And, for my twentieth post, I have an announcement. It's not really like anyone reads here, so it's more a self-notice to book-end my personal writings here for my own records.
This blog has served its purpose, and, though I haven't written on it nearly as much as I wish I had during the period I used it, I am ceasing to use it. It's been a good tool for working on writing just because I wanted to write, though I did, for a period of time, have a very dedicated readership of one person.
I'm returning to my Livejournal, now. As much as I love Blogger's interface, it's too isolated and I'd rather write somewhere where I do have a few friends, at least for the time being.
I may revive this blog at a future date, and I'm certainly not going to delete it (though Blogger might; I've no notion of what its tolerance for abandoned blogs is), but for now, it's just a memory of a time I wanted to get away from my Livejournal, work a bit more on my writing style and reviewing skills (two goals I never really accomplished), and just isolate myself from the online communities I was involved in, hopefully having some extra time to spend away from the computer (another task I didn't quite manage).
According to timeanddate.com, the blog ran from Wednesday, May 17, 2006, to Wednesday, October 4, 2006; 4 months, 18 days including the end date. Or 12,182,400 seconds, 203,040 minutes, 3384 hours, 141 days, or 20 weeks (rounding down).
Now how's that for an inflated sense of self-importance?
For the record, my favorite entries are:
Today is Armageddon. The first real post I made on here, it's actually about the deadline day for my last piece for the English correspondence course I was doing at the time, a research paper. It's a bit overwritten and tries to be clever but really isn't, but I'm still kind of fond of it.
Midday Rendezvous. Just because it marks well an event that was special to me, I guess, even if I lay the self-deprecation on a bit thick.
More Reading. Probably some of my best attempts to sort out my feelings about things I've read.
Honorable mentions: Charlene is having an affair. WITH A TRANSFORMER. (because I find these pages hilarious, and was always a little disappointed no one ever commented on it) and Odds and Ends (because it shows just how banal and decompressed I am willing to go to find something to write about my day, and also for probably being the longest thing I wrote on here).
I finished The Man in the High Castle early Saturday morning (and I mean early early: 1 AM-ish), and it slowly sank in just how good a novel it is. Just, the way it all fits together, how it seems perfectly normal and plausible, but then at the end resolves its final plot thread in a slightly unnerving way that I honestly can't claim completely makes sense, but only seems to make the book even more disturbing. For the record, I think the first time the book really, really clicked with me, was when someone mentions The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which is the book within the book that describes a world where the Nazis lost World War II. The Man in the High Castle, of course, takes place in a world where they won the war, and it suddenly struck me that this book was the equivalent to that world of The Man in the High Castle in our world. It's kind of a dumb observation, I guess, and I don't know why it seemed so profound, but it seemed like it was, for some reason.
It actually didn't take me too long to read, only four or five days, but it feels so good to be reading, and to enjoy reading, particularly to read two excellent books in a row. Ender's Game was also a great sci-fi book (though it seems strange to say also, since The Man in the High Castle doesn't really strike me as science fiction all that much), and after finishing it, it surprised me how much I identified with Ender. His sense of disillusionment and apathy towards the middle of the book, particularly, strike a major chord with the sort of mood I've been struggling to get out of, lately. It was indeed quite an enjoyable book, though, and the twist at the end was a surprising one (yes, sometimes my inability to write very charismatic recommendations of media annoys even me).
So, in summary, I enjoyed both of these books and plan to re-read them again some time in the future.
In the mean time, I read a graphic novel (glorified comic book term) today, The Chuckling Whatsit by Richard Sala, which you can look up on Amazon if you want but I am too lazy to link to, and it was as good of an odd, twisty, conspiracy-laden noir story as I'd hoped. Now, I'm on to another novel, The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton, one of my favorite writers.
After that, I think I have Dracula, The Little Prince and a few more comic books to catch up on from my library stash before I make my final returns to the library for a good while: the books that I've bought or been given have been slowly accumulating on my shelf without being read, so it's time to enjoy what I can and get rid of what I don't.
