| What Dreams May Come... |
[Nov. 1st, 2005|12:13 pm] |
I would really, really like this to be truth.
I cannot yet believe it.
But of all the cruel torments geeks face at the hands of our more insidious peers, the Nerds, there is none greater than the Photoshop. To take a man's dream and falsify documentary evidence of its actuality!
Scandal I say!
God damn nerds. They always get our hopes up, then crush us back down with unrivaled intellect and superior mouse-clicking skillz!!!1!one!1one! (4tw). |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 25th, 2005|01:55 pm] |
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ./ IT'S A TRAP! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . \
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 24th, 2005|12:14 am] |
It's possible that you haven't seen the movie "Waiting". Actually, judging from its box office numbers, and knowing what I know about statistics, I would say it's damn near likely.
The movie, as a comedy, maybe missed its mark. As a film, even, it may have not accurately represented the moments it was going for, and it may have even lost some of its audience due to the seriously irreverent nature of its content. I mean, that whole borderline-pedophelia thing that Ryan Reynolds' character has going, that can be a real weirder-out-er.
That being said, the movie's REAL main character, Dean, he goes through a sort of epiphany moment by the end, what after being offered an assistant manager position at his restaraunt, and then seeing the associate's degree he's "striving for" on his boss's (the head manager) wall, he figures out how he's been putting off making a decision. And the more he finds temporary solutions to temporary problems, the more he realizes he's dropping himself into a hole he doesn't want to be in, and worse yet, doesn't belong in.
Tonight Rebecca said I could be a Store Manager. That I have the work ethic and presence of mind to do such a thing. She hinted at the fact that her posting at the Linglestown store was temporary, that within a year, she'd probably be back at the Market store.
The hint was that I could probably become a Store Manager. At the ripe young age of 20. I'd be hiring people that are older than me. I don't think she realizes I'm only 20.
Which I'm ok with, I dare say it could almost be fielded as a very generous comment.
But she was serious.
Serious to the point that I had to back-pedal, lest I laugh in her face. The conversation actually started like this: We were talking about family, and significant others. Monica, our closing GSR-soon-to-be-shift-leader-probably, is 34 years old with 2 kids. I don't know about their father, but I suspect something aweful happened to him and she was left with life insurance, because she's just "working for fun" and lives an otherwise "comfortable" life, I think is how she put it, with her mother, which I suppose isn't a bad way to be - she's happy, and she has a great family, and what more can you ask for in life?
Not to go into too much detail on Monica.
Anyway, somehow the conversation put to the point of days requested off and Danielle came up, somehow or another, and Rebecca asked why I didn't get to see her that much. The obvious answer being that she goes to school 2 hours away, which is very much drivable and seeable, but that visitation has to fit into our schedules, somehow, what with her work and research and band... and my work.
So Rebecca, making conversation as she's so adept at doing, asks what she wants to do with her life, so I go into the psychology/thinks she wants to do family counseling thing, and then the question shows up: "What are you going to school for, Sean?"
Since no one ever asked.
The de facto response: "It's complicated."
Normally at this point, people figure out that I don't want to talk about because... well, because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing and I'm not really comfortable admitting that most of the time, but some people are a little more pushy.
Rebecca is pushy.
She says "Give me the Layman's version."
*Sigh* "Ok." I say, "I really want to make video games."
In two seconds I saw her go from anticipating a response, to writing me off. She knew I was a gamer, and we don't have a problem with that, since we really do need someone at the store who knows what the fuck they're taking about when it comes to games. But that sentence had barely left my mouth and her heads turns away, and she takes this really big draw from her cigarette, and does that thing that smokers do when they talk while they exhale their smoke, you know, so they can keep their faces really impassive and emotionless? Yeah, right at this instance, she does that.
In all that, I read, and I think fairly accurately, her thought process as: "He's going to community college, but he wants to make video games, meaning it's a dream of his that he'll give up on."
She suggests the Store Director bit, and makes it very clear to Monica that it's between "the 3 of us", meaning she doesn't want it to get back to Jeffery, who by all means and rights, has been with the company so God Damn long he should be a regional director, but internal politics mire him fairly quickly, because he does have his faults, and the current company staff chooses to only see those and not his virtues.
Which is a shame.
Regardless, she implies that I could find myself in that position in "less than a year." So, as casually as possible I say "I may not be here a year from now," with a smile on my face.
So here's where the cigarette is forgotten - that's a big deal with smokers. When they stop smoking, it means you've made something important enough to them, via surprise or deeply meaningful declaration, that they forego their addiction for a couple minutes.
This was longer. She dropped it, and put it out, half way done, so she could come all the way back into the store and talk to me.
She goes "Well what do you mean, where would you go?"
Understand something now, about Rebecca. This woman operates on average at about 70 mph. Her thought-train is the God-damn European bullet, it'd blast the British-French Chunnel in about fifteen seconds, so when you read that line, the one she just spake, via my story telling, read it really fast 8 times, until you forget what the hell you were reading and what it means. Then go get someone, and have them read it out loud, but looking at you, 8 times, as fast as they feasible can, with no hint of a smile or any positive expression on their face.
