↑Equilibrium

New Address!!

2008-11-25T21:02:00.001-06:00

Equilibrium has moved. Click here to view the new site. Be sure to update your bookmarks!

Online Dating: A Sociological Examination

2008-11-20T15:33:00.001-06:00

We finished our poster for Sociology. It looks pretty slick!

Survive Style 5+

2008-11-17T23:38:00.003-06:00

Today we had a party for JCS to celebrate our success at the Folk Fair. We ordered pizza from Toppers, Takoyaki from Shanghai and then watched a movie together. The movie we picked was recommended by Tom, the Vice President. I really really liked what he picked: Survive Style 5+ One of the strangest movies you'll ever see. It followed five different, completely bizarre, connecting and unconnecting plots. It was so bizarre it was brilliant. One of the stories is about a man who kills his wife every day, buries her in the woods and comes back to find her wearing new clothes and alive. When he finds her, she tries to kill him again. Another story is about two assassins who run a "killing people" business where people can hire them to kill people. On the walls of their business hangs photos of all the people they've killed. The weirdest one is probably about a business man who gets hypnotized to be a bird. Then, mid-hypnosis, those killers who run the killing business kill the hypnotist, trapping the man in the mind of a bird for the remainder of the film. Actually, I really can't describe this movie... You have to see it though!! It's incredibly entertaining and will change your life.

Blog Review Online is Live!

2008-11-16T00:43:00.003-06:00

I decided to try my hand in the world of extreme critical blog analysis. I have been working on this site for quite some time and now it's finally ready to go live! It's online now at BlogReviewOnline.com!

View Blog Review Online

Sunshine, Perfume

2008-11-10T23:51:00.002-06:00

All of last week was midterm exams and not much is new, so here are two new movies. Sunshine: Is a new movie about the sun dying out (in the year 2037) and the attempt Earth makes to "re-start" it with a giant bomb. A lot of this movie doesn't make much sense. It doesn't explain why the sun is dying out in the year 2037 for one. For two, if the sun were to die out, Earth would have already been burned up by its expansion. Lastly, I really doubt that there is enough material on earth to fashion a bomb large enough to create a new sun out of a dying one. Because I couldn't really get over these things while I was watching the movie, I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I could have if I had just ignored it. It was okay. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer: Everything about this movie is strange. From the concept to the presentation to the characters, it's all pretty messed up and dark. I don't recommend this to any people who don't like dark films or can't handle gore. It was probably the strangest movie I've seen. It's hard to describe, if you're curious go ahead and see it. I think you will be as surprised as I was. Anyways, I think that's all that's new.

Happy Halloween 2008!

2008-11-01T12:27:00.005-05:00

And a Happy November too! I do like Halloween a lot, probably one of my favorite holidays. Fortunately, it landed on a Friday this year. And because of leap year it will also land on a Friday next year. This Halloween was good. I even made a good bunch of money right before Halloween for fixing a girl's laptop. But, before we go into Halloween photos, I found a really sweet Folk Fair photo that got lost in the shuffle and was never posted. Us holding the fish! Great. Now for some Halloween fun: First, Beth came to work dressed like this... It's a clown costume she made by herself. It's funny because she's the only one that dressed up at the office. Everytime she blinked her huge eyelashes went everywhere. That's our boss Kyle standing with her. After work, Bryan and I went to Coffee Hour - but they were pretty much dispersed by the time we showed up due to it being Halloween. After that, we went to eat at Great Wall. After eating, we went to Bryan's house to finish setting up his costume. He went as Rorschach from Watchmen. I went as... well, I found these doo-dads at Bryan's house. Here's Tucker wearing my costume before I put it on: We went back to my dorm to grab my camera. Then, Jessie showed up and took some photos with us. Here's Jessie with the Joker (Mike Renner): And with the guitarist (Mike Barnet) and Rorschach (Bryan): After that, we went to Water Street. There were a lot of people dressed up. Fun. We met up with Jenna and Piper (by the way, Jenna and I broke up. She decided she likes Bryan) and went to Racy's: My costume! Rorschach thinks further investigation is necessary.

