More Festevaluation

Day two was a much more subdued affair. very mellow. so low key i don't think imma gonna capitalize anymore. the great lake swimmers were very nice, full of wistful, lovely songs n such. as were most of the other acts of the night. the standout f the evening was Suzanne Vega. She gets capitalized, cuz she deserves it damnit! Such a great voice, full of cute and sweet and sad all at the same time, and she writes songs that serve her voice well.

There one big problem with this evenings line up was the host. I forget her name and am glad of it. Who the fuck can render the do do doo do do do doo do part of Tom's Diner unrecognizable? I thought it impossible. Bitchtard proved me wrong. Any time she approached the mic, I started feeling all punchy.

Folk Fest

The39th Annual Regina Folk Festival is going on right now. in years past, we had just bummed around outside, listening to the music for free. Cuz I was a young punk kid. But now I feel motivated to spend money to support stuff I like. And I liked every single artist onstage last night. The Weakerthans, Final Fantasy, Broken Social Scene, plus some lovely local bands like Library Voices and Polymath. And the crowd was great. Not too rowdy, not too pushy, but not too small either. It was just right.

Bits of Blog

So I went to the Exhibition this past weekend. As always, I went mainly for the food. But this time I did not partake of any of the old favourites. No Mr. Souvlaki, no little donuts, no corndogs, no brats covered in onions and peppers. Nope. Too much new stuff. New stuff like deep fried Coke. It tasted like deep fried Coke. And the deep fried Oreos tasted like deep fried Oreos. Those names are pretty self explanatory.

Hot Beef Sundae and Taco in a Bag need some explaining. The delicious Hot Beef Sundae consists of two buttery scoops of buttery mashed potatoes covered in melt in your mouth barbequed beef smothered and covered in barbeque sauce, said sauce sprinkled with grated cheese and topped with a cherry tomato. So good. Delicious as all hell. Only sligtly less delicious was the Taco in a Bag.

Take a bag of Doritos, crush it all up and then cut open the side of the bag. Throw some ground beef, some salsa, some sour cream and some shredded lettuce into the bag. Do all that and you have yourself a Taco in a Bag.

The food at the Ex was fantastic, as was the entertainment. And I'm not talking about the dog show, although that was nice.

I'm talking about Weird Al.

Go ahead and laugh, but that spastic bastard puts on a hell of a show. Multimedia as all get out. Video clips and skits in between the songs. The videos served two purposes: they were funny and they gave Al and his band time to change costumes. There were a lot of costume changes.

The guy played for two hours and then came back for another half hour encore. I was impressed.

I was not as impressed with Hellboy 2. I cannot believe that people are saying it is better than the original. The effects are better, the creatures are amazing, the action is great, but it all added up to less than the sum of its parts. The creatures were cool looking for the sake of being cool looking. Or maybe it was to show how vibrant the other world (the world mankind is greedily destroying) is. But it didn't seem all that vibrant. It seemed ugly. The whole movie seemed ugly. It was a nice looking ugly, but still ugly. And Hellboy seemed less likeable. Everyone did. Blurg.

Movies

It is just like me to start blogging to bitch. I bitched about my broken finger. But what really made me want to blog, before my still twisted finger, was Wall E. But I didn't. I couldn't. I can't. I can bitch. That is easy. But to properly praise such a glorious film? My ironic slacker vocabulary is not equipped to deal with that. All I can say is that it is a truly lovely film. The film is suffused with love and the longing that goes hand in hand with it.

I was going to say that I haven't really seen a disappointing film yet this year, but then I remembered the latest Indy. But for everything wrong in Indy, there was something right in Get Smart. Get Smart was so much more enjoyable than that Crystal Skull flick. The funny parts were actually funny. The action looked real. And the funny and the action were mixed together nicely. It was a good time. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

I feel like I should write more about all these films, but that would just be me wasting words. New Indy - why? Get Smart - surprisingly good. Wall E - God Damn Wonderful.

My finger

So I broke my finger round about a week ago.  Almost exactly a week ago.  Spooky.  The middle finger on my right hand.  One bone in that finger in a couple places.  It looked gross.  Still does.  I don't think the doctor who fixed my finger actually fixed it.  So I got my family doctor to look at it, to make sure that everything was A OK.

He said everything was A OK.  But he didn't look at my finger.  He X-rayed my finger (said the lady who took my finger X-ray, "That doesn't look right.") and looked at the X-ray.  He said the X-ray looked good.  That may be.  But my finger looks like shit.  Feels like shit too.  Not that it hurts, oh no.  But when I lay my fingers flat on a table, my middle finger feels WAY off.  Only half of the pad, half of my fingertip comes in contact with the table.

I don't care if my X-ray looks good.  I do care if my finger will work right at the end of all this.  And I don't think it will.  I'm kinda pissed off right now.

Uni Qlo

Yeah, there are scads of things I am going to miss about Japan.

But not scat. Won't miss that.

I will miss the commercials. Most are crazy, some are cute and then there is my new favourite commercial.

It is for Uni Qlo.

It starts with a topless lady walking into a room. The lady's shapely back is to the camera as she strides across the modern looking room (all white and bright). She picks a piece of clothing off of a chair in the middle of the room and steps into it. She fixes the straps on her shoulders and then turns around. It is a camisole type of thing, with the bra built in.

The commercial ends with the lady bouncing down the street, all happy like.



I spend all this time trying to describe the stupid commercial when i realize that I could just show it to you. You're welcome. And...

Yeah.  I miss the crap out of Japan sometimes.

Groverfield

That would have been awesome! A giant muppet tearing shit up in New York? Sign me up!

Cloverfield was not as cool as that. It was still enjoyable. It was indeed a cross between Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project. I didn't really have a problem with the Godzilla side of the equation. The monster was freaky looking and did a fair bit of damage. And seeing it from a civilian's perspective really did add to the impact. If I had cared more about the civilians, that would have been nice. None of them were horrible, but I only found one engaging. And the way she went out was awesome. I know they were going for realism, for believable dialog. But believable is not a synonym for boring.

And if they were going for a realistic/natural feel, the film makers should not have made the plot points so obvious.

I had no problem with the shaky camera work, but I had a problem with the editing. So they are running from the monster: fine. The camera is shaky: fine. Hud(the cameraman with the stupid name) somehow stops recording and then starts recording whilst running? No. Fuck that. Maybe he accidentally did it, but it just struck me as obvious editing.

And the sound. If you are going to get out of the boat, get out all the way. Shit or get off the pot. The mic should have been cutting out during the firefights. There is no way that the mic would have picked up a message playing on a cell phone held up to someone's ear, aforementioned someone standing in the middle of an electronics store that is being looted. And so on.

And (and) I can deal with the fact that the protagonists keep crossing paths with the monster, that is fine. But their final encounter with the Monster just rubbed me wrong? They didn't notice it was standing behind them? Can it be really quiet when it wants to? Is it a ninja?

But that final monster encounter led to my favourite shot of the whole movie, the shot that made the whole concept worth it. The auto focus couldn't figure out what to focus on. Loved that bit.

Didn't love the movie. But I liked it.

Hells Yeah

Just the other day I posted about how Wii Fit didn't think I would loose any weight. Well, I just now broke through my revised target weight. Wii Fit seemed quite surprised. Suck it, Wii Fit, suck it down!

It Figures

Every time I try to motivate myself to blog here more often, it always has the opposite effect.
Plus, I was supposed to be talking about my Wii Fit-ing and I kinda slacked off on that for a bit. But not no more. I've been averaging about 5 days a week, and that is pretty good. For me. And I've been loosing weight. Wii Fit told me there was no way I was going to be able to loose the amount of weight I wanted in the amount of time I wanted. So I changed my goals slightly. I changed it to 2 kilos in two months. I've been working away at that goal for 2 weeks now and I have half a kilo to go.

In your face Wii Fit!

It Ain't Gonna Happen

I can feel the negativity, man. I can feel me trying to bring myself down. It ain't gonna happen. I'm not going to let that happen.

So lazy

Too lazy eve to capitalize that lazy up there in the title.

So when you weigh yourself in Wii Fit, you give yourself a stamp for that day. But only if you weigh yourself. If all you do is workout, but don't weigh yourself, you get no stamp. If you were to look at my stamps you would think that I am even lazier than I actually am.

I am so lazy. I've had Wii Fit since January but I've only played it for like 12 hours. I've had Smash Brothers for three weeks and I've put in triple the time on it.

After the ten hour mark my little time keeper buddy changed colour. He is now bronzed.

Too lazy for witty segues or any sort of closing remarks.

Lazy Bones

I didn't Wii Fit at all this week, but I'll be damned if I slack off on the posting as well.

Maybe I Wii fitted once. I haven't weighed myself since last time, of that I am sure.

The main reason for all of this is the new Smash Brothers game. It just got released. And I am HOOKED.

I'll try harder this week, I swear!

Wii Fit/Me Fat

I'm once again trying to be more regular in me posts to this here corner of the blogosphere. Yeah, I hate that word too. I figure one way to make sure I update at least once a week is if I have something to report on on a weekly basis. Say, for example, I was trying to loose weight. Which I am. But I'm not so crazy as to join a gym or anything nutty like that. Heavens no. Instead, I am trying to Wii Fit every day for at least 30 minutes a day. I haven't been so great at the daily thing, but I haven't been all that bad either.

Making yoga and exercise into a videogame seems to work for me. Not that I've lost all that much weight.

