A Movie Review

dragonball evolution
---
So last night the movie Dragonball Evolution got leaked, in English, onto youtube. Since it was about 2 a.m. and I was bored as hell, yet not tired, I decided to browse the /tv/ boards. Lo and behold, there was the link. So I decided to watch it.

After the first 10 minutes, I thought to myself "Well, this isn't that bad. Maybe I'd see it in theaters with friends." There were the standard deviations that occur when translating a 10 year old anime into a live action film, so although not blown away, I could accept the movie for what it was.

Well, it only went downhill from there. The poor quality of the video, combined with intense fatigue from the previous days of punishment at work and school didn't help it in any way either. With about 35 minutes left of the movie, I decided to IM a friend of mine to share some of the pain with...

(commentary inserted randomly in bold)

tomkamrad (2:24:07 AM): dude

TDan953 (2:24:26 AM): ?

---

Auto Response from tomkamrad (2:24:26 AM): flip the trap

---

tomkamrad (2:24:43 AM): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M7lgNEQKto&feature=PlayList&p=26583D10695E45D3&index=0

tomkamrad (2:24:54 AM): this is unfortunately REAL

TDan953 (2:25:39 AM): Oh gad

tomkamrad (2:25:57 AM): Im almost done watching it all

TDan953 (2:26:03 AM): x_X

tomkamrad (2:26:29 AM): I guess I'm a movie masochist

TDan953 (2:26:51 AM): Apparently that movie did really well in Asia
(proof that Asian box offices mean shit)

tomkamrad (2:27:33 AM): Well, it's nothing at all like the anime

TDan953 (2:27:41 AM): Yeah...

tomkamrad (2:27:47 AM): Yamcha is a total bro

TDan953 (2:27:53 AM): Speaking of which, did you see they're redoing the anime?

tomkamrad (2:27:54 AM): like, he actually says bro all the fucking time

TDan953 (2:27:59 AM): rofl

tomkamrad (2:28:04 AM): redone anime?!

TDan953 (2:28:09 AM): http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/03/16/dragonball-evolution-tops-asian-box-offices/

TDan953 (2:28:10 AM): Yeah dude

TDan953 (2:28:57 AM): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl-EUfU_fcA

TDan953 (2:29:23 AM): http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-03-02/toei-confirms-dragon-ball-kai-is-edited-to-follow-manga

tomkamrad (2:30:32 AM): woah, this is totally awesome
(seriously, I'm kinda excited)

tomkamrad (2:31:06 AM): okay, so theres only about 20mins left of the movie, and hes just learning kamehameha

TDan953 (2:31:19 AM): wat

tomkamrad (2:31:39 AM): and chichis massive father never makes an appearence
(I was really hoping for that massive man to make it to the big screen)

TDan953 (2:31:44 AM): =(

tomkamrad (2:33:03 AM): im crying

TDan953 (2:33:13 AM): QQ

tomkamrad (2:33:28 AM): WHO GAVE THIS THE OKAY

TDan953 (2:33:35 AM): WRYYYYYYYYY

tomkamrad (2:33:58 AM): AT ONE POINT SOMEBODY THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA AND WILLINGLY PUT OUT MILLIONS TO MAKE THIS MOVIE

TDan953 (2:34:14 AM): Apparently they're making more.
(I just died a little inside after hearing this)

tomkamrad (2:35:22 AM): bulma is like a weapons master

TDan953 (2:35:30 AM): psyduck.png

tomkamrad (2:35:33 AM): lol

tomkamrad (2:35:41 AM): stop 4channing me

TDan953 (2:35:46 AM): lulz

TDan953 (2:35:55 AM): So, what've you been up to these days?

tomkamrad (2:36:19 AM): school, work, r9k

TDan953 (2:36:29 AM): Ah

TDan953 (2:36:33 AM): Where're you working?

tomkamrad (2:36:38 AM): started doing artworks again

tomkamrad (2:36:42 AM): buddy's

TDan953 (2:36:48 AM): orly

tomkamrad (2:36:54 AM): f'sho

TDan953 (2:37:00 AM): Got anything you can show me?

tomkamrad (2:37:10 AM): not currently

tomkamrad (2:37:22 AM): i need to sit my ass down and scan stuff for once

tomkamrad (2:37:46 AM): OMG ROSHI JUST USED KAMEHAMEHA TO BRING GOKU BACK TO LIFE

TDan953 (2:37:59 AM): wat

TDan953 (2:38:02 AM): Does that even make sense?

tomkamrad (2:38:11 AM): HE REENERGIZED HIM
(total bullshit. THEY SHOOT THE ENERGYBEAMS TO KILL SHIT not heal the sick and help the poor)

tomkamrad (2:38:16 AM): phaillllll

TDan953 (2:38:47 AM): Indeed

tomkamrad (2:39:05 AM): this movie is so jumpy

tomkamrad (2:39:22 AM): 7 minutes ago, goku learned kamehameha then started kissing chichi

tomkamrad (2:39:53 AM): hes already died in a gunfight, and now theyre fleeing this temple because piccolo has all 7 balls and is about to destroy the world

TDan953 (2:40:14 AM): >_>

TDan953 (2:40:23 AM): This movie sounds impossibly horrible.

tomkamrad (2:40:43 AM): apparently now, piccolo was sealed away 2000 years ago

tomkamrad (2:41:18 AM): hes a fucking alien

tomkamrad (2:41:24 AM): this isnt inuyasha

TDan953 (2:41:42 AM): alksdjfawelfkejafelk

TDan953 (2:41:49 AM): I think we're being trolled
(i know we're being trolled at this point)

tomkamrad (2:42:02 AM): real hardcore

TDan953 (2:42:07 AM): 10/10

tomkamrad (2:42:38 AM): okay, 12 minutes left of the movie

tomkamrad (2:42:49 AM): goku just got in a hummer accident

tomkamrad (2:43:02 AM): and walks out of the wreckage in his orange uniform

tomkamrad (2:43:12 AM): he wasnt wearing it before

tomkamrad (2:43:50 AM): now theres and eclipse

tomkamrad (2:44:07 AM): and goku is turning into a wolfman

tomkamrad (2:44:15 AM): i suppose its supposed to be his ape form

TDan953 (2:45:10 AM): =|

TDan953 (2:45:39 AM): ...Wait, eclipse?

TDan953 (2:45:46 AM): Isn't it supposed to be on the full moon?

tomkamrad (2:45:46 AM): oh yeah

tomkamrad (2:45:57 AM): theres an eclipse thats going to end the world

tomkamrad (2:46:25 AM): because its the sign of the apocalpse

TDan953 (2:46:38 AM): >_>

tomkamrad (2:46:56 AM): bulma is kinda hot
(really, she was)

tomkamrad (2:47:14 AM): youtube quality video doesn't help though

tomkamrad (2:48:01 AM): also, still no flying nimbus, extendopole, dinosaurs, krillin, or red ribbon army

TDan953 (2:48:22 AM): =<

tomkamrad (2:48:46 AM): I MUST HAVE FAITH IN WHO I AM
(so deep, im getting this tatood on myself one day)

tomkamrad (2:51:26 AM): THATS THE FUCKING DRAGON?
(phailtrain has officially left the station at this point)

tomkamrad (2:51:51 AM): OMG WORST MOVIE EVER

TDan953 (2:52:13 AM): D:

tomkamrad (2:52:20 AM): hooooooooooly shit

tomkamrad (2:52:58 AM): no no no no no no

tomkamrad (2:53:22 AM): i cannot believe i just watched this whole thing
(90 minutes of torture, and its 3a.m. to boot, my god i was tired as shit at this point)

TDan953 (2:53:38 AM): I think you're required by law to commit seppuku now

TDan953 (2:54:02 AM): The founding fathers foresaw this movie. It's in the motherfucking Constitution

TDan953 (2:54:59 AM): That said, I should be getting to bed. See ya.

(i dont blame him for leaving at this point)

La la da da da...

flip the trap
---
I skip class a couple times a week now. I don't even care or feel any sort of remorse or obligation. Out of sight, out of mind I suppose. It's been a couple weeks for my bullshit LIT class, so I think I'll go tomorrow just because it's been so long.

I've been thinking of creating a pen name for myself, but make him 45 years older and have him die soon with all of his works unpublished. This way I'll be able to have a career that is entirely posthumous, yet still get the benefits of all the fame and money at the same time. Ridiculous yet awesome.

I need to get out on some sort of vacation, or at least out of my house during the daylight hours. The past couple months have been a blur of school, work, and sleep, with all of my free time and leisure taking place when it's dark out. I need to brighten up my life because it's making me slow and depressed.

I had something funny to add, but it escapes me for the moment...

Dog Tongue

>oops, wrong button
>woah, hell of a party
---
I think it's funny when my dog yawns or opens her mouth really quick and her tongue flops around.
No tongue control, how weird.

On a Mothafuckin' Boat!

>i hate work
>on a mothafuckin boat
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU

I've watched this video probably 10 times in the past 24 hours. I was surprised that T-Pain would do something like this, but after seeing it, I only like him more.

Off to work...

