Animation Age Ghetto: The Discussion

Ever since I became a fan of the site TV Tropes, I loved finding tropes that applied to my life.  One of my favorites was called the Animation Age Ghetto.  There used to be a picture on that page of a kid who'd gotten a DVD of La Blue Girl for Christmas.  That was mostly likely the gift that kept on giving, as La Blue Girl is a Hentai anime series.  Hentai is the American word for anime that is explicit in nature.  Basically, that kid's porn stash was bigger than mine when I was seven.

I can't remember if I believed I'd still be in love with anime when I was 19 back when I was 12.  I probably did, since the shows run on Adult Swim were supposed to be for people who were 17.  If I did, it's kind of funny, since when I hit middle school I slowly started to turn my back on the world of anime since it was a niche craze that wasn't always approved by the popular kids.  This continued into my high school years, until I dated a girl who liked anime.  She was a fan of one in partiuclar, called Death Note, which I'd heard of and maybe even caught an episode of on TV.  Nevertheless, she had me watch the whole series on Youtube.

There's nothing all that flashy about Death Note, other than some of the more narm worthy scenes (search "I'll take a potato chip...and eat it" on youtube).  There aren't episode long battles between people who fly and pilot giant robots and fight off evil monsters.  There aren't even bright colors.  If I showed it to a 7 year old, they'd probably be bored...or Ryuk would scare them off.  No, Death Note is 37 episodes of psychological, philosophical, and intellectual battles set in a world that is very realistic.  There are mature discussions about the ability to save the world, and what constitutes good and evil.  Above all that, it's centered around a very interesting concept: a book that will cause the death of anyone whose name is written in it.

I'll bet a lot of people haven't seen Death Note...which is a real shame, because it tells a very interesting story, and does it without choosing sides...the viewer is left to do that on their own.  It's a story that would lend itself well to cinema (in fact there are two live action movies based around it) if it weren't so complicated and well thought out.  If it were a Hollywood movie, instead of an anime, it's almost certain that more people would have heard of it...and even more people would recognize its brilliance.  Instead, it's something that not all that many people beyond their youth will look into.

The fact that animation doesn't have to be for kids is one that always gets ignored at my house.  If a commercial for Family Guy comes on, it just doesn't mesh in my dad's head.  He always calls it "disgusting," which in turn never meshes in my head.  I can only imagine trying to argue with him about how cartoons don't have to be for kids, using a bloodier scene from well, anything, and having him respond with the circular "well, why does it have to have blood in it?"  That's kind of when you facepalm and you know you have to take another option...and it's an option it actually takes me a little while to consider.

What people have to realize is that there are freedoms in animation that do not exist in live action films and shows.  In animation, you can design your characters in a precise, overdone way that will tell your audience about them before you they get to know them.  You can do that, in turn, in a way that would look absolutely ridiculous in live action.  See Yoko for an example.  I would dare any filmmaker to put a real person in that, hair and all, and make people really believe in it.  Cosplay shows use time and time again that there are some things you just can't do with real people.  Or at least, you couldn't do it without getting strange looks from the normal people.

I used Yoko on purpose, since it brings me to another point.  If people don't think it's for kids, and this is mostly an anime thing, they think it's porn.  Believe it or not, Yoko over there is actually a pretty decent character and actually does not ever explicitly get laid ever.  It's actually kind of a feminist thing really.  Yoko should be allowed to trot around in whatever she wants and not feel like a sex object.  Just because Japan can poke fun at sexualization and still tell a good story, doesn't mean you have to call it porn.  I mean, why else would they let the Victoria's Secret fashion show go on TV?

But back to the freedoms of animation, which I really could sum up with two words: Dragonball Evolution.  I've never actually seen it, but I can imagine it's issues.  How on Earth do you make a Kamehameha wave look good in live action without it looking like a high school kid's After Effects project?  Maybe that's more of a Hollywood issue, but it's one to consider.  The bottom line is that animation is purely a sylistic choice.  This is something a storyteller knows very well, and an open mind in general can recognize the choice.  Of course, talk to an Xbox fan about the Wii's graphics and you've got a perfect example of how some people just don't get the whole "style" thing.

It's almost kind of unfortunate that the Animation Age Ghetto ends up being such a simple argument.  It's like realizing that there's really nothing wrong with being gay or that gender is a social construct that's entirely manmade.  It's one of those college-enlightenment things that has you unlearn what you've learned, and that's it.  Funny thing is, it all has to do with one simple aesop that you DID learn when you were a kid: Don't judge a book by its cover.

And seriously, try explaining this ORCHESTRA to your parents.

All Scents, No Sense, and No Senses

It's funny, because almost two years later now, the thing I remember most is your smell.  I'm starting to think it's not even your smell I'm remembering.  I think it's just my smell that for whatever reason I hadn't smelled before.  I don't have particularly good senses...see I'm pretty sure I'm slowly going blind, I've probably got permanent ear damage from my rocking days, and nobody actually knows what taste is, since we have so few words to describe it.  I guess I'm the same with smells as I am with songs: I remember little bits and pieces really really well.  Yeah, I think this is my smell anyway, which is good, because I'm always running out of words to spare for you.  And that's fine.

Finally, a short one.

A Drill to Pierce the Heavens - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann



Recently I've shoved myself into a bit of an admittance: I still really like anime.  This is probably the result, at least in part, of me taking a Japanese class this semester at college.  For whatever reason I seem to be regressing back to a time when I was into Dragon ball Z and secretly stayed up late to watch InuYasha.

In fact, it was DragonBall Z that brought me in range of a series called Gurren Lagann.  On Youtube a video featuring a cross section of an anime girl pulling up her shirt was in my suggested videos...knowing this was youtube and it couldn't be nsfw, I decided to watch it.  It featured a red headed character and a really really catchy techno-y song.  For whatever reason that is long irrelevant now, I decided to have a look at the TV Tropes page for the series, which described it as a giant robot series that didn't take itself seriously.  More importantly it was made by Studio Gainax, who I know for making my favorie anime of all time.

The whole series is, for at least the US, available on Youtube.  In the past, I'd watch a few episodes and then quit and move on...i did this with Trigun over the summer, so I decided to just watch a few episodes.  So on Friday night I watched the first three episodes and delightfully learned that Kyle Hebert voices Kamina, one of the main characters.  What I saw was good, so I decided that the next day, I'd casually watch a few more of the 27 episodes.  Cue me spending almost a dozen hours watching the next 24 episodes on Saturday.  For whatever reason, the show got me hooked and then it was one episode after another...after another.  Honestly, I'm proud that I stuck with something like that.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it's a Super Robot anime, meaning there's going to be lots of...super robots...fighting.  I kind of got over that whole genre sometime after G Gundam aired on Toonami, but something was keeping me with this show.  Okay, I admit, I love Adult Gohan's english voice enough to make jokes every time Kamina opened his mouth, but that was only part of the reason.  That character, Kamina, was more of a badass than about 89% of badasses out there.  He's kind of your standard grade idiot hero that relies on strength alone to get things done...so naturally we watch to see when he'll learn his lesson and be forced to back down from a fight.  The thing is, it's established very early on that Kamina just can't DO that, no matter what, and the fact that he's both arrogant and likeable really makes him effective, particularly along with the idea that he has the same effect on the viewer that he does on the characters around him.