Because that's what it feels like. The Woman verbally assaults you until she gets an answer, which at times, can feel very strict and imposing if you're not prepared for it.
I wasn't prepared for it.
So, being the person (read: pussy) that I am, I INSTANTLY backed off. "Well, I'm not goin anywhere, specifically, so I don't know, I got shit to do, I have stuff to figure out."
Again, I can see her judge the response, read me, and spit what she wants right back out. "Well, just keep it in your mind. As one of your options."
And I go "well, yeah. Ok."
"Becuse I really think you could do it."
"Well thank you. I appreciate that."
"What are you and your girlfriend gonna do when she's done with school, I mean, is it serious like that?"
-This is a change of subject designed to relax me. She puts the ball back in my court with a subject that completely doesn't concern her so that she can make me feel (and maybe evern make her feel) like she's just interested in my life as a friend/co-worker.
So, standard response. "Well, yeah, I mean, we've been together for like, 4 years." (And 3 months at the time, the 23rd of October marking that particular anniversary.)
Back to seriousness. "So it's possible that this is a girl you'd get married to, or at least consider it."
Not a question, a statement. It makes you feel like there's an obligation that you may or may not have thought about, that has to change your perception of the current conversation. I was ready for this one, though, because I HAD actually thought about it.
So I say "Well, that's a ways off. I mean, she's still finishing school and what not."
"What does she want to do with that when she's done?"
Ah ha! See how this is looping back to the real point she's trying to make? We're back to occupation, but now it's occupation of someone very dear to me, an area of my life I hold great amounts of concern and affection for.
"Family counseling. I mean, I guess she'd like to start her own practice, but that's always hard, especially from a money stand point, so she'll need to do a lot in terms of working toward that."
That's what she was looking for me. "Ha, my family could use her." Again, endearment and attachment to my personal life, since we'd been talking about her family earlier.
And she says "But if you guys got married, you'd help support her in setting that up, right?" Which was really meant and played like a question, maybe she was really curious to see if I support my babeh-cakes in that regard, which Of course I do (Love you babe!), so I say yes.
She nods as she casually "gets back to worK" and says "Well, Hollywood isn't a bad company to work for." As if I'm not REALLY working for them now. Phrased really specifically to make me wonder what allure and green pastures are held at the position of Store Director.
"So, keep it in the back of your mind."
Which takes the pressure off of the ponderance of the benefits of Store Director-ship. And we go back to small talk fairly quickly.
For most people, I wouldn't think so analytically about that conversation.
Rebecca's other job, before she came back to the company, was as a Realty agent. She's a salesperson, first and foremost. It very suddenly occurred to me, that I was getting sold to. This was not a rehearsed pitch, but an on-the-fly, adapt and go sale that she was really trying to dangle in front of me. Not so I'd bite right then, but everything about it. The hush-hush nature of discussing it, as if it were a super-special deal she wouldn't offer to just anyone (which in some ways is true, even if that is a little narcissistic and flattering), to the tricky way she tied it into the rest of my life.
And left me to make connections of my own in my head about how being an SD for Hollywood Video could benefit me. We even talked about places where I could live, and she starts in about how I could transfer there.
She was really trying to sell me a career at Hollywood Video.
And the part that pisses me off more than anything is that it almost worked.
I sat there in my car-ride home and thought of all the benefits. I could use it to finance my own game project or game company, I could make connections with like-minded people who are attracted to the same field, it's just a temporary solution to a problem, and even maybe a step toward achieving my actual goal...
But in what fucking way? In what imaginary universe would I be able to act as a Store Manager, run a God damn Hollywood Video and still find time to work on my game? that's a full time, salary-based job that requires crazy hours and crazy commitment with lots of responsibilities and obligations just to keep the place running.
It's not a step in my own direction. It's a step away from any of the many paths I've ever considered onto a new one.
A very pathetic one.
Look, being the Store Director at a Hollywood Video is probably not a bad gig, most people would probably be pretty pleased by it. You can raise a family with a working spouse and two kids, live in a nice place, drive a decent car, and afford all the comforts that you really care about, plus you get free movies, so entertainment is in part covered.
But that's it. Once you start down that path, once you commit to that sort of thing, "temporary" just becomes a funny word for "Short term" which becomes an imaginary word you used to use to describe the career you never thought you wanted but turns out you now have with a company that is probably quite nice to those people, but certainly nothing even remotely close to your ideal or dream.
It's not a future. It's a stepping stone that turns into a God damn island that you wind up living on. Complete with is own Professor, and replete with Bamboo-Homes, and radios made out of cocconuts.
No fuckin thank you.