Halloween Eve

2008-10-30T23:32:00.001-05:00

A Halloween costume I found at Wal-Mart: I think it goes really "well" with the coat and skull club. A few tiny paper cranes Larry folded in Japanese class:

International Folk Fair 2008

2008-10-26T23:59:00.005-05:00

Today was a big day!! It was the International Folk Fair at school and it's a pretty huge event. All the cultural clubs get together and put on displays of their culture and sell food. It's a lot of fun, and I have a ton of pictures to show! Here is our area (before the event started): My job as treasurer was cashier. So, here's me cashiering: Our menu: Starting to get kind of crowded! Larry was making sushi for the event. He made some really good sushi! Here is a guy from the papers photographing him while Bryan assisted, he took a lot of photos: Tasty! Yoshi making Takoyaki (this sold out pretty early on.... sadly): Ryu and the girls serving Tonkatsu: Bryan, Mike, Mikako Sensei and I: Another victory for JCS!!

Saw V

2008-10-26T00:14:00.002-05:00

Good news! I'm all better. Just in time for the weekend! Friday was a good day. Bryan and I have been watching the Kite Runner movie on Monday and Friday mornings. We're almost done with it and it's a pretty good representation of the book I think. After classes Friday I went to work at First Net. When work was done, it was Japanese Coffee Hour with Bryan and Mike. I went and saw my parents at Stella's on Madison after Coffee Hour. We had drinks and various foods while we talked. When I left I went to hang out at Bryan's for a bit. Today I had guitar lessons in the morning. Next week we are recording rhythm tracks to solo over. Pretty exciting! After guitar lessons, I went to the bank and did some shopping. Then, I fell asleep at the dorms for a bit. Mackenzie was going to come over but we decided to just do dinner. Then, I met up with Jessie from JCS to go see Saw V. Here were my impressions: The ads for this movie have been making it seem like this will be the last in the Saw series. However, the ending leaves an easy open if they want to do another one next Halloween. There were loose ends, and I think they're getting lazy. The keystone in every Saw movie has been the surprise ending. However, Saw IV's twist was weak and V lacked a surprise ending at all. On top of that, the makers have wandered away from the "Big Picture" games of the first two films and replaced it with lots of smaller games involving more people. I prefer it to be just one main event like in the first movie. It gives the film more direction, a set-amount of time, less gore for the sake of gore, and more character development (rather than just a bunch of nobodies). In summary, I think they are still putting an effort into these movies (they have been getting Tobin Bell back for each film, after all), but just falling short of my expectations. I don't feel that III through V have really been worth my time. They just can't seem to get back to the quality of the first and second films. I thought that V would tie the previous two movies together and make them a better experience overall, unfortunately not much was done to tie the films together other than showing that Jigsaw's real successor has been with him since the very beginning. You know, now that I think of it, there has to be another Saw film. They left a large thing unexplained. I won't ruin it for those who haven't seen it yet, but rest assured that there will be another Saw film next Halloween. After the movie, I called Mackenzie and she said she already ate and didn't feel like eating anymore. So, Jessie and I went to Target to get a few things and went back to campus to help JCS set up for the Folk Fair tomorrow. We set up and got things looking good. After that, we went up to Bryan and Mike's dorm to play Rock Band for a while. Oh, Guitar Hero IV comes out tomorrow! Yep, good weekend so far.

Still Sick, JCS Meeting

2008-10-21T21:03:00.003-05:00

My sore throat is gone now, but in its wake came a really bad cough. This is turning out to be a pretty long cold, hopefully it clears up by next weekend! Yesterday we had our second JCS meeting to prepare for the International Folk Fair on Sunday. We made practice Takoyaki since that will be one of our main dishes at the Folk Fair. It turned out pretty well, but we had to use meat since we didn't have any octopus.

Joe making Takoyaki

Larry and I eating it.

It was a fun meeting. I'm sure the Folk Fair will be fun, but looks like it will also be a lot of work.

Sick. A Movie. A Book.

