Afghan

This is blog.
This is to appease the teeming masses.
Yes I'm saving the world. You'd be dead by now without me.

Religulous

So, I saw it, in a cool little theater in Raleigh. HA! If you'd seen it you'd understand why that's funny. Anyone else seen it? I imagine it won't get as much serious discussion as Expelled since this movie wasn't trying to appear scientific or having some definite aim. But if anyone wants to talk about it I've got a fickle internet connection.

In Desperation

Everything so far has fallen through. Here's the deal. On October 1 I'm deploying until sometime next June, when I'm getting out of the military. I have this cat, The Professor. He's totally awesome. He's friendly and handsome and he fetches and sleeps under covers and is front declawed/spayed (or neutered. I forget which it is for a guy).

I'm trying to find someone that can keep him until probably Julyish next year, when I move to wherever I'm gonna be for at least a little while. If at all possible, I don't want to get rid of him. He's the coolest cat I've had. If you can take him for that time, or if you know someone that can, please let me know. I'd pay for all his food and cat litter and then some on top. If I can, I'd like him to go somewhere where there's no other animals, just so there's no drama, but if that can't happen, no big deal. He's been fine with every animal I've seen him with after the initial cattiness.

I can ship him anywhere if the person I find to take care of him isn't here in Nebraska.

He's a couple more pictures of him looking cute.

Since When Did Saruman Start Reasoning With Madness?!

I just needed to do one more. And there are some gems on the extended edition too.

Sweded

To anyone that's seen Be Kind Rewind, it apparently has taken off in the real world. Here's a couple pretty sweet examples.

Star Wars


Jurassic Park


The Princess Bride

The Desolation of...

Alright man, here's the freakin deal.

I'm thinking of getting a tattoo. I told some friend's this and one of my friends said, "Oh yeah, death eaters, you and me buddy!" He meant something like this, I'm assuming. Sans the binary.

That's a little too geeky for me. Or let me correct. A little too obviously geeky.

So I've spent a good few hours checking out online what people have. And my god there are some really dumb tattoos. Here are my ideas, really, 2. One is to have something in Gaelic. You know, to honor my Irish heritage and give grandma Irish something to gloat about at the next book-cover-ripper's convention.

But then, there's this:
It's actually a sketch by JRR Tolkien for a possible cover or image on the cover of The Hobbit. It's Smaug.

So this means something to me. Tolkien was kind of a big part of my life growing up. Plus since I'm sort of Chinesey, I could probably pass it off as something along those lines...but...really...it's pretty freaking nerdy. I just don't know man.

I'm looking to get it on the inside of a forearm.

The Slope

There are two things on my mind. One's good, and one's sad. Both are about life.

The first is a movie I watched called Cash Back. It's British and has Oliver Wood from Harry Potter as the main character.

There's a lot of nudity in it. It's about beauty though, and claiming the moment. It's pretty Bohemian, but it's definitely an inspiring movie - inspiring in the way I like it to be. Not in the Seabiscuit or Radio way, where they might as well put it in the "inspiring" genre, but something that lulls you in and makes you care about the characters, and then tells a human story.

I had to put that one first, because the second makes it seem trite. Someone that was a good friend of mine in high school, I just found out, was diagnosed with colon cancer in June. Apparently he has a fairly high chance of survival, but it's just so strange. Anyone past some certain point in life, I would think, would sympathize with this sentiment - but it is not quite scary and not quite sad to me...but just an altogether wordless feeling, to be confronted with death in such a real and immediate way.

I don't know if I've written this before, I may have, but it's worth repeating. It's both horribly tragic and terribly interesting that we should grow to know that we are - and to build relationships with people, to have love, and to have things we build, and accomplish, and overcome - and die. If we live long enough we will see everyone we love die, and die ourselves. And this is certain. That we would pass thru life like a blip on a radar screen, like a vapor, and we know, we know that everything will end. That we could understand this, and still slip toward it completely unable to stop it. Humanity is actually a tragedy.

To Embellish

I suppose it's high time for a post about my life, mainly for my mother and my sister - my mother, who I haven't called in a while, and my sister likewise. The thing about this job is you can only say so much, and then that sort of bleeds in to the rest of your life, like mud spreads. And all of the sudden your life is a gray mesh of classified information.

This is where I am.

I moved to a new squadron. So far I've been made to go on to a shift that's nights...which is awesome...but that includes a 4 hour shift on Saturday - which is decidedly not so. And I was volentold to do some duty at 6 am on a saturday. And I took part in a squadron-wide piss test in order to root our columbian drug lords or some other such nonsense. Welcome!

I hate it.

I'm trying to not be so negative. I remembered, from some previous "I can't talk about this" sort of training, that I had a nervous smile. I don't think I have that anymore. I have a nervous frown, and a calm frown, and a happy frown. Let's not go that far, but we're getting there. I tend to complain. I tend to whine. I should stop that, but then I'm looking for something really good - really good in my life. There are plenty of things I just have to grab hold of and shake and squirm like one of those tube blob things you can't really get a hold of. I'd rather not explain.

Otherwise...not much.