I hate coconut. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 20th, 2005|12:59 am] |
It was not long ago that we discussed this, this The Batman show that evidently need to be created at some point for reasons I myself was not initially able to grasp. As evidenced here, the show has clearly done better than I would have thought for all the flaws I found in a single viewing of a single episode, for there now exists a Feature-Length animated film... "The Batman vs. Dracula".
Before we continue... read that one more time.
The Batman.
Versus (abbreviated herein as "vs.")
Dracula.
History's two greatest bats battle for the future of Gotham.
Indeed.
So, let's give it four minutes and try to look past what's on the surface. The ridiculousness of the idea is not as apparent as it would initially seem. I invite you to recall Raz al-Ghul, which literally means "Head of the Demon", a man who could simply hop from corpus to corpus, borrowing vessels form other souls until the body wore down, or until his own had been restored in a pit of normally toxic liquid known as the "Lazarus" pit. Batman has dealt with the mystical before. Of equal note should be the line "Gone, gone the form of man, rise the Demon, Etrigan". It should sound vaguely familiar. One of Bruce's good friends is Jason Blood, a former Knight of King Arthur's court who's body and soul Merlin bound with the Demon Etrigan, to act as eternal protector of all things holy and right, and powerful... Think of the Knight at the end of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", and you're headed in the right direction. Know turn him into an a yellow-skinned World of Warcraft Orc with spikes on his head. Bam, Etrigan.
The real problem here is that I gave it more than four minutes. I gave it 1 hour and 23 minutes, which is its approximate running time.
So, let's start at the beginning, as I am loathe to do. The show opens decently. Dark, brooding city that Gotham is, there's a storm a comin, and the music is... well, surprisingly good. There's hints of "Batman Begins" and the original "Batman: The Animated Series" (heretofor known as BTAS or Gotham Knights for the later years) Danny Elfman theme popping in and out, teasing the senses. Overall, a good start.
Then we dive straight into Arkham, where James P. Cobblepot (That's the Penguin, though I didn't think his first name was James) is sitting, chained, at a desk while a guard reads off Bingo numbers, and a mobster who's had a recent big-hit (played by the guy that did Brooklyn from Gargoyles), talking him into busting out of Arkham in order to recover the money. Already we have problems, because we're introduced to the Penguin, of all people, and we're expected to take the movie seriously.
Look, there are only like, four characters in the Batman Rogue's Gallery that I can't take seriously. I have a hard time with The Riddler, I don't really get down with Rupert Thorne / Carmine Falcone / Other Mobsters, and I'm not a huge fan of Poison Ivy... but the one I simply cannot tolerate is The Penguin. He has no reason for being, no sensible explanation, other than being a little round pest of a villain.
The movie STARTS with the Penguin. Quick summary, the money's in the cememtery, the Joker knows about it too, oh noes, the Joker's got away from Arkham (again), and now the Penguin and the Joker have to race to the money. So Penguin has to break free, and we see him portrayed as a competent fighter, even sans knife-bearing-umbrella... that confused the shit out of me, personally, because I've never really seen the guy as a capable hand-to-hand combatant.
So the Batman, appropriately, chooses to pursue the Joker, and now I am once again faced with the Joker of "The Batman".
The dude wear's no shoes, but somehow still manages that strangely formal purple suit. Look, the long and short of it is this: The tall, irreverently clean-cut psychopath we knew and loved from BTAS and Gotham Knights, hell, even Batman Beyond is gone. In their reimagining of Batman, they wanted something a little more visually unsettling, they wanted to create in the Joker a character you conceivably be weirded out by.
Which, already, is a failing, in my opinion. The great thing about psychopaths, and crazy people in general, is that they do such a good job at not looking any different from normal people. That's what makes them truly disturbing. The Joker is already broken loose of that mold what with the white skin and big green hair but this is a step further in making him look downright fiendish and freaky. The Joker I love is the clean cut, upstanding Joker who really looks like he could be a gentlemen if he weren't completely insane, not this punked-out imp.
He does bust out the sharpened playing cards, which, ok, props. I have to admit, the concept of cutting someone's throat with a playing card, that's just mean. It is also absurd to the point of funny, so congrats, the Joker did what he's supposed to do.
So I have officially forgiven the animators for his look, for the most part. The only part I cannot forgive is the face.
No, the big green Dreads are fine.
No, the weird creepy toothed mouth is acceptable, so is that Jerard Depardieu shnoz he's got going, my major point of contention is the eyes.
They're not even human. They glow. Explain this to me. Ok, he falls in a vat of acid, gets his skin bleached, and dies his hair green. Gotcha. His eyes... glow? They have absolutely zero human characteristics. They're big and round, and it seems, perpetually open as far as they can go.
He's got this 10 yd. stare that makes him look more like leashed animal than psychopathic murderer.
It's just a problem that I can't forgive.
And then he speak... sigh. Keven Michael Richardson is not a bad voice actor. As a matter of fact, this movie proved to me that he could pull of the Joker. He's getting closer to finding a good laugh, but the rhythm is still too slow. He has none of the fast talking, big gesturing malice that snuck into the Mark Hamil voice. I don't necessarily need Mark Hamil to make my Joker work, but I do need someone who can sound how the character is supposed to sound.