Feeling Change

>strippers named cinnamon, more chips than pentium HOLY SHIT
>and I've got this crazy feeling
>5 bank accounts, 3 oz., and 2 vehicles
---
Getting into my car the other day, I swear I could smell spring. It wasn't cold outside, just cool. A breeze came along as I was opening my door, and it didn't have a chilly scent to it, but something fresh and alive, not warm yet like the summertime, but distinct from the sterile, bitter scent of winter. It felt good to be able to know that the season will soon be over.

Who Knows What's up?

>me and icarus burn together
>i roll with ma shit off safety
---
I have no idea what's been wrong with me the past 3 days. All I want to do is sleep, and I don't even care. I skipped class yesterday and today so I could sleep for an extra 6 hours. Yesterday, I got my paycheck, chilled with some friends for a couple hours, then came home and fell asleep on the couch. I don't even want to be awake right now. I don't feel depressed, just really really tired and a little apathetic.

On a lighter note:

"Just think about it. We'd be a beacon of light for the gay community."
"Oh yeah?"
"Kinda like the gay Martin Luther Kings. Only better!"
"Well, wouldn't we be Martin Luther Queens then?"

I'm in bed

>me and icarus burn together
---
So I finally got my laptop, the Asus eee 900HA. I gotta say, besides the really small keyboard, this thing is pretty damn awesome. It's super small so I can easily take this thing everywhere and I'll probably get around to downloading some games for this thing, probably a bunch of emulators. It'll be like a completely portable old school gaming machine. With a couple RPGs and some quick mindless distractions like Columns I think I'll be well entertained wherever I go for quite some time.

Well, I suppose it's time to defragment the drives and whatnot to make sure this thing will run to it's full potential. I can't wait to see what else I can do with this thing.

Rick Warren

>interesting speech eh?
---
What the fuck was up with Rick Warren and his nice long prayer? Shit pissed me off. Ugh, I can't even believe they gave him that time on the podium. At the presidential inauguration of all places too. His politics are hateful and inconsiderate of anything other than whatever church faction he pledged himself to. How incredibly stupid and ignorant.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't believe that anyone should be able to speak their mind, cause I'm all about free expression and anti-censorship and whatnot. Really though, I think something needs to be done about big ethical foundations found in religion and whatnot. We need to somehow decide once and for all what is acceptable and what isn't when dealing with all these religious nuts.

Obviously, as any semi-rational child will figure, their whole idea and concept of god is completely false. The religious leaders of the world have been slowly changing their positions and backing up for hundreds of years now. Why is it that a few hundred years ago the Bible was taken as fact, while today much of it is either open for interpretation or considered highly symbolic? Wake the fuck up and realize that none of that shit is true. How can the flawless word of God just magically be reinterpreted and have it's meanings and histories changed based on the current state of human cultural development? Just like some ass backwards textbook of mysticism, it keeps undergoing revisions and new editions, only instead of actually presenting any sort of factual, hard evidence from the time of scripture or even any sort of miracles from today, the meanings just get reassigned to keep people doing whatever it is the church wants.

In all seriousness, we need to have a final, end all decision on the validity of the religions of the world. These billions of foolish people all believe in their one god who will save them while simultaneously thinking, and possibly preaching, how every other of the religions out there are false. Something is seriously wrong with that. It defies all logic.

Yes, I'm a complete atheist. Agnosticism is even worse than being religious because either you believe in a god or not, easy as that. However, I only use these terms in the sense of religious beliefs. That's because even with science as the finest tool for deciphering what's out there in the universe, we still don't have any idea about the cause of everything, or what will happen when it ends. Obviously something happened, and the word "god" is so loaded with so many different meanings at once that it's foolish to use it to describe whatever it was that started whatever our reality is. Besides that, were relatively new on the evolutionary chain as humans. Maybe in 25,000 years some new evolutionary trend will be fully implemented and we'll see everything in a whole new, clearer light.

New. New. New.

>new ppg@8
---
Well, today was a pretty exciting day. I cleaned and completely reorganized my room and closet, started getting my freshly "xp upgraded" computer back in action, got a few new albums for the music collection, and even saw the new Powerpuff Girls episode. It was awesome.

Besides that, I now have Mass Effect and Spore installed and running smoothly. I just got to the land animal phase on Spore, but I know what's in store ahead and I'm anxious to see what kind of awesome stuff I can create. The amount of freedom you have is so great, especially when designing your creature. Buildings should be fun too.

Well, this is getting cut short because the cough syrup just hit me like a truck.

Just Gotta Ignore It...

>tatted up and fatted up
---
As seemingly good as my life has been recently, the world itself is the same old shitty place. I can't get over how fucking much my books cost, and continue to cost me since I don't even own all of them yet. 110$ for a book I know I'll use maybe 5 times over the next 3 months. Not even 5 important times. Bullshit. The schools and book companies are gouging my wallet like no other. Their profits have to be ridiculous.

This past week at school was going pretty well for me. Good classes, nice people, decent teachers, all arranged in a tight fitting, efficient schedule. I have free time in the afternoon and actually do homework the night it's assigned all while having time to burn on my own endeavors.

Today I realized why my week was going so well - I wasn't scheduled for any of those days at work, and really, I didn't even think about that place for a second. I didn't miss it one bit. Now I realize that work is for the most part, the cause of all the stress in my life. Every night of every weekend is spent there, giving me no time to go out and see other people. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are busy days, and therefore I do lots of work for long and painful shifts. Yeah, they're maybe only 6 or 7 hours, but when they last from 4pm onward the majority of your day, and the time you could be spending with others, takes place in a miserable little kitchen run by confused, miserable people. After a single shift today, I was sick of that place. I need to get out. How do the managers work 50 hours a week there? How? It's got to be soul crushing.

Walkie Talkie

>that beautiful, intoxicating yellow house. and that horrendous landscaping next door...
---
Yesterday, on the last full night of my little winter vacation I can honestly say that I had the most interesting, exciting, exhausting time in who knows how long. Everything I did was fun, memorable even. Imagine that.

I got off work, bundled up, and Neal and I trekked through the snow and fracturing ice to go see the fort for the first time in months.I think that only a picture can do this any sort of justice. The woods were dead and bare, but so bright with moonlight. Besides a few unidentifiable animal tracks, we were the only signs of life. It felt good to seem like the only humans on earth. I felt total disconnect from all the shit I have to see, hear, smell, think about, and deal with in my day to day affairs. Everything just melted into the snow and got left behind.

Afterwards, we met up with one of Neal's friends and her sister and wandered the neighborhood for at least an hour, just walking in the middle of the snow filled streets. It was cold, I was congested, but it was a long and good conversation with some good people.

I could have gone to bed happy, but then I got a call from Andy, my coworker, and he wanted to go sledding at Ford Field. I decided to meet up with them, even though it was already well past midnight and my legs were sore.

I ended up waiting 25 minutes at the park for them to get there, all while trying to get there as fast as possible because I figured they'd be waiting for me. I wasn't mad though, I wasn't even that annoyed, and when everyone showed up we had a blast sledding until around 2:30. Good times.

Tomorrow is my first day of classes for the new semester. I don't want to go at all. Should I?

Immune

glasses glasses!
---
So, on my quest to try to stop wasting time getting messed up I decided to try to take out what was left of the new years beers tonight. I just drank 10 beers, and I really don't even feel that large of a buzz. Granted, they were Busch Light - but still. I just took a 20 minute walk and I didn't feel tipsy or clumsy or much of anything.

Besides the 120 oz. of beer, I had a pretty awesome night. Neal and Aaron came over and we just talked for 3 hours straight. We talked about abortion, human nature, life, feelings, society, 2012, and total social transparency. It was filled with debate, opinion, and argument. It was both nerve wracking and relaxing. It was probably the best Friday night I've had in a long while.

Here's to more nights like this one. Cheers.

Who Knew the New Me?

>I want to publicly denounce somebody.
---
New Years resolutions: Work out, stop all the sugar intake, work hard, don't waste time or money.

Working out hasn't been all that hard. Maybe I'm not doing it right, or maybe I'm underestimating myself. Maybe it's just easy for me. Maybe anything is easy for me. Anything. That would be great. Phenomenal. I think it's worth looking into.

As part of my full self redo, I'm also done with smoking for a few months. It's an investment that takes time and money,two things that most of human life revolves around almost exclusively, and two things I always seem to not have enough of. The last of the ganj will be gone either tonight or tomorrow. After that, no restock, no calls, no matching, no free hits. Picard, the hookah is getting washed and scrubbed tomorrow, Tassadar is getting soaked in hot water and soap as I write this. I have a single zig zag left, but not enough to fill it. That goes in the trash I guess.

I just washed my bathroom clean of anything left behind. Ashes, trash I discarded, crap on the windowsil. I'll mop and vacuum tomorrow since I don't have work.

My room is already messy from the New Year's eve party. Clothes and water bottles are discarded all over the floor. There are bits of trash I either missed or keep ignoring on the floor. Nothing major, nothing disgusting, but it's not clean. I want to reorganize my room too. We shall see.

An Anecdotal Adventure

>L4D
---
A little anecdote: A few weekends ago I had the flu. Bad. Worse than ever. I was, for about 3 hours, puking up yellow stomach acid and water because my stomach was that empty. Really unpleasant, especially when coupled with the shits. This lasted all night, and in the morning I decided to take a super long hot shower. I ran it until the full blast hot water ran cold. There was no more warm water left in our entire house, or our neighbors house I would guess.