So Kamina's presence is absolutely magnetic, even when he spends the majority of an episode naked, with only a little furry creature covering his crotch.  Even better is that by the end of Episode 7, he has a love interest.  Maybe I don't watch enough anime...or television in general, but it's rare to actually have two characters KISSING on screen like an official ship.  I applauded Gainax's move there...but I did even more so when we learn that Simon was watching from the bushes.  Up until this point, Simon, who's Kamina's heterosexual life partner, has been a quiet character who's admittedly come a long way from his timid beginnings to his fights alongside...err...on top of his "bro" Kamina.  The two were joined by a young girl named Yoko (i havent tried this, but if you Google "hot anime chick" she'll probably be one of the first things to come up I've now tried this, and indeed, Yoko is the third image to come up with that exact search query, there's another picture of her on the first page as well.) and later a Camp Gay mechanic named Leeron (who's also very fun to watch).  Yoko, along with every other female we meet, develops a thing for Kamina, and when she finally gets her moment, we learn that poor little Simon had feelings for her too.  His reaction to the scene is so very well done...and truthful.  This was the beginning of the grander allure of Gurren Lagann: it's characters.

It's hard to talk about what happens next without spoilers, so I'll just elaborate on my last point.  Simon is one of the best realized characters I've ever seen.  He's just written very very well.  From his struggles with trying to be just like his "bro" (he develops a pretty nasty complex over this...which is portrayed wonderfully) to his realization that he can stand on his bro's principles while still being his own person gives him REAL character development.  It's something that normally happens instantaneously with this kind of show, if it all.  No, Simon grows and changes to the point where he's a whole different kind of Kamina.  He's not Kamina, mind you, and Kamina tends to be the one that makes all the catchphrases for the show (WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?).  Still, by the end of the series, he's gone, even physically, from a little boy to the kind of anime action hero we're very familiar with. 

Of course, this all happens while maintaining a broader cast of characters.  Quite a few of them are easy to lose track of, but others will shine.  Viral is a great example of an ensemble darkhorse who starts out as the first formidable foe Kamina and Simon have to take on, and later shows himself to be the honorable one amongst the enemy ranks.  Rossiu, a young boy from a highly religious and strict village, is another noteable, especially for his stepping up to become a main character after the 7 year time skip that happens in the show.  The way parallels are drawn to his past and his actions make the viewer question right and wrong are proof of his strong character.  Princess Nia, too, came to be someone I cared about, even though in the beginning most of my delight in her character came simply from the fact that her voice actor had done Starfire in the old Teen Titans series.  At the end of the series, she provides the typical confusing (read: maddening) Gainax moment.

Let's talk about the time skip and division of the show.  The first story sees Simon and what comes to be known as Team Gurren taking on the Spiral King (great name), who has driven humanity underground and kept them there with the use of beastmen, who pilot the mechs known as gunman.  The conclusion of that arc sees a seven year time skip, in which humanity has moved above ground and is expanding at a rapid rate.  So rapid, in fact that it attracts the attention of an alien race seeking to prevent further expansion.  The second story arc is very much like a sequel to the first, and I really like that it's there, because it's story and layout are excitingly different from the first arc. 

The story is, at its core, fairly basic, but its elements like Spiral Power and team spirit that keep this series interesting, particularly in the second arc, where things get a lot more science fictiony (read: ridiculous (read: epicawesomegasm)).  Once again though, the real success here is the characters.  I think I watched so vigilantly because I really wanted to know what happened to them in the next episode, in part thanks to the first few being so well crafted.  I really can't stress enough the ways the characters are brought to fruition here.  The second story is really what accomplishes the realization of the characters.  It makes you think "well why the hell is he/she doing that?" and it won't outright tell you all the time...but if you go back into the first story it's all there.  From Rossiu's hard-fisted politics to Yoko's choice of profession...it all has actual grounds within the series.

With good characters comes good tone though, and Gurren Lagann is exceptional at controlling its tone, always getting its emotion through to the viewer.  It's got lighthearted comedy, moments of sheer darkness, moments of pure triumph, dashes of mystery, and of course, plenty of over the top kickassery.  While the action scenes weren't always my favorite things to watch, a lot of them are really, really well done, especially larger scale battles that we see when the stakes escalate.  Art design was used brilliantly here, and its one of the things that makes the two stories distinguishable from one another in a good way.  It too will control the mood in subtle ways. 

Overall, Gurren Lagann is an absolute delight to watch, and takes viewers on an excellent journey.  From the great fun that pervades the first few episodes, to the heroicism of the later parts, and the mind screwing badassery that starts to build up near the end, the show always proves it has something else to show you.  In the vein of the philosophy of Kamina, this show doesn't believe in limits, and screws the rules time and time again.  If there were ever a real reason for the word "epic" to go out of style, it would be because this series is the standard for it.  While I do have a few complaints about the series, particularly bits and pieces of the ending (which I will probably cover in an upcoming post), they're really not what I'm going to remember about this series.  I'm going to remember the awesome characters, the "screw the rules I have Spiral Power" mentality, the quirky story, and the good presentation.  Oh, and of course, Kamina's quotes.

"JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?"

Just a few sidenotes here: in my reviews, and this is one of them, I won't give a numbered rating.  You should be able to tell what I think from my words.  In most cases, my reviews will be positive, because that's just the kind of guy I am.  Also, I feel like there's a lot more to say about this show, but I tried to keep it a little less long winded this time...which I mostly failed at.  Also, here's this, which for whatever reason, I forgot to mention:

Seriously, Japanese music kicks copius amounts of ass.

Congress' Time Machine

There's been a lot of hype on the internet regarding some bills in Congress, called the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House) and the Protect IP Act (in the Senate).  I am, once again, certain that my readership is not enough to lend support to the cause of bringing these infamous bills down.  Despite this, I feel that by merely mentioning them once more here, I am empowering the entity that seeks to defeat these bills.  Google is what comes to mind first here. 