2008-10-15T00:02:00.004-05:00

I've been coming down with some illness lately. It's progressively getting more inconvenient, with today being a pretty bad day to be up and about. Fortunately enough, I don't get sick too frequently. With hope, I will be well by the weekend. In the meantime, here's a new movie and a new book: I decided to not do much tonight. After work, class, and a group meeting for a group Sociology project was over, I laid down and put in one of the movies from the library this week, Notes on a Scandal. I wasn't expecting to like this movie, at least not very much. I was pleasantly surprised, it had me interested for the entire duration. I would say I liked it quite a bit. It's about a scandal, so it's full of drama. Drama avoiders would naturally stay away as I was inclined to do. But, in this rare case I was in the right mood for it. Maybe you will be too? The book: Bryan recommended this to me, it being based on his future career aspirations. He loves this book. I checked it out from the library and just finished it tonight. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. This book is already pretty famous, made more so by the movie "adaptation" starring Will Smith. I use the term adaptation pretty loosely here because the two are not even related. The movie is completely different. I had seen the movie before I read the book, saw it was average and didn't care much to see what the book was like. If you are in this situation, I very highly recommend you forget everything you know of the movie and give the book a shot. As told from the 2100's by a (human) robot psychologist, this book chronicles the history of robots in a series of short stories, each story involving the creation of a more advanced robot and delving deeper into the robot psyche. Robots start out primitive with no speaking capacity and eventually a robot is created that can see what humans think. In the last part of the book, a robot is unknowingly elected as a world politician. This book is amazingly interesting, I think Isaac Asimov had some incredible ideas here. I can see a lot of the situations in this book becoming reality within the next one hundred years. Lastly, for those of you that know of the anime series, Dragonball which is widely regarded as a show that represents all that is good and all that is bad about anime. Dragonball is sometimes referred to as "the best and worst anime of all time." Those that are aware of Dragonball probably already know that they've been making a live-action adaptation of the first of the Dragonball series. Well, they finally put out a teaser trailer. Being the main show that I grew up on, I was curious to see how they were doing with it. I'll post it here, but I gotta say I'm a bit disappointed. It doesn't feel like the original at all. I guess it's hard to replicate what the show was, but this adaptation looks a lot more like Mortal Kombat than Dragonball. This isn't a Mortal Kombat movie. None of the characters even look remotely similar to what they're supposed to who they're supposed to resemble. So, I've expressed my distaste. But, it's only the teaser, maybe it'll be good. Not likely, I think.

Fall Leaves Outside the Dorm

2008-10-12T18:38:00.002-05:00

Engrish Shirts

2008-10-08T17:54:00.004-05:00

Grab yours today!

Dr. Strangelove - Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

2008-10-05T11:40:00.004-05:00

Was great. The whole thing is just fantastic! Dr. Strangelove is about what would happen to the world if the United States accidentally launched our nukes at Russia. A general crazy with hate for the 'red coats' locks himself in his base and gives the bombers "the go code." From then on the whole movie is about figuring out how to stop the catastrophe. This is another gem by Stanly Kubrick. Recommended.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

2008-10-01T00:28:00.002-05:00

Just finished Khaled Hosseini's second book. This author is really on a role... First Kite Runner (an amazing book) and now A Thousand Splendid Suns which was equally epic and amazing. I loved it! Read this! Read Kite Runner! Khaled Hosseini really knows how to evoke emotion. I really feel what the characters feel when I was reading this book. It was a difficult book to put down. Recommended in the highest regard. This is the epitome of fictional literature. In other news, we had our first JCS meeting this evening. It was great to meet all of the new people, we have quite a crowd this semester. There were some twenty people, not including the officers and people I already knew. It was a fun first meeting, and didn't last long enough! I really look forward to future meetings and events.