Anyway, what the fuck is up with sharting? That's terrible. You go to sneeze, cough, fart, or whatever and a little liquid shit pops out to say "hi" allover your ass cheeks and inside of your shorts. I think everyone's reaction is the same when this happens too. You don't go "Wait. Hm. What was it that just happened? I'm not quite sure - I need to investigate.". You know what just happened. There's nothing else it could be. You, a full grown adult, just shit yourself while laying on the nice couch. Why couldn't it have been the loveseat? When this happens, you go "Fuck.", realize the "being a full grown adult" thing, and then say "Nobody must ever know of this! I need to get this out of here fast!" and proceed do everything in their power to erase any evidence of the event happening.

Well, the clothes get cleaned up really good, wiped clean with toilet paper and drenched in a half bottle of laundry pre-wash stain remover. You check your surroundings. Maybe something else got shit on it somehow? It's likely that there isn't. Why are you inspecting all the lamp shades? "Didn't I adjust the lamp a few minutes ago?" you think in panic. "Was it before or after this incident." then "Or was it this one? The nice navy blue on from IKEA".

The obligatory shower is just as bad. How do you get it off the fastest? Let the hot water run down it? That'll take forever, and it gets allover your legs and feet. Your feet are bad enough without a nice layer of shit on them. You don't want to use your hands either, this situation is gross enough already. Poop hands should probably be avoided.

The shower part is a lot worse when you have to do it with cold water, like when you take a 30 minute hot shower earlier in the day and use it all up.

Eventually, something will happen that leads to cleanliness. I don't how to explain it without watching every episode of MacGyver because out of a seriously limited number of cleaning supplies and tools everything will get taken care of through some ingenious manipulation.

12.25.2008

>VOGUE< --- It's finally Christmas. I never thought this year would come to a close this soon. I also never thought that holiday shopping could be such a pain in the ass. I always do all my shopping online, and now after doing the whole thing the "normal" way, I don't see why anyone would ever go to a store except for food. Lines, people, parking spots, dealing with cash, looking for stuff without the help of a search bar. What a headache. I bought and received some pretty awesome gifts this year. For my brothers, I got Adam a Boo pillow from Mario which I know is totally kickass and a Jack Skellington figure. Randy got a Japanese Mega Blok model of Palkia from Pokemon Pearl which is probably the coolest thing I've ever bought for anybody. Nathan got a Japanese Lucario action figure and some Bleach character trinkets I figured he could use for his snowboarding gear. My mom got baking sheets. Not badass or anything, but she wanted them, so that was successful. My dad got some thermal jeans from the army surplus store, and my aunt got an Amy Winehouse CD. She'd been asking me to burn her a CD of her music for about a month now, but I don't have any, so I figured an album would be perfect.

As for me, I think I hit the jackpot this year. I feel almost guilt ridden for all the awesome shit I got. Season 1 of Dexter which I've been dying to watch, a Quaran, Left 4 Dead on PC which was also really anticipated, Boom Blox for Wii, Madonna's Immaculate Collection, Panic at the Disco's Live in Chicago album which I didn't even know existed, Spore, a printer/scanner, some weights, a couple hundred dollars in gift cards and cash, and a new wallet.

I'm really excited to get the scanner hooked up sometime today or tomorrow. I have a couple hundred pages of sketches I've done over the years and scattered around the house, and now I can make 'em digital. I think I'll even take the time to ink and color some of them digitally and see how nice I can make some of my stuff look. I bet half of my stuff will look like complete shit if I go through and look at it now, but whatever. It's artwork, my artwork, and I didn't make it so I could throw it away. Now, hopefully this will lead to me working on my biggest dream project of all - a "graphic novel" (wtf how pretentious) or some short flash cartoons. I know how to animate alright, I just need a way to not have to draw everything by mouse and the scanner should help me.

Well, I'm out of mimosa, and I think I need more to keep the holiday buzz going. We couldn't do this sober now could we?

I Was Molested at Lunch

>kinda shitty
---
The only choices for lunch in my house today were ramen noodles, instant ramen noodles, and Appian Way pizza with no cheese, just sauce and dough.

I had about 3 clean dishes in the cupboard consisting of a large plastic plate, a FOX 2 NEWS mug, and a ludicrously small cereal bowl. Oh, and I had a single fork sitting in the drawer. No other silverware.

Cringing from my drastically narrowed choices of cuisine, I went for the ever popular and flavorful INSTANT RAMEN affectionately named "Mr. Noodle" which oddly enough sounds like a pet name for a child molester. It was labeled "vegetable flavored" and by the small foil packet of freeze dried peas, microscopic carrot pieces, and corn kernels I suppose this is what was being referred to as the vegetables.

There were sufficient amounts of noodle, but the broth was bitter like most vegetable broth is. The recessitated vegetables were passable, but they all smelled like onion. So did the broth I guess. So does my breath.

To top it all off, it all came packeged in nature friendly styrofoam and shrinkwrap. I'm offended at this poor attempt at food. Too bad it makes up a large portion of my diet.

Olympic Ping Pong

>(cell phone)
---
It's on odd though to think that my father will be 45 soon. I'll be there one day. It's so far away, but I can see it coming quick. Hell, I just realized that the past 15 months have been a blur, and I'll be 20 in just under a year. Twenty years old and I still feel like a fucking child.

I need to get out of my nest here in scenic Dearborn and do something new. I need to move out of here; move to a distant college town where people are my age and I won't be so cutoff from everything. All my old friends moved out of town to their respective schools, and I know they love it. Why didn't I do it from the start? I can feel them slipping away too. Even the friends I hung with last year don't talk to me anymore. They don't call or text me. They never see me at school. They just went their seperate ways, even though they live right here, so close and still so distant.

I don't care for LCD Soundsystem. They are intensely boring.

Back to dissecting my ever more apparent sense of mortality, I am baffled by the though of the people I know actually dying. One day, they will simply cease to be who they are. No more thoughts, emotions, movements, words. Just their body. The minds' hardware. Everything that really made them who they were, a human being, will be lost forever. Then, the body dissolves and thats that. It's all so futile.

I seem to have nothing optimistic to say.

No, actually I do.

Fall is beautiful. This really is my favorite time of the year by far. The wheather, leaves, crisp air, holidays. It's awesome. I think I do more now. I love the outdoors, I take my dog for walks in the woods, sit on the porch and talk with my friends, and leave the windows in my room cracked just so that the air is chill and my soft, warm bed is all the more inviting.

That reminds me, I have a heated blanket sitting in my closet. It's a real pain in the ass sometimes, but I still use it daily during the winter. It's got two different temperature controllers so that each side of the bed can be individually heated, but all that leads to is a rats nest of tangled electrical cords.

It's got a little feature that makes it so that after 8 hours of use it auto shuts off and "locks" itself so that you can't overuse it until it bursts into flames. Well, that's what it's supposed to do. I'm not quite sure what happened to the sensor, but at random times the thing will go into lockdown mode. Or if I'm especially lucky, only half of the blanket will work thanks to two different controls reading two different sensors. My right shoulder and thigh are sweating, yet my torso and left half of my body seem to be frostbitten. Splendid. I've only used this thing for 3 months, last winter when it was brand new, so I like to think that this is by no means my fault.

Back in Business?

>beatbox my heartbeat. untie my shoes like I did my heartstrings
---
Hello world. It's been a while. My life has changed. No, my mind has changed - I just see life much differently now. My life's changed too. I guess.

I'm back into playing WoW, I play TF2 almost religiously now, and I'm only taking 9 credits in school this semester. I haven't been scheduled to work in a week. I like my classes, they are easy. I'm pretty much completely alone all day long, every day. By the time people start coming home, I'm either just starting to go to class, or have had to work. I feel insane. I think I'm starting to dislike other people around me. I'm uncomfortable. I think I'm going to start working out next week after my birthday on the 23rd.

Exile

>Bambino...
---
Well, it's just days before school starts. I feel like hell. I feel useless, dumb, blind, unwanted. I feel I need some sort of break to make myself better. Get rid of this sickness called reality. I guess I contracted it through an epiphany. My sluggish reactions to what life has thrown at me has caused everything I deluded myself into loving to come crashing down on me. I can't comprehend how to decide what it all means, so finding the meaning of the answer is impossible.

I need some sort of escape from my body and earth. From the universe. From suddenly realizing that everything that will ever happen and has ever happened means nothing in the grand scheme of everything or anything.

How do I lift curses?

Clarity

>someone is calling my name from the back of the restaurant
---
Lately, I've been having lengthy periods of a sort of nihilistic clarity. My mind just focuses on the larger picture of everything that goes on around me and it makes a sort of sense out of the world and universe. I swear that within the past few days I have learned the reason why everyone acts the way they do, how the universe works, and how it began and will end. It's bizarre, and scary, and unsettling.

Boggled...

>hey baby i hear the blues a callin'
>tossed salad and scrambled eggs
---
I don't even know what to say right now, my life is a mess. A horrible, horrible mess. Shit is fucked up. I'm not even sure where to begin the reconstruction. Relationships? Work? School? Home? Myself?