Imagine it, the biggest internet-based company in the world, suffers drastic loses due to thousands of sites and links being blocked for copyright infringement.  That affects pretty much everyone, including the elderly of Congress.  All of a sudden they don't have their research prepared because whoever does it for them cannot access it readily.  The more I think about it, the more this goes beyond entertainment.  The education system has only JUST integrated the internet into its systems.  Since I started high school, the use of the internet by teachers and professors has increased tenfolds.  Youtube videos are now regular teaching aids, and quick facts get brought up by wikipedia and Google.  Hell, my college uses Google for its entire e-mail system.  Group projects would get so much worse than they already are...of course, the assignments themselves would probably be drastically different since information can't be exchanged as quickly and easily as it could before.

Contrary to the total number of hours per week I spend on the internet, I am typically for the reduction of internet in our daily lives, or at least mine.  I support people not instant messaging and instead calling on the phone or meeting up.  I support CDs instead of MP3s (even the legal ones).  I support not knowing more than I have to about people I don't love dearly.  I know I spend too much time in cyberspace and my communication skills have suffered for it.  Most of the world's has.  I'd have a lot more free time on my hands if it weren't for people posting twenty seconds clips of Dragon Ball Z on Youtube.  At the same time, however, there are things I've gotten from the internet that I would never dream of giving up.

Last year the fan website Green Day Authority had for download a bootlegged song that the band had played at a soundcheck while on tour.  In order to get it, I had to join their forum, the Green Day Community.  So I did.  For something like 8 months, I was never heard from again.  Just this past February though, I became active on the site, and now, in November of that same year, I can say that I've met some truly amazing people that I had a 0% chance of meeting otherwise.  Some of the friends I've made are closer to me than people who live a few streets over, and they're generally a good few hundred miles away or more (and NAUTICAL miles in some cases).  I will firmly attest that these friendships are as real as any friendships that occured between neighbors in the 1960s.  I love some of those people, truly I do.

They made me think of a friend I'd met over the internet before this year.  Well, my first was a girl named Katie who lived in Missouri, but that's not all that special.  In 2008, a friend from school somehow got me cybernetically introduced to a girl from Canada.  I still have texts on my phone from that girl when the two of them, one in America and one in Canda, were screwing around.  In 2009, that friend from school committed suicide.  I'll never forget the real emotions that I felt from Canada on that day.  I was so moved that when I could, I never failed to speak up on behalf of the people that my friend touched from hundreds of miles away, because for all their pain they deserved no less. 

I'm fairly certain that were I to leave the world in short order, you would hear voices from places that aren't just America.  I'm certain now that I have touched those internet people like they've touched me, for I would certainly cry out for them if they were to leave me alone.  It's truly amazing, when the source of these potentially powerful emotions is a little bootlegged song from a fan website.

In the past year, I've tried to make myself a presence on the internet.  One of the most recent and primary attempts at this occured when over the summer I discovered a Youtube user called NintendoCapriSun.  This user both delighted and scared the daylights out of me.  At 35 years old, he was posting videos on youtube of himself playing video games and talking over top of it.  He wasn't married, had a shitty low-end job, and was not, I admit, too easy on the eyes.  It scared me because I felt like I was on track to become this man.  As I watched his videos however, and laughed with them and at them I realized something.  I realized that being NintendoCapriSun when I was 35 wouldn't be so bad.  i discovered that at 19, I was still learning not to judge books by their covers. 

He's not a special man.  He'd faced struggles like everyone else.  He had to quit smoking at least twice, and both times he did it on Youtube.  You listen or watch his vlogs and you know he really is all that he seems.  He's is a 35 year old video game nerd without everything the world has to offer, but at the same time he's on top of the world.  He harbors hate for no living thing, and despite everything has kept doing the things he loves, and has never faltered in updating his youtube pages consistently.  YouTube is a tough world too, and yet he's brave enough to show his face on it without being Brad Pitt.  NintendoCapriSun is not a celebrity, but he is to me, and a damn respectable one at that.  After watching him I decided to give his type of video a shot, and lo and behold I now have quite a few videos worth of Lets Plays on my youtube channel.  NintendoCapriSun inspired me to actually do something...and he's just a man on the internet playing video games way past the age when he supposedly should have quit.

Then there's this blog, and by extension, my posts on Green Day Community.  I used to have a notebook where I wrote about the day's events and stuff.  I haven't written in it consistently for months.  Why?  It's all here, on the internet now.  It's in the chat windows of the aforementioned friends, in the commentary of my Let's Play videos, and in the entries of this blog.  Instead of keeping all of that bottled up emotion and thought for myself, I've let it go into this infinite space.  I've found a way to express it all in a better way, and I feel better for it.  On the internet nowadays I'm more sociable than I've been in a long time.  I post comments everywhere and have things to say.  I have hope that someday my thoughts will mean something to people in the same way that NintendoCapriSun's do.  The only way that'll ever happen though, is if I put them out there.  Thus began my mostly benign scheme to make myself into a huge presence on the internet that people can engross themselves in and possibly relate to.  Sometimes my words are not my own.  Sometimes I'll express what I'm thinking with a Youtube of a song or scene.  It's all still me though.  Years of surfing the internet have made me into a nerd culture wiz machine, and I reference things so much that it's ingrained into my everyday speech. 

I will freely admit that SOPA and PIPA are some of the scariest things I have encountered in some time, and that's including the economy and the shoddy job market and all that.  I'm afraid to have my friends taken away from me.  I'm afraid to lose a shot at my dreams.  I'm afraid that inspiration will be that much hard to come by.  I'm afraid of losing hours of entertainment.  I'm afraid of having my numerous forms of self expression slashed.  I'm afraid of having a place to talk to people with interests similar to my own foreclosed.  I'm afraid of being denied an understanding of the world we live in, good or bad.  I'm afraid of losing touch with the people in my life faster than I could ever dream.  I'm afraid my life being forever changed by the absence of something that changed my life forever.

What Congress has in its hand is a time machine.  Unlike the literary time machines we are used to, Congress' time machine works on all of us.  The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act will send us all almost ten years into the past, back to a time when those obscure songs and shows you loved as a kid and desired to relive were just memories, and back to a time when communities existed only within the boundaries of a full tank of gas.  The internet is a great and powerful beast, untameable by any one entity yes, this is true.  It is a chaotic neutral that does its share of both good and bad.  By creating it, we humans have created our very own world inhabited not by us ourselves, but by our ideas, visions, and imaginations.  I understand that this world gets abused, much as we abuse the Earth, but introducing something like the SOP Act would destroy the beauty of human conciousness that has come to exist within the internet. 

As the platform of human advancement, the internet is one of man's greatest creations, and has been at the forefront of technological advancement for some time, and thus much effort has been put into making it a better place.  Much of that effort has come from normal guys...like Andres Martinez (owner of GDA) and Timothy Bishop (NintendoCapriSun) who have made something of their passion, and watched is it evolved into a den of human activity and communication.  Without people like this, the internet would because sterile and soulless.  The work of millions of people would be in vain and all that they have created would be in danger of destruction at the whim of a government agency or corporation.