I am 100% down with Rino Romano as Batman now. I listened to him for 1 hour 23 minutes, I can safely say he is most certainly a capable Bruce Wayne, and even slightly better as Batman.
I can hear a young Kevin Conroy in his voice as well, which doesn't hurt. Don't ask me how or why, but I like that I can bridge a continuity between BTAS and "The Batman".
Ok, I'm getting a bit long winded. General Complaints:
Dracula
Ok. yes, Obviously, I had to do it, but Dracula? Come on. Blatant Bat-on-Bat action. He introduces himself to Bruce Wayne as a "Doctor Alucard", (Y'know, anyone who's ever played the original Castlevania will have wept a thousand times if they ever saw that), and makes a decently Batman quip about "Bat-creatures" masking their true identities as the top-tier of the rich and famous. Bruce considers the theory "interesting". Once Alucard leaves, he snatches a serving plate from a waiter, steals some woman's lipstick and writes Alucard backwards onthe serving plate, then holds it up in front of the mirror.
Dracula. Orbviously.
Look, when it comes down to it, "The Batman" is still a series of great action sequences with burgeoned, though continuously emerging moments of superior quality, mired by intense, nearly unmitigated drudgery.
Drudgery I say!
Like, the Joker was more the Joker when he was a vampire than regularly. Maybe they'll use that as an excuse to make him into a better villain, but I dunno.
There was a LOT of blood in this movie. I have to give them that. Penguin cuts himself by accident, bleeds onto Dracula's dead-ass heart, and that's how the Prince of Darkness awakens. The Joker shows up at a blood bank and just gets dripping in the stuff, so... kudos. Seriously, that's kinda bad-ass. At one point, he's LICKING IT UP.
And the voice-over of Vampire Joker is superb. I can't even describe how good it is, but it doesn't make it sound like "Vampire Joker", it's just how I picture this Joker sounding. I've gotten past the lack of suave and safistication in this Joker, I acknowledge that they want something a little more Punky for how he moves and how he carries himself, but that like, ten minutes of almost Gollum-like voice-over just fit the character better, and should have been kept even san-Vampirism. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 20th, 2005|03:07 am] |
I recently found a package of Fish Crackers, open, yet unspoiled, in my snack cabinet. I do not recall having eaten from this package for over a month.
I warn you here, for I fear that this may be folly, and the consequences of which I will not likely experience until sometime in the next 24 hours. I warn you, because it's my opinion that the immediate area, at about a 625 sq. mile from here with my toilet being the epicenter, be evacuated.
Aged cheese, be it baked or au naturale, has a tendency to corrupt my anus in a most violent, near toxic manor. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 20th, 2005|01:58 am] |
I've been kind to Nintendo.
Not explicitly kind. I haven't yet forked over $80 for their cute little purple system and a copy of Smash Brothers, then another $50 for Resident Evil 4. It is truly tempting to do so, I must frequently walk past the GameCube display at my local GameStop and pull my eyes from its siren call. The Dan, as I know him, teases me, and puts one on the counter whenever I come up with an inane question, without fail. It's that sort of atmosphere that indicates that you've probably spent way too much time at a particular place.
I've fequently entertained the idea of owning a Nintendo DS. I've more pointedly entertained the concept of purchasing a DS and a copy of Nintendogs, the lovable, furless pets that they are, for a particular someone, though she chastises me in great and fanciful ways, categorizing methods of punishment and means of torture that, were I just slightly more perverse and irreverent, I'd describe as down right saucy.
But I'm not like that.
So, after nye on two decades of unadulterated gaming experience and certainly more thought and effort put into this form of interactive entertainment than most folks really ought to, I have to deal with this. They really want me to look at this and go "Of course! The revolution! The wave of the future!!"
I should back up. When the DS was announced, like much of the elitist gaming populous that considers themselves hardcore, I cocked my head quizzically in a way that doubtless inspired the current "killer app" for the system. I furrowed my brow and turned up my nose, curious to see what devilry those cats over at Sony would unleash with their spicey little hand held device, and lo and behold, they gave me the PSP. The pixel-eating, money devouring, chiq device of today's College gamer. It's an MP3 player, it's a Portable Playstation, and if you're tricky enough, it's a portable AVI player. Skip the whole UMD thing - why pay $30 for a piece of entertainment you can use on one product when you can spend $20, rip the video, and plop it down onto your PSP with an easily accessed hack.
I turned back to Nintendo, and pulled out my wooden stake, for this innovative creature was quickly proving to be an undead thing, a harbinger of a lonely tomorrow from a past I so fondly recall. Nintendo didn't exactly fold its hands over its chest and lie down like you might expect a cooperative rot to do. Instead, they hurled crazy minigames with all sorts of levels of interaction I didn't anticipate enjoying. Granted, I haven't yet paid for this enjoyment, for I can't be assured that it is indeed "worth it." Still, my perception of it as this enigmatic little device that would struggle to an untimely death when faced against the Morgul-blade of Sony's PSP shifted drastically over the first year.