One thing I do know is that I'm on nasaimages.org. I'm fucking blown away. Maybe it's because I haven't been drunk in a while and I forgot the awesome feeling, but just looking at these photographs of hundreds of galaxies each with billions of stars, I can't help but want to simultaneously kill myself out of fear of uselessness and celebrate at the beautiful chaos of the universe. I'm fucking torn between the two. I've never felt so powerful and so weak at the same time. The mere fact that all of this exists is so excruciatingly wonderful and terrifying at the same time is almost like ecstasy.

Summer Blues: Part I

>looking for nothing
>dinner bah
---
My fucking life. Shit.

I can't even begin to explain what the hell is wrong with me lately. I have no motivation to do anything. It seems that work is the only fun I have all day, and that's definitely a stretch.

I can't read, I can't bring myself to play WoW, I can't make music, watch movies, eat something, anything. I just have no desire to do any of it. The only problem is what I do have attention for. I just tried drawing while listening to System of a Down. I came up with a face, and a little hair before losing all interest in art in general.

4chan doesn't amuse like it used to, nor does gamefaqs, facebook, myspace, wis.dm, or stumble. No one emails me, the only 2 blogs I read rarely update (kinda like me, heh...), and there are so few people that are entertaining on AIM it's sad.

Anyway, BAWWWWWWWW.

A New Job?

>I'm just waiting for your call/you're just looking for a pulse
>into dust
---
So I guess that I have gotten a new job that doesn't suck ass. A new job as in something that could actually go on a resume. As in not in the food service industry.

So, I'm working in the offices that ABC owns in the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit on the pilot for their upcoming show The Prince of Motor City. I'm pretty excited to see what's in store. I know I probably won't be working on the show itself due to my lack of knowledge in anything production related, but I'll still get to see the show go from blueprints to real life.

Now, the only bad parts about this job are the commute downtown, it'll probably only last for another 2 months max, and I don't know how long of a workday I'm cut out for. Whatever though, cause now I'll have real experience with stuff, and make some good money doing it. Well, 130$/day is good money for me considering I make maybe 45$ a day at Buddy's.

Here I am, now where are the past three weeks?

>drop a heart/break a name
---
So here I am, still off the track of my life. I feel so much slipping away, missed opportunities, jokes, moments, people. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm in a terrible grind right now, merely weeks into my summer break. It's torturous. I need more excitement in my life, but I don't know where to get it from.

Drinking is always a fun escape, but I need new places and faces, I can't do the usual "world explorer" bit I like to do with gas prices this high, and there's also the little fact that I've explored so much stuff with my friends I have left little to be found. I think Toledo was the farthest any of them were willing to go on my adventures, but I know I'd take them out to California if they had the time and I had the money.

I can barely get into WoW. TF2 isn't cutting it lately. CS:S is a love/hate relationship. I keep forgetting that Half Life 2 exists. I don't want to replay Bioshock until I get DX10. Not enough people play Smash Brothers well enough for them to be a challenge or any fun at all. Anything else? Not game related.

Books are hard to read for me now, though this could be just my choice of reading materials. Hitchhiker's Guide is good, but so odd that I often lose focus on what the hell is going on. I keep trying to read my books on philosophy, but with my schedule the way it is I'm usually too tired to stay awake for more than a few paragraphs or have already made plans for a night out. I want to be enlightened though, just at a more convenient time.

So basically, I'm in a rut. A really fucked up rut, and I hate it.

Wow, I guess I need some philosophical studies to get some pleasure out of what I have.

Time Escapes Me!

>robotic
>enslavement and sorrow
---
It's been a goddamn month since I've written anything and I'm kinda pissed at my lack of drive to do something productive. At least I kind of accomplished some stuff like finished a semester of school with a 3.6 gpa, rearranged my room and computer stuff, and started playing CS:S. Well, I kind of started playing World of Warcraft again too. Whatever. It's summer and I need to do something.

Here are some goals I'd like to accomplish:
>make music with Julius Mode or Burlap Baby
>read a lot of literature
>work out often
>become more frugal so I'm not always dirt poor

Reach for the Schuyler!

>the definition of fucked
>wurkin
>listening to dre and writing a paper. i am happy
---
So there's this guy at work, the new guy in the kitchen. Well, he's actually been here for almost a month now, but he still acts like a new guy. I digress.

So, he was initially hired because he was a general manager at a Papa Romanos and was stuck working 70 hour weeks, so he wanted out. Everyone had high hopes for him, he's worked in food, he was a general manager, so he might know more than just kitchen duties, and he's used to working long hours, so he'd be good working the shorter shifts we have.

His first week of training, he was alright. Quiet, but alright. We figured he'd be more talkative once he got to know everyone, and would get a lot better at his job once he got used to the swing of things.

Nope. Wrong.

Well, only kind of. He's a bit more talkative now, but still moves like a snail when working. He still messes stuff up more often then he should, and still doesn't understand how to do a lot of stuff that should be self explanatory. One of the problems could be his eyes, or lack of vision. He obviously needs a new prescription because even with his glasses, he spends about 15 seconds squinting at a receipt before he can read it. When food is being rung in ever couple seconds, and stuff is coming out of the oven every other couple seconds, we obviously don't have the time to spend 10 minutes reading a pizza ticket because our eyes don't work.

Okay, yes, I am being very harsh and judgmental on this kid and his physical capabilities, or lack thereof. My points are well founded though, so I don't care. At least he has a personality. Or wait, never mind, he doesn't.

This guy doesn't know how to tell a story, or even a sentence without putting me to sleep. He says words, but they fall flat and go nowhere. Heres some examples (I am the">", he is the "-")
=====
>Man, I cannot wait to get out of class in 2 weeks. Freedom, friends in town, I can go out and drink and party all the time. It'll be a grand 'ole drunken time.
-Oh, you like drinking eh?
>(kinda freaked out at this odd question) Yeah, it's fun, and I love my friends.
-Yeah, the other day me and my friends went out and got some booze.
>Oh yeah?
-Yeah.
>...
-(for some reason, just walks away, off in some random direction)
>...
=====
Seriously? Seriously? That's it? You got booze? What happened? Who got thrown off a third story balcony? Who accidentally slept with their cousin? Who slammed the fifth of vodka in 10 minutes? Something has to have happened. Or it didn't. Maybe he just bought booze, drank it, then went and sat in the corner and cried. I don't know. What I do know is I don't need his mental drool polluting my eardrums.

Also, today, he told me and Scott a story about registering for classes at HFCC. It was excessively lame, but he had one classic line where his information got locked into the registration servers and couldn't be modified or moved. Apparently he was "trapped in cyberspace". We had quite the laugh behind his back, entirely at his expense. It was too good to pass up. Seriously.

Oh, and I know that he was thinking of that line for days. I just know. 3 nights ago, or maybe the next afternoon, he thought of being trapped in cyberspace and said, in his go nowhere, monotone inner monologue "I have to use this one! BALLIN'!". Seriously. I bet he even thought the word "ballin'".

Kwadruple Pheature

>work, then things after
>the things after work now
>so close... CRUNCH TIME
---
I've seen a record number of movies in the past week - FOUR! Here's what I thought of 'em:

Waiting...: Pretty funny, and somewhat true to life. As a restaurant worker, I could definitely see the similarities and people I know in what was going on. Dane Cook was actually tolerable too, which was a big surprise for me. Overall, I liked it.

Deja Vu: An action/thriller movie about some machine that allows people to look through a wormhole 4 days into the past in real time. The government uses it to investigate a terrorist attack on a boat in New Orleans. It was interesting, but the movie never gets too violent, too fast, too slow, too science-y, or too much of anything else. It kind of kept everything at a mediocre level, which sucked. Also, it was too long, at just around 2 hours. Taking 15 minutes off by speeding stuff up would have done wonders.

Dan in Real Life: I actually wanted to see this when it was first in theaters but never did. I really like it. It's a very lighthearted romantic/family/comedy movie which I enjoy, plus Steve Carell is a good actor and a funny guy. He was perfect for the role. Dane Cook was also in this movie as the somewhat dickheaded brother. He was tolerable in this role too, so I guess it's just his standup I have a problem with.

Walk Hard: I thought it was an alright movie overall. It has moments that are "random funny", "silly funny", and "vulgar funny", but nothing I found to be absolutely laugh out loud worthy. Still, I enjoyed it for what it had to offer, and that's probably why I don't outright hate it.

Baby Politicians

>wow, i fucking suck at css
---
Today, at school, were the student government elections. What a joke. For some reason, I was 20 minutes early to class - a rare occasion. As soon as I enter the building, I'm bombarded with fliers, people talking, hand gestures, and whatever else goes along with getting people to vote for you.

Some girl I've never seen before (big surprise) walks up to me. She's running for something. Not president. I don't know, maybe senator. She asks me if I'm going to class. No shit I'm going to class, does she think I like to walk around inside college campus buildings at 9 a.m. for fun? She doesn't get the hint that I want to keep walking and would prefer it if she stayed stationary. She follows me, opens up one of her little booklets, and props it in front of me so she can show and read it to me as I walk to class. Christ!. I get rid of her by going to the bathroom, then get rid of her pamphlets by introducing them to the garbage bin.

Fortunately, I found a way to Solid Snake my way around them for the rest of the day. Mostly because of fear.