I started this grand experiment on the seventh of this month. At that time I weighed about 84.4 kilos and had a BMI of 24.6. (I don't know what that means either). Today I weigh 83.1 kilos and have a BMI of 24.3. considering a person's weight can vary by a kilo a day, that isn't all that promising. But I do feel better. The stretching every day might be helping my back. And I seem to have more energy. But I'm more cranky.

Yay! What a great first Wii Fit post. hopefully I won't just post my weight and such each week. I hope I'll ramble on about other things since I'm typing anyways. That's the theory. We'll see how she goes.

I Don't Want To Be That Guy

Was out drinking with Carla and David and Fernanda last night. Over there at Captain Kangaroo's. The table next to us was filled with older white dudes. And by older I mean they could very well be the same age as me. But they were fatter and wrinklier. And all their efforts at talking with the girls at the bar met with failure.

I don't wanna be that guy.

Love Hotel

Here is a guided tour of our awesome love hotel room in Tokyo.

Grindhoused

For one whole week, one whole movie theatre devoted one whole screen to showing the 'American' version of Grindhouse. I was all over that like mutated rednecks on a stripper's leg.

I'm glad I saw it in the way the directors intended and I'm also looking forward to seeing them separately. Oh hells yeah, I'm seeing them again.

I'm also glad I saw them when I did and with whom I did. A bunch of geeky gaijins and some squeamish Japanese ladies. The fellas all laughed and hooted and hollered at all the same spots and the girls really squirmed. I felt bad for them. especially since I was the one who suggested the movie in the first place. But that didn't stop me from bursting into applause at the end of Death Proof.

And I wasn't the only one. I've never seen or even heard about a Japanese audience applauding and cheering at the end of a movie. So that was cool.

Know what else was cool? Everything.

Yeah, this was totally my kind of movie.

Although there don't seem to be any strippers who actually get naked in Rodriguez's universe. Small quibble.

The only other quibble I have is that the 'ladies' from the first half of Death Proof are way less engaging than those from the second half. Seriously. I found them kind of annoying. In no way deserving of what fate befell them, but maybe not worthy of all that screen time.

That's it. Thems is all the nits I have to pick.

It sucks that it didn't do so shit hot at the cinemas, but I hope they don't abandon this idea. In fact, since Grindhouse was inspired by the 70's, why not make a direct to video spiritual sequel inspired by the direct to video shlock that started popping up in the 80's?

I want to talk more about the films, I want to gush like that guy's black tongue, but it would just be a bunch of exclamation marks and OMGs. I dug it, and people who think that they might dig it will most probably dig it and I would never in a million years let my mom watch it.

Grindhouse

is finally coming here. But not as Grindhouse. It's being released as two films. Nearly a month apart from each other. Death Proof first.

I'm happy that I actually get to see it but sad that it won't be in the original format.

Also, Japanese people do the above a lot. They start typing out a sentence in their subject line and then just continue the sentence in the body of the email or txt message. It takes some getting used to.

The Only Way This Vacation Could Get Off To A Worse Start is if it Starred Chevy Chase

So I woke up this morning not to the alarm clock, but to Carla telling me to shut off the alarm clock. Poor girl, I didn't hear it at all. Next I awoke to the sound of the garbage truck. It was too late for me to get or garbage out in time. Next I awoke to an unpleasant feeling in my bowels. I dashed into the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes making sure no more hot chocolate soup was going to fly out my anus.

Welcome to my summer holidays.

Woot.

Some Kind of Pun Relating to the Movie and Its Relative Merits

Transformers was a pretty movie. All of Michael Bay's movies have looked nice (I assume. I haven't watched most of them. The trailers looked pretty. And retarded), but in this one, the cameras stayed still and the edits were spaced out so that you could actually appreciate the prettiness. Still no continuity once the action started, but I think that's just the way Mike likes it. That's just about it for the nice things I'm gonna mention.

There's an old saying, "An action movie is only as good as it's villain." That's not totally true, but it's a lot closer to right than to wrong. And that is one of the many reasons why Transformers is not very good.

Shut up, internet, it just isn't.

Megatron spends the bulk of the movie in a block of ice and then rips an ebonics speaking moron robot in half and then gets killed by an actor whose name translates into 'the beef'. That ain't much of a villain. Oh yeah, he also screams about hating all of humankind. Spooky stuff, eh kids?

His heroic opposition is Optimus Prime. Prime's actions play out thusly: he crashes into our planet, gets a rad flamey paint job, says a bunch of phony hollow bullshit, cuts the head off a dump truck (that part was kind of cool), gets the shit beat out of him, tries to sacrifice himself honorably and fails. Woot.

Not all the robots were handled so poorly. The opening with the helicopter was pretty sweet. Stuff blew up real good, there was a sense of menace. But it shows just how poorly Megatron is introduced.

Bumblebee, despite being involved in all the lame comedy, was pretty alright as well.

Notice how I singled out the two characters who spoke the least? Don't think that's an accident.

Nothing that comes out of anyone's mouths is any good. Anything that comes out of the humans' mouth is retarded and anything that comes out of the robots' mouth is inane.

Megatron hates humanity for no real reason other than he's the bad guy, and I can accept that. Bad guys are just born bad sometimes. But Optimus Prime loves humanity. He's been on earth for like three days and he's willing to sacrifice his Spark for us. Why? If he learned all there was to learn about humanity via the internet, as he stated, he would have nuked the planet from orbit.

I should have said pwned. Optimus would have pwned the planet from orbit.

There were other robots in the movie but I don't really know why. There was that medic who couldn't fix anything, the Autobot who got torn in half, the dump truck who got his head cut off, the jet and the police car.

Man. Starscream was pretty awesome in the cartoons. He was devious, always plotting to overthrow Megatron. I can't even recall if they had a scene together.

I saw the movie two days ago and I can't remember it. And that's not really a bad thing.

Anything to do with the internet was head breaking. I could hear Carla's eyes rolling.

The action was cool, if a little hard to follow sometimes. The Beef is charismatic. Navel McTits reminded me of Jennifer Connelly, and that ain't ever a bad thing. Plus it had Optimus' voice! I was so happy to hear that voice come out of that blue and red robot. Then I heard the words he was saying. And despaired.

I know that this is a summer movie based on an old cartoon that was nothing more than a commercial for toys, but they really could've done a better job.

That Rat Movie

As I mentioned before, I found it much easier to identify with a talking rat than with a talking car. But there were moments in the film that broke that connection between me and the rat. As soon as there were multiple rats on the screen, I would get freaked out. Masses of rats are gross, they make me shudder. I don't know if Brad Bird did that on purpose or not.

Pixar

Cars was the first Pixar flick I didn't catch in the theatre. It just never grabbed me. I read and heard the reviews, it'"s Pixars weakest effort, but still miles beyond most of the competition." Having finally seen Cars, I would only agree with the first part of that sentiment. I found cars to be dull, not all that funny, and un-engaging in just about every way. It looked fricking fantastic, but that's about it. Unless the car transforms somehow into an ass-kicking robot, I can't really care too much about it.

Transformers still isn't out here yet, not that I expect it to be good.

But yeah, Cars weren't so good.


Ratatouille (the spell check suggested Catatonia), however, is so very good. Fantastic, really. Gorgeous, funny, everything you expect a Pixar film to be. Brad Bird is just... I have to see every film he directs in the theatre. He's earned it.

And the trailer for Pixar's next film Wall E (or whatever) looks darn good too. That quick little snippet of film affected me more than the whole of Cars.

Spamalot

I joined Facebook a few days ago. The amount of spam my phone gets has gone through the fucking roof. Coincidence? Fuck that noise.

Drinking is Fundamental

Crikey, I must've been well in my cups went I posted that last post there.

There is a danger to drinking. And that danger is this: you might blog while drunk. And during your drunken blog, you might fuck up when blogging about what you've been drinking. And I really did Underage Hooker With A Bag of Coke a grave dis-service. I said it contained raspberry liqueur. That was a God damn die. You see, Kishen tries to bring the name of each shot he creates to life. The Southern Comfort is for the dirty. The Malibu is for the underage and the prostitute. That leaves us with the bag of coke. Raspberry liqueur may be a lot of things (it isn't), but it sure as shit ain't no bag of coke. No, this shot calls for Red Bear.

Red Bear is like Red Bull but full of alcohol. What a great frickin idea.

There, now I can sleep better at night, knowing that I've done right by Underage Hooker With A Bag of Coke.

By the way, you don't drink a shot of UHWABOC, you don't slam it, you kill it.

Drinking is Fun

Kishen is going home for his wedding in two days, so we went to Balas to see him before he took off. At some point it was decided that we should be drinking shots. So I got us some prairie fires. That was a good start. Then we started making up our own shots.

Spittoon Juice was way tastier then we were expecting. Southern Comfort, Peach liqueur, and Baileys. It mixed good in the mouth. But it weren't so good as the next shot.

Underage Hooker With A Bag of Coke.

A Wee Bit of Backstory: I was talking to a dude who knows a girl who's married to this other dude who is an RCMP officer, and so on. Anyhoo, I said to this guy your friend ain't ever getting fired, he could kill an underage hooker with a bag of cocaine.

Kishen thought that would be a good shot. So this is what he came up with:
Southern Comfort, Rasperry liqueur and Malibu Rum with a squeeze of lemon. Went down real smooth. Not much goes down easier.