Highlander, Pi, The Gods Must Be Crazy

2008-09-28T15:45:00.002-05:00

I have a few new movies to share today, along with a few other musings. First of the movies is Highlander... Bryan and I have been watching this movie in 45 minute segments every Monday and Friday morning. I must say, for how praised this movie is, it didn't meet my expectations at all. The fight choreography was dreadfully boring (perhaps I am too used to being treated to modern swordplay and effects). There were large plot holes that opened simply because of subject matter that was never talked about in the movie. Or better put, things that were never explained nor mentioned that should have been. These errors could have been easily mended if they had just recognized them as holes and made something up to explain them. For example, the "rules" or "conditions" of being a highlander were quite vague with many questions left unanswered. Things were not explained leaving a vast majority of the film to one's own interpretation, the characters and motives were poorly written, and the lackluster quality of the effects made me take a step back from being truly involved with the film. I felt no connection to any of the characters or their plights. Overall, it was an underwhelming classic and I caution against seeing it. Next...Pi. The first thing that caught my attention was in the opening credits. Clint Mansel, my all-time favorite movie music composer (the one who wrote the score for The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream) did the music for this film. It gets a plus for that. The music was quite good. Pi is about a man who is very good with numbers. He believes that everything can be mathematically predicted, even something as chaotic as the stock market. He sets out to find the pattern in this mayhem, but as he comes closer to solving the elusive puzzle, his teetering on the edge of madness becomes more frantic and soon spills over into the people around him. For some reason, they did the film in black and white. Maybe it was to show the absoluteness and infallibility of numbers? I don't really know why they did it in black and white, but the film was made in 1998 which means that could have done it in color. Pi was very interesting as a whole, but there were some segments in the film that were bizarre. It was a peculiar film, one that I recommend seeing...but just a cautionary warning of the strangeness that also comes with it. Lastly, The Gods Must Be Crazy. Pretty sure most of you have heard of this film. It's about a bushman in the Kalahari desert and his family. He lives in an uncivilized world with no knowledge of other cultures or the modern world. One day, a plane overhead drops a coke bottle into his world and he picks it up. Oddly enough, this simple container is the most advanced piece of technology he has ever seen. He describes it as "like water, but the hardest thing on earth." He takes it to his family, and they all love this new device and thank the gods for sending it to them. However, soon feelings of jealousy arise over the bottle and they begin to fight over it. Realizing that the gods must have made a mistake in giving them this evil item, the man sets off to the edge of the world to cast this foreign object that does not belong there off of the edge of it. This aspect of the film I found very interesting, but a lot of the film also is about the modern world and how they fit into this man's story. During the segments with the civilized people, I found the film started to lose my attention. I didn't find it nearly as interesting or well done as the bushmen aspect. Overall, I'd say this is a gem, but there were also a lot of dry patches in between. Maybe you'll like them, though. They just didn't seem to fit very well together. Let's see...Other things... Guitar progression is going well. Larry recently got a guitar and he's learning now, too. It's nice seeing someone else start out playing, this way I can see how much progress I have made. It's reassuring. School is good. Asian Religion Philosophies is by a long shot my hardest class and will indeed be the greatest challenge I must overcome this semester. It's rough stuff, very dry material, and very hard to concentrate on such abstract schools of thought. Hm. I think that's all for now.

A Picture A Day Project (Year One)

2008-09-24T00:02:00.004-05:00

Today's movie was Electric Shadows. I thought it was very touching and loved all of it. I recommend this film very highly and I think this one is getting added to my favorites. It's a foreign film so if you want to see it but have problems finding it, just let me know and I'll hook you up. Big news today! It's been exactly one year since I started the Picture A Day Project. Here is the entire collection of photos over the last year... Enjoy!

It's Gonna Be A Big Movie Week

2008-09-22T23:23:00.003-05:00

It was a good haul at the library this week: Pi Electric Shadows The Gods Must Be Crazy The Quiet American And the one that I watched today: Japanese Story It was a sad story, which I wasn't expecting at all. I thought it would be a moving movie about people expanding their horizons and accepting different cultures. Alas, when the tragedy set in I realized things were going to be a bit different. I think I've been seeing too many sad movies lately and am becoming desensitized to tragedy in films. It was sad, but I didn't really feel much for the characters. The acting talent was very good, but I didn't like the actors especially. If you're not one for sad films, I wouldn't recommend it. If you're one for sad films, then I would recommend it, but you've probably seen it all before.

Saturday Night

2008-09-22T00:28:00.002-05:00

We were looking for clues.

Burn After Reading

2008-09-21T00:56:00.004-05:00

Today was Orientation for Study Abroad Spring 2009. Bryan and I got up at 8 to go check in and get it over with. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the whole day a lot. I thought it would be very boring and last too long like most orientations. This was a good experience though, I really got into it. I got there, checked in, sat down with the rest of the people going to Japan (I'm the only one going to Nagasaki, though!) It started off pretty quickly with a bunch of relevant information and friendly greetings. Then, the separated us by country and we got to talk with our groups and peer adviser all about the trip. It was small and personal and we got to ask all the questions we had. Turns out I will be able to travel around the other islands fairly easily and also will be able to get a bike for day to day transportation. Next semester there are five people going to Japan including me. After orientation got over, Bryan and I went to go see the new Coen Brothers film: Burn After Reading. This poster sums everything up pretty well... There is a lot of talent in this movie. It's a gem and one of the top five movies of '08. See it!