I've been back since a week before Friday night last, but I have also been doing school and have been a very busy little boy. I have, however, found time to read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card which is actually quite good like everyone said it would be. Next I am reading The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick.
In lieu of actual content, here is a video of me quoting Desmond from Lost Season Two, episode 3. You can probably guess what I've been watching lately. Yes, I know I look horrible in it and it doesn't quite sync up with my template, covering over the new sidebar feature I added. This feature comes from my new account at All Consuming. It's actually a pretty nifty site, where I track my consumption in various forms of media, and you can even create your own account and make suggestions of what I should consume next. In other words, do so.
In somewhere approaching fourteen hours, I will be on a bus. This bus will be departing from Kitchener, Ontario. It will be going to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I will be on it for two days. When I get off the bus, I will meet up with an old friend that I have not seen for one year. I will stay with him for a little more than two weeks. I will be back on Labor Day. I am very excited. I have many things to do before 10 PM. These things include: dropping off my time slip at the temp agency (I worked yesterday); filling out and submitting job applications to Zehrs, Food Basics, and Tim Hortons; determining whether my health card is valid in Saskatchewan; buying goggles; and, most importantly, shaving my head. I'm not as excited as I was last night, probably because I am more in denial that today is my last day in Kitchener for almost three weeks and I only have some thirteen hours left to get packed and do all these other things, but I'm sure I'll be excited in good time.
I do not know what will happen to my posting schedule once I am in Saskatoon. It is possible that I will end up posting regularly, and it is equally possible that I may not post at all.
If I have the time today, I have a post about the events of the past week to finish, but updating the blog is not a priority today. If I have the time, however, I'll put it up. And pictures of my head, of course.
As Haloscan has so graciously, automatically informed you, I've enabled a new comments system using, you guessed it, Haloscan! It's a slightly better comments system that is also a little more powerful in terms of controls on my side.
Unfortunately, at the same time it automatically installed Haloscan tech into my blog template, it also automatically erased all the comments previously placed on my blog! Thus, being the sporting lad that I am, I found a cached version of my blog on Google and then typed up and restored every comment left on my blog pre-Haloscan.
Hopefully no one else encounters any problems with the new comments system.
I edited and made some creative contributions to a home movie filmed entirely with a webcam that you may see here if you are sufficiently devoid of anything else to do and haven't already seen it (and you probably have). It is a farewell video to the friends we were visiting outside Ottawa for most of last week, in response to a video that was briefer but of similar purpose that we found sent from them to my sister's email inbox as soon as we got back home on Saturday.
It has We Used to be Friends as part of its soundtrack, though, so it isn't all bad.
"If you see van Do not get into The man inside will try to abduct you You will be far from your mom and dad And you will be dead or at least very sad
Do yourself a favor Do not talk to strangers Do yourself a favor Never talk to stranger"
Kompressor - Never Talk to Strangers
I don't believe in luck. But it was certainly a marvelous stroke of fortune that led to me actually meeting up with Kevin, as opposed to barely missing each other as we did during the previous itinerary intersection that found us both in Ottawa. I didn't really notice him on the table in front of the New York Fries, at first. It was the New York Fries at the Rideau Center, where we had previously attempted to meet up during March Break, since I had recommended it as being possibly the greatest food court spot known to mankind.
I can't really remember exactly the first thing he said, something or other involving the use of my name that attracted my attention. Having been found out, I walked over to his bench and sat down. We sort of introduced ourselves, I guess, and he asked me how I was, as he had many times before on MSN; I said I was fine. I asked him how he was in return at some time or another, I think, or perhaps after I offered him the once-in-a-lifetime chance to discover whether he truly disliked New York Fries (essentially the only thing I'll spend my money on in mall food courts) he revealed that he was recovering from having had a flu (apparently two times) over the course of the week. Sitting there with someone I had talked to so many times on the Internet was a little awkward. I sort of knew him and didn't know him at the same time. I commented that it was surreal, despite the fact that it still wasn't that much.