I've been drinking.

What Good's a Mirror Without a Face?

So it has been over a year since last I wrote here. That, y'all, is just whack. But I'm a year older now. A year is a long time. I'm much more introspective and... deep... and stuff.

Salty Rations

There is this show on Japanese TV that I catch from time to time. A man is locked in a room with a video game and he has to play it until he beats it. And these ain't new games. These are old, obscure games. From back when they made games hard. I always get caught up in it. After about 10 seconds you can grasp the play mechanics and the goal of the game. So you know what he needs to do. And you cringe along with him when he screws up. You cheer him on when he looks discouraged. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it is totally an awesome show. Every once in a while someone will come in to berate him if he's not doing to well.

Also, there are a couple channels that show a lot of straight to video cheese. I'm loving it. Recently, there have been a lot of giant spider movies. Good times.

I've also seen the 'sequel' to Ong Bak, Tom Yum Goong. It's more ambitious, and more of the director's flaws are obvious but that doesn't matter. Tony Jaa is fucking amazing. He fucked up most of the stunt doubles from Thailand, so he travels to Australia to fuck up their Ozzie asses. And he does. A lot. But not just with knees and elbows like last time. Nope, he's expanded his repetoire. He's become quite adept at breaking and dislocating bones. It is gloriously painful to watch. He is a crazy whirlygig of pain! I loves it. I have no idea what the hell happened in the non fighting parts of the movie, but who the hell cares. He fucks people up!

Just Now

Just now we figured out Carla's Indain Porn name.

Dirty Pants in Mouth.

Odd Longings

There's a sandwich shop a stone's throw from where I work. The lady who owns and runs the place is Japanese but speaks fluent English. She spent some years in Vancouver. The chef is French. The sandwiches are delicious. I had no idea how much I missed Hoagies and Reubens and Philly Cheesesteaks until I couldn't have them. Seriously, you cannot find corned beef anywhere in this frickin country.

I used to go there every Saturday for my lunch break. I still go there every Saturday, but my work hours have changed and now I'm done at 12:30. So I can have a beer with my meal. That is good stuff.

And there's a new pizza place near where we shoot pool. The owners and operators are also Japanese who spent s fair bit of Canada. Toronto in their case. And their pizza rocks. No corn, no tuna, no squid ink. Fantastic sauce. And they have beer. But I didn't have the beer. Cuz they also have bubble tea. Hell, I didn't even have the pizza. I had a calzone.

All I need is a place to start serving crisp meat burritos and I'll be set.

And a hot Japanese mistress.

Yerp

Well, it sure didn't take me that long to completely fall down on that whole update very day thing. In my defense, this is the sickest I have been since I was in Australia when it caught on fire. Eric saw what I looked like. I was a smidge better this time. But I was working for most of the time this time. Not fun. But I believe I'm now on the mend. Yay.

And just to get back into the regular swing of things: There was other stuff I wanted to write about, but I forget them all right now.


It's good to be back.

My Humps

I've been watching a little bit of Japanese MTV, they've been showing the American Top 20. Is this shit fa realz? Seriously? My Humps? My fucking humps? Dude, I had no problem with Milkshake. That was a catchy song. And Kellis was nice enough to disappear immediately afterwards. But My Humps? Fuck you! That ain't catchy, that is just shit! What is up with The Black Eyed Peas? They alternate catchy, kinda good songs with absolute horseshit. And chick from The Black Eyed Peas? Fucking Die! All the Horseshit songs have way too much of you. And you are not hot. Don't sing to me crappily about your "luscious lady lumps". I don't want your lumps, I'd prefer painful lumps on my testicles. Fuck that is a shitty shitty song. FUCK!

And Madonna? When did she start taking vocal lessons from Cher? I guess they have a lot in common. For instance, I never want to see their unclothed asses again. Act your fucking ages!

And what's up with this shitty teen drama in the middle of Green Day's shitty ballad? Whatever. I'm all pissed off out.

Peace.

GIVE UP? GIVE UP? GIVE UP?

It is 5 in the god damn morning. And, if you ain't noticed, I am not asleep. I got a big long day ahead of me. This sucks. I went to bed at 10:30 in the hopes of getting a good night's sleep. More than a good night's sleep. A good ten hours of sleep. That didn't happen. Obviously.

I wanted to get all this sleep because I am still sick. I have been sick for basically the whole month of November. And it is getting worse. I was just about over it and then I relapsed. Hard. I think I've getting a cold sore. That really sucks. And I have no idea how to find the medicine I need in this country where the language is all crazy.

My head sucks. It is all the time dizzy. And filled with gross stuff. Every time I cough, I taste snot. Every time I sneeze, I taste snot. Every time I taste snot, I taste snot. With a hint of iron (I wanted to play some kind of word game with "irony", but thinking about it made my head hurt). Blech. And it be getting worse. Soon, when I cough, not only will snot and phlegm come out my mouth and nose, it will come out of my pores. And maybe my eyes. That would really suck, you wouldn't be able to just wipe it away, you might have to yank at it. Ewww.

And, at some pint when I wasn't paying attention, someone put two pounds of milk shake in my lungs. My breath is rattly, painful and cold. I am starting to get a wee bit concerned. Coming from me, that means something. I usually ignore what my body tells me. This is how I roll: if I feel sick, I just ignore it until I feel better. But I am not feeling better. I may have to re-roll.

Well, the cute girls wrestling in bikinis show is over so I'm gonna try to catch some sleep.

Pray for me.

There's No War But Ours

So I'm watching La La, the channel for women. I think. And there's an informercial on. Sorta. There are no peppy hosts, no fawning audience. No stubborn spots, no easy cash. Nothing but Toronto. Toronto from the eighties by the look of things. And the sound of things. Allanah Myles' "Lover of Mine" is the soundtrack to the cityscape and sundry other shots. I gotta tell ya, they ain't selling me.

I frickin LOVE this country!

No, But I Can See It From Here

This will be one of my last posts where I talk about the act of posting. At least for a little while. There's no reason for me to bitch about a lack of material when I have peppered this blog so liberally (Ivy league communists) with unfinished thingees. I am spoiled for choice. Starting tomorrow I guess I'll just start choosing. But not today. Today I tell you about tomorrow.

I also tell you that my throat really hurts.

And making and eating nabe all by yourself is not very fun and way too filling.

I watch tv as I type. The coming soon channel was showing a trailer for Star Wars Episode 3 and there was a shot of some sort of Star Wars videogame in there. Just the one shot. Not a very long shot. In a fairly long trailer. That was weird. Before that they were showing trailers for Idol DVDs. Idols are cute girls who put out DVDs filled with them looking cute and bending over. They don't get naked near as often as you might think. But I don't care. They are cute, they smile a lot and they bend over. That's enough for me.

There was more that I wanted to mention, but I forget it all. As always.

Oh yeah, I should mention that this is National Novel Writing Month. Have I done that already? Have I mentioned that there is a suggested word length for the 'finished' novel. Broken down, it averages out to about 1700 words a day. I'm happy if I break 800. But I just gotta keep plugging away. One day, I'm gonna be a real boy.

All Over It

I have a hurty head. There was something very wrong with the train car I rode on the ride home. It made this noise you see. I'm not quite sure if I'll be able to accurately describe it, but I'll give it a try. Take a violin and a trumpet and mix them. Not the instruments themselves, but the sounds they make. Mash 'em up using a substandard synthesizer. And make sure that neither instrument is in tune. And that both out of tune instruments are out of tune in different ways so they ain't in tune out of tune, if you dig. Then take that ugly sounding synthesizer and hold down the second highest key. That, kinda, was the sound the train was making.

It hit me and hurt me right where the skull meets the spine. The Skine. Or the Spull. Take yer pick. I don't know which one I like better.

And then, when the train stopped, I walked through a cloud of stink on my way to the train's door. Ladies, when you apply your perfume with a ladle, it is no longer an 'exotic scent' it is an 'unholy stank'. Just a little FYI.

But there's one more reason for my non good head. One of the kids today slapped me in the temple. Just out of fucking nowhere. We were doing the usual interview thing when we just slams his hand into my head, knocking my glasses askew. I am so proud of myself: I didn't harm him in any way. Rather, I grabbed him by the shoulders, said four words in a very serious voice: "No!" and "Say you're sorry!" I didn't let go of his shoulders until I was sure he meant it. If that had been my own kid I would probably be talking to a lawyer right now.

A lawyer who would hate my guts, think me lower than a impotent snake's penis. He would agree to defend only because he could then not win the case. I would end up being sodomized by a bunch of angry, angry convicts. But their penises would be small and not all that uncomfortable. And I would finally be able to say that I've had sex with an Asian.

5 or More Correct

I really should update the Japanese blog, but I really don't know what I can talk about. One of these days I really need to take pictures of our neighbourhood. It's a great place. A covered arcade that's a couple blocks long, three supermarkets within walking distance that mark some of their food down about when I finish work, multiple karaoke places, sushi places, izakayas (cheap food and drink), and a second hand shop fairly close by. It's good stuff. Plus there's an "esthe" place a stone's throw from our place. Now esthe can mean a place for relaxation and massage, but it can also mean a place where certain things get massaged. I'm not sure which one it is.

But hey, if you come to visit me, maybe you can find out and let me know. That'd be great. We may have a whorehouse out back of us. Yay us!