It all seems so surreal to me, that such a bill could exist.  How could something...anything be THAT powerful?  How could ANYTHING be so threatening to the internet on which I thrive?  Beyond that, how could ANYONE think that something like this is a GOOD idea?  That is what truly appalls me.  Those who seek to pass this bill seem, to people like you and me, to have no idea what they're getting themselves into.  Their Google would never be the same, and our everything else would be threatened.  I often wonder if my view on this matter is exaggerated and overdramatized...but if I don't remember the brighter side to what's at stake here...I can't help but feel scared by any degree of threat.

Update In My Head

What I really need is a "record" button on my dashboard, because god damn I say some really neat things while driving.  Today, for example, I had a great discussion with myself about why a 19 year old and a 15 year old would have issues dating, and how there are some passions for which there are no real jobs, among other things (this was of course in between bouts of being terrified of the night and rain at the same time...the government REALLY needs to give someone a job fixing the streetlights on my highway).  If I had a record button, i could've put the whole thing on here as the equivalent of a podcast.

Instead, there's this sorry few paragraphs explaining that I really haven't thought about anything good to talk about as a blog post for a good week now.  Even this little entry is going to be (or rather, should be) cut short by the fact that I should be studying for a test tomorrow, whether I'm confident or not.  Either way, it feels weird not to have written anything in a while, but I've dipped into one of those awful stretches of time where nothing comes out.  There's nothing going on creatively in my head.  I predict that it'll be brief, but it's still pretty annoying.

Generally, though, when it comes to blogging, I try to stay off of a few subjects.  Feeling lonely or something?  Yeah, I try to stay away from it.  About a girl?  Yeah no, that'd be silly.  I've been there.  More rants about college/daily life?  Eh, only if something sticks out and I can form an argument around it.  Fetishy/sexy time?  As much as I could give you empassioned speeches about all of that stuff, yeah, it's not all that appropriate here. 

It's certainly not the case that I'm just not thinking about topics, heavens no as we saw above, it's just that sometimes I don't develop them enough to write about them, or I don't feel like writing about it, or it's just not timely.  I've been wanting to write about the evolution and history of my written journal and how slow I've been at updating it, which is a good topic, but since I thought of it this weekend, I just haven't found the time to sit down and put it all together.  I actually did a fair job of keeping myself busy this past weekend, and that was cool.  Only one more day of school this week and then it's Thanksgiving break...which reminds me of another post I wanted to write about a status update someone made about Christmas decorations.  So it's not about a lack of ideas sometimes....usually the reason for a break in the new posts is about a) me forgetting the topic by the time I'm actually in the mood to write something, b) me jerking off and not putting it all together in my free time or c) and this affects both a and b, something school-related is clouding my mind and halting all productive activity whatsoever.

So now that I've offered about fifty explanations about why I haven't done anything, I'm going to leave it there.  I'll get down to writing some stuff when school's over tomorrow...of course, I have a bunch of papers and speeches and crap due after break...

*- actually, I had a blog post ready last monday, but I decided I wanted another person to look at it before I posted it and....basically we started chatting about other (very pleasant in fact) things and I never got it finished...so the gap between updates looks smaller to me than it does to you.  If you're curious, it was another post about Harry Potter.

Potter and Pirates: The Predecessor the Battle of Hogwarts

It's interesting to me how the world of Harry Potter and the world of Pirates of the Caribbean seem to be similar, and maybe someday I'll get around to writing that fanfiction where Lord Voldemort apparates through time at the last second to find the Fountain of Youth.  Actually, I'm supposed to be writing MageBoy about now, but I've taken a time out to browse through a few things on MuggleNet, a fan site the caliber of which every series should have.  In doing so, I've decided to write down my thoughts on something I couldn't help but notice while watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 tonight on Blu Ray.  Consider this my review.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a great film, full of adventure and enough action to ensure that it will never grow boring.  Walking into the theatre to see it however, was a bit different than going in to see any other movie.  This was the end of a journey that spanned ten years and would serve as the final film in a series that was destined to be one of those things synonmyous with my generation.  As such, expectations ran high, and part of that was due to the fact that this movie was a huge sandbox for the filmmakers.  The battle of Hogwarts must have been a special effects designer's dream job once Star Wars had run its course.  When you read the book, you just know that this is the kind of thing that is just meant to impress you with its visuals, and movies have the advantage of being able to show every single little detail, and adding quick things in that books will leave out for pacing (as George Lucas once said of the script for Revenge of the Sith "There's a lot of 'they fight.'").  Naturally, this was going to be one epic battle to close out the series.

Of course, this concept seemed a little familiar to me.  The most epic, large scale, effects driven battle I'd seen up to that point had to be the one in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.  I'd drawn parallels between the two series since they started coming out together (you can only imagine how much fun I have with Rufus Scrimgeour every second he's on screen in DH1), but this one was huge.  In theory, it was very much the same scenario: one huge ass final battle.  You can look at the reviews all you want, Pirates 3 had one epic finale.

I first began to wonder about how the last Harry Potter film would run when I listened to its soundtrack.  On it, there were no sweeping battle themes, no scenes that screamed "something huge and fast is happening here" and no 11 minute suite that carried the most potent themes from the entire series.  The soundtrack itself was kind of disappointing in that way, and while I understand that Alexandre Desplat had to try and leave his own mark on the series, it was a shame to see that only a few themes were used from older films.  It's a huge missed opportunity that there was no theme for Voldemort.  There are moments in the film, such as when he's punishing his underlings for their failures at Gringotts and when he's taunting his enemies over Harry's dead body, that could have intensely benefitted from Emperor Palpatine's ominous and evil theme.  Interestingly enough, Voldemort had a bit of a theme in the first movie...and with Desplat doing his best John Williams impression in a lot of places in this score, you'd think some semblance of it would be remembered.

The soundtrack alerted me to something about the movie that caused some unrest in me beyond the lack of revisited themes.  There were no battle themes.  There was nothing that screamed "Maelstrom."  I had a hard time imagining a battle like the one at Hogwarts taking place to this music.  There seemed to be an emphasis on drama over the action itself, and that worried me a little bit.  How serious and dark was this film going to be?  Is it really going to give me that same final battle feel that I got from At World's End?

It turns out these convictions were absolutely correct.  There was a lot more going on in terms of drama in the movie, rather than fast paced action.  I remember very vividly placing "Battlefield" into the movie when it appeared.  I never imagined it would be accompanied by the images that went along with it.  There was so much action going on...and it was happening to music going in slow motion.  This of course, was one of the few glimpses of the scale of the battle that we actually got.  In the book, the battle was meticulously crafted to include every character it could, and more than a few of them got a line or two.  Here it didn't come together quite so well.  We didn't see Hagrid at all until later, and an important bit of banter between some of the Weasley boys was infamously cut.