Graffiti With A Message:

2008-09-19T23:29:00.002-05:00

In an unrelated note, my watch came in the mail today! Slick.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2008-09-18T22:44:00.002-05:00

Kayla and Larry came over the other day and we watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which I got from the library on Monday. It was very bizarre, confusing, entertaining, and hilarious. Think I covered all of the important adjectives for it. If you like crazy, you'll probably be fond of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I don't know how I felt about it really, I guess I was kind of neutral. But, Larry really enjoyed it. In non-movie news, not a whole lot is new this week. I have orientation for Study Abroad: Nagasaki on Saturday and I'll probably go see Burn After Reading afterwords. Oh, and Friday is double payday. Nice.

すごくたのしい週末だった

2008-09-15T00:52:00.004-05:00

This weekend was a lot of fun! Unfortunately, I don't have any pics, but I will tell you all about it. Speaking of pictures, Sept. 23rd marks one year in the Picture a Day Project I started. Video to be posted soon! Going from Saturday, I had guitar lessons in the morning. They're getting harder! He expects a lot more from me and from now on I'm expected to bring in my own solos for lessons. But, I am learning a lot and I'm happy about that. After lessons, I went to the bank and then to the mall. I did some shopping and got a gift for Brian Burce (it was his burceday. (birthday)). I got him the Flight of the Conchords CD. I ordered a watch online (finally replacing my broken one from months ago). Did some more shopping...ate...came back to the dorms and read for a while. After a quick nap, I went up to Bryan's and had dinner with him. We then departed for Brian and Jenna's for a Birthday Party Extravaganza. It was a lot of fun! We had about 15 people packed into the living room, a strobe light, balloons, a pinata, Jeff and Jim's pizza...oh yeah, and squirt guns. We had a shootout in the hallway and got pretty much soaked. Other than that we all pretty much sat and talked for five hours in the living room. We met some new people and talked with some old friends. Monica is getting married right before I leave for Japan! Edit: someone did send me a photo I guess. It's very candid though, everyone's face is mid conversation. After the party, Bryan and I watched a quick episode of the office at my dorm before going to sleep. Today, I woke up and went to work until five. After work I threw my laundry in the washer, ate with Bryan and then went to my parents' house to pick a few things up. Then, I came back to the dorms and after looking for 45 minutes for a parking spot eventually found one about a mile away from my dorm. On the way to my dorm, I stopped at Bryan's place for a few minutes. Later on, Jenna and Brian came over and we watched some more Spaced and an episode of the Office. It was a fun weekend!

Happy Death Magnetic Day!

2008-09-13T00:33:00.003-05:00

Today Metallica's highly anticipated 9th studio album was released. It's been five years since their last album so I've been pretty excited to hear their new sound. Michael and I went up and got our copies at Shopko before work and since then I've listened to the entire thing. I'm very pleased! I figured I'd like it after hearing the singles and the reviews showing up online of it, but it's great to hear it all first hand. It's sad that Brothers in Arms didn't make the album, but it probably wouldn't have fit in with the rest of the tracks very well. Moving on, after work Bryan and I went to what was left of the first Japanese Cultural Society Coffee Hour of the semester! I was super excited to see all the new faces and of course the familiar ones! I met lots of new people and actually got to talk a lot despite being an hour late. Coffee hour starts at 4 this semester and I work til 5 each Friday, so... I automatically miss the first hour! It's sad because a lot of people leave after the first hour so I only get to talk to whoever feels like staying. I'm glad that it held together for an extra hour after Bryan and I showed up though. After the Coffee Hour, Bryan and I went over to Davie's theater to watch Reign Over Me. I'd already seen it and it's one of my favorite movies so I thought Bryan would like it. After it was over, we walked up the hill for some eats and then went back to his dorm for some guitar playing and tv watching. It was a great day! And I have a feeling it's going to be a good weekend.