Still, I wasn't really sure what to say, a habit that continued throughout our meeting. My fumbling, mumbled mention of a mass Christian event occuring on Parliament Hill which I had walked over from and my wondering how it worked for the government to allow religious events to occur on their property led into a discussion of separation of church and state in which I mostly revealed my lack of insight on the subject.
He looked a bit different than I had expected; wearing glasses, possibly with a different haircut, and with stubble across his face. He has a necklace with a silver wolf's-head on it, and his voice was slightly nasal, I think. I fiddled with my visor and took it off. I felt somewhat boring.
At some point in time I mentioned that I had a friend who's opinion of the quality of serial TV had regrettably been forged by watching the first disc of Smallville, Season One. This led to a discussion of Smallville's general quality, the pain of certain scenes in the pilot episode, and also (by train of thought) Star Trek: Voyager (because, like Smallville, it is also not especially great all the time), Veronica Mars (because Kevin said I would like it probably), and then Firefly and Joss Whedon (though I'm not actually sure how that entered the discussion).
After a little while, we got up and strolled through the mall. We located musicians playing muisc that I would not especially associate with the BluesFest they apparently were playing for. Kevin said he thought they probably let musicians of different styles in, and remarked that it would be awesome if they had a BluesFest where they only played emo music. Kevin is a hero.
Eventually, we made our way to HMV, which is, of course, the mecca of mall audiovisual entertainment purchases. Kevin pointed at the television screens on the wall outside HMV and said something that I can't make out. It is eventually related that he desires the so and so Final Fantasy movie which is being displayed. I probably mumble something dumb and mostly irrelevant which requires at least two repetitions to be heard.
At HMV we browse their wares and engage in commentary on their products. First we go to the sales rack and Kevin makes fun of Koyaaniqatsi and tells me that Edward Scissorhands is good. He also takes the Director's Cut of Daredevil, which is cheap and he has previously mentioned he wants. Eventually, we make our way to boxed sets of TV shows. I make a comment about the generally decreasing size of the boxes. Kevin explains this phenomenon (fold-out cases and larger individual boxes for the DVD's being replaced with smaller boxes for individual DVD's). The boxed sets of Andromeda are gigantic. I point this out and question what all they put in there. Kevin says, "Well, considering it's Andromeda, it's probably full of crap." Around this time we discuss Star Trek movies and I reveal my lack of knowledge as to how long Scrubs has been running. We also attempt to locate Veronica Mars in vain, and are told by a worker that it is OUT OF STOCK. We also find a boxed set of thumb parodies of movies. No, really, parodies of movies filmed entirely with thumbs. This boxed set is around eighty dollars, and its total running time is around two and a half hours. Keven notes that this comes to paying roughly thirty dollars for each hour of film in the box. We are properly scandalized.
Eventually, it is realized that Kevin must depart, and he purchases his movie. As we leave, the Final Fantasy movie is playing on the TV. Kevin says, "This movie makes physics cry."
I walk him to his bus stop. We shake hands, and I bid him farewell. He hopes we meet up again, and I probably return the sentiment. I walk off towards Parliament Hill, glancing back once or twice as he crosses the street to the correct bus stop. I feel much the same as I did during our meeting: a bit disappointed in my inarticulate quietness, but happy to have met a friendly, intelligent, and charming young man who I could, with any luck, call a friend.
You're wrong! Spider-man with a laser could definitely beat Hellboy!
So, MSNBC has taken the liberty of gracing us with their very own list of the ten best superhero movies. Obviously, since I've seen a few of these movies, I am thus obliged to comment on this list. Since you may not have read the list, you might find it worthwhile to read the list before reading my comments.