Have I mentioned the flyers that are sometimes thrust into our slot? They have cute and sometimes naked girls on them. Sometimes these girls are doing interesting things to pink blobs of pixels. I check the mail slot multiple times a day.

I had a week off from work but I feel not all that much better. Still real tired and my throat still hurts. But I've got the heart of a champion and that's what counts.

Maybe if I update a different blog every day, the posts won't be so same-y and lame. We'll see. I hope.

If not, well at least I suck.

Why Was I Not Informed?

I think I may have mentioned somewhere that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoRiMo). And I think that is just a damn fine idea. But yesterday I missed out on the chance to participate in an even better idea. Saturday, November 5th was (Inter)National Drunken Writing Day. You open up your blogging device of preference, you start to drink, you continue to drink, you get dead drunk and you try to write all the while. Before you pass out, or maybe after, you can spell check it (optional) and then you must submit. And you can't delete it later. Sounds like my kind of fun. But I didn't hear about it until today. God damn it!

I, also, think this box has been glued.

That is something I might type whilst under the influence of wheat and/or barley and/or potatoes and/or whatever else people can make hooch outta. Apples, say.

But I am not drunk right now, I typed what I typed above because I heard Carla say it and then I typed it down. It fills up the space, it does. The only problem, I suppose, with writing while shit faced is that I already suck at typing. I've been getting steadily better, I may actually be able to beat Typing of the Dead upon my return, but I still ain't anywhere close to good. I imagine tasty libations may widen that gulf, while simultaneously making that same gulf seem to unwiden. Yeah, the poor spell checker might asplode. Which is hard for a non-physical thing to do, but not impossible.

According to Nike, "Impossible is nothing". But then, they're dicks.

You may think that even though I claim sobriety I am actually imbibing most egregiously. You would be wrong. I am not drunk, just exceptionally tired. I played basketball today. More to the point, I was surrounded by people playing basketball today while I practiced and worked on my awkward flailing. It's really coming along.

The worst part about writing while fit shaced, I suppose, is the ever present danger of blowing chunks on the computer. That last sentence back there? I typed blow chinks, which is even more offensive than blowing chunks. Which is surprising really since chunks is my dog. "Why chunks with a small c?" you ask. (God Damn! Y'allz be hard to shock) Back in the day I did use to call my dog Chunks, but the capitalization thing just went straight to his head. You all know me. You all know how I roll. Ain't no way I'm going to suck on a conceited dog's cock.

Pardon me, I'm going to go return some videos and maybe rent some more. Be back soon.

Didn't rent anything new. We've got too much junk on the hard drive that we haven't watched yet. We gotta clean this bad boy off. It's chugging.

Ow. Typing hurts. I jammed my finger during basketball and it hurts.

Maybe I should go into more detail about my basketball experience. But I don't think I will. It was a fun, yet very emasculating experience. I was the tallest guy on the court, but the most useless. Well, Ben may have been more useless but not by much. Most of the other guys there were fairly good. Of course, their recording studio is next door to the court we played on. That might have something to do with something.

There was one girl who played with us, but her shirt was too loose to see anything going on as she ran. And she smokes. They all smoke. As soon as a game was done, they would light up. But neither they nor I experienced any shortness of breath. Yay breath! And yay after-baketball naps. That was nice. Boy, I sure do enjoy our new bed. It be sleep-tastic!

During our walk to return the videos, we stopped by a combini (as you do). I've mentioned man before, yes? Man can mean a few different things in Japanese. It's ten thousand and it's also a hot bun filled with stuff. Like a Chinese bun. You can get all sorts of man from the combinis here. The one I partook of this evening was a mushroom stew man and it was kinda tasty. I am gonna miss the man when I go home. Sure 7-11 has all kinds of overly salty snacks, some of which are even edible. I seem to recall not hating something called Taquitos.

Well, basketball was a bust word-wise, and my finger is getting more irate the more I write so I'm agonna wrap it up. L8terz!

Loneliness March

Sorry about that there previous post. I am even more sorry that I don't really have much of an idea of what I'm going to write about today. Tomorrow should be a bit easier, we're heading to a big flea market and those things are always at least a little interesting. Plus it seems that I am going to be playing basketball tomorrow. I'm not sure how or why. Hmm... maybe I should go buy some shorts. I'm not sure what the etiquette is. All my other shorts require belts, are belts kosher in B-Ball? I don't know these things. Oh man, they're all going to laugh at me.

But that will all be grist for tomorrow's mill, whereas today's mill is looking very grist-less. I've always meant to approach my movie reviewing with a bit more... profesionality-ism... ness? But whenever I write such a review, it doesn't sound like ME. I still haven't cracked that nut. Maybe I should keep whacking at it here, on this blog. That would certainly take up more than enough time and space. It might even be useful. Well then, it's settled: I'm too lazy to actually follow through with it.

This is something that always gets me down. My lack of word wrangling ability. I should be a much more accomplished word wrangler. I have all these ideas in my head, but somewhere between the grey of my brain and the black of these keys it all goes pear shaped. Once in a great while it all works perfectly, but it has been a great while since it last happened.

OOOPS! Got a little too introspective there.

Maybe I just need to post on one of my other blogs. Variety is a spicy lunch and all that. I have been meaning to talk a bit about our neighbourhood. It's nice, we like it, and I think it's about time we paint a word type picture of it. Or I could use, like, actual pictures. I have the technology. Plus, if pictures are worth thousands of words, as leading scientists have led me to believe, then just one of those babies would put me up over my daily minimum. But maybe that would be cheating.

Or I could go to my videogame blog and write up something. I have been gaming a lot lately. Mainly old games though, trying to catch up and all that. And next weekend is the Osaka Games Festa, so maybe I'll just wait till then. I could write about Jack Thompson. But to much thought has been wasted on that horribly thoughtless man. I do heartily approve of the motion that whenever someone uses the phrase batshit insane on the intraweb, they must link to Thompson's entry in wikipedia. Like I did just there. That way Thompson and batshit insane will forever be associated together in our hearts and minds. And all search engines. That's something I can get behind.

I also brought that up so I could somewhat smoothly segue into this: I read about the whole JT thing on Eric Burns' http://websnark.com/. Eric (I feel like such a phony calling a man I've never met by his first name, but I can't refer to him as Burns. I'll get confused and start talking about Simpsons stuff. And Eric is more of a Fat Comic Book Guy than a Burns.) uses websnark to talk about and critique webcomics. And anything else that he may want to talk about.

And he uses lots of words. Lots and lots of words at times. And he has a couple webcomics of his own and he's writing a novel this month because that is what you do in November. His word count on said novel is up over 15 thousand. I don't think I've broke a grand yet. That just makes me feel bad. Not that more words equals better books or blogs. But the fact that he can tap so freely into the inkpot in the sky and scrawl out so prolifically without getting his parchment all smudgy and gross humbles me.

But hey, lookee here! This post has more words in it than the last one and it weren't near as hard to type out. If only it worked like this all the time. Only, maybe, it would be better if I could also manage to make these posts interesting.

That Didn't Take Long

If you want to be a hard ass about it, I've already missed a day. I, being not a jerk, would not agree. I started typing this just before midnight, and a day isn't really done until I've had a nice long sleep.

Boy, I sure could use a nice long sleep. I just woke up from a nap, but that is just not the same. I could have just slept right through, stayed in bed, but I woke up for the express purpose of blogging. And maybe watch a bit of 24. But 24 has gotten so stupid lately, I would gladly choose sleep over it. But Carla had some online stuff she needed to finish up, so that's why for I had such a late blog start.

I could've blogged earlier in the day, but I was busy. Cooking, cleaning, various other little things. Plus I talked with Trev for like two and a half hours. That was nice. Real nice.

I'm kinda stretching here, if you couldn't tell. I have no idea what the hell I'm blathering on about. I'm both too tired to think of anything interesting and too lazy to care. That is a winning combination right there.

Crap, something just about floated to the surface of my brain, but then it totally wriggled away. Stupid brain.

I'm too goddamn tired to check to see how many stupid words I've used. Here's some words, just to pad this baby out: purple monky dishwasher incontinent jam monster ape bog frog dog mog pog. This, right here, this is a new low.

G'night folks.

The Water is Awesome

Been seeing a lot of movies lately. Corpse Bride this evening. I liked it. It looked quite lovely. Lots of bits that made me wonder how they did it. I enjoyed it a lot more than that there Nightmare Before Christmas. I felt like I was supposed to like that movie more than I actually did. There was too much singing in that Xmas movie and some weird live action shots quickly edited to and from so you hopefully wouldn't notice their non animated-ness. It was jarring.

But I had none of those problems with Corpse Bride. There were far fewer songs, none of them overstayed their welcome, and all the animation was... animated. I really, really liked the pen at the beginning, the father trying to smile, all the piano playing, and the liquids. It was a really lovely film. But a lot of the boobs, both bouncing and non, were a might bit disturbing. I'm not quite sure what was up with the butterflies at the end, but fairytales don't need to make real sense just fairy tale sense. Speaking of which, that ending was a bit abrupt, but what else really needed to be done? Other than the necrophilia scenes that better be included on the DVD.

The only thing that I didn't enjoy about the film was how full my stomach was during the length of it. We went to an all you can eat country style viking right before the movie. That was not the best of ideas. The food was good, but I always eat more than I need to at those kinds of places. I need to get a little more self control. Plus I think that I'm trying to fatten myself up for my trip back to Canada. I've dropped like 20 pounds since coming here. As soon as I learned this, I started eating more and exercising less. Not on purpose, I just realized it today, but that doesn't change the fact that some part of me doesn't want me to be skinny.

