Several posts to be inserted here
So here's the skinny: Die, Zombies... DIE!!! vs. Episode III. LaRocco totally outdoes Lucas for acting, dialog, and definitely scene transitions. Lucas wins on sound, cinematography, and consistency. They about tie on the action scenes. Overall, I'd say Lucas comes out the loser.
So here's the skinny: Birthday party, fact or fiction? Facts: Andy made out with Mame, they promised to meet up later. Heavens was a dancing machine. I was actually complimented for owning CDs by the likes of Real McCoy and No Mercy. Two spilled beers, one on the Dreamcast. Chili beer caused our genial host to re-examine his dinner.
No one finished a chili beer. Amy and Geoff were totally flirting. Foosball rocked, and Brian rocked at it. Equal parts sloe gin and orange juice tastes just like popsicles. Fictions: Drinking bourbon on the rocks from a sippy cup will help you to only sip it. We ran out of Jell-O shots. The blacklights weren't cool. Store-bought hummus is uniformly high in quality. We didn't have enough cups. I remembered to invite everyone I should've. I completely trusted Brian's motivations for driving Erica home. The map showing the location of the bathroom was in any way unclear. The room is still clean.
Fact: It was nice seeing Hannah and Kaleb again, even if only for a while.
Fiction: I am ready for finals.
Fact: Spilling chili beer on The Couch is just as bad as mixing it into a baby's formula.
Facts: I just hit Ctrl-X Ctrl-C to save. I need to stop using the computer now. After typing that, I almost hit it again.
Sunday
"Any STDs will be killed by the jalepeņo." -Stan, 05/29/2005
Caesar's Bath, eh? I can tackle this. There are at least five things I don't understand.
- Cream cheese. I mean, make up your mind! Do you want cream, or cheese? Neither really belongs on a bagel, and ya'll know it. What are you thinking?
- Sciece fiction authors who, rather than writing several books which happen to be in a series, write one very long book, serialised into several long volumes. This is especially strange if the the author is not a proven quality, id est the four-volume-each-of-which-is-the-size-of-your-average-brick-long book in question is their first novel. I might have said "full-length" novel, but that's a bit of an understatement. I mean, one could get away with that if one is writing a history tome, but this is fiction. That's just too long. You think people will still care by the end of the third book? I doubt it. How pretentious does one have to be to even think one can get away with that? Thankfully, this is a problem that seems to be limited to science fiction. For now.
- Livejournal. No, I'm serious. What do they think they're doing? Why are they doing it? Especially people that just post chunks of song lyrics, and that'll be the whole post. Now, I don't mean to cut down any of my friends with this, and I'm not saying posting song lyrics is bad, but for cereal, are they just bored? Isn't there some more constructive / less prodigal way to deal with that? Do they think anyone else cares? Do they think that, months or years later, they will be amused to read it? And the comments, always the comments! Like it's some BBS or something. I mean, really.
- Anti-polygamy laws. I mean, I know why they're there. They're there to keep the Mormons in czech. But no one has ever made to me a convincing argument that polygamy is bad for the State. What business does the State have, in a free republic, publishing laws that ban something benign to the State? Moreover, it's not like polygamy isn't practiced; look at your average married man with a girlfriend, or college girl with three simultaneous boyfriends. Basically, it's a social taboo, and not one that society bothers to enforce. So, in the first place, if it's a social taboo, it's up to the society, not the State, to enforce it through social, not political, means. And further, since society apparently doesn't care that much, it makes any ban that much more silly.
- Drinking bad alchohol in order to assume drunkenness. I love the taste of (fine) alchohol, and enjoy the social element it often carries. I dislike being drunk. My lack of understanding, or rather, its causes, should thus be obvious. Further, most of those same people hate hangovers. Are they just not thinking? This is almost as bad as cream cheese. Sobriety is a state of mind, people! You drink/smoke/whatever because you're too lazy to alter your consciousness manually, or because you want an excuse to act shamefully, or both. All I can say more is "What's the deal with that, yo?"
So then, the last thing is to pass the ball. To the chosen (who are, incidentally, not yet chosen as I write this): Pick five things that are popularly accepted but that you just don't get. It's the Caesar's Bath meme, and I can't or won't tell you why. Now, the movers and shakers themselves: Leah, on account of her love of creamcheese (with her, it's one word); Matt, who is most likely to know the nebulous motives of scifi writers; Joan, who has used her livejournal in more ways than I've ever seen anyone else manage; and Lorange, who knows some people who know a thing or two both about polygamy and about drunkenness and how to get there.
"The penis is evil! Go forth and kill!"