BASEketball

2008-09-09T23:54:00.005-05:00

I watched BASEketball after getting a few recommendations for it. It seemed to me like an old 90's comedy that was quickly forgotten. But, perhaps not? What is it behind this movie that lead to a lasting memory? Well for one, it has Terry Stone and Matt Parker in it (this could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your taste). For another, it's unique in the sense that I don't know of any other movie based off an entirely made up sport. I'm sure there are a fair amount, but off the top of my head I can't list any. So, we'll call it a unique concept. As for the execution... it was very formulaic (as are most comedies). It started off very slow but gradually gained momentum. As I watched I began to like it more and by the end of the film I decided that I did like it, but not because it was a well made film, rather just because it made me laugh. It served its purpose as a comedy (granted, I was with a group of people and most of the things I laughed at probably wouldn't have been nearly as funny if I was by myself). The funny thing about comedies is that they reference so much from pop culture that they don't stay current very long. I noticed a lot of outdated pop culture references and for that reason I don't know if I'd recommend it for the average group gathering movie. If you're group is into classics, I'd recommend this as a classic comedy. In other news, this weekend was pretty fun. I went to Racy's on Saturday with the usual group and then on Sunday I worked. I'm settled into my school schedule now and it's looking like it'll be busy but not too busy. It should be fun.

Dorm Room Redux

2008-09-06T01:09:00.005-05:00

These are the new shots (with the carpet and both beds lofted) My bed (now lofted) with the futon under it: My desk: Out the window: Closet: Nathan's desk and dresser, my dresser on the left under the TV: So today was busy as usual, but it was great because it was Friday. After class I had lunch with Mike and then went to work with Bryan. Today at work I got a shot of Max, the office cat: After work I got the room all arranged as pictured earlier. My family came over later in the evening and we went out to dinner at Cancun. My sister got me this cool frog glass in Colorado: When I got back to the dorms I went over to Bryan's dorm for a while and Mike taught me how to play Afterlife by Avenged Sevenfold. It was a lot of fun! It sounds great on his guitar and amp. I have yet to try it on mine. After the guitar action we went back to my dorm and watched Spaced, a british sitcom comedy by the people that made Hot Fuzz and Shawn of the Dead. We're on episode 5 now (out of like 14, I believe) and we're enjoying it quite a bit. It's very funny.

Fall 2008 Semester, Third Day

2008-09-04T23:54:00.002-05:00

I've been pretty busy. Not much new to say other than I've had a few more classes. Two Sociology classes and a class on Asian Religion. Work at First Net has been good as usual. I started work again at BITS Help Desk and it was very slow. I can't wait to start getting paid for the jobs, I could use the money. Speaking of money, I posted the old fridge on Craigslist and got about 20 emails about it. It just sold today and I made $15! As for classes, I am thinking about leaving Asian Religions because I am not very interested in it at all. I thought I would be but it's not turning out like I expected. I'm thinking about it, but I'll give it a few more classes.

I sense many parking tickets in my future...

2008-09-03T00:28:00.002-05:00

Today was the first day of classes. I woke up at 7 and got to work at 8 for First Net Impressions. At 11:30, I left for my first class, Japanese. Unfortunately, I only have a half hour between work and when class starts to get back to campus and then find a parking spot when the campus is most busy (people bustling everywhere to get to classes). Thirty minutes just isn't enough time to find a spot, especially with a Residential Hall Permit (this means I'm only allowed to park in the dorm lots). So, reluctantly I had to park at a metered spot in order to make it to Japanese on time (I have a feeling this is going to happen a lot) and got my first ticket of the semester. Japanese class looks like fun, but much more difficult. Not just difficult, but more work as well. Japanese 202 already had too much work in it, but I guess it has to be done. I am pretty out of practice in speaking Japanese and the professor is much stricter this year on English speaking in the classroom. Already we have a large essay due on Friday. After Japanese I went to lunch with a bunch of friends at the Terrace. It was tasty as it usually is. After lunch I had Economics 104 (Macro-econ) which doesn't really interest me, but it's worth some credits and will probably be easy aside from the busy work. I was supposed to have an Asian Religions class at 5, but I had written down a room that didn't exist on my schedule and spent about a half hour looking for a room that wasn't even there. So, I missed my first Asian Religions class and on top of that the bookstore was out of the textbook for that class. After all that, I went to my parents house to pick up a few things and was very sleepy. I only got to see them for a few minutes and then decided to go. I stopped by Brian and Jenna's and they were busy watching a Supernatural (some TV show they are very into) marathon. It was pretty uninteresting to me and I fell right asleep. When I woke up I decided to go back to the dorms and get something to eat for supper. Then, I went back to the dorms to do dishes, shave, and plan for tomorrow. And that's my first day!