I am why I can't have nice things.

Well That Certainly Sucks

I wrote all kinds of words, placed in an easily read order, I wrote about all sorts of things. Well, mainly about my day yesterday but my day yesterday encompassed all sorts of things. It was good, I deemed it good. I hit the publish post button and it all just fucking vanished. I am a bit fucking pissed.

You see, I outlined in that lost post that since National Novel Writing Month has once again rolled around, I would use it as an impetus to (no, not write a novel, none of us want that) update at least one of my blogs every day. I also wanted every post to be at least 200 words in length. My last, lost post had way more than 200 words contained therein, then the shit cable connection conspired with Blogger's bloated badness to lose my words. Fuckers! Non corporeal fuckers!

Let's see if I can do a quick recap of my Saw and Saw 2 reviews:
Saw 2 is better than Saw 1.
Cary Elwes looks and sounds bad in Saw 1.
The devices in both are creative and gory.
I hate the "Spin the camera around and speed it up!" technique that the filmmakers seem to be in love with.
Both films need more (Read:they ain't got none) boobs. Although I appreciate all the nipples in Saw 2.
The ending in Saw 2 is more twisty but makes less sense than the ending of Saw 2.
I like Saw 2's ending better.
The writing in both is not as clever as it thinks it is.
I am even more clever than I think I am.

I think that puts me over 200 words but still far short of the fabled lost post.

See you tomorrow.

Wherein the Pervert Comes to the Fore

You would have to be a mongoloid moron who's on fire to not pick up on Halloween in Japan. Seriously, the girls just come up to you and tell you how cute and/or cool you are and touch you all over. Plus, the train was so crowded I'm pretty sure I molested at least three different girls. I wish I could have seen what they looked like.

Today, as I was out and about, I passed by a little fashion boutique down a small side street. There was a very cute girl in a very short dress tending the shop. We made eye contact, we both smiled and then she turned away from me. I thought I had repulsed her. Then she bent over, at the waist, and started adjusting her frilly stockings. Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

When I recovered, I crossed the street to look at the cute little puppies in a pet store. There was another cute girl in there who was squatting down and playing with some small, ratlike dog. I could see nearly the entirety (is that even a word?) of her thong. It was leopard skin. Today was a good day.

Dear Christ Why!?!

They are making a sequel to Underworld.

Words fail me.

Cool

I was just now watching the Discovery channel. There is a program on about the Universe and stuff. Stuff like black holes. Whilst explaining black holes, they showed footage from the end of Evil Dead 2. That is just plain cool.

Japan Fashion

Yesterday I saw a very attractive lady walking down the street. She had on a very tight shirt. On this shirt were these words: "I Large Breasts". Under these words was a black and white picture of large breasts. On this picture of the large breasts, right where the nipples would be, were bright pink stars. Exactly under this black and white (and pink!) picture of breasts were real breasts. Lovely large yet perky breasts, unrestrained by any bra. It was quite a sight.

Fanboyism

I don't know if all y'all have heard about this or not. Please click on that there link. Now chew on that for a bit. Unsure of what to think. Here's some more to chew on. Before Nintendo, the accepted form of controller was an uncomfortable stick with a button on the top. Or some unholy mishmash of keypads and click-y sticks. Nintendo invented the directional pad. That was way back in the NES days. The SNES introduced the world to shoulder buttons. The N64 was the first console to have analogue sticks. And four controller ports. With the Gamecube, Nintendo was the first First Party to release wireless controllers.

Let's look at the Microsoft 360 and the PS3 controllers. Dpads? Check. Analogue? Check. Shoulder buttons? Check.

Nintendo knows what the fuck it is doing. Don't be afraid.

Christ man, get excited! Think of the fucking possibilities! A racing game that requires no pushing of buttons at all! Imagine the sniping interface in an FPS! I'm giddy!

And Another Thing...

I meant to study Japanese tonight, I truly did. But the internet was especially fruitful this eve. This scratches me in almost all of my itchy places. The music is superb, the idea is wonderful and the execution of it is pretty damn good. Plus it has some nice ideas in it. Parts are a little forced or 'joke-y', but no in any way big enough to detract from what it is trying to achieve. I love this stuff, using games in ways not intended. I love that a game about shooting as many things as many times as possible can be used as a platform for intelligent discussion. Awesome. Teh Awesome, even.

While I'm Here...

I meant to post this a while ago. It is a perfect distillation of the modern gaming environment, hot chicks and rag doll physics. It is nigh perfect in its focus. Seriously. I really like how every factor in this game is "weighted" to keep the action going, to keep the good times rolling. And if she ever gets stuck, just give her a tug and off she goes again.

But as with almost anything pure and beautiful, politics had to get involved. This is the exact same thing, only with Bush instead of bush. I can't say that I like the substitution. I'm not even sure I know what this political statement is stating. Bush is tumbling like the economy, like his approval rating, like foreign relations, like all of the above? But then, I've never been much in to politics.

Why Was I Not Informed?

There's a new Serenity trailer out there. And it is good. So here is a link to the new serenity trailer. And here is a link to the international trailer. I recommend watching both. Many times. I am giddy. Giddy I tell you!!

Also, I finally got an S rank in Double Dragon Advance. 102 was my tally. Yay me.

TeReBi

Last night I was riveted to a program on the television. The gist of the show was this: a guy with a handheld video camera and his camera crew prowled a beach in Japan looking for girls to interview. As the camera crew filmed the guy and the girls making small talk, the dude's camera was always aimed at the girls' goodies.

I'm serious. This is how the show went. Guy:"So tell me about your tan." Girl:"Well..." Camera:"BOOBIES!!!" GIrl:"... desu ne." Guy:"That's a nice bathing suit." Girl:"Thank y..." Camera:"CAMEL TOE!!!" Guy:"Is that your friend? Rub lotion on her!!!"

My Japanese is horrendous but I believe the name of the show was, roughly translated, THE BEST SHOW OF ALL TIME!

Also, as I was typing this, Carla showed me her tits. It made my day. I think I'm finally getting somewhere with this chick.

You Can Never Finish If You Don't Start

So these three films, Danny the Dog, War of the Worlds, and Batman Begins, they're all a bit mean. Sure, they each have their happy endings but there is some real dark stuff to get through first.

In the case of Batman Begins, there was some real life stuff we had to endure before we could enjoy the movie. I'm not going to get all Knowles-ian on you and tell you about my BMs and how that may have influenced my state of mind, I'm just going to tell you how movie going in this country can kind of suck.

Even though there were posters for Batman Begins all over the subways and such, we had a hard time finding a theatre playing the film. Odd that. So we sit down near the front, we got there a bit late y'see, only to find that our legs don't so much fit. Not cool. Luckily, there's a balcony (how long has it been since I've been in a movie theatre with a balcony?), so we grabbed some seats up there. Our legs fit and everything. Then the trailers started. Another way you could say that, and have people understand your meaning, is to say "The lights went down.", except they didn't. Not up there in the balcony. So that wasn't so nice, but I can understand why they did it (or didn't do it, whatever). We were so busy wondering when they were going to turn down the lights we didn't notice how callipygian the sound was. Ever do that thing with the 2 soup cans and a piece of string? Me neither, but I imagine the effect is very similar to watching Batman Begins in the balcony of that theatre. The other reason why they left the lights up was so that the mother with the screaming child could see where she was going. Not baby. Child. Fucking screaming five year old piece of shit child.

Batman Begins, War of the Worlds and Danny the Dog ain't child appropriate. Says the guy who was raised on raunchy comedies and vampire films. You can show kids whatever the fuck in the privacy of your own home, but don't sully the shared privacy of the movie theatre with your kids' stupidity.

But the kid gave us the kick in the ass we needed to move to somewhere better. There were seats along the ramp leading from the balcony back down to the floor. We sat there. Much better. The movie had been playing for about five minutes by this point. Bruce had just gotten out of prison and was looking for Ras. I don't know why, what Liam Neeson said to convince Bruce to join him. Couldn't hear a damn thing.

That's how my Batman Begins experience began. I still ended up really digging the flick. That's impressive. It overcame poor lighting, shit sound and a screaming little fucker.

This is easily the best Batman film I've seen. Better even than that one with the Anti-Shark repellent.

Why?

Well, as my shark-repellent joke nicely illustrates, Begins is the first film to really take Batman seriously. I know Burton's Batman was dark and serious and noir and all that. But it wasn't really about Batman, nor Bruce. It was more about Burton and the Joker. I still really like that movie, I'm not slagging it. I like that 'Batman' was not an origin movie. Just like I love how Batman Begins is.

I love that there is not Batman in Batman Begins until halfway through the film. I love seeing the evolution of his suit, the expanding of the arsenal. I love Lucius Fox. Maybe I should just make a list of things I really liked about the film... nah. It all ties into this one thing: they played to Batman's strengths. Raimi also does this quite well, he knows that Peter Parker is the lovable loser and you need to show him lose to make the Spiderman stuff seem even more exhilarating. Batman is fucked up. You need to get in there, in Bruce's head. And this film did. Batman is noir-y. Begins out noirs Burton. I love the way Batman fights in this film. For the most part. Because he doesn't fight. He freaks his prey out until they make a mistake then he takes them down. I never got sick of seeing badguys just getting yanked screaming up into the air. I wish I could tell what was going on in the actual 'fight' scenes though. Not near as bad as that Bourne movie, thank goodness!