It was things like that that made the battle of Hogwarts seem rather impersonal.  I mean, look at Arthur Weasley's face when he's spell-locked with an oncoming Death Eater.  He looks like a ghost.  We got plenty of nice lines and expressions from characters before the battle, but in it, they all seemed to become stiff and serious.  In the book you couldn't help but smile when someone like Trelawney shows up and starts kicking ass, and you knew that Kreacher leading the house-elves into battle in the name of Harry Potter would be a cheer worthy moment.  I mean, Fred's death means nothing without him getting his last laugh.  Some of these funnier, quirkier moments seem out of place in a movie as dark and serious as this one, but as the drama was amped up, some of the characters were lost.

This continues into Round 2, where a large account of battles in the Great Hall are forgone for a duel between Voldemort and Harry.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved that they allowed Harry and Voldemort to show off their wizarding chops, but the only other characters we got to see besides the rest of the trio and Neville were Molly and Bellatrix, in a moment that the fans would have mutinied over were it not included.  One of my favorite parts of this battle in the book was that Slughorn went from having his whole house led out of the castle to duelling with the big bad himself alongside Kingsley and the newly redefined Professor McGonagall (who was another character we didn't get to see quite enough of after her chain of Crowing Moments of Awesome). 

And then there's the very end, where Harry and Voldemort go mano a mano.  This, I think, was one of the more universally nitpicked things from this movie.  No one was watching as Harry finished off (and told off, gloriously) Voldemort.  Everyone missed it, and because of that, it seemed, there was no celebration afterward.  Really.  They needed to befriend the Ewoks here, who play a rousing tune using the heads of their enemies as drums.  I wasn't particularly a fan of how Voldemort perished either.  It was too quiet, and for whatever reason Lily's Theme played in the background.  Was Voldemort actually Lily Potter in disguise?  The soundtrack kind of made me think so.  Voldemort, in my opinion, deserved no less than an explosion set to background music composed of thundering trumpets and strings and an insane scream of disbelief.  Of course, it never gets any louder either, as pretty much no one cracks a smile at Harry in the Great Hall after the battle.

This is the perfect point for me to connect this all to Pirates.  One of the larger flaws of the Maelstrom battle was that there a few dozen other ships around that did absolutely nothing.  However, at the end, all of these people cheered, creating a very satisyfing sense of victory.  In Harry Potter, there's none of that.  I mean, not even Harry's girlfriend is with him after the battle.  Considering that was the point at which it was determined they could be together again, you'd think they'd be so.  Of course, Harry and Ginny's relationship is an essay in and of itself.  It makes it clear that the rebels in Harry Potter are the only ones that don't know how to party.

The Battle of Hogwarts, epic though it was, could have learned a thing or two from the battle it stole the title of "most epic final battle" from.  One place where the Maelstrom sequence succeeds is that all of the characters have their moments, and each one is spent how we know them best.  Marty's handling firepower bigger than he is, Barbossa's having the time of his life, Jack is just looking to run away, and Will is determined to do the right thing until the very end.  This battle is serious business too, for if the pirates lose, it means the British government will charge some really nasty taxes on everyone.  Oh, and they'll have control of the sea forever...that's a bit more fitting.  Our heroes are faced with impossible odds and locked in battle with one of the most legendary ships of all time.  You know, it also took two movies to get here.

Maybe Pirates' sense of humor simply stems from the fact that it's a Disney film and I'm giving it credit where something is naturally occuring.  Still, At World's End provided us with a spectacle of a battle all the while keeping its realistic special effects intact (and yes, a lot of that water was animated too) and having plenty of PG-13 style things going on.  Then there's still the story to consider.  You've got Will and Elizabeth getting married and defending each other (Ron and Hermione's kiss need to take a panoramic, mid battle lesson from them), the key to the Dead Man's Chest crawling around all over deck, Bootstrap Bill destined to come into contact with his son, Barbossa defending his keep as captain, Davy Jones filled with rage over his lover's newest betrayal, Jack the monkey helping everyone out, and of course, Captain Jack himself, still deciding whether or not he has the face for tentacles while facing down a heartless captain to whom he owes his soul.  It's not like we're not dealing with two people here, there's a whole plethora of characters that need to be and are addressed.  They even parallel Harry Potter somewhat by keeping the arguable big bad, Lord Cutler Beckett, out of the majority of the battle.

The action of the Maelstrom sequence doesn't really slow down either, at least not until its most dramatic moment when most of our main characters are facing each other down.  It never sacrificed drama for a coral-covered minion stumbling overboard after having been stabbed in the chest, or a witty one liner from Jack Sparrow (oi! my pistol!).  No, in the end, all the characters were represented and accounted for (even Murtogg and Mullroy, the two dim-witted naval guards from the first film), they all had a rousing moment of fun, all of the plot points came to a head, and everything felt as intense and as grand as it should, minial slow motion used.  Add in an extended version of "I Don't Think Now is the Best Time," and you've got a good looking final battle.  Hans Zimmer's score here is excellent and exciting.  When listening to it, I knew exactly what to expect, and the movie delivered.

Again, Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean are still vastly different series, so there's no way their final battles could have been similar in too many ways.  There are quite a few parallels, however, much like how At World's End and Return of the Jedi are very similar (again, another essay in and of itself).  It's a big battle that's been built up to over several movies.  All the characters are here.  Not all of them are going to make it out alive.  The future of the world will be altered.  That's all stuff we know about any final battle.  What makes the difference is the characters, the presentation, and the subplots.

Harry Potter has every right to be different from Pirates of the Caribbean in terms of characters and subplots, but as far as the presentation goes, there was something very very basic missing from its final battle sequence.  I think that thing was straight up action, followed by personality.  Much of the grandeur and spectacle of the Battle of Hogwarts felt obligatory.  If you take away the characters and the relationships they have with one another, it's just a bunch of blue flashes firing all over the place.  Which reminds me, it was really odd to see that pretty much all the spells going on seemed to be the same blue flash instead of a variety of colors and effects.  That was one of the ways I knew that while the creativity here was strong, it wasn't as strong as it could have been.  Certainly there would have been no loss from using a few extra minutes to make sure that the characters in this battle are the ones we know and love.

This Moment is Infamous

It's weird how one-sided the relationship with an entertainer can be.  On one hand, you can learn everything about them.  You watch their shows, hear their musix, and listen to their stories.  You know everything about them.  Yet, on your end, they could not say the same about you.  Though there are endless I Love Yous on both ends, only one end is really visible.  I understand that to know all of your fans as a popular entertainer is damn near impossible, but it's interesting that I can have a dream at night where someone I've never met is a living, breathing person, complete with voice, mannerisms, and signature clothing.  Yeah, it's pretty crazy things your head can do with an image and a voice.