I read less, I write less. Here is a hilight. I'm taking drum lessons and practicing a lot. I've wanted to do this since I was young, but then, we always had guitars around. I play my electronic set and I do drills and etc. It's not ideal, but it's a light, for sure.

Side note. I remember when I used to go to church, in high school, in youth group...we were trying to come up with a new name for the youth group, rather that YOTM - Youth on the Move. My suggestion was B.U.T.T.E.R - Bound Undeniably To The Everlasting Rock. The one that ended up getting voted in to power was Luce or Luchay. The Italian word for light. Pronounced Loo-chay. It wasn't universally accepted. So a few of us painted the podium to say stuff about butter, and had verses about butter, etc. I really enjoyed that time.

Butter.

I'm trying to spend time with people, and I'm getting back in to creativity - being interesting - transcending. There are definitely bright points in my world.

Two Videos

They Find Me, Whisper Things. I assume from the lack of comments no one watched this before it was removed...but you should. Trust me.



And this other one, that I, as an expert in chinese culture and tactics, can confirm is 100% true.

In My Deepest Hour

I was looking thru old blogs on myspace, deleting them, and I landed back on one where I linked to this trailer. I know I talke about movies a lot on this, I don't really feel much like talking about much of anything right now...much...but I keep writing cause of the therapy in it. Cause it's easier to blog than to skywrite, and better than yelling.

The guys that are involved in these movies, including sin city, the spirit, and watchmen, which is coming out, are really doing something interesting with movies. They're doing what salvador dali did with painting.

We don't care anymore about what the world is, we care about what we can make it. That's interesting when it starts going in to colors, and we start making people look like people never could, and make places this world could never have. I wonder how far we can take the surrealizing of existence and still be able to relate to us humans.

Yeah

Mr. Mostafolese

Before I go see Dark Knight again

This is a cool website that was on www.digg.com . This guy strapped a camera to his cat that takes periodic pictures. It's actually pretty cool.

Why So Serious?

Two views from the midnight show last night:



The second shirt was made for lindsey - the girl you can see in the right of the screen there, but she thought it was too douchey or something. I had no such qualms and wouldn't let something of that caliber go to waste.

My analysis: It's a long movie. Longer than I expected, and longer, I think, than whoever wrote the climax expected. I may need to see it during the day because at some point it started making me feel tired. That was probably at about the 2 am point, so I need to separate the time fatigue from that of the movie. Nevertheless, I've seen this hinted at by some critics as well, that the plot is rather convoluted. It's concerned with one thing for most of the movie, and then some other things for the epilogue, so that I think you have a difficulty feeling a sense of resolution.

Heath's performance was by far the best part of the movie, I thought. That and the writing for the joker was very clever. I found myself waiting for him to be back on screen when he wasn't. The schemes they involved him in are very clever, and his character is very interesting, and well portrayed. Oscar worthy? I'm not sure. It's hard for me to separate the hype from the performance at this point. I wanted him and the movie to succeed, both of which happened, I think, but I also think I don't go in to most movies with the movie already so far ahead.

All in all a very different movie from Batman Begins. In some ways much more real.

Oh No!

The Undesigned

This is the post. This is the reckoning. When the children of men dance beneath the timid starlight, then the true feelings emerge. This is the photo dump. This is the unknown rejection. If you design a skyscraper, it will fall. And paints slowly slurp into the gutter. This is as far as I'll go. This is the fire water. This is that digital talking. 00010100 10100100 01110 01111000. Picture and color. Design and randomness. This is the head.

There is no design. Only order.

If I look repeated, deal with it. Lastly

WHAT!?

Here is #1 of the Six Worst Thing Harry Potter's Success Has Wrought, which is not all that interesting of an article. I'll write about my own life one of these days, but in the meantime, read what came out as number one below. What the hell!? -

General fan wankery amongst hardcore Harry Potter devotees is the stuff of legend. Harry Potter has, as of this writing, 360,039 entires on Fanfiction.net alone. For comparison, every single Final Fantasy game combined has only 48,977 entries. Harry Potter fan wankery also has earned the distinct award of being by far the gayest of any fandom out there that isn't related in any way to furries or something, which is quite a feat considering how much Yaoi is out there.

If there's any one thing to nail down how specifically and completely fucked up a lot of the hardcore, sexually frustrated Harry Potter fans are, it's MPREG. For those (luckily) uninitiated, MPREG stands for Male Impregnation. Or maybe not, since I refuse to look too specifically into the matter, but the gist of it is that there is a large contingent of grown men and women writing, drawing, and fantasizing about Severus Snape getting a large, distended belly that is filled with the seed of Harry or Draco or Ron or even all three, utterly defying any sense of logic and human decency with the simple theory that Harry Potter has magic, anything can happen!

I leave you now with an excerpt from Bleudiablo's MPREG Harry/Snape fanfic, "Someone Else's Father":

She blinked then moved her gaze from Harry's abdomen to Severus, "He's aborting."

"But there is no blood," Severus replied, not arguing about the fact that his mate was -had been- pregnant, many male wizards, especially powerful ones could get pregnant.