I Panicked about Panic!

>philosophical endeavors
---
In regards to my thoughts on the new Panic at the Disco album Pretty.Odd, after giving it 30 or so listens, I like the new them. Not as much so as I did the original, but I still like 'em. They go from country sounds, to sounding like The Beatles, then to the Beach Boys. Some of their old lyrical style shows at a few small points, but for the most part its tragically toned down. Musically, they're vastly different as well, with nothing electronic on the whole album, and a whole lot more guitar action goin' on.

It's different, but it'll do.

Bone and Thorn

>O! Green World!
>I'm laughing at a rude awakening.
---
So the other day, like any other day, I got really bored of television, computers, videogames, or anything electronic, and decided I wanted to read something. That something happened to be the complete Bone series by Jeff Smith. Yes, all 1400 pages or goodness.

A quick back story of how I came to know Bone: I first read it in Disney Adventures Magazine probably 8 years ago now, and was really fascinated by Fone Bone and Thorn. This probably has to do with me not knowing anything about the series prior to reading it for the first time along with the fact that the piece I read takes place a little ways after the beginning which gave me no back story. Anyway, I've wanted to find out what this series was all about for the longest time. So, last Xmas, I bought the complete series for my brother thinking he would enjoy reading it since he likes much of the same stuff I do.

Anyway, some afterthoughts- I thought the story was awesome and very well paced. It keeps the main characters in the same places and predicaments for a few chapters and then resolves it and flows into the next plot almost seamlessly which really helps make the story varied and exciting, yet fluid and logical.

The artwork was beautiful as well, even in just plain black and white. I'm seriously considering picking up the full color series once I have the money and they're all released. I've seen them fully colored, and borrowed The Great Cow Race volume from my brothers friend, so I'm positive that the coloring is great looking, and probably enhances the series.

The characters were all interesting, especially Phoney Bone who was by far my favorite. Second to him would be Lucius, the tavern owner, and actually Phoney's foil throughout the series. The shape of his body, facial expressions, and entire character were really entertaining and visually interesting. My only character problem would be with Thorn, who I really wish would have been developed further. She goes from innocent farm girl, to mopey, then to heroine, and ends up as down to earth, still innocent farm girl, except shes the queen of the kingdom and savior of the world. She just made too many quick transitions for me to really follow her 100%. Jumpiness aside, I still really liked her.

Now I guess I'll have to finish Hitchhikers Guide soon too won't I?

I Threw Away my Childhood?

>hey eric, remember when i went over your house and we bought that neopets cereal? that shit was fucking stupid
>grotesque
---
Today while taking out the trash, I noticed some Pokemon cards in one of the clear plastic bags. Not just any cards though, some of my favorite cards, specifically a Lieutenant Surge's Electabuzz. For some reason, this didn't phase me, and now that I look back to 5 hours ago I feel a kind of awkward sadness.

See, I held onto the goddamn cards for this long, since fourth or fifth grade. That's 8 or 9 years spent keeping these things safe and in great condition. They're worth next to nothing in money, but always represented a really important part of who I was growing up. I used to play all the Pokemon games, watched the anime, and even played the card game - semi professionally. I played because I guess I was just that good when I was that age compared with all of the other underachieving dumbshits who thought they could play.

Anyway, it's odd that I didn't feel anything about these cards as I saw them there, sitting in the trash. I just threw away part of my childhood. A big part. And it didn't phase me.

I'm tempted to go out on a limb and say that maybe I'm actually starting to grow up.

Maybe I'm an adult now, maybe I'm not. All I really know is how much it saddens me to think of this happening. I didn't think I'd ever actually change. I thought I could just sit and play in my own little world forever and things would just take care of themselves, but it doesn't look like my dream is going to last much longer, let alone forever.

I have to work on my life.

Cannot Focus!

>new PATD on mtv website
>frankenmuth for some zenders
---
I'm supposed to be writing some sort of Political Science op-ed piece, but since I'm so easily distracted, and pretty apathetic towards the class I think I'll do something else. Also, it doesn't help I haven't listened to a lecture in a month and don't own the book yet.

So on the MTV website they had it set up so you could go on and listen to the entire new Panic at the Disco album. When I first heard this I was ecstatic at the chance to listen to one of my favorite artists new album a week before it came out. Unfortunately, my over joyous mood didn't stay at the apex it was at as I listened to the new stuff. There's nothing electronic. No beat machines, no synth, no super fast, off the wall, multi-syllabic words, nothing like that. They sound like a normal band, only somewhat mellow, and possibly even mainstream.

Now, I have no problem with them becoming mainstream. I wish them all the best in their music making career, but I liked them so much better as their original, techno-y selves. They were bizarre lyrically, musically, and image-wise, and that's part of what made them stand out so much.

I'm not completely sold on the new album - yet. I'll give it a few more listens, read the lyrics, watch whatever music videos they have, and then make my final decisions. However, I'm sad that the old Panic! was replaced with the new "Panic".

Brawl!

>SSBB FOREVER
---

Super Smash Brothers Brawl has completely taken over my life. I should be studying a million things right now. I should be sleeping. I could take the dog for a walk, or better yet, work out. There are books to be read, rooms to be cleaned, showers to be taken, and meals to be consumed, but KO-ing my way to victory seems to be of utmost importance at the moment.

I beat the story mode on hard mode without any help, cleared all 41 single player events, and all the multi ones with my brother. I got all the characters today and have classic beat with 6 of them. Now I just need boss rush mode done, the rest of classic, all star mode, finishing the trophy collection, sticker collection, getting that last 8% completion in the SSE, 100 man brawl, and shaping up my game for kicking other peoples asses.

There's a tournament next week at school with actual prizes and such, so I'm really psyched for that. I really want to see how I stack up to other players since no one that lived around me was very good at Melee. I think it helps that I never got too good at advanced techniques such as SHFFL and wave-dashing so the gameplay changes to Brawl don't mess with my play style as much as it will with others. Now, to go practice a bit more with good old Wario.

Matthew, Isabelle, and Theo.

>junpei
>feeling sick, watching the dreamers
---

As my AFK status implied, I'm feeling sick to the point where I could vomit, and I watched The Dreamers.

I discovered this movie about 4 months ago on the Independent Film Channel, or IFC. I was up in Ann Arbor partying for the weekend with friends, and when we turned in for the night and turned on the TV we happened to stumble upon the particular scene where Isabelle takes off Matthew's boxers in the kitchen. We had no idea what the movie was, or what the IFC was for that matter, so we just figured "Ooh! Implied sex scene on late at night R-rated movie". Once they started having sex on the floor, we were corrected. Now, this scene is about halfway through the movie, I was really drunk and tired, and it had actually been a long day, so I fell asleep maybe 30 minutes later.

Of course, this film intrigued me to no end after that point. It was so perplexing with it's talks of revolution in France, overt sexuality, and the fact that I came in watching it part of the way through which just shrouded it deeper in mystery. Naturally the first thing I did when I got home was research the IFC. Then once I had the title of the movie (The Dreamers), I researched that. Finally, a quick order off Amazon.

Now that I finally got my lazy self around to sitting down and watching it, I'm thoroughly happy with my purchase. This movie was beautiful to me in many ways. The weird, tense, sexual, interactions between the characters makes for something not seen in everyday entertainment, the frequent talks between the characters about cinema, music, and revolution, are intriguing subjects themselves, and I really liked the cinematography throughout the film, especially the use of mirrors.

For some reason, the films use of mirrors entertained me extensively. People seem to avoid mirrors, for good reason, but their presence in many of the indoor shots added an extra depth to the scene, mostly due to them being used to show the characters not directly in the shot. Maybe not on par with the mirror scene in Contact, but the entire bathtub segment is brilliant in that all 3 characters are visible throughout it through the use of the mirrors on the side of the wall. It's a strange way to see the action, but I found it oddly enjoyable.

I really liked The Dreamers, and I suggest people go out and see/buy/rent it if they can. It's definitely not the deepest, most revolutionary, or mind blowing film out there, but it conveys themes not found in other movies, and because of this, makes it something very special.

Oh, the Slump!

>REGULATORS! Mount up!
>it was a clear black night, a clear white moon
---

So, I'm on my "school's" "spring break" this week. Let's define the terms used first, and then see what's wrong.

I used the term "school" because I guess that the University of Michigan Dearborn would be considered a school of sorts. I don't consider it one however. This place fucking fails at everything possibly conceivable. The people are twats, the campus is small and boring, there isn't ever anything legitimately interesting ever going on around campus, and it's in Dearborn, one of the most boring places on earth for us underage peoples. Sure I could go to the bar and stuff if I went to the right places, but it's expensive, and I should have other choices besides destructive drinking every weekend of my life.

Why is this "spring break"? Because while it's labeled "spring break", we are not even remotely in the spring season (hence the 5 inches of snow on the ground and bitter cold days and nights). Most other colleges have theirs either next week, which is a little better, or in 2 weeks. I don't understand why ours is so early.

Yeah, so my break is kind of sucking. It's not just because of the total lack of things to do where I live, but also because without anything to actually do, I get really lazy. I get home at 1 a.m., which for me is pretty damned early, and I will sleep until 1:30 p.m. By the time I wake up and realize I've slept through the "me time" part of the day (ie- playing Pikmin 2 and Team Fortress 2) and there's just enough time to shower, eat, check my internet stuff, and be off to work. The vicious cycle has been going on the past couple days, which with only a week long break equates to most of my time off.