Labor Day 2008, Wall-E

2008-09-01T23:27:00.004-05:00

It is now the evening before classes begin. Here are a few new things! My parents showed up at my dorm with a new fridge and carpet: The carpet is only visible in the bottom of the photo, but it takes up the majority of the room. I will post another photo when the room is all finished and organized. The bottom bed is mine. Today was Labor Day. Jenna came with to a picnic with my aunt's family, cousins, and grandparents. After the fun picnic we came back to Eau Claire and went to Shanghai for some sushi with a bunch of friends. Then, we walked back to the dorms and I had a hall meeting for my dorm. After the meeting, Jenna and I watched Wall-E: It was very good! I liked it a lot and I recommend it. Oh by the way, Happy September! I start my first day of classes tomorrow!

Back in the Dorms

2008-08-30T02:53:00.004-05:00

I'm all moved back into the dorms now! I took a small panorama of the room set up... I'm pretty tired so I'll keep this summary short. I started my job at First Net Impressions on Monday and it's been pretty fun. Not much to say other than the time flies when working there and it's enjoyable. On Wednesday, We went and saw Hamlet 2: It was...interesting. I think it had a lot more potential in concept but the delivery was weak. Oh well, I guess. Today I moved all of my stuff to the dorm and then set it all up (a very tiresome task...) Then, Brian, Jenna and Piper came over and we watched The Notebook. It was pretty good, but sad. Now, time for sleep.

Swimming, Tropic Thunder, Rock Band

2008-08-24T23:50:00.006-05:00

Saturday was a bunch of fun. First, I woke up for guitar lessons. It's getting pretty hard, but I'm learning a lot of fancy stuff, too! After lessons, I went home and took a nap for a bit. Mike and I decided to go see Tropic Thunder at 7:10 and then later on Kevin also decided to go. I went to get some tickets before hand so that we could still pay afternoon prices. I went over to Larry Ader's house for the Kids' Classic, which is a pool party held each year at his house. I only stayed for an hour before I had to leave for the movie, but I did get some swimming in so it was fun. After the swimming, I saw Tropic Thunder with Mike and Kevin. It was incredibly funny. I think that image sums it up. See it if you haven't, it's worth your time. After the movie Brian, Bryan, and Jenna met up with us at Racy's. After Racy's I went over to Kevin's for a while and we played video games on his parents' new TV. Today, I got up and went out to lunch with Bryan and Mike at Great Wall Buffet. We came back to my house and got together a Rock Band party. Jenna, Bryan, Larry and Kayla came over and we ordered pizza and played Rock Band. We also watched Joe Dirt on TV, and that was...ya know: not the greatest. Oh well, it kept us entertained for a while. Good weekend!! Tomorrow I start work at First Net Impressions!

Update

2008-08-21T13:53:00.003-05:00

Harold and Kumar 2: Was awful. As expected. I didn't even like the first one, and this one was worse. Freddy Got Fingered: Had its moments. It was overall a very strange movie, but I laughed a lot and looking back I think I liked it. Job: I got the job at First Net Impressions! I start on Monday and then the following Monday I'll be going back to school and working two jobs. I called Holiday and told them about the new job and that I wouldn't be able to work there over the fall semester anymore. So, today could be my last shift at Holiday! It's pretty sad, I really liked working at that place! I'm pretty sure that First Net Impressions will be fun, too. I'll be doing what I really like doing - web design.

