but the unknown actor they got to play the title character portrays him with such...sincerity...Hitman is the man-child finding himself cut loose of his superiors for the first time in his life, while still being a very efficient assassin and killer. It's this juxtaposition that carries the events in the film so well, as Hitman is forced to enter society to survive and begins to evolve as a character, even as he takes steps to discover who set him up that inevitably lead to gun blazing fight scenes. It's an action film with a brain, but one that doesn't become too cerebral either. You don't even have to be familiar with the video games to enjoy this movie; I highly recommend it.

----------------
Now playing: Journey - Only The Young
via FoxyTunes

In a bit of odd news that is starting to become strangely familiar, a man survived being shot in the head by a nailgun a while back. Even weirder is that they used a common claw hammer to pull it back out; no surgery involved, except for a few stitches.

A study shows that the rate of arctic warming could triple, potentially bringing the threat of global warming to downright dangerous levels as carbon dioxide and methane gas are released by thawing permafrost.

A recent death here in South Carolina highlights a little-known threat in the form of "dry drowning". It is when you get just enough water in your lungs to asphyxiate you without necessarily drowning on the spot. Victims are reportedly capable of walking around, engaging in conversation, ect; but usually grow fatigued and eventually die as their bodies become starved for oxygen. It is a slow process that isn't always obvious, but read this article to learn some lifesaving warning signs.

Disaster part 2

Fri, 30 May 2008 18:56:34 GMT

School is officially out for the SCSDB people, which means that once again, I'm out of a job. There will be no summer work available at the school this time, which puts a farther strain on my budget. I still have no idea what transportation will cost at the Gathering. I'm beginning to wonder whether or not going might be worth it after all with my financial status so dire. I suppose we will soon find out, as I have already started to make commitments to it. I have commissioned a con badge and the artist is expecting me to be there to pay for it. There is little I can do now aside from move forward.

So it seems the livejournal elections are over. legomymalfoy was the winner. Absolutely none of the people I supported made it into the top three. There has been many claims of fraudulent elections and ballot box stuffing by sockpuppet journals. So my question for you is:

View Poll: Do You Think The Livejournal Election Was A Farce?

Now for some random links:

Here's a list of the top 25 arcade games of all time.

Adding to the list of Darwinianally embarrassing deaths, a man was killed during a spitting contest mishap.

Since today's post focuses on polls and statistics, I thought I'd share this little gem that j_wolfman found:

This chart scientifically proves that RAMBO's shirt does not correlate to his kill count. I suspect a Nobel prize will be forthcoming.