So, tomorrow, or I guess technically today, I will wake up, eat breakfast, do some stretches, and stay awake for the duration of my normal day without sleeping for a completely unnecessary 5 extra hours. I may need an energy drink, but I'll do it damnit!

Lists of things that keep me awake

>just kickin some ass
---
A list of the random shit that goes through my head

-I don't understand Kid Rock. His image is pretty much being a badass of sorts, and a lot of his music pretty much goes with it. However, on his latests album Rock and Roll Jesus he's got songs like "Amen" and "All Summer Long" which are loaded full of sentimental, religious bullshit. Totally not Kid Rock there. Besides, his next songs, "So Hott" and "Sugar" are loaded with lines like:

SO HOT I wanna get you alone
SO HOT I wanna get you stoned
SO HOT I dont wanna be your friend
I wanna fuck you like I'm never gonna see you again

or these excerpts from Sugar:

And I fuck hot pussy until it's cold
You can kiss my Anglo-Saxon ass
I'm the illest mutha fucker on the God damn planet

(Now keep in mind, the lyrics right there are from 2 songs directly after the sentimental religious shit I mentioned earlier.)

Now that's the shit I like to see! This is the Kid Rock we all love/loathe. I don't think anyone wants to pay money to have him talk about sending his kids to church or some girlfriend he had back in the day. We want the real Kid Rock. The 40 oz. malt liquor chugging, swear up a storm, donkey punch your wife Kid Rock. Now we're talking!


-Have you ever had to take a massive shit? Of course you have. However, when you sit, have you ever had a really difficult time gettin' that little fucker out? Like, it's almost too big for your asshole to process? It's usually really hard too. Like someone put a baseball sized rock in your rectum. Well, after the horrifying experience is over, don't you ever feel like your asshole is "spaced out"? It feels larger than before, like you forced something so big through it that it stretched it.

Let me say this: I had one so bad the other day, that after I left, it felt like I had been at a goddamned porno shoot for hours. It felt that large. Yeah, I know that's fucked up.

-What would it be like to write scripts for pornos? Like the cheesy ass dialogue. I really want to know how they do it for stuff like Big Sausage Pizza, First Fat Chick, and anything that picks up "random girls" on the street.

Deadly Nuerotoxin

>keep 'em guessing
>i loved you more, than the week i did before i discovered alcohol.
---
So, like I said, I beat Portal.

It was awesome. Really awesome.

I don't get hyped for very many games very easily, and it's really rare for me to love anything I play, but this exceeded expectations by a long shot. I had been following it for a while and had watched my brothers play through the game a number of times, but always said I'd wait for my own copy to play it so that I wouldn't spoil the fun, and it was totally worth it.

Everything about it is done so fantastic and fits so well that you can't complain about anything. Tight control, wonderful music (especially "Still Alive"), GLaDOS - the best character ever, ingenious level design, and a great length to the story. Although I knew the game was short, I couldn't believe it was literally "beat it in one sitting" short, well, until I beat it in one sitting. Really though, it helped the game sort of "contain" itself by keeping it close to its central theme instead of branching off in all sorts of ways. I liked that, just like Cloverfield.

I don't think I need to go into all the stuff about the portal gun and the weighted companion cube and all, but one thing that a lot of people fail to mention is how awesome the developer commentary is. Really. Maybe all the people that wrote about the game a few months ago when it came out knew everything there is to know about the way Portal was engineered and designed (yeah right...), but I for one didn't, and the sheer amount of complexity and precision this game was pulled off with is staggering. I have an even greater respect for game designers now, especially the minds behind Portal. I'm applauding you right now.

If the pictures still not clear or you want the "tl;dr" version, Portal is one of the most original, ass kicking, hilarious, ingenious, brilliant, clever, smart, and interesting games you'll ever play. And to top it all off, you'll be begging for more afterwards. Instant classic in my book.

Sounds Like Work

>sleep-o-tron
>fuck
>PANIK
---
Regina Spektor played over the radio at work today. Needless to say, I was oddly overjoyed to hear it whilst in the dismal clutches of my job.

I noticed that they play a lot of Fall Out Boy too. A lot. Like, as in I'll hear at least 3 different songs on any given shift. I like them, but it's just kind of odd how much I hear them.

Besides them, the only other thing you'll hear when working is A) me singing "The Black Parade" aloud, B) me repeatedly singing the line "Born to be wi-ild", C) constant screaming of "YOUUUUU!" from that fucking Soulja Boy song (we all hate it, but it helps the time pass to piss everyone else off), or D) some other random ass song that I feel needs to be a part of the communal work time experience. For example, today me and Terry did a performance of "Regulators" by Warren G and Nate Dogg. Truly awesome indeed.

I beat both Portal and Bioshock, so now I'm off to conquer the looming beast that is Half Life 2. I'll get back to you on my thoughts on all three.

Sub par

Traditional British Shoes
---

My life is absolutely sub par as of late. Work is shitty, which is kind of unusual because I usually don't judge my work, I just take it at face value.

My classes are alright, it's just that I need to manage my time better so that I get to do something fun and productive when I have free time. I mean, I'm really starting to want to get back into art related stuff, start writing more, for fun, music, and blogging, and finally learn FL Studio so that me and my brother can get our group up and running. I don't care if anything I do goes anywhere, I just want the experience, and there's always a chance we could do something new and make a name for ourselves.

Other than that, I'm up to nothing. Besides waiting for the new Smash Brothers of course.

Oh Fields of Clover!

its a strange kind of terror
work 5-11
ITS A MONSTER
---
Cloverfield was an absolutely fantastic movie. Of course, I was already psyched about it, plus there are hardly any cool monster movies like that, so that made it so much more rewarding. Some of the major complaints I heard about the movie were that it was too short, the camera made people sick, and that you couldn't see the monster. Surprisingly, I didn't seem to have any of those problems.

Now, don't get me wrong, the movie was short. About 71 or some odd minutes of actual stuff. Really though, not at all a problem. I think that with what the movie had to offer, the length was perfect for telling the story in semi-real time over the course of one night. Secondly, the camera was shaky, but not sickening. Maybe because I play so many videogames I'm not at easily nauseated by shaky camera movements as other people. I don't know though, thats all I have. Lastly, you do get to see the monster. Yes, parts are brief and you never get a perfect view of it, but it's just enough to keep you wondering what the hell is going on.

Worst Day

prty n bllshit

---
Yesterday was probably the worst day in recent memory. My internet kept going in and out, I felt like shit, my knee is all messed up, we were short 2 people at work, and I got a flat tire. Awesome.

Work was especially shitty because of the kitchen manager. She said she'd work my stuff for me while I did all the cleaning stuff for the other people. I was pissed, but at least I didn't have to do my normal stuff too. Wrong. Right at 9:00, the time when I usually leave, she leaves. The fucking twat didn't do anything the whole night, so I had to go back and do a whole mess of other stuff. Damnit. I didn't leave until around 10:45, and I got to walk up to my car with a flat tire.

I think I'm gonna go take out some rage on people in Rapture.

Down!

AFK TO THE MAX!!
---

Yeah, my internet died for about 4 or 5 days last week, so it was actually really rough for me not being able to do email and such for a while.

Looking back at the last month, it's ridiculous at how much I've started gaming again. I always thought of myself as a "gamer", and I like keeping up on all the industry news and new releases and games, but I never really play all too many, and I complete even less. This last month however, I really started playing seriously again. I sat down and played like 7 hours of Bioshock, did some single player and LAN on Diablo 2, started loading up The Orange Box, and did some Smash Brothers. Needless to say, it was fantastic. Once I complete Bioshock in another day or two, I'm thinking about jumping on into Super Mario Galaxy.

Now, I like Nintendo, but I don't really like any of their games, or the main ones at least. About the only games by them that I've actually sat down and played seriously are Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Wii Sports, Pokemon, and Smash Brothers. I'm not too big of a Mario fan, never got into Metroid, and I can't play more than 30 minutes of a Zelda game for whatever reason. Super Mario Galaxy however, is a completely different story. The first time I saw it in action at home, I was completely blown away. Everything about it is beautiful, unique, and fun looking. The music is spectacular, and everything else just ties it together into one awesome looking spacey-platforming adventure.

Now more TF2!

Happy New Year I Guess...

its ALL WRONG
-
FUCK
-
less than stellar
---

So it's a new year, 2008 to be more specific. Anything new? No. Not yet at least, but hell, it's only been 5 days. As if for some reason I haven't said this before to myself and/or others, I plan to keep my resolutions this year and make something of myself. I want to do an album with my brother, get some of my other music released with other people, get on track with school, start my artwork making back up, and start getting out there in the world. I want to meet people through parties, my music, and my drawings. I want to be part of a social scene with anyone I can get with. I figure, it's time to start getting my name out there, even with random ass nobodies just for the publicity. Maybe someday I'll be able to use my creative abilities for something great.