I also really liked the Batmobile. I didn't like how Batman didn't seem to fussed about causing all kinds of accidents and collisions. He's not a killer. Some of those cops cars got pretty fucking crunched.

But those are pretty minor quibbles. My main gripe with the film is how 'neat' it is. I don't like how everything inter-relates. (Oh yeah: *SPOILERS*) Some comic book geeks didn't like the Joe Chill stuff. "Joe Chill should never be caught! That's what drives Batman! He feels guilt over never catching his parent's killer." I think we can all agree that that is bullshit. Batman does what he does so that what happened to him won't happen to someone else. I like that Bruce Wayne was going to kill Joe Chill. I like that. I don't like that Bruce's parents death wasn't random, that there was a conspiracy. That struck me as being overthought, overwritten. I also could have done without some of the one liners, mainly during the Batmobile chase scene.

And I could have done with a lot more Katie Holmes nipple. That was good stuff.

The villains were good. Everyone was good. (Well... Katie Holmes didn't really have much to do, but: NIPPLES!!!) I especially liked Gary Oldman. One of the guys I saw the film with is a big Oldman fan, after the film he asked who Oldman played. That's how good Oldman was.

The last thing I should mention, I guess, is the effects. I liked 'em. The fear drug stuff looked like it was torn right out of Arkham Asylum.

Well then... I took longer than I meant to and only ended up talking about one of the films. At least it's a start.



PICTURE TIME!!!

All Apologies

I want to write a review of Danny the Dog, because it is quite a good film and I want to talk about it. But then, to be fair, I should also talk about War of the Worlds and Batman Begins, because I also like those films and I also like talking about films. But I am also a very tired puppy. This freaking humidity really saps a man's will to live.

I will try to talk about these films soon. Maybe somehow I will manage to tie them all together. Sometimes I can do that. Usually only when I don't mean to.

As an apology, here is a picture.



The Japanese women? They don't believe in the one piece, yet another reason why Japan is one of the smartest countries in the world.

Rainy Season

I kinda like this here rainy season. Other than the fact that it should have been last month.

See now, I thought it would be nothing but rain. Rain rain rain all the time. That ain't the case, least not so far. Nope the day can start out sunny, hot, and beautiful then it'll cloud over and start raining in the blink of an eye. It all happens so fast that the girls wearing their tight white Tshirts who didn't bother to bring an umbrella have to run all over the place, trying to minimize their wetness.

I really like this country.

I'm a Dollar

The internet is a wonderful thing. Just the other day, without really meaning to, I found the unaired pilot for Buffy. It was only a half hour show, and Willow was played by a different actress. It was interesting. And I don't mean that to be as dismissive as it comes across. It was still a good show, just not as good as it could have been (or as good as it was? Cuz the pilot that actually aired, the hourlong one with the cute Willow, was pretty good).

I bring this up as a roundabout way to talk about Revenge of the Sith. Cuz it was good, but could have been a lot better if they went back and fixed it up a little bit. I gotta say, I was a little let down by this one. People all over have been saying that this is the one that makes the prequels all worth it. Maybe I should stop listening to those people. To be fair, I was drunk and it was 3 in the morning when I saw it. I'll have to give it another chance, but here are my thoughts on the movie as of right now:

The opening scroll was nice. Not deadly dull like the one from Episode 1.

The opening shot was/is probably the best thing George Lucas has ever done. It's a long tracking shot that starts of with an homage to A new Hope at the beginning. A massive ship soars past the camera, then two fighters zip by. The camera follows these 2 ships as they fly along the exterior of the ship, once they pass it they bank hard and the camera follows to reveal: a massive space battle. The camera sticks with the fighters as they plunge headlong into the battle. After a bit of excitement the camera pushes in even further until it's inside one of the fighters. That's just a great shot. And a great way to start the movie.

The whole opening action piece is fantastic: after blowing some shit up in space, Anakin and Obiwan crash inside a cruiser and fuck some more shit up Jedi style. Just great. And R2 gets in on the action too. Carla didn't like the R2 part though, she said it seemed a bit out of character for him. I can see where she is coming from.

The Anakin, Obiwan, Dooku rematch wasn't as long as I would have expected. Still good, just short. And I love the look on Christopher Lee's face before he gets taken out. Plus I like how the staging of it mirrors the Vader/Luke fight from Return of the Jedi.

After that opening, though, things really turn to shit. After their victory, the two Jedi go back home. Once home, Anakin gets to make mushy talk with Padme. Yipee? Dear fuck!! Everyone knows that the 'romance' was the worst part of Clone Wars. Even Lucas himself has said that he ain't too shit hot when it comes to the dialogue. Here's an idea Georgie boy: don't write any more dialogue than you have to.

Fuck! In interviews, Lucas likes to brag about how he is so proud that his films can work with the sound turned down. He's a visual storyteller, so says he. Well then tell the fucking story visually. One longing look of love, just ONE, would have been immeasurably better than all that "I love you!" "Nu-uh, I love you!" "I love you mostest!" bullshit I had to sit through.

Fuck! Just look at your own God Damn Films George!! Look at Empire Strikes Back. "I love you." "I know." That's all it took.

While I was glad to see the Wookiees, they seemed to be there as fan service. 'Let's throw in some Wookiees, everybody loves Wookiees.' I do love Wookiees, but I dunno.. I have two main problems with the Wookiees, the first being that it makes them seem more like Ewoks. Third film fuzzy creatures that need help fighting off the evil oppressors. The second is Chewbacca. Fuck off! Chewbacca did not need to be in this movie! The only reason he's in this movie is so that Yoda can thank him. That bothered me.

Palpatine is pretty cool. I really like how subtle he is. Then he goes a little too over the top for me. Seriously, one minute he's nudging Anakin to go in a direction he might not want to go, the next he's yelling, "ABSOLUTE POWER!!!" Also, while I like his fight with Mace, he takes out those other Jedi too fast. These guys are the best of the best, and he takes out 3 of them in about as many seconds. I know it's supposed to show how much of a threat Sidious is, but instead it makes the other guys look like chumps.

The Jedi slaughter part of the film was pretty good other than that. Wait, just as I thought Sidious went over the top right after the Mace fight, I also didn't quite buy Anakin's sudden change of heart. I know it wasn't "sudden", but still, I wanted more conflict. Maybe those two snarks are related. If Palpatine didn't start cackling like a god damn madman, maybe I could accept Anakin blindly following him a little better.

Plus, Sidious totally has an ass on his forehead. That just looks stupid.

Now, there have been a lot of complaints about the acting in these prequels, especially concerning Hayden and Natalie. But I think they both do some really good work in this film. In fact one of my favourite bits in this film is watching Padme watch the Senate get behind the Emperor. "So this is how democracy ends... to thunderous applause." That's a great fucking line. And the heartbroken look on her face is... heartbreaking.

I also dug the little homage to A New Hope when all the little robots scattered at Anakin's approach.

The final showdowns weren't as epic as I was expected. This is why I want to see the movie again in a less sleepy state. There was nothing wrong with the fights at all, they just weren't as 'right' as I wanted. I guess.

I didn't like seeing Yoda turn tail and run. I wanted to see him try again. But then Ben pointed out, "Do or do not, there is no try." So Yoda wanted to do, it turned out he did not, so there would be no point in trying again. I can get behind that.

I can't get behind a lot of Yoda's dialogue in this film. They sound like cliche action movie lines as recited by a dyslexic. Kinda lame.

The end of the Anakin/Obiwan duel? That was pretty cool. Pretty graphic too. And the look in Anakin's eyes made it seem like his rage set him on fire. I liked that.

Carla liked the irony of the ending. Anakin turned to the dark side to save Padme, but his dark side led to her death. That was nice.

Not so nice? Her actual death. "She's given up the will to live."? Fuck you!

I liked how the birth of the twins was intercut with the 'birth' of Vader.

I liked the shot of the mask coming down, the quick look of fear and regret in Anakin's eyes. Nice touch. The profile of that helmet 'shoonk'ing into place? Should have been in the trailer. Fucking iconic.

I wasn't a huge fan of Vader's first few 'Frankenstein' steps, but I appreciate the homage. I really like his force freak out, crushing everything around him. If they had left it at that, that would have been great. But no (or should I say NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!), Lucas fucked up Vader's first scene in the worst fucking way possible. There is no way, no way at all, that that scene, that 'beat' could work. Clenching your fists and screaming NO! as the camera pulls out? That cannot work in a drama. Everyone knows that. How the fuck did that make it into the final cut?

The bit with Uncle Owen striking the same pose as Luke? Seems kinda forced to me.

And let's get back to the bit about George the visual story teller. Why not fucking show us Qui Gon? How fucking hard would that have been? I can understand though, audiences would see Liam Neason and go, "Hey, remember how crap he was in Episode 1, and how good he was in Batman Begins? George Lucas sure does suck huh?" Man, that cheesed me off. "Hey Obiwan, Qui Gon is totally talking to me from beyond the grave. Practice for 20 years and maybe you can do the same." What a cheap, lazy way to handle that.

That was one of the big mysteries I wanted solved in this movie. I was all like, "How come Obiwan and Yoda disappeared and no one else did?" I'd rather it stayed a mystery than how they shat out the answer at the end of Sith.