Wednesday, Ninth Week
"This egg, something that has all the complexity of a ping-pong ball: How does that change into a complex thing that moves around, and watches videos?" -Don Kane, 03/28/2005
For anyone who wants to czech out my final project for Java, I give ye BallOoga! I warn, though, that it is a work in progress, and may not always function correctly. Also, there's no paddle yet. Grr, key bindings!
Speaking of things that stress me out, I'm convinced that Leah and I have very different attitudes about things like skipping class. I skipped my classes today for what I consider to be very legitimate reasons (ie. I would not have arrived until halfway through class anyway), but when I confessed this to her, she seemed upset and angry at me. I mean, what am I supposed to do, waltz in with twenty minutes left of class? That's just disrespectful.
What bothers me is that after talking to her, I found myself becoming angry at her for being angry at me. That is just silly, so I stopped, and now I'm just listening to what could be considered angry music: FurtherMore's sheandi, which could just as easily be titled 12 Songs About the Same Things. It's a good CD though; I recommend it.
"Likewise, changing just because I say so? Rearranging yourself with nowhere to go, feeling vertigo. Also, I wanna remind you, haunting memories are hunting you down, wanting you to drown."
Friday, Eighth Week
"Maybe you want to go to Noodles Et Cetera. But you shouldn't. Because I'm convinced that 'et cetera' stands for food poisoning." -Pedro, 05/19/2005
I have something I want to talk about. You know how when something's on your mind, you see it everywhere? Like the number 23. It's all over. Just look.
But 23, cool as it is, is not what I'm here to talk about. Sometime last week, Leah and I had a Talk. The latter half of this Talk was on the subject of faith. I said some things I should've emphasised earlier; she, already a little emotional, said some things that made me cry, then I said some things that made her cry for a long, long time. It was a miserable time for both of us; there were a lot of misunderstandings involved. Things have now been worked out, misunderstandings cleared up, and we know where we are, where we're going, and what we're going to do about it, though I still feel like kind of a jerk sometimes.
The long and the short of it is this: I love her and she loves me, but I love God more. If I had to choose between them, I would have to choose God. I don't want to have to choose. She doesn't want me to have to choose. Because of her love for me, she will care about her own faith. For this, I am overjoyed.
Any person with life experience knows, however, that some choices are not made once but an infinite number of times. Thus, the problem, though resolved, weighs heavily on my mind. And I went to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Lucas last night with Fishbein and Dewey. In the movie, Anakin Skywalker feels that he has to choose between his faith (ie. the Jedi Council and the light side of the Force) or the woman he loves (ie. Natalie Portman). This caught my attention, of course. Anakin eventually betrays the Jedi Council in the hope of saving Padme, but his conversion to the Dark Side irrevocably changes him. No longer being who he was before, he loses Padme anyway; is, indeed the cause of her death. This, incidentally, causes him to scream "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" in a manner extremely reminiscent of Jeremy.
I still don't know how I feel about this. As a Star Wars fan, I am satisfied. As someone searching for answers, I am not. Even though I went down the 'other road', and have not lost the woman I love, this resolution seems a little too pat. Is that what we are supposed to learn? That selfishness is always self-defeating in the end? I don't buy it. I've read the Bible. I know that the wicked often prosper while the righteous suffer. As to Star Wars.... well, we all know it's fiction, right? It didn't actually happen a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I guess it can afford to be pat.
Though I don't know that it could afford to kill off General Grevious so early in the movie; the only character that was more lovable or more badass was R2-D2. Why don't they have shirts that say (Mmm, sacrilige) 'WWR2D2D?'
later
"I've spent the last three days doing nothing but watching Scrubs. [pause] It feels so good." -Geoff, 05/04/2005
I need fewer roommates.
Sunday
"These people over here, these are the D students." -Don Kane, 03/28/2005
"So far so good, or say they say in Mission Control. The deep of space is no place for a fragile human soul. The rockets burn as circles click and turn and fall into their place. Robots can't cry, don't laugh, can't die, in the darkness of space. He is strong! Made of steel, with a graphite lining! Watch his eyes flicker slow like the batteries are dying. Three strands of wire, threefold the tie that binds. She is the one thing on the Earth for which he still pines. To his heart, she is life, so he prays to his maker with a sigh, as his fire flickers out because
robots never cry.
Space Robot V, is he alive?"
or
"I don't want the right to want what's wrong, we're not in any love hexagon; we are way beyond that. But I'm looking for more than just a life of acquisition of boredom; I know there's more than (More than what?) Don't interrupt, or I will self-destruct and distance myself further and refuse to listen. (Oh is that some kind of threat?) No, I quit being so vicious."
"I want to break loose immediately from this hideous idiocy."
later
"We'll talk about zebra fish occaisionally; I can't help it." -Don Kane, 03/28/2005
Lesson: Don't successfully shotgun Mt. Dew.
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