"It's a magical abortion, his body is reabsorbing everything, I doubt he even knew he was pregnant but he no longer is. I think the shock of finding out about you and father made something in his subconscious abort." Severus shivered and grabbed his mate's hand, he was sorry that they wouldn't be having a child soon but Harry was more important, "Will he be okay?"

"Yes, he should wake up in about an hour but will be weak for about a week, he shouldn't do any unnecessary or strong spells but there is no real danger with magical abortions. I'll contact Albus tell him he'll need someone to teach both of your classes tomorrow."

QoS

I'm amazed that they're making this movie so quickly after these events took place in my life.



**edit - better quality video. Just ignore the black at the end, I guess it needed to be longer to make it HD

Given

Shoot the wings off the fly. I think Wanted can't figure out what kind of movie it wants to be, or what sort of statement it wants to make. Apparently in the graphic novel this fraternity of assassins is a group of supervillians that decide to get together and get their revenge on anyone that ever made them feel insignificant. That takes the form of killing and raping, etc.

You can sort of see that in some parts of this movie, but it's like they took aspects of that and yet tried to make these people a little more hollywood worthy. There's some sort of half-assed tension between using their powers for selfishness or following "the code," but it's pretty artificially inserted. What ends up being the main thrust of the movie is a "twist" that I feel like you can see coming from pretty early on.

That being said, I liked it, and I'd see it again. Why? There are some pretty amazing action sequences. It's matrix-esk in that aspect. The explanation for these abilities is that some people can raise their heart rate huge amounts to pump copious amounts of adrenaline into their blood and essentially slow down time. Oddly enough, this strikes me as somehow less realistic than virtual people being jacked into a huge, world-creating computer. This lets them shoot wings off flies, block bullets with other bullets, and other sorts of things that, come on, are pretty sweet. So despite it's sometimes awkward dialogue and wandering plotline, it's does what it's really supposed to pretty damn well.

It also shows Angelina's butt.

Redeem

What a scam. What are casinos exactly? They're basically like video games that if you beat the whole game, maybe you get the price you paid to play. Except way faster. So if I sit down at a blackjack table, the dealer's like "No, you didn't beat it. Okay try again? Nope, not this time either. Oh! You did really well this time! Damn, looks like I did better."

This "adult" entertainment is just like a less fun, more expensive version of the arcade. Who was the first person that learned to manipulate people so well? Probably the ancestor of Donald Trump or something. Cause I tell you what, even a crap casino like the one in Council Bluffs has gotta pull in several hundred thousand at least every night. Just get some money to start a casino and you're set. $5 Blackjack tables are like giving out free samples of heroine. What a funny species we are.

Crumpet

Dreary dreary. My cat puked twice the last night. I had to get up and clean it at like 1 am and 6 pm. You can hear when he starts heaving, and then I get up and grab it with some paper towels and spray it with carpet stuff.

Dear past. I have to sensor myself on my blog. I've been writing though. And some good stuff has come out. Gooooood stuff. I just write without thinking. Like splattering paint on a canvas, it just spills out. Creativity is just about making things that come to mind - and then the sensor portion afterward. But that's easy isn't it? We're all our worst critic. The hard is the creating.

Creation is an act of sheer will, said someone whose name I think was Hammond in a Michael Crichton novel. Or maybe it was just the movie Jurassic Park. I read that book in like 4th grade, and wanted to be a paleontologist like every 4th grader around that time. Then I discovered that just like Indiana Jones doesn't spend his working days running away from giant rolling stone balls, so paleontologists also don't fight real life dinosaurs.

Turpentine. Blastysis, and dearmo.

Recluse

Why am I having waiter dreams? And moreover why are they in McDonalds? If you've ever been a waiter, you probably sympathize. But usually they come in the few weeks or months when you first start working someplace. Oh no, I forgot that or...I've made this table wait forever or...How am I gonna do this special order.

But last night the McDonald's customers in my head had me running around getting chocolate mousse covered pretzels and low carb fish hash browns. At one point I was putting the order in to the computer and the food just popped out of the machine - then I had to work backwards cause it didn't give me a receipt for everything. My manager was some big gangly dark looking guy that couldn't figure out what was going on and didn't seem to care.

How very strange. I spent all of yesterday shut in and maybe it's cabin fever or something. I'd better go out and gamble away some money or anything else to get me out of these three rooms.

Domino

Today I evalled. I'm not going to bother explaining what it means. It is the anticlimax of my henceforth existence. This 10 hour flight and everyone is too tired to move at the end, and a little too bitter to give where credit is due. It is this landing and this long transit across the united states.

And all the souls I know are on night shift, and it's a wednesday, which means I celebrate with a bottle of smirnoff ice, alone on my couch.

I may watch the daily show, I may read something, I may go to the casino. My apartment smells like onions, like a rotting box - the life is drained out of me. I eat because I must and I let my eyes tumble out of their sockets like bowling balls in the alley down the street. The one I'm not in.

Here is the transparency, here is the melancholy, here is the roadblock. The paths of blue open before me, as does the sand. There is no more excuse.