Several of the choices come as a bit of a surprise, but not bad ones, necessarily: I'm willing to accept Spy Kids as a superhero-ish movie that is far more fun than, say, Fantastic Four (and the less I have to say about that movie, the better). There's also some sort of Japanese movie that looks corny and probably awesome, The Rocketeer (which has faded into obscurity a bit, and I haven't seen anyways), and Darkman, which is also kind of obscure. These are all fine and different choices, I guess. They're a bit unorthodox, and that's good for this sort of list, the sort that is typically mired in stolid predictability. The problem, for the most part, is when they reach the big corporate franchises (all four picks from which take up spots in the top five, interestingly enough). Well, maybe not so much a big problem. Just that two of them are a problem.
Superman II, I won't gripe with that. I haven't seen any of the Superman movies, but the first two are apparently quite good. The Incredibles I won't complain about either, that was a pretty good movie, but the problem sort of comes when they tell us the three movies that are for sure better than all the other movies they already listed.
Spider-man? Is number three? Is better than The Incredibles? Come on, I don't think it's even better than Spy Kids. It has its merits, but sadly, these merits do not include a villain that doesn't work for me, a mostly nice quiet story that turns into a big loud messy plot at the end, and more than a few corny exchanges that are quite honestly painful to listen to. Maybe the good parts outweigh the bad, but is it still better than Spider-man 2? And they don't even mention Spider-man 2 in the paragraph they devote to why they picked the original over it? Wow, snubbed.
The second best superhero film of all time is Batman Returns, apparently. Most of the reviews I've read of this have been bad, but since it has an 82% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I haven't seen it, I'll leave it alone.
But the problem comes mostly when they try to tell me that X-men is the best superhero movie of all time that they fail. X-men has metaphorical resonance? What? Yeah, the theme has metaphorical resonance in the exact same way the comic book did, because that's part of the context. That doesn't make it a good movie. It's not even that I have a problem with the movie. But it's not an amazing movie. It's good dumb fun. It's not very deep, and, though it is perhaps a bit more human, it doesn't even reach the level of action spectacle that its more solemn sequel achieved. I haven't seen it in too long; I can't analyze it here. Maybe I should pick it apart on here sometime, since MSNBC has given me a definitive reason to. The point is: Spider-man 2 is better than all of these movies and doesn't even get mentioned on the list. Once. Even in passing reference.
In other news:
In a vaguely predictable manner, my livejournal haiku has been pulled from the countless entries in which I agonized over my english course:
I also generated these afterwards:
I know, I'm a glutton for these things.
The only problem with the engine is that it needs to find a better way to compose haiku that actually is complete and doesn't end abruptly.
Also:
I escaped from the Dungeon of Zephyr Pie!
I killed Leamas the floating eye, Wongchungbang the leprechaun, Homz the zombie, Ern56 the zombie and Licyeus the leprechaun.
I looted a Figurine of Myliverhurtz, the Armour of Percussion, the Sword of Warm Laundry, the Dagger of Vegetables, the Sceptre of Canadian Ammerz, the Axe of In the Groove, the Armour of Science Fiction, the Wand of Milk, the Dagger of Milk, the Sceptre of Reading and 97 gold pieces.
I didn't think I managed to kill myself but I actually did. And when I say myself I mean Homz the zombie. It is also amusing to note that the scroll marked "HIKING" had a map on it.
Beside the entrance is a potion marked 'RELIENT K'.
So apparently this is from the man who brought us the goodness of (Jo/No)hari. Neat.
I escaped from the Dungeon of Dave2!
I killed Clysm the gelatinous cube.
I looted the Armour of Dr Erection, the Armour of Burstroc, a Figurine of Flaming O, the Sceptre of Zzt, the Amulet of Vgamet, the Sword of Madtom, the Crown of Mrlachatte, the Shield of Benco and 70 gold pieces.
Score: 245
Explore the Dungeon of Dave2 and try to beat this score, or enter your username to generate and explore your own dungeon...
My dungeon is hard, though. It's not fair.
I escaped from the Dungeon of Homz!
I killed Odditycollector the floating eye and Myliverhurtz the leprechaun.