This Moment is Almost Over

Right now, I'm pretty chuffed.  It's funny how I'm feeling accomplished over something I shouldn't feel accomplished over.  See, I made a witty comment on a NintendoCapriSun video on Youtube, and it currently has 56 likes, which is the second most likes out of any comment on the video currently.  I'm excited not only because I love NintendoCapriSun to death, but because his videos are seen by thousands of people.  Now I know that of those 56 people, very few will actually go and visit my Youtube page, which is kind of sad...but did you read my entry from like two days ago?  I'm just happy someone...or 56 someones noticed me, and I've decided to make a momento about it in the form of this blog entry.  If I'm lucky, I will get a few views.  I can also be excited because it means that NCS himself might see my username.  A reply or message from him would be like a reply or message from Billie Joe Armstrong or something.  It might make this whole past week just a little better...it might give me hope for the future and make me continue to work on my own Lets Plays and projects like that.  It might just be the kind of boost to my spirits that I need to make me properly create again.

But that's all hearsay and I can't expect anything like that or get my hopes up.  Or rather, i should get excited and get my hopes up...isn't that what I just said I needed?  This little moment will pass soon enough, I know, and my problems will come back to the forefront, but I'd rather preserve this one stupid little happy moment than all the ones I spent dejected and unhappy.

I figure that even though this blog gets little to no traffic, the least I can do is post the video here.  Hopefully by the time you see it I'll still be a top comment.

Just Like the Flash of a Ghost

It's not fair, i can't put you on a pedestal just because you're not a physical being.

You have exactly the same chance of being like everyone else.

Except you're completely different.  I swear each and every day you had the answer to immortality.  Stay young and pure forever.

Sucks I have to get old.

The World Without a Speed Limit

It's weird how a few entries this week have been about things I saw as a kid vs now.  This one's kind of general, though, as opposed to one little nitpicky thing.  This could just as easily be an entry about driving though...that's a whole rant and a half waiting to happen.

But that's not what this is.  Today I read an article posted on GDC (Green Day Community) about how CDs are (supposedly) going to actually die in the next two years.  That's completely devestating to me, as a connoisseur of jewel cases and a frequenter of the Record & Tape Traders up the street from my college (in fact I fought a Misfits album there on Monday).  Ironically, I'm doing a speech on the very subject, and I'll be persuading people to buy physical.  Hey, sounds like I just got some free evidence.

Scanning another thread, however, I realized that whatever this is is so much bigger than CDs.  In ten years, my whole LIFE could be digital.  The point I want to make is that ten years ago, in 2001, Game Boys were just starting to display more than 12 colors, my computer could only display something like 256, and there were absolutely no images of me on the internet anywhere.  We might have gotten a DVD player the previous Christmas and our TV was this big assed wooden beast that sat on the floor.  I might have JUST gotten a CD player, and if so, the only CD I owned was the Baja Men.  CDs were the shit, and downloading was evil.  Yeah, Napster.  Hell, we'd JUST moved past those blocky polygonal models in video games.

2001 was an interesting year...a lot of things were beginning that are now a million times better and more advanced.  Back then, I spent maybe an hour on the computer a day.  The rest I spent watching cartoons and playing with action figures...or occasionally I'd go ride bikes on my dead end street with the neighbor kid.  It's hard to look at how things have changed when you yourself spent the last ten years changing.  When I was 9, I was a badass.  I didn't give a shit what anyone thought of me because I told myself I was absolutely awesome no matter what.  I was the leader.  Not only was I going to follow in my sister's well behaved footsteps, I was going to surpass her...only I didn't call it that at all.  Back then I was your textbook example of genius.  What this means is that in ten years I managed to have my self esteem stolen and shattered, my head mixed in a kitchen aid, and...well, you get the idea.  Safe to say I wasn''t always a Social Ninja striving for acceptance.

Still, at 19, I can take an hour to stop and look back, and then look ahead.  Goddamn, a lot has changed in me and the world.  It's impossible to put into words really, and lord knows if I were 19 in 2001, I'd have to find another way to do so.  Lord knows I've done a good portion of them by now, so I guess you might call that "keeping up."  One thing I know now is that ten years is a long time.

I'm living as part of a tweener generation.  We're a bunch of kids that don't know what the hell to do, thanks to everyone else.  I'm not the only one who's seen things these ten years.  As I see it, we are a people who can only struggle through the years as the human race is figuring out what to do with itself.  I like to think that there will come a point when people will figure out how to consolidate technology and...real life.  Until then, no one knows what right is.  There is no right.  People make their own ways, none of which are proven to truly work and many of which will lead down paths unknown into less than pleasant fates.  It's fate anarchy out there.  Parents, teachers and counselors try to give us advice that has been proven to work for them, but the fact that it's not working here shows the rules have changed.

This topic is really too big for me to tackle in one blog post so I'm not going to try.  As has been typical of this week, I'm just going to say what's on my mind.  Looking at the last ten years, the next ten years are scary as hell.  What the hell are we going to have then?  Imagine that Skyping is just the BEGINNING of something.  In 2021 we might have that sort of thing built in to everything and in very good quality.  I think we'll have even more than that, but it's impossible to say what.  Looking back gives me certainty that I can't know what I'm looking at looking forward.  My generation's visions of the future are old and outdated...based on visions of the future from the past.  Who in 1980 predicted iPods?  Who predicted that in 2011 games would me controlled with a moveable remote and not a visor and gloves?  Who knew that there could be discussion about HANDWRITING becoming obsolete?

That's what scares me.  I'm a fairly smart guy, but I feel like all that might be lost on the world just a little later on because I spent my whole life keeping up with the times.  On the Internet, there's already way more information than I can handle.  i could spend several lifetimes looking at it all.  I've spent years already and a good portion of it I've found interesting.  In that though, i've missed out on a lot.  Social activities and life experiences that other people had, and certainly my parents and their peers had.  Or did I miss out?  Today it's entirely possibly that I did not miss out on those things.  Those things might be obsolete.  I might be perfectly in line with an upcoming generation.

Look at it: kids are being taught by video games and tablets and electronics.  They learn to use a computer before they learn much else.  These things come naturally to them.  They have cell phones...cell phones that are better than MINE.  They are starting out playing video games with these motion controls and awesome visuals.  They're spending way more time on the internet.  They are the subjects of studies saying that these things are bad.  And that's crazy too...because soon all of it will be normal, and something new and crazier will takes it place.  Then the kids will struggle to consolidate it into their lives...and they'll watch kids get with it like it's no big thing.