Maybe that could be a reason why I've felt like shit lately. I have great, original ideas, but never execute them. I think that it's time that my ambitions started to take form and I work my hardest to make whatever dreams I have come true. Yeah, I know for a fact that I tend to be pessimistic and cynical most of the time, but I know for certain that what I have to make and share with people is great shit. It's often time weird and out there, but entertaining nonetheless. I fly all my ideas past a couple of people like my brothers and a few friends, and although I'm usually met with some sort of exasperated sigh because my ideas usually begin with some sort of pun or play on words, I always get good some kind of good feedback.

I know that anyone could say "They're only telling you what you want to hear!", but I know better, and I know that it's not true. My brothers and father rip my ideas apart piece by piece because of how "stupid" they are, but always end up 20 minutes later going "hey, even though we just made fun of it, it is kind of interesting and new". I get laughed at all the time for the ideas I have shared, but people usually end up feeling that they are overall well developed and intriguing.

Anyway, I could talk for hours about my other ambitions with art/design and music, but I think that's for another time.

Pass the Past

lets get nostalgic
---

With whatever I have right now, it leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. I'm missing something in my life, and it ruins everything. Sure, I can seem happy, but I still don't think that I've got it all. Everyone else seems to have all their shit figured out and ready to go, while I sit here wondering what the hell to do with myself, and how to finally go about doing it.

Yeah, I fucking already know that for pretty much everyone out there it's not an easy ride, but it's just the fact that this illusion exists and is so powerful all the time. I know for a fact that things aren't perfect for others, especially after a few days ago, but I still can't help but want to hate the world for now. Yeah, life isn't fair, nothings fair, blah blah blah. If anyone knows the way the world functions, its going to be me since I'm a no nonsense kinda guy when it comes to life.

Still, I fell like shit. I feel lonely. I feel weak. I feel vulnerable. I feel like theres something terribly fucked up. It isn't right. I like to brush stuff off and keep on going in my old humorous, no nonsense, spur of the moment ways, but I feel stuck now, trapped. Nothing seems right. Like puzzle pieces just forced together, it just doesn't mesh. Looking back at the previous year, I'd love to think that I'm at an all time low, and I probably am. I need more people in my life, and not just anybody, but as much as I hate to admit it, I really doubt that I can get things the way they were forever, or ever again.

Mrs. Mystery!

[adult swim]
-
ITS THE UFOS!
-
Work until 11ish T_T
---

Funny thing today. I was leaving work at 11:20pm or so, and as I was crossing the street and turning the corner, the driver of the car stopped at the light quickly turned her head, eyes all lit up, and started waving at me all excited. I just kind of smiled and waved back since my obviously slow mind didn't make the connection that it was someone who seemed to have known me. A second later though, it finally occurred that maybe they knew me and wanted to say "hello" or something, but I figured it was too late for me to turn around and walk back to the car- besides, it was a traffic stop and they were probably pulling away in a couple seconds anyway.

Now, I tried to figure out who it was, and judging from the way her hair looked curled, I instantly assumed it was one friend of mine. The hair color matched, the curls, possibly the car, the location, it all seemed pretty probable to me. Of course, it wasn't her. She had no idea what I was talking about. Okay then, so who the hell was it? I mean, I don't really know of anyone else that looked like that, even though I guess that it was dark and I couldn't really make out who it was. Still, I don't have a call, email, facebook comment, text, or any of that other stuff from whoever this was. I know it's not necessary for them to do that, but it tends to happen that if you bump into people for whatever reason, they usually happen to leave you some sort of message about how they saw you. You know, in case anything that happened before two hours ago was suddenly erased from memory?

Maybe I'll find out tomorrow. Maybe it was just some nice person trying to be friendly to someone they don't even know. Until then, I'll be losing sleep over this, cause what if it was a friend and they saw me brush them off like that since I really honestly didn't even comprehend what the hell was going on until it was too late? I'm sure it's not going to be that drastic, but still, crazier stuff has happened.

So Little To Do, So Much Time

blaze a pound a weed, six days up out tha week

---

My little holiday break here has been pretty funny. I mean, I have had little nothing to commit to. Shopping- done online, work- I only work part time, and I don't have school since the semester ended, Family- not so much, Friends- keep in mind that Dearborn is hellishly boring and that I'm the only one with a car. It's kind of difficult to go out and have fun with people without slowly becoming the "drive me places" bitch. The one thing that I said I wanted to accomplish over these couple of weeks was to finally complete Bioshock in time for getting The Orange Box on the 25th.

I started my game over fresh since I was only a couple hours in, and going back, I missed a hell of a lot of stuff. I walked around for almost 40 minutes yesterday in the game doing stuff that I completely skipped over for whatever reason. Found 2 new tonics, tons of ammo and money (and I remember being pissed because I never had any ammo in my first try through), and a lot of people to kill. It was pretty damn satisfying.

Maybe I should go play it now instead of sit around writing?

Awesome New Stuff!

dR. dRE PRESENtS dETOX
---

So, the past few days were filled with some unexpected surprises that really made me happy.

First and foremost was a trailer for a Speed Racer movie made by the Wachowski brothers. It's at speedracerthemovie.com . To be honest, I'm not expecting a hell of a lot from this movie, but I'm still excited for the whole idea.

Second, Dr. Dre apparently set his final album Detox to be released this June. I'm fucking elated. I've been waiting years for this album. As far as I'm concerned, he's the best goddamn rapper/producer out there by a long shot. And I mean a really long shot, especially with the crap that's been passing for music lately. I'll be there at midnight if at all possible to pick it up and rock out for the rest of the eternity.

Other than those, I've only got class up to this Friday and I'm off the hook for break. I beat Quake4 earlier today, so that just leaves me with completing Bioshock before Xmas if at all possible since when I get the Orange Box I'll be pretty occupied. Combine that with reading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, plus whatever else comes my way along with stuff like Super Mario Galaxy, it should be a fun time.

Taking Shots

OMFG TILA TEQUILA IS ON!!
---
As much as I find most of television to be absolute, unwatchable crap these days, especially MTV, VH1, G4, and FOX, I can't help but watch A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. I don't know why. I hate reality TV. I don't think MTV is a very good network either, but something about this show has me hooked. It fucking pisses me off, but just because I feel like a hypocrite for liking it so much.

I guess I do like the show a bit, but what really makes it fun for me is just sitting down with a few friends, using their tivo, and replaying people getting punched in the face or that hard drug using, crack whore Amanda's facial expressions. Seriously, her facial features are grotesque with a mangled set of lips, wrinkled face, and bugged out eyes. She always looks like shes strung out on something hard. Maybe she does rails of coke between shots. I don't know. But it seems likely.

Pretty!

school
trying to do a goddamn paper
---

So I woke up at 5:50am today to register for classes. Apparently, tomorrow is the registration date, so I get to repeat the misery all over again! I was so tired this morning that I just slept through my class from 10:20-11:10. I know it's bad, but I would have literally just slept the whole time due to exhaustion. So I woke up around 11:30, took care of stuff, and then drove to school for my art history class. It was canceled. Damn it. I forgot to check my e-mail this one time, and I go to school for nothing.

So I got to come home and type a final paper/presentation for my psychology class. It's not long, and it was a really easy paper, but of course I procrastinated until now to do it. I started typing a 3 paged, double spaced paper at around 2pm. I finished around 7:45. Needless to say I have severe ADD and a horrible StumbleUpon addiction. Some good did come from this however, which was my discovery of the Unreal Tournament 3 demo.

This game looks so pretty, it's awesome. I can max it no problem, and everything is so fast and fluid. Being a big Quake fan, I like the game play a helluva lot too. The weapons are interesting, the alternate firing modes are cool, the physics are nice, feigning death is a nice move, and some of the vehicles (like the War of the Worlds -esque one) are kickass. I'm extremely tempted to buy the full copy soon if I come across some extra money since I'm that impressed.

Advent Children

school then work
---

So, on my quest to watch some more movies I ended up borrowing my friend's copy of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I wasn't too sure what to expect from it. I heard mixed reviews of it, but I love cool looking CGI stuff, and although the only Final Fantasy I've fully played and beaten was Tactics for the GBA, I've always been intrigued by the whole universe and setup of the characters, especially VII because of its ridiculous popularity.

So all in all, the movie was okay. The cool visual were a definite plus, but I wasn't too enthralled by the storyline and the characters. I'm sure that playing and fully understanding the source material would have enhanced the whole experience ten fold, but still, whether I know the whole story or not, I should be able to get into what's going on.

I'm not stupid, and I did pay attention to the movie. I even know a bit about Final Fantasy VII, but the story didn't suck me in at all. There was something about it that just didn't click for me, something missing. I'm not sure what, maybe it was just development of the story, or maybe I do need to know all the events prior to the movie.

However, like I said, the CGI looked pretty, and the fight scenes were awesome when they worked right. The battle with Tifa in the church was probably the most memorable for me, just because of how fast and thrilling it was to watch. Sadly, some of the fights have a bit too much camera movement and quick shots of other stuff going on to really get me pumped up for whats going on. See, I really like it when the camera stays on the fight for a long period of time and I get action nonstop and uninterrupted. I don't care what the other people are doing, if it's that important to have them in the shot then just move them into it, but don't keep jumping from one person to another. That's just annoying.