And that's one of two reasons I haven't just plain old broken down over the "Revolution." Sure, I see the N64/SNES/NES backwards compatibility right there, though I can't say I'm terribly pumped about that. Nintendo has said that I'm going to have access to those whenever I want it, but we're not seeing any internal storage - that means you're going to be using the internet to stream Mario Brothers 3 to me? Sorry, Big N, I can do that right now, I have a GamePad designed expressly for that purpose.
The second reason is that Nintendo did this once before with the DS. "Bawhuuhh?" you say? "Uh-huh", I say to you. What is the DS if not a gaming-devoted, dual-screened Pocket PC? Every Pocket PC that runs Windows CE is required to have a Stylus, the bitches are guarunteed to be wirelessly connectable, the only difference is that you don't have to have spiffy shit to connect to your buddy right there and play a game. They took something fairly basic and forgotten in interactive technology, physical interaction, and turned into the latest damn thing like we'd never done it before. The fact is, I have a 3 year old Pocket PC upstairs which does exactly what the DS does, and I didn't pay a dime for it (hand-me-downs rock, huh?), so I've clearly done this before, oh yes, I have rolled like that. One might even go as far as saying that's how I get down.
Ok, so maybe you don't know how this works, but that would be a shame on you situation, because I told you in the beginning to check it out, since I did link it, and we've been over what it means, precisely, when I link things. The point is, it's a damn magic wand. It's uses a sesnor base to wirelessly figure out where you're pointing the wand, whether your turning it, moving it up or down (relative to you), or forward and back (relative to you, again).
I had something very similar to this 3 years ago. It's a base-less Joystick. The thing proclaimed to have Gyroscopes in it so that I can pick it up off my base and twist it in the air, point it down, pull back on it, lean it right or left, and the actions on screen correspond accordingly. Being that it was brandy-new, it was a little twitchy and took some time to get used to. I think Zach's term for it was "whale-penis", and recalling its rather phalic shape, he was not entirely wrong.
One of my roommates had this spiffy little wireless, optical mouse that you could pick up, and hold like you were in the Wild-Wild West, sans Will Smith, and it still operated much as you'd expect a mouse to, even in First Person Shooters. I found it particular addicting there, as it imitated a Silent-Scope like experience right there at home with Call of Duty or Half-life 2. Brilliance.
But not new. The mouse has been out for awhile. It's not exactly revolutionary.
Nintendo espouses that they can make it so, and its only our long love-affair that prevents me from walking away, shaking my head and muttering the ubiquitously apropos male phrase "unbelievable". More than that, it's my observation-based experience with the DS that make me stand firm and simply raise an eyebrow. This shit is not expressly new, but Bongos weren't either. I think we (as a species) have had drums longer than we've had two discernable eyebrows, but that didn't stop Nintendo from poving to us that we hadn't quite thought of everything we could do with a drum.
Unfortunately, there a few unkind things that I think lots of people could figure out to with Nintendo's newest efforts that Nintendo won't exactly appreciate. I mean, it is a vibrating stick.
But sales are sales. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 14th, 2005|02:17 am] |
I'd like to discuss something very humorous. Because I'm actually going to get to something painfully serious in a few minutes.
But first, American Dad.
I think we've talked in the past about the potential for American Dad. I know I've spoken in at least some detail to certain people where I think American Dad failed in the past. The brilliance of Family Guy is the characters all fill particular roles - these roles are their center points. The writers can freely stray to a certain degree of ridiculocity (it's a word now, ho) in either a more or less intelligent direction, but the core of the character remains. Father figure, mother figure, Moral Guide/Dog, etc. etc.
American Dad lacked this. Instead, the show stretched in an effort to hit more politically oriented humor by establishing strange political centers for the characters. The problem with that is that comedy only really comes from two political perpsectives - Extreme right and extreme left. That puts precisely two essential characters in American Dad - Haley, the daughter, and Stan, the CIA father.
So we can stretch some of the politics a little further, and take cheap shots at the military and the CIA, but the family roles, such as they are, didn't differentiate themselves from Family Guy in any way shape or form. Sure, American Dad's minor characters, Avery Bullock (Patrick Stewart), the Priest played my Martin Mull (go figure), Haley's Boyfriend, and Klauss the German-brained talking fish, are all funny in that odd Family Guy way.
But that's just it. After a half hour of truly new, truly Unique Family Guy content, it felt like, when we tuned into American Dad, we were getting Season 1 Family Guy, which, while funny, was still experimental in every way, from art to voice talent.
We are now officially in Season 2 of American Dad, and they're really starting to get it.