Man, that's a lot of negativity, isn't it? I still want to see the film again though. Even if I like it better the second time, I'll still find this funny.

Scary

Saw the ugliest baby ever on Saturday. Swear to god. It was either a baby or a horribly disfigured midget. I cannot accurately describe it, which is wholly to your benefit. From the quick, painful glance I got, I imagine that the wretched little thing could never, ever hope to close it's mouth. Not even Mick Jagger's lips could cover those craggy, creepy bicuspids. Her insane eyes also seemed incapable of ever shutting. Those two features kind of made any other visual information gathering nigh-impossible, but I got the impression that the skin was blotchy, pallid and not at all comfortable at ease on the bones underneath it.

This is what I said to Carla: "I just saw the ugliest baby ever. I just about yelped." Carla had to have a look for herself. I watched her approach, saw her try to steal a glance and winced as she nearly gave herself whiplash.

She says I didn't adequately prepare her. That may well be true. In my defense, I was rendered nearly mute. My brain was in a state of shock, my powers of description were even more retarded than is the norm. It was a bad scene.

*shudder*

Abstemious

"I look back over what I've written and I know it's wrong, not because of what I've set down, but because of what I've omitted. What isn't there has a presence, like the absence of light.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn't necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones."

I finished The Blind Assassin. I never remember if I'm supposed to bold or italicize book titles. If only there was some way to check such a thing. But I have no time for that. I'm blogging. I quite enjoyed the book. There were a lot of good words in it, put together flawlessly. Not that it is my favourite book, but easily the best book I've read in this country. I've read a fair bit. Still can't read non-fiction without falling asleep.

She compared a dude's face to a testicle. I wish I would have dog-eared that page so I could quote it.

Motherfuckers Gettin' HURT!!

I trust we've all seen Ong Bak. I know there weren't no story, but it looked pretty good and God Damn in Tony Jaa ain't amazin'!! Well, it looks like that flick was just a warm up. Tom-Yum Goong is his latest film and I think he won't be making another one for quite some time because he appears to cripple every stunt man he gets close to. I mean: JEEZUSS!! This shit looks painful! I warn you now, the site is beyond slow, so start downloading the trailer, go out and rent Ong Bak, watch it, return it and then watch the trailer. Unless you try for the large size trailer, I doubt you''ll get the whole thing before the actual movie comes out.

God damn, he kicks a dude right in the fucking head! I know, you've seen it a thousand times before. I know. But you've never seen it like this.

Holy fuck.

Grr

It annoys me how much I don't get done in a day. I haven't sat down and studied any Japanese in forever. I haven't written anything of any import in about as long. What did I spend my night on tonight? Reading forums. That is not a good use of time. Man, I suck.

FHjo

Yeah, not really so much to say. Work is still work, and there ain't much else going on right now. But, I really don't want to not write just because I have nothing to say. I must write damnit. Yep. I must write, but you are by no means required to read all this scribbled drivel.

I have at least three gray hairs on my head. I don't like that. Back in Australia, I had a white hair in my goatee. Now that was cool. These grey fuckers, not so much. I totally meant to use two different spellings of grey. I'll leave it up to you to figure out why.

Curses

So I said that I would both blog and study more. The studying part hasn't so much happened yet. Dang. But I do feel compelled to post at least something every day to this world wide web of nets. Even if I have nothing to say. I guess I could just make shit up. Like this:

If you are passing by some bushes and the bushes say "Oi!", do not stop and talk to whomever is in the bushes. Bad things will happen.

I Just Totally Blogged

Sure, I surfed the internet a little bit, but I didn't do it for as long as I could have (and usually do). I haven't even played with Kimber yet, and it's best to try to train her while Carla ain't around. She doesn't like listening to me repeat the same commands over and over and over again. Dude, I totally picked blogging over the internet and videogames.

Yay me!

Munificence

munificence

n : liberality in bestowing gifts; extremely liberal and generous of spirit [syn: largess, largesse, magnanimity, openhandedness]

I just now learned this word. I'm quite busy not learning Japanese words, but I looked up this here 'munificence' on dictionary.com. Why? Because of Margaret Atwood. I likes me my Margaret Atwood. This is a new discovery for me. I mean, I'm sure I've liked her for years now, it's just that I haven't picked up any of her books until about a month ago. That book was Wilderness Tips, a collection of short stories. Short stories about women mainly. Depressing mainly. The happiest story ended with a slightly older than middle age woman crying in her bathroom during the Christmas holidays. Yet I loved every sentence of it. Maybe not every sentence. But there were perfect sentences in there. Sentences that made me stop reading, just so I could grin and drink them in again. Sentences that a trillion monkeys on a whole lot of really nice typewriters would have a hard time topping.

I don't own Wilderness Tips, so I can't quote any of those sentences, but I am right now reading 'The Blind Assassin' and loving it even more. I''m less than 50 pages in, but man am I digging it. Somehow has made put me right inside the head of an elderly woman. Which is not somewhere I ever thought I would be.

(on the subject of her thinning hair)
"Beneath it there are glimpses of scalp, the greyish pink of mice feet.
If I ever get caught in a high wind my hair will blow off like dandelion
fluff, leaving only a tiny pockmarked nubbin of bald head."

That's just good stuff.

Makes me feel even more crap about my own writing, but whatever. I am so disenchanted with my own abilities at the moment, that I couldn't even muster any energy to even attempt to imply that Atwood is, like, totally munificent for sharing her words with the world.

Even More Boobs

Damn!! Forgot another great thing about Japan and boobs. In any large store of any kind you will find the massage chair section. This section will always be full. More often than not, a few of the occupants will be comely lasses. Which is great. Let me tell you why. The massage chairs here are fairly forceful. They push the recipient around a bit. So when a cute girl's back is being kneaded, it affects her front as well. God, I am such a perv. Plus, the girls have such blissful on their cute faces. Which, if all Japanese pornography is to be believed, is not something that happens in close proximity to bouncing breasts all that often. It is really hard not to stare.

Also, my spell checker just won't listen when I tell it to learn 'boobs'.

More Boobs

Back when I waxed slightly waxxy about bosoms, I totally forgot to mention how totally awesome girls on bikes are. Bikes are like perpetual motion machines. That is all.

Plans That Will Not Be Fruity

Seeing as I now commute about an hour and a half less every day than I used to, I figured I should try to spend this new surplus of time in a productive manner. The plan, as it now stands is to spend about 45 minutes a day writing and the other 45 studying the Nihongo. I always make plans like this and rarely do I ever see them through to fruition. Even if I do write more, it will probably just be about boobs.

Drool

I love it when women run. It's like Beyonce dancing in slow motion but in real life. I was going to say in real time but when boobs are involved, time seems less real. When those boobs start to move and sway, time becomes sticky. It doesn't flow as swiftly as it should. To me, boobs are hypnotic. I was going to be lame and try to rhyme by writing, 'They make me wax rhapsodic.' But can it really be deemed rhapsodic if I keep using the word boobs?

Late. Never. Better.

I think I finally figured out why I've been so moody lately. It's not because I've been sick for months. And it's not that this constant sickness is a constant source of anxiety for me at my job, cuz why would they want to keep a sicky like me around when there are other, more healthy Caucasians to be found. And it's not cuz Carla and I didn't get the apartment we wanted. Fuck, was that a nice apartment. TV in the bathroom.

It's none of these things. I've been moody because I've been derelict. Derelict in my duties as a browncoat. The trailer for Serenity is up. Has been up for near a week now. I meant to throw up a link here as soon as it went live. I didn't. I aim to rectify that.

Serenity is, of course, the Firefly movie. Firefly was, of course, one of the reasons why television was invented. Joss Whedon's ability to weave action, humour, plot, characters, suspense, cheese, Chinese swearing, philosophy, and everything else together has always awed and humbled me. His film track record ain't so sterling but Serenity looks to change all that.

If I could, I would stand in line for tickets to this move. Hell, I'm giving thought to flying somewhere so I can see it early. Early for me, I mean. No idea when it's coming out here.

I threw in the Firefly DVD so I could accurately quote some of the dialogue, and I ended up watching much more than I needed to. Objects in Space is one of my favourite hours of anything ever. But it's just barely my favourite episode.

Sorry

<a hreh="http://www.4q.cc/vin/index.php">Link</a> that's what I typed in my post last night. As we all know, it should be <a href=... Sorry about that. And in the short time it took for someone to notice my error, write in a snarky comment (thank you Anonymous) and for me to fix the problem, the site seems to have broken. Damn. The link in the previous post works now. You can check if you want. I hope it gets unbroke soon. But, for now, I will just post some of my favourite random facts about Vin Diesel.

Vin Diesel once used Gary Coleman as a hand puppet. Coleman said the experience changed his life and led him to give up smoking.

Vin Diesel once had cancer, but he coughed out the tumor and then used it to butter his bread.

Vin Diesel is a strict vegan vegetarian in all respects except that he will eat shrimp. When challenged on this, he insists the shrimp are "the lettuce of the sea".

Vin Diesel can read braille with his scrotum.

Vin Diesel once circumnavigated the globe in the hulled carcass of George Burns.

Vin Diesel once got so angry at a man that he punched him hard enough to cause his ancestors to feel it. This is how Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo.

Only about a thousandth of Vin Diesel's mass is expressed in the three dimensions we can perceive.

His intestines can hold 13% more bacon than mere mortals.

Vin Diesel once used a 3 year old child as a baseball bat during softball practice. That child was Bjork.