Movies are awesome

playing in the snow!!
---

I don't watch a lot of movies. I own a couple hundred, and I've seen less than 1/3, and remember less than 1/5 of those. I don't know why, I love watching TV from time to time, I love video games, I like making jokes all the time, and movies are a great way to not only get new material and ideas but to establish a connection with my audience, but I still don't see too many of them. I think I'm going to try to change that though.

Why? I think it's because of seeing Beowulf yesterday. That movie kicked ass for 2 hours straight. Everyone else said it was "good","okay", or any number of other responses indicating vague indifference. The "CGI layered on top of real stuff" effect was stunning. At times, I couldn't tell it was fake, other times it looked like an awesome video game (this is a good thing), and some times I could clearly tell it was animated, but only because the action and effects were so wild and out there that I just knew it wasn't real.

Everything that I wanted from a fantasy movie like this I got. Grendel blew my mind with his skin and screeching and blue fire. Pure genius. The dragon he fought? Spectacular. The liquid fire, the golden scales, how he flies when he gets his wing torn - I feel like a little kid it's so awesome.

Besides the movie, the previews beforehand were equally awesome. JUMPER, or JMPR, or whatever it is looked great, The new Tim Burton / Johnny Depp movie looks promising, and there was the new Cloverfield trailer out too which just made me more confused and anxious to find out what was going on.

So yeah, now I'm watching movies.

Thanksgiving

boys will be boys hiding in estrogen
---

I just gotta say that I don't like Thanksgiving. People go absolutely crazy for it and I still fail to see why. Is the food they eat drastically different from what I usually consume every year? Are their families that much more entertaining? Are they spiking the drinks? I don't have the slightest idea.

All I know is that my food usually isn't that special. Yeah it's thanksgiving, but still, as far as I'm concerned, mashed potatoes can only be taken to certain extremes. Turkey can only get so good, and I don't even eat meat anymore anyway. Rolls are usually good, but you can't ever get enough and getting sick while eating is the worst thing in the world. Dessert is pretty good, but still - you only have so much room for food combined with there being 147 pumpkin pies and only 1 apple pie. I don't know why there is always such an imbalance of pies. No one ever finishes all the pumpkin pie and people always want more of whatever else is offered. I don't even like pumpkin pie that much, so it's even less for me.

Maybe it's me, but Thanksgiving sucks.

Waking Up

if only...
---

So, I woke up really early this morning, sometime around 6 maybe, which is early for me. Naturally, I tried to get back to sleep, but I just couldn't, and I ended up having the most amazing lucid dreams.

Now, I've been having them a lot lately because of my sleep schedule, but this one was way different than the ones I've had before, and I don't know how this makes me feel.

Usually, they're just simple, stupid dreams I have about whatever is going on in my life or around me. This one though, it was about real people in my life, one person in particular, and some sort of confession of love. I don't know what this means, and I don't think there's anything special about it, but just the super realistic feeling of the dream combined with this sort of feeling of happiness of us talking and being together really makes me do a double take. I really don't want to think anything big of it, but what if I'm wrong?

Almost There

schoolin'
---
Well, the end of the semester is almost here, and I couldn't be happier. Yeah, it really is still a couple weeks until it actually ends, but for the most part its all downhill and I couldn't be happier. I'm still looking at classes and credit hours and that sort of thing, but it's not nearly as bad as I had assumed. Plus, my grades aren't seeming too bad at this point, so maybe that time spent in Ann Arbor isn't as far off as it seemed.

Speaking of which, I'm psyched to head up there this weekend for the OSU game. I don't have tickets of course, but I like going for the "atmosphere". Naturally, that's just what I tell everyone as a sort of euphemism for getting ham dammered. Saturday will definitely be a good day, and if we win, it's definitely going to be one hell of a night as well.

Other than that, there's a new episode of "Pure Pwnage" out, and since I kind of owe it to them for helping me get excited about gaming again, I'm about to go watch it. It's a great show to begin with anyway, so I guess it's not only because of its influence on me.

Beaten

at school. so cool.
---

I feel so stressed out right now, it's unreal. I've got quite a bit to do, such as studying, doing a project, getting a birthday present for my father finished, cleaning my car, doing lots of laundry, math work, registering for next semesters classes, setting up some kind of network for the computers in my house, work, and most importantly, sleeping, since I don't get nearly enough as I think I'd need to function realistically.

Of course, with my massive amounts of procrastination mixed with a very small attention span when theres a computer within 100 yards doesn't make it too easy to get all this done. I want to play Quake4 and get good again. I want some F.E.A.R. multiplayer action and to get the expansion packs. I need to beat Bioshock. I want some more Starcraft LAN action. I want to sit on AIM all day and look at Facebook for no apparent reason. I want to just blow all my money on amazon.com and newegg. Hell, I'm happy just shopping around and putting stuff in the shopping cart just to see how much it costs. Oh, and I'd love to start bringing my DS with me everywhere like I used to, but Tetris and Castlevania don't mix with studying or work.

So Happy!

smo to the gon
eating some lapita!
---

The car is back, and alive. The guy at the impound lot did us a favor and bent the stuff back out away from the back tire. Everything is still a bit messed up, but I'm happy. I probably could replace the stuff on the back of my car, but I'll just worry about making the exhaust pipe not all bent out of shape and crazy looking.

An End To Things.

I'm actually at my computer right now. Tricked ya, huh?
---

Got some news today, and it doesn't look like the car is savable. The 1993, pink, Geo Tracker with no airbags, a cracked front windshield, dog hair coated back seats, cup holders overflowing with change, isn't going to be around much longer. I'm really sad, it was my first car, and I honestly don't think that I'll ever have a car that will equal the supreme awesomeness of this vehicle.

I've had so many adventures in that car. The discovery of Canton2.0, my random 1a.m. trip to Toledo for absolutely nothing, getting lost in Detroit after a Keane concert, people wanting rides in it because of the novelty of it, and a lot more.

Yeah, the car was old, it leaked oil and some other fluids, didn't accelerate too well, and was kind of rusty, but still, it was cool, odd, and had a history to it. Whatever I get next probably won't have the same air of mystique to it. Plus, whatever I replace it with will be an old car anyway, so it's not like I'm getting a great performing car in lieu of losing my old one.

Though, in all seriousness, if anyone could get me a Pontiac Solstice, I'd consider taking it.

And It Only Gets Worse!

some bitch decided to hit my car
---

So yeah, if the away message didn't make things crystal clear, some bitch hit my car today. I'm fine I guess, but the back of my car - oh man. The whole thing fucking folded into itself in a way that made it so whatever is around the back bumper and exhaust pipe is curved inward and scraping my back wheels. Needless to say, I had it towed since the last thing I want is for the tires to get ruined too.

So now, I have no car, but I still have school and/or work 7 days a week, plus other family members that work and need to get around in one way or another. I really don't have any idea how this will work out except that it's gonna be very interesting.

Besides getting to places, I'm wondering how long it's going to take to fix the car, if it's even worth it. I really don't have any idea how long the insurance will take, and I've been told that with the insurance on my car, stuff might not get covered. I'm hoping for the best since I need a car, don't want to spend a whole load of money, and because I don't know what life would be like without my Geo.

Let's just pass the time away...

Not doing my papers/studying
---

friend: so i took mushrooms

tomkamrad: aaaaand?

friend: and we listened to rainforest music and looked at monkeys
---

So, I'm a pretty decent Starcraft/Brood War player. Or I used to be.

See, today I decided to do a LAN with my brother Adam in Brood War just to waste some time and get back into the game. I've always been okay at the game, and he's not too spectacular at all, so I figured it'd be a couple quick rounds. Maybe a few big battles if I moved slow, but nothing too exciting.

Wrong.

He beat me with the Zerg on a money map where I played Protoss. And he beat me pretty good too. I got kinda pissed, so I wanted a re-match with me being Terran and him being whoever.

Now, I usually just build a big lot of barracks, stock up on minerals, and make masses of fast cheap marines and rush the base in the first 4 minutes of the match- but today, Adam learned how to do the same thing, and he got Siege Tanks out a lot faster than me which sealed my fate early on. Not to count me building Firebats while he's sending cloaked Wraiths at me like its nothing.

So I lost again, and now I want revenge. I WILL BEAT HIM. Mostly cause I feel stupid since the student completely owned the teacher.

Crappy Halloween!

work work work
---

Can someone please tell me what's happened in the past few years to Halloween? Last time I checked it was about staying out all night long, getting 2 or 3 bags of candy, and being a kid. It's really not like that anymore.

Why? Well, it all started while I was driving home from work yesterday. It was just a few minutes past 9 o'clock. Once I got into the neighborhood I though something was weird, and it didn't hit me until I was parked in the driveway. Not a single person was out. I even didn't believe it at first and stood around looking for someone, anyone. Nobody.

So I go inside. Only one of my brothers went out that night. He was already in bed, and had just 1 bag of candy. Are people this lazy now? It was ridiculous.

Fast forward to today. My coworker went trick or treating. He's around 23. My friend Aaron went out with some people. They're 17-18. I'm kind of pissed at how these people are still trick or treating. It's not a holiday just for the kids, but still, I don't believe that people over 14 or 15 should be going out begging for free candy. Maybe I just don't get it - though I have a hunch that its probably most of these other people that really don't know whats going on.