Rather than turn Roger the Alien into a Cheap Brian knock-off, they've made him the intellectual confidant of arguably the only two sane people in the house - Stan's wife Francine, and Stan's Son, Steve. This gives him a purpose. Francine and Steve are moderates - Francine because she quietly objects to Stan's... insanity... and Steve because he's an undecided teenager. Roger then becomes the mirror that reflects the moderate sides of them, and a comedic device as the Son's trouble making friend as well.
Furthermore, their taking political problems which are arguably serious, and personifying them, so they're easier to laugh at. They spent a whole episode making prank phone calls on behalf of other countries.
Naturally, the awkward pauses and ridiculously long holds on scenes that are actually quite done are a holdover from Family Guy, but a welcome one.
New stuff comes in the availability of new avenues of humor based on Stan's occupation... most notably the violence therein.
I mean, Patrick Stewart grabs Geoff's nostrils, and THROWS HIM AGAINST THE WINDOW. The stupidity of that is hilarious.
They also explore the paradoxes of the class-roles they've put their characters in. Stan's an old-fashioned, right-wing morale-values sort of guy, and all but whores his daughter out to his boss for a promotion. Sure he comes back to his center at the end (after an hilarious drawn-out fight sequence - again, the violence and extremity), but the point is they knew how to deviate him.
Haley, likewise, is severely left-wing (not that that's a problem). She has this weird sort of self-liberated woman vibe, but is sort of attached to the concept of a strong male figure (like her father of all things). She even suggests it would be good if her boyfriend hits her, but y'know, only because he loves her so much. Her mom, the ultimate submissive, even suggests the cover up lie of "running into a door".
Throughout the episode, Klauss provides director's commentary as though he were watching the world unfold on a DVD, and he was... providing commentary. It serves to break up things like the typical talk-sequence between Stan and Francine, or the over-played fight sequence that could have easily gotten repetitive, but turned out hilarious because Klauss talks over it, we see Stan and Bullock's (P. Stewart) mouthes move, and then Klauss says "Oops, I've just talked over the best joke in the whole episode."
Which was pretty funny, in my opinion.
So... that's that. Ready for a complete change of pace?
I've been thinking about love.
I have no problems with my current emotional investment. She's the best, she really is. I'm not really complaining about that. But I've decided a few things about Love that I, from here out, consider truths.
The thing about love is that Love is all-pervasive. Whether we buy it or not, Love exists permanently in human beings, even if we don't bother with it at any given time. When you fall in love with someone else, romantically speaking, you're entering into a commitment way more severe than a full-time job.
Because Love isn't easy. Just because we have it within oursleves to love doesn't mean that it just happens. Nothing about Humanity has ever just happened. When was the last time, that, for no apparent reason, you smiled? Just because smiling was something you just happened to do?
Love is not so basic, but it is very similar. I think that we, and by we, I mean Americans, toss the word around so much we attach no emotional or syntactical weight to it anymore. I love Danielle, I know I do. She's amazing to me, she's amazing for me, imperfections though we both have. I know that she loves me. I know this, because despite problems, we make it work because we love each other.
It's easy to think that you don't love someone. It's easy to lie to yourself. It's easy to get angry and frustrated and let everything else in your life come before love. Because love requires like, a 19 hours a day commitment. Whether you're loving your mom, your brother, your girl/boy-friend, or your best friends, love requires effort, it requires time.
And, just like it can't just happen, it can't just fade away. We drive it away, by way of either direct action or inaction. We may know that we love someone, but for whatever reason, we decide that that love is not as important to us as X, Y, or Z.
Want justification? You fall in love, much like you'd fall into a hole. I know, that's not a very pleasant metaphor, but bear with me. Have you ever seen someone fall out of a hole?
You know why they call it falling in love? Because whether we realize it or not, love sneaks up on us and begins to take residence someone in our brains, in a very special part of us some of us call our hearts, some of us call our souls. When it moves in, we don't realize it. We don't realize until we got to put something less important there and we find out, holy crap, we're in love.
Likewise, you can't be surprised when you start to push love out. You can't not realize you're doing it. You're fully aware that it's happening, whether you wish to acknowledge that fact or not, you know that, even as you're replacing bits and pieces of your love with anger and frustration and fatigue and God knows what else, you're driving away the best thing that's ever happened to you. You just wind up trying to fill yourself up with empty promises of "I'll be better when..."
So you can't just one day wake up having fallen out of love, likewise you can't dig a hole, then fall out of it - by definition there is not way out of a hole, but to climb. And climbing takes effort.
Thus, climbing out of love takes consciouss effort by us to remove ourselves from that hole. We often think that, though we were happy in the Love-hole, other things started to get in there, stuff that made the love-hole crowded.
Nay, I say to you, because you're the only one who knows how to find your own little love-hole. Not even the object(s) of your love can track down your little place, you have to lead them there. Likewise, we lead other things there. That's called blame.