In 2021, I'll be 29 years old.  Think of all the things that happen in your 20s.  You're supposed to get your career, find your soul mate, get married, possibly have kids.  I try not to think about that (Woman Rock.  Soon.) but that might just be what happens...well, I kind of  hope it is.  Seriously though, what's going to happen?  What am I going to do?  How much more am I going to get used to?  Is it safe to say that all of the old things I remember doing as a kid will be, at very least, debatably relevant or the fodder of purists?

I'd say I'm sure this is the way it's always been...but I don't think that's true anymore.  My parents never faced changes like this.  The things they knew as children, television aside maybe, took their time getting better. Things didn't go so fast that the world spun a little quicker too.  My generation is like that weird twilight between the colonists and the people of the 1950s.  There's going to be a new old soon.

Social Ninja

I told myself I was in too good a mood to do this post right now, but I'm easily reminded of this fact.  I'm a social fucking ninja.  I am the only person in the entire world who can have negative anything human.

Nothing I do, good or bad, ever seems to amount to anything.  I create things, just like everybody else...i put them out there...and nothing comes back.  It's like thousands of people send thousands of bottles out to sea, and all but mine return.  When I do get a bottle back, it's incredibly encouraging.  The words on the sheet of paper inside are positive.  All is good...but those bottles don't come back.

I sometimes worry about hate.  I worry about people slamming what I do wherever I do it.  But those fears are unfounded.  I don't really get anything.  Okay, that's not true.  I get things occasionally, and I have gotten hate.  It was awful.

Case and point though, I used to have this friend who did really stupid but hilarious videos.  He hated them, he hated the stuff he was putting out, and eventually it all stopped coming and he tried to erase himself from the face of the Earth.  He seemed pretty suicidal for a while there (and those people aren't the ones you need to watch out for) but alas...today it seems he's doing better than ever.  He's doing better than I am.  His videos are being re-uploaded (I can't help enjoying them immensely until...) and are getting views at a better rate than any of mine are.  He's got a woman too, something he always thought he'd never ever have.  He has a circle of friends (no comment on personality, but friends none the less) that have remained loyal to him.  It sounds like I'm ragging on him, and I am, and I don't care because it's unlikely he will ever read this.  And if he or any of his friends does, it's fine, because they've ragged on me before.  Have I mentioned we used to be friends?

I haven't had a Nakama since...okay, well if the band counts, since 2009, but if not then it's probably been since elementary school.  There's only one friend that I talk to intermittently that I've had since way back when.  People always just come and go like I'm a city street.  Like I'm a stranger.  To anyone else, they'd keep their promises and see their oathes swore, but for whatever reason, it's not the case with me.  For whatever reason, i can't be part of a group for more than a week.  I'm not but a bit character that shows up in a random episode only to find that the audience actually doesn't like me all that much.

I'm not the only social ninja out there either.  I know that.  People get left in the dark every day and no one can help them out.  It's one of the saddest things on Earth.  I remember a generic pass along status someone posted one time about people misjudging other people.  It included a teenage mother who'd been raped, an obese man with a disorder, and an ugly man who'd been disfigured in the war.  Yeah, it's tragic, but you've noticed these people.  Social Ninjas?  No, they don't get noticed.  There's no status saying that you should randomly chat someone you haven't in a while...and if that were the exact wording, it's STILL unlikely that a Social Ninja would be the one a person chooses to chat.  Because we're ninjas.  We can't be seen...but unlike real ninjas, this is our curse.

Every time I do the same thing as another person, whatever they do gets more attention.  That's when I swear the only time I'll ever be recognized...like the few people that react to me say I deserve, will be when I'm dead.  It sounds like I'm a little bitch...crying because I'm not getting attention.  What is it then, that I can do?  I put things out there.  I make videos, I twitter, I write blogs, I post copious amoutns of status and express interest in the goings-on of other people.  In this day and age, I can barely be considered isolated.  I'm visible, but I'm invisible.  Or maybe everyone is just blind.  That's a bit more bleak, however.

Still, it annoys the living piss out of me...it's been happening for at least four...five years now.  On this day, November 2, I am reminded of my band because we once had a show on November 2.  It's cringeworthy to think of all the work I put into that band and how little people appreciated that work.  Is it really because they were all stuck in their stupid little minds?  Or was it because there was something figurative on my face?  Well, on behalf of all the bands that never made it, I know I'm not alone there.

That doesn't stop me from believing this is all fate.  Like when I was born everyone was told to ignore the piss out of me at all costs.  A few people broke that creed, and good on them...but most of them are gone and at least one is dead...aka truly invisible.  Or maybe it's the case that most everyone has it in one obscure part of their chromosomes a gene that tells them to not bother with a person of my exact description.  As is the case with all viruses, some people are just plain immune...but they're few and far between. 

I turn to these Fantasyland explanations because I have no logical ones.  (Okay, I do, but those are both lengthy and personal).  It just bothers me that I have so much to say and show, but no one to say and show it to.  I'm as good as any other bard or entertainer out there, I'm certain of it, but in the dark I'm no good.  Conditioned that nothing comes of my work.  It's true, even if the whole world...that is all the billions of people, read this and watched my videos and loved my music, it wouldn't be enough for me...I have nothing to lose by being proven wrong (this is a variation of a good quote of mine "I have nothing to lose by proving them right!"). 

I'm sorry for this rantiest of rants.  Trust me, i hate sounding like a bitter, emo bitch, but that's how I am sometimes.  I know this blog is actually pretty safe from prying eyes...as depressing as it is.  I must leave you with something that serves as both a warning and a sequel hook:  Woman Rock (a.ka. Pink Shit Blues) is coming.  It may not be tomorrow, but it will come because much like my status as a Social Ninja...the Woman Rock never goes away.

Just a Thought on my Chest...Possibly Literally

Can someone please explain to me the rage with tattoos today?

It hasn't been long since I was a kid, it really hasn't, and back then it seemed like only bikers, hippies and just weirdos were the only ones who really got tattoos.  Now, it seems to be the women first.  I mean like, all of them.  This isn't some "I haven't been enlightened" or "I haven't opened my mind" thing either.  It just strikes me as odd that at a certain point someone feels the need to have something drawn onto their body...and then again and again.

A few years ago in high school we had this blog project to do where we had to make a blog with a certain theme (yeah, it was nothing like this blog...this one's a lot better), and someone's was a blog about tattoos.  I remember she talked to someone who had a lot of them in one entry and said this of her "...has turned her body into a living work of art!"  I swear that's a plot point in a movie somewhere...that some villain is trying to turn people into living works of art.  It's definitely somewhere out there, and if it isn't then it should be.  It gets worse when I actually picture this.  A work of art?  What will they do, skin you and hang it in a museum?  Macabre man, macabre.