I looted the Sceptre of Guitar, the Amulet of Mystery and 51 gold pieces.
Score: 101
Explore the Dungeon of Homz and try to beat this score, or enter your username to generate and explore your own dungeon...
So, over on Blogcritics someone has posted an article about how the characters in the original series of Star Trek would be recast today. It's an interesting article, and I agree with most of the choices. Except for Frankie Muniz as Ensign Chekhov. That's just... wrong.
And then, in the comments section, apparently James Doohan's son (!!!) starts leaving comments, suggesting he could replace his father in the role of Scotty.
Since it's been extra long since I've written on here, you get an extra long post. Aren't you special, now.
I could write one of those very special essays I adore, but I think I'll settle for a potentially mildly diverting weekend recap.
On Thursday, I attended my second-to-last piano lesson. I do not have much to say about this, however, afterwards, I went shopping. The shop in question at this visit was a second-hand clothes store. During this time, I was deserted and left to fend for myself while looking for suitable pairs of shorts and shirts. I was actually surprised how well I was able to get on with it after getting a bit of an idea of what I was looking for, and looking for shirts, at least, was pretty fun. My labors produced fruit in the form of a construction worker shirt (orange shirts, neon parallel lines on front, neon x on the back), a red shirt with the words 'Sumo Skateshop' on the front and explaining on the back that it was the official shirt for a putt putt tournament (I'm not entirely sure of the correlation between the phrases on either side of the shirt, but I admittedly could not resist a shirt that said Sumo Skateshop on it. I mean, come on), along with a few other t-shirts and a couple of buttoned t-shirts. I also successfully located a few pairs of shorts.
I was really very pleased with my finds and my mom and sister thought I did a pretty good first-time job of clothes-hunting.
The day after I was over at the mall trying to cash a birthday check from my grandmother that I'd found recently buried under some papers on my desk. Unfortunately, it had expired just a week ago, depriving me of my rightful sixteen dollars (more, actually, since it's a US check). Anyways, after that I was looking around at HMV and I noticed their rack of top-ten TV boxed sets. On this rack was the complete collection of Firefly's first (and last, unfortunately) season, for twenty-five dollars. Twenty-five! That's more than half price! Unfortunately, I don't actually have twenty-five dollars, and I'm not sure I'm quite confident enough to make a purchase completely on good faith of the series' reputation.
Diversion: actually, speaking of TV shows (and trust me, that theme just keeps recurring in this post), well, to put it simply, TV interests me a lot as a medium these days. I like that you can tell long, captivating stories filled with mysteries that slowly unravel and with characters that continue to evolve as the show progresses, and, in my opinion, what's on TV these days is a million times better than just about anything in theatres (anything that's mainstream Hollywood, at least; indie and foreign stuff is still looking good).
So anyways, after that heart-shattering disillusionment, I went over to Walmart to take a look at their TV boxed sets, since I've seen the first season of Veronica Mars on sale over there a couple of times and wanted to see what it was going for. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they were actually having a massive sale on TV shows and had just about every freaking season of Friends for sale, there was no Veronica Mars to be found. Which is sad, because if that was on sale for twenty-five dollars, I actually would buy it at first sight, based on the few episodes I've seen (and considering if I don't like it, I can likely sell it on eBay).
There is only so much disappointment one man can take in a day, so I left the mall, having failed in cashing my check, which was actually the reason I was there anyways. From there, I headed in the direction of Staples, where I had a printing job I needed to get fixed.
This particular printing job involved leaflets promoting my superior house-cleaning skills. One page was divided into three leaflets, and while the second and third leaflets had a particular text box that explained I was a 'responsible student looking for odd jobs', this text box was oddly vacant on the first. Assuming I had made a grievous mistake when copying the document on its disk for printing, I checked the disk only to find that I did, in fact, have this text box on all three leaflets. This problem was furthermore confounded upon my arrival to Staples. There, after waiting my turn and checking to make sure they still had a copy of the game Splinter Cell on sale for ten dollars for PC, I had them load up the document from the disk to replace the faulty pages. As before, all the correct text boxes were present in the document. However, when printed out, the first text box once again disappeared. They tried printing it out again, in color, even, but to no avail. The text box was lost to us, forever. Instead, they printed out enough copies with only two complete leaflets to replace the defective leaflets that should have been, providing me with the original number I had intended to print out.