Blame is always Placed. Blame does not automatically acrue as events unfold. We pick Blame up, and we drop it into Love. Notice, we have to be out of love to truly blame. You can start to blame while you're in love, but you've pulled it in from other places, other venues of your life. In love, there is no real blame. When you realize that, you go "what the hell do I need this for?" and you toss it out of your little hole.
So, what happens if you do leave behind the hole? Well, I don't know if you get this, but Love-holes are more like wells. When we dig them, we make them very jagged and raw around the edges so that when we try to leave, try to climb out, it hurts. This is for our own good, you see, but the problem is that the pain we inflict, we toss back down the hole, and it gradually becomes something we can stand on, we start to even forget that it hurts.
So now we have a hole that we've managed to get out of, so what do we do? We toss stuff in it, so it starts to fill up a little. We place blame and all sorts of other unnecessary things in the hole.
Best example? Ethan is my brother. Not by blood, mind you, but I love him like one. When I looked at him, I saw someone I loved. He was family. When I look at him now, I see a hole I've filled up. I've blamed him, I've blamed me, I've blamed work, circumstances. It's all just me filling the hole so that I don't trip and fall into it. Sometimes, I wonder if we're still brothers. And I realize how much hit hurts that I wonder that. All the scars that I got when trying to climb out of that hole, come back and remind me of what that hole was, what it meant, all the things that I've tried to replace it with.
And that's how I know I still love him. I suck at it, it's not a very deep hole, and I waslk away from it way too often, but it's still there.
You never forget the kind of pain you inflict on yourself when you try to run from love.
In my biggest love holes, I feel like a king. I feel like the hole runs so deep, and is so well protected, that in reality, I have a fortress of love. A little barricade built around me. Occassionally I dig a new hole, but they're all connected somehow. Still, even in my little fortress of... well, it's grates my every nerve of my geekey being not to say solitude, but... in my little Fortress of Love, I can't forget the hole I filled up. How much it hurt me to fill them, how much it hurt everyone else when I filled them. You can't forget the pain.
You never do.
So that's my serious thing for today. Stuff I've decided recently, thought it was worth sharing. Hope the metaphors aren't too confusing, I didn't know how else to run with it. Goodnight.
Love,
S |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 11th, 2005|01:47 am] |
So I woke up about 30 minutes ago and now I can't sleep.
So I popped around the interwebs for awhile... this is what I do when I"m tired and I know I can't get back to sleep right away. I am again feeling fatigue weigh me down (Oh yes, it is fatigue, not normal tired-ness. I've been busy), but before I commit myself to the remainder of my dream-laden night, I wished to share something.
There's this. It's called, I believe, Konsekai: Swordwaltzer, and though the dude got off to a considerably rough start (you'll notice the first 3 pages of Chapter One are... hrm... of questionable quality), he's overcome quite a bit and come quite a long way.
I urge you, if in any way, you're into Anime/Manga/Action Web Comics, or just an art fan, check out the site at the ver least, and consider donating. The guy's biggest problem is that he lacks a fanbase that really makes his comic intresting to anyone but the fanbase.
And there's no apparent reason for it. It's a rivetting story, and the guy has a Miller-ian (as in Frank) eye for visual pacing and white-space.
(Side Note: For those not into Comic Books, "White Space" is the time between scenes. In traditional books, it's literally the white space between any given set of panels. It's where the reader interprets the action and the pacing, and sometimes, the positioning and intensity of color diversification makes the white-space more or less useful)
I mean, this is fantasy on par with, nay, exceeding Escaflowne (which I just watched - that is a damn weird movie), and hangs out up there with any comparable fantasy I've ever read. Throw this and Full Metal Alchemist side-by-side and you'd be hard pressed to tell me which one is better > You can tell me which one is more professional, that's true, (FMA. I mean, I own the first book, so I can confidently tell that much), but K:S is so rich with history I find it vaguely sickening. I also really enjoy that he has a group of people that are not all that different from Jedi, he uses magic the way it should be used, as arcanum and not frequent practice, and he has an established history between his primary cast that is easily workable as interest for the Soap Opera Anime lovers out there... y'know, the folks that watch Full Metal Alchemist to find out if Ed planted memories in Al's big metal had.... shutup.
Anyway, there's a depth behind this story, and some emotional weight in the characters... it's just so damn rare that you find this on the vast desolate exspanse of the InterWebs.
So I urge all interested parties that don't mind hand-drawn blood, check it out. I read it all the time (though it's sadly somewhat sparse) and cosntantly think the guys at Williams Street, the folks behind [adult swim], should pick this up and run with it. I mean, they tend to just yoink shows raw from their original homes, but they're a powerful enough force now in Geek Culture that they could actually reach out and make something awesome.
The [as] guys are quite good at comedy... I'll go ahead and reference Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021, The Brak Show, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, Venture Brothers (which I love, so back the f*ck off!), Stroker & Hoop, and of course, the one and only, indomitable spirit of AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE (number 1 in the hood, G)...