That's the thing...tattoos are both permanent and temporary.  They're permanent in that once you get it it's on you for good.  It'll be there when you get married, it'll be there when you get old, and it'll be there when you die (and yes, I know you can get rid of them, but if you're so hard on getting one, that kind of defeats the purpose).  At the same time, they're very very temporary.  When you die, that art dies with you.  I mean yeah, you can take pictures, but it's not REAL per se.  It'd be like having a picture of a painting.  No, the art gets burned or thrown into a casket, and on top of that if you're buried you're dressed.  Furthermore, it's entirely possible that people won't remember you for your tattoos.  There was a poignant demotivational (though i guess the de is kind of null) of a person with some intense sleeves hugging a little kid that said tattoos don't change character.  And yeah, that's right they don't, but they don't necessarily define it either.

And then there's the idea that people tend to get tattoos of things involving temporary obsessions.  Or they'll get something really really vague or universal.  That's a whole nother Foamy rant in and of itself (although this is less of a rant and more of a hmmm type thing) that people in general just aren't creative.  And those memorial tattoos...I don't know, I guess that's more meaningful than putting it on the back window of your car.  Okay, actually that makes a lot of sense, the memorial thing.  But with some people, yeah it's a nice design, but it'd be great if it was on your wall and not your back.  That begs the question "Who is this really for?"  If I spent as much money on a tattoo as some people do (these living works of art end up costing more than non-living ones in some cases), I'd at least want to look at it!  I mean boy....having the wrong thing on the wrong part of your body could make for some awkward love making.  Well, or some hilarious love making (making note of this for that Hooker Jesus story...)

There's something that seems...Freudian in all of this however...or at least overly psychological.  I mean, anyone can get tattoos.  Maybe people "get addicted" to getting tattoos because they believe they're covering up their body with something better.  It almost makes sense when you remember that I said it seems to be mostly females jumping on this whole tattoo thing.  That logic gets taken to a whole new level when you realize that fat people have more space for tattoos.  Instead of ugliness, you can then view it as "more potential beauty."  As much as that's a joke, there's a fair point in there.  Women tend to be more likely to have image qualms, right?  It'd make sense they'd then try to cover that up with art.

Just a thought...

I don't have a beef with tattoos, I really don't.  If you want em fine.  If you've got some sort of tattoo fetish (and I know its out there otherwise some people wouldn't have half as many as they do), that's fine.  but me?  I don't get it.  For me tattoos are something that give you special powers...and until they do that, i probably will not be going through any such process.

Eh No, Let's Stay Generic

'Nother sentimental argument and bitter love....Oh wait, that's Worry Rock.

Actually, I've been feeling kind of ill lately, for whatever reason.  Ew.  Hoping THAT won't continue...I think today at least, it's due to stress and Halloween candy.  I'm a bit of a fatass at heart, and I guess I shouldn't be.  You won't see me turning this place into one of those health and fitness blogs though, nope.  Even if I do start making a bunch of good choices, I'm not going to parade it around or anything.  I mean, I SHOULD start doing stuff again...I think my voice is being affected by a lack of activity, and that sucks.

Originally, this was going to be a topical entry about...well I'll save it for when I post that one.  But in light of me feeling so odd, I've decided to just write about what's going on right now.  Stress and frustration hit me today.  I just caught a break from this whole school thing and now it's back and madder than ever.  All of a sudden I've got a whole bunch of stuff on my plate again.  It's not that it "snuck up" on me due to procrastination either.  It's more like I just got out of one asteroid field and now I'm staring down another.  Due dates one after the other...and then there's scheduling...ew.

We're at that point in the semester where you realized you lost a few weeks somewhere.  They just zipped on by, week after week.  When you first think about it, you see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Then you realized the light blinded you for a few seconds and there's really a lot of tunnel left, and it's actually pretty dark. 

This is all exceptionally weird considering I used to have classes almost nonstop before now.  You know, it was called High School.  And now, I can't even handle a few months without moaning.  Granted, it is a headache.  You want it to go by and go fast, but you don't want to lose your time anywhere.  Once time speeds up, it seems, it never slows down.  I cannot fathom how fast it'll be moving in ten years, but I'm wise enough now to know that it'll be so fast I can't actually fathom it.

It's weird how I live though.  I think about ten years from now and then i don't want to anymore.  All I'll think about is what I SHOULD have, and no doubt the me of the present will have no requisites for that future.  So then you could say I live in the present.  Somehow, though, I'm not a "live in the moment" type of guy.  I don't have too many moments I'd like to linger on.  Besides, the present is so fleeting.  You linger longer than a spilt second and it's dwelling on the past.  Have to keep moving.  If you keep moving though, you'll go faster than the treadmill of the present and end up in the future.  Time is much like Rules of Citation: they're both more confusing than they have any right to be. 

You might recall me writing about how everything is routine.  Same concept here.  You walk the same path too many times and it wears down, then you're in a rut.  That's kind of what it feels like. 

I'm not into this whole "college" -y thing.  I hate the word "scholarly," research is the bane of my existence, and, when it all comes down to it, the whole thing just seems...stuck up.  Maybe it's all just too upper class for a shamefully proud middle class kid like me.  I wasn't handed everything, but I've never pulled a true all nighter either.  I don't consider myself all that hard working.  I just have a memory for the mundane.  I always say I'm really good at remembering useless information and that's why I'm so good at college.  That's the best explanation I have, and it makes it make sense that I hate research papers.  They require me to get information on my own...and find a use for it.

It's little things like that that ruin the kinds of challenges I like.  I mean, i don't really like challenges at all because I've got a...what do you call it?  A hair trigger temper.  So maybe challenge isn't the right word.  I'm talking about this phenomenon when you're in a class called writing fiction and the first thing the teacher says is "No science fiction" and you're the one wearing the Star Wars t-shirt (granted I still loved that class to death).  A lot of college assignments seem really fun, but 95% of the time (and I say 95% of the time because a few weeks ago I got full credit for spending 20 minutes talking about LGBT themes in Fight Club.  No strings attached.) the merit of it just being a college assigment makes it too formal to be fun.  You have to cite your sources or have four sources or pick something within a specific realm of topics or include an aid or demonstration or...you know, whatever.  The closest I came, and you can interpret this however like, to that kind of freedom was in that very same class I used in my example.

But yeah, that's just something that's been bothering the living urine out of me today...well aside from the fact that I think my body's finally shrivelling up into itself...but that's another story.  Overall this little random ramble went well I think, and I'm feeling better than I would if I'd stuck to my original plan.  So hey, there you go, the me of right now (or more than likely by the time you read this, the me of the past) in a nutshell...well, I think it's safer to say that nutshell is inside a bigger one...