After this problem was somewhat solved, I considered the problem of Splinter Cell. It was half price, and that was pretty good. I had been unable to cash the check, however, with which I intended to pay for it. Therefore, on the good faith that I had money, somewhere, on my debit card which I was not supposed to be saving on there for what is presumably the remainder of time till eternity, I brought Splinter Cell with me to the register. There, it turned out that the game was not only half off its usual twenty dollar price, it was half off its half off price! Thus, I achieved posession of what has proved to be a quality product for a total of five dollars. Which I am pretty pleased with.
They also had a copy of Starcraft there, which I think comes to seven dollars with all the half offs. I've never played it, but I have heard good things about it, and it's a temptation to go back and snag that, too. However, I've seen more copies of Starcraft for sale at other places, including the 'War Chest' that includes two expansion packs, as well, and, assuming that that product and I will cross paths again for a reasonable price, I think I'll wait to snag it then (assuming I actually have money at said time).
The rest of the weekend was pretty low-key, but on Saturday, I was on my library catalogue, looking at my list of holds. I think I had March of the Penguins on hold or something, and my sister was commenting on this, and this somehow got me on the track of documentaries. While thinking of documentaries, I thought of the documentary Hoop Dreams, a movie I have very much wanted to see and almost rented once. At once, I typed the words Hoop Dreams into the title search and quickly located a DVD of it at my library with great elation. Considering this stroke of luck, I pondered what other things I had considered renting at the time I didn't rent Hoop Dreams (I got House of Flying Daggers instead), and I remembered 24. Without further ado, I typed in the number 24, and, voila, the entire first season of 24, meaning I don't have to bother actually paying money to rent it and figure out whether I like it or not (I hesitate between thinking it looks like I'd like it and thinking it looks utterly shallow and brainless). Which is awesome. On the other hand, there are twenty-one holds on the first eight episodes (I guess they've packaged two discs together in each case, which is pretty good of them), so I'll be waiting for twenty-one weeks or something. Possibly less. Which is not so awesome.
As it turns out, after yesterday's further scrutiny of the library catalogues, I discovered that my library has every season of 24 currently on DVD. Which is mindblowingly amazing.
This is not quite as amazing, though, as discovering today that my regional library has the aforementioned collection of Firefly, as well as the movie that ties up the series' loose plot threads. I'm running out of superlatives here, but basically figure that counts as at least a million times more awesome than discovering 24 at the library.
They also have the first season of The West Wing, and a few seasons of MacGyver, which is pretty cool. I don't have the same burning desire to watch these shows as I do for the others, but I'd certainly like to give them a try (The West Wing, particularly).
During the same TV show hunt last night, I also decided I would try my luck at finding some movies I wanted to watch. Thus: Rules of the Game, Mission: Impossible, Unbreakable, Capote, the original King Kong, Finding Forrester, Water, and Millions (which I've already seen and I like very much but wouldn't mind watching again), all with my name added to the holds list.
The moral of this story is: look for good stuff at your library. They just might have it.
Do you like incredibly fun blogs where the writer in question gives you a list of what he's planning on writing over the rest of the week, and then proceeds to completely ignore it and probably not update at all? I do, so it's only natural that I should attempt to emulate this venerable procedure here.
So, I'm thinking about writing a review of The New World, assuming I find time to watch it, since a friend of mine saw it and didn't like it, and I wouldn't be surprised if I found time to write a bit in response to a post Zephyr made on his LiveJournal a while back. I'd also like to express my deep hatred for Hollywood at this point in time, but we'll see if I find the time to actually make three entire posts on here.