But their action line-up consists of Inuyasha... which is sad. I don't care if you're a fan, the English translation sucks and the show gets progressively worse after the first 6,000 episodes... FLCL (which is retarded in my opinion), Cowboy Bebop (Amazing, but done), Full Metal Alchemist (gets really, really weird, and they're just putting up the second season next Saturday), Samurai Champloo (way under-rated, but still a step above the rest, sans Cowboy Bebop), s-Cry-ed - I don't even know WTF this show is, but it's at least different. Lastly, we have Paranoia Agent (WEIRDEST. GOD-DAMN. SHOW. EVER.), which I hesitate to even call "action", more like, creepy Japanese Cerebral butt-rape thriller/mystery suspense wackiness... and occassional episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (excellent show, but much like Bebop, very much complete).
So, Williams Street is a place chock full of talent and smarts, and at least a few folks that appreciate real quality Anime. But there's nothing new. It takes a year at least for us to get the dubs of the more successful Japanese stuff, and we never get any of the stranger side titles. There's plenty of funny in the Williams Street [adult swim] crew, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that there's some real gusto there too, and if they were going to give a random, highly talented artist a shot at his own series (besides Seth Green), I'd want it to be Konsekai: Swordwaltzer.
"Daddy!" "Oh That's hot, say it again." "Daddy!"
... Harvey Birdman. There's just an inexplicable briliance there. I know not how to describe it, other than with the customary ululations of the lower class...
That is, "LOL". |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 27th, 2005|11:10 pm] |
About working - It's important to note that when I say sliver of free time, I do not consider hours occupied in World of WarCraft as free time. I pay for that shit, and though it is finer than the best narcotic ever produced, and certainly healthier, I do feel somewhat obligated to play it, and thus it is scheduled into my time, and not in a way that indicates that it is recreational time.
If that play time bleeds into my scheduled recreation time, it's overtime. I am not obligated to, but will continue to play... because my soul requires it. World of WarCraft - Crack for you Soul.
Incidently, there's some news on the job front - I was promoted, albeit unofficially, to the Position of Shift Leader, which is the bottom wrung of management, but nonetheless, constitues a promotion and a pay raise. It also constitutes closing shifts and possibly weekend work...
Which y'know, what'ever... but I'd like to have some weekends off so I can visit a certain someone in West Chester University... but we'll have to see. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 26th, 2005|03:54 am] |
Many things have conspired recently to make my life interesting.
For one, I found out that I am one of 3 employees currently at Hollywood video, and the only of my type capable of Closing the store. That means that this coming work week (Sunday to Saturday), I'll be closing every single night but one. That means 5pm - 1am every night except Tuesday. While that's not a huge deal, becaues I'll make a butt load of money, I also have to consider the fact that I'll want a sliver of free time somewhere, and I have classes at HACC to attend to.
So that's that.
The guy who's covering some of the Closing-spots for Managers is a big Comic book nut, so I spent an inordinate amount of time talking with him, about V for Vendetta among other things. It should actually be quite good, however its release seems tenuous at best, as a recent trailer was not so much producing and given to us in an official manner, so much as it snuck out of someone's basement laboratory, utterly unbenkownst to many of the fans that clamored so for it. Shortly following this daring escape, a glimmer of hope in otherwise Alktatraz of dryness (news wise) we call the summer, was the concise if not frustrating announcement that, oh, now that you're excited about it again, it's not coming out till 2006.
Hrm.
On a note slightly tangent, but not unrelated, Joeseph Staten has recently penned a very interesting article. You may also know Joe as the inimitable voice of everyone's favorite alien cannon fodder, der, foot soldier, the Grunts of the Halo universe, happens to also be the very scribe that bestowed upon us the Halo universe, for the most part, or the story as such as it's presented through the two games, most notably the cutscenes. He works in close relation with the Authors and other suport crew that their Franchise Development Department provides him with in order to more fully explore the Halo universe (and the chance, therein, to turn significant profit).
He seems, for the most part, titilated over the prospect of haivng someone actually pull of this whole movie business. I, for one, am considerably less nervous after having read that article. It's excellent, and I highly recommend it.
What sorts of other things shall spring from my mind tonight? Frnak Miller is a God Damn genius. I can't stress that enough, the man constantly births some sort of crazy... twisted, beautiful series of thoughts that congeal into a meaningful, incredibly wonderful story. It would be foolish and arrogant for me to say that I espouse to achieve even a quarter of the brilliance of his work, and yet I can't lie. I do. Someday, I want to be that good.
Patience, I suppose is key. I guess I have some raw talent, though it's difficult to gauge whehter or not that's true, because I have this infinitely expanding terror over sharing my work, especially as it beocmes increasingly eccentric and, dare-I-say, original, but am I losing something genuine in trying too hard to break the mold?
I hope not.
If you're curious enough to read through a LOT of crap to find some moments of struggling, emerging goodness, let me know. I badly want someone to read my stuff and tell me they didn't hate it, that they might even enjoy it someday. |
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