Vin Diesel was once asked if he believed in the idea of reincarnation. His response was simply "I used to be a plate of pancakes."

Not only can Vin Diesel comprehend infinity, he can express it in terms of pi.

He starts his day by arguing with a bowl of green apples.

Vin once went sledding in New Hampshire and broke the sound barrier by turning his head around and blowing forcefully. As a result of the shock waves, several children died. Vin ascended to heaven and repeatedly punched God in the eye until he brought them all back to life. Every single one of those children are now scientists.

Vin Diesel can cut 2" thick steel piping using only his rectum and Beatrice Arthur.

Vin Diesel is the only man to run around the Earth at the equator and kill a wolverine in the same day.

If you whisper Vin Diesel's name to a newborn penguin, he will attempt to suckle your teat.

matt damon

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around...Vin still hears it.

Vin Diesel wrote the book of Mormon because he wanted to beat up the people who thought it was real.

Vin Diesel once sneezed so hard a nearby building exploded. Upon seeing the explosion, Vin Diesel flew around the world counterclockwise fast enough to reverse time. After he had reversed time for 10 minutes, He went back to the building and went inside. He then punched Stalin in the face. Thus, Communism fell.

Bruce Campbell is the only being in our dimension capable of killing Vin Diesel, but the vacuum left by his absence would collapse the universe. To this day, the actors refuse to be wthin a thousand miles of eachother's presence.

Vin Diesel sometimes accuses acorns of being lazy.

Vin Diesel once faked his own death after a sheperd boy hit him in the head with a rock from a sling.

Vin Diesel has a black belt in pudding, which is not a martial art. He's just that good at it.

Vin Diesel can drink a packet of Swiss Miss chocolate mix and urinate a steaming cup of hot cocoa. Interestingly enough, this only works with the Swiss Miss brand, and is now one of their main selling points.

Vin Diesel is the only person to ever beat Battletoads without dying.

Every time Vin Diesel kills god, a kitten masturbates.

When Vin Diesel is sad, magical puppies appear to cheer him up.

Vin Diesel enjoys clapping babies together like erasers. He calls it blapping. *I think this one is my favourite*

Vin Diesel defied MC Hammer and touched it.

Vin Diesel doesn't actually have bones or internal organs. Underneath his skin is another slightly smaller Vin Diesel and underneath that is yet another even smaller Vin Diesel. After the third layer his body is filled with rich, creamy nougat.

Vin created belt buckles to prevent his waist from shooting lasers.

For Halloween, Vin Diesel cuts down a tree, scoops out the inside, fills it with candy, and then stabs anyone who rings his doorbell. He then eats the candy-filled tree.

"Vin Diesel" can be rearranged into "I Send Evil." And he does so, in the form of flying monkeys.

Vin Diesel once killed a man in Reno just to watch him die. He then
summoned Jesus to bring the man back to life, at which point Vin killed
them both.


Well, this is one of my longer posts. I went on a bit longer than I meant to. Sorry about that.

...and now a random fact about Vin Diesel:

I'm lazy: Link

Old Timey Music

This is where I type some regular text to better differentiate between the title above and the link below. I should have done this for my House of Cosbys post. It's a House of Cosbys. But, no, it's not. Not this time. This time it is:

Kinda lamely cool

Fucking Ducks

I like ducks. They are one of the few species of birds that don't have scary eyes. Have you seen the eyes of a chicken? Then you have seen the eyes of madness. But ducks are okay in my books. But I can't say the sight of them having intercourse is all that pleasant.


Well now, these are a couple of fine looking ducks.


This may look like a picture of just one duck, but I assure you it is not. The male, when he starts his 'bidness' (that's the scientifically correct term), forces the female to stay submerged.


Every once in a while, the female will poke her head above the water and the male pecks at it. That ain't cool.

Unless you're in to that kind of thing.

The House of Cosby!!

Here's a good link, y'see.

This one here is like a jello pudding pop.

With the hipping and the hopping.

Bill Cosby is funny. More Cosbys=more funny.

I Banged The Fuck Out of My Arm

Anyone who has visited us at the five star Orange House knows that there is only one stall in the whole building that has a western style toilet. That stall had been locked all weekend. Thinking that something was up, I hoisted myself up the wall of the adjacent stall and took a peek. The locked western stall was empty. Someone's idea of a joke I guess. I took it upon myself to sort this stupid situation out. I clambered over the top and was gingerly lowering myself down. I managed to stop my rapid descent by banging the fuck out of my arm. It does not feel good.


Also, I'm losing my voice. Maybe I shouldn't be cutting my orange juice with Tequila.

God Damn You George Lucas!!!

God damn you all to hell. My bitterness and pessimism had finally won out. I was resigned to the fact that Episode 3 wasn't going to be all that great. I was still going to see it opening day, download it off the internet and buy it on DVD, but I wasn't going to like it. Then the new trailer dropped. Fuck. That is a nice god damn trailer. I had been wondering how they were going to turn Anakin to the dark side without it feeling cheap and forced. They convinced me in the span of... however long that trailer was. And there's no sign of lameness in the trailer. No Gungans, no romance. All that shit is in the past. What's left is the good shit. A whole lot of Jedi are going to get their shit fucked up. Nothing but ass kicking and despair. I can't wait.

God damn you George Lucas, I cannot fucking wait.

Jokes

Why did God give women legs?
Have you seen the trail a snail leaves?

A woman is in the delivery room... I'm too lazy to type out the whole thing... "Don't worry, it was dead anyways."

Ba Dum Ching.

And I'm glad that not everyone I know knows about this site because I don't want them all to get pissed off at me when I say this: Japanese moms are hot. It's not like North America where it's like they take a year to get back into pre-birth shape. If anything, Japanese women are even hotter after they have a kid. They're still skinny and cute and dress amazingly, but they also have sensible hair. I love my job.

I Really Dislike Paris Hilton

I would say that I want her to die, but then there would be a period of mourning liable to rival that of a President and that might make me snap. She needs to disappear. She needs to stop manufacturing events in her life to keep her in the media spotlight. Yeah, that sex tape was leaked. On no, someone hacked into your PDA! Bullshit! She is a needy, clingy walking abortion. For all the money and such that she has had access to through her whole life, you would think that she wouldn't need as much validation as she obviously does.

I say all this only because, last night at the Green Leaf, I saw a girl who obviously modeled herself on Paris Hilton. Other than the fact that the girl last night didn't bleach the fuck out of her hair like Paris, the resemblance was annoying. Same slight, stickish, figure. Same whoreish dress, well maybe the girl last night showed less skin, probably because it's winter. Same vacant eyes and unmoving expression. That's what so bothers me about Paris. Her eyes never change. It doesn't matter if Paris is smiling or crying, her eyes keep the same vacant stare. Ditto the girl last night.

She was throwing herself onto anything that moved, rubbing up against at least three different males within the space of about 20 minutes. But the buffest male, who used the most hair product, was obviously the main target of her affection. You could tell because she was always hitting the classic Paris pose: hips jutting out and thumbs tucked into the pockets or waistband, wrists cocked at a playful yet sexy angle. You couldn't tell by looking at her eyes. It's as if the anesthetic the plastic surgeon used never really wore off.

I was sickened watching these two vapid, 'pretty' people do their mating dance. I don't need to see that kind of shit whilst I'm drinking. I hope they did end up fucking, and that his seed had enough sense or luck to find her absentminded eggs. And I hope that her malnourished frame somehow can support that small life growing within. Because that baby, judging by its parents, will be a black hole of intellect, and I hope that it sucks the mom away with it.

Beyonce

BEYONCE DANCING IN SLOW MOTION

Commercials

I'm seriously considering just taping shit off of T.V. as souvenirs for people at home. The shows themselves are just slightly crazy. Except for the wrestling, that crap be whack. Half an hour of guys dropping each other on their heads. Human bodies ain't meant to do what their bodies do.

I got sidetracked.

The shows on television are interesting, but it is the commercials that make me sit up and pay attention. There's one that is just a bunch of cute Japanese girls dancing to happy music. It makes me smile. Japanese girls wiggling is good stuff. Even better is the commercial for some kind of apple yoghurt. It's a hot Japanese lady in short shorts doing ball aerobics. I always pause in whatever I am doing to watch.

Then there are ones that involve puppets. Lemon puppets. Others involve... I don't even know. After some of these commercials, I have this discussion with myself in my head:
"What the hell was that commercial advertising?"
"I don't know, man, but I want it."

As I type this, I am watching a movie on T.V. I have no idea what it's about, but there's a chick with a sword and a short skirt. She just threw dynamite into a building, and turned away as the building blew up. The explosion hurled flaming bodies all over. Her back turned to the carnage, she still managed to cleave a flaming flying body in twain. And now her sword is ON FIRE!

I think that the main baddy is a eunuch. And I think this flick has been edited for television. Oh wait. She just killed the villain. She cut his throat. Well, she cut right though, but he didn't notice until he did a a spinning slice attack and his head didn't rotate. Kinda neat. Oh wait, now she's crying. Is that Jesus? What the hell is this movie? I should watch television more often.

I Banged the Fuck Out of My Toe

It doesn't hurt that much anymore, but man! For a while there, I wasn't happy. I did it at work and managed to not scream or swear in front of the chill'ins. Speaking of chill'ins, have you been to gizoogle yet? It's like Pimp My Ride for webpages. Bitch.