Guitar Amp, Iron Man

2008-08-16T01:50:00.004-05:00

I went down to Brickhouse Music and finally picked up an amp and a whammy bar. The whammy bar was cheap but the amp was a little more than I was expecting to pay. I just got the cheapest thing they had that was standard size for practice and went home to try it out. It's a lot of fun playing guitar with an amp! It's a whole new world, basically...the notes ring out and you can hear hammer-ons without strumming on the string first. The distortion quality isn't that great, but I wanted to get some jam time in before moving back to the dorms. It sounds pretty good for a Fender knock-off (if the audio seems quiet, it's because the mic is in the back of the camera): Today after work I went and saw Iron Man at the Budget with Bryan, Mike, Sarah, Niji, Brian and Jenna. It was fun, but the movie didn't live up to the hype that Bryan and Mike gave me at all. They all said it was so good, but it wasn't really anything special. Then again, I am not one for super-hero movies. I also found all of the technology in this movie to be far too outlandish and far-fetched. Yeah, yeah...it's a movie, it requires suspension of disbelief. But that's one of my main gripes with superhero movies... too unrealistic.

Pee-Wee Herman's Big Adventure

2008-08-12T12:36:00.003-05:00

Today I went to Bryan's work in the morning to talk to his boss about getting a position there as a website updater. They read my resume and tested my HTML and CSS skills. After about an hour of talking with me it was sounding pretty good. Their only gripe was that I wasn't interested in a Computer Sciences major or a career in computers. Despite that, it sounded like I got the job and they will call Friday to talk about hours. After the interview I went out to lunch with Bryan at Wendy's. We talked about what it's like to work there and he said it is a very comfortable and fun work environment. If I did get the job, I would leave Holiday and then work at Bryan's work (First Net Impressions) and the BITS help desk during the first semester. After that I went over to Mike's for guitar lessons. Mike says that I am getting faster! Later in the evening, I met up with Jenna for dinner at Red Robbin. It was fun and delicious. We saw Kevin and Magan there, too! After dinner we went over to Bryan's to meet up with Mike and Bryan. We all went over to Backalley-Movie Night early (the last one this summer!) and got pretty good seats. The movie was Pee-Wee Herman's Big Adventure. I was highly skeptical. The tag line was: "You will believe a man can ride a bike" (which, looking back now I actually find it pretty funny). I don't like the Pee-Wee Herman Show, I don't like kids' movies, and this seemed like a combination of the two. I was pleasantly surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed it, though. I was surprised that I was surprised! Who would have thought? I laughed through the whole thing. I think it helped that Tim Burton was the director, the whole feel of the movie just made me smile. I can say I recommend this. A lot.

Saturday, Sunday

2008-08-11T00:06:00.003-05:00

When I worked at BITS Help Desk during the school year there was a guy that would always come in needing help with Dreamweaver on Sundays. Every Sunday without fail, he would be there and I was the only person working the help desk on Sundays. Sometimes I would end up helping him for upwards of 4 hours straight with video editing and website design. Well, Karma has come through for me and it turns out that the same guy is a real life guitar god of Eau Claire. Volume One voted him the best guitar teacher in the Chippewa Valley. Guess who is trying to learn guitar? (Me). Guess who is giving me free lessons? (Him). I walked into his studio on Saturday morning and he was just wrapping up lessons with two kids who were about twelve. I looked around and saw about 1,500 CDs, 3 huge amplifiers, 7 electric guitars and 6 acoustic guitars. The kids were amazing! And then I heard him play. His fingers were flying up and down the neck of the guitar and when he used the wammy bar it sounded like a jet plane taking off. It was astonishing! Needless to say I was a bit intimidated when he asked me to show him what I could do. Not much compared to what he is capable of. He may not be good with computers but he is very good at teaching guitar. He gave me a rythym CD to practice strumming in time to, finger exercises for increasing dexterity and useful mneumonics and metaphors for memorizing notes and string names. Needless to say, I was impressed and glad I had the patience to help him out every Sunday. Later in the day, I worked until 9. After I got off work I met up with Bryan at his house. Chris and Ryan were already there. Jenna got off work at 9:30 and met up with us at Racy's. They were open this time (although we got there about an hour and a half earlier than last week). It was a good Racy's outting, I missed not going last week. Today I didn't do much before work. I practiced guitar for a bit and played a bit of the new 太鼓の達人DS game, then it was time to go! After work I came home and watched Three Kings, a movie I'd been meaning to watch for a while. It was really good! Definately worth watching if you haven't seen it.

Vanilla Sky

2008-08-08T14:13:00.005-05:00

I found this gem at Applebee's and had to take a picture. It doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary until you look closer and see that "Divorces" is listed under the different occasions on which one might want some hassle free fireworks. And then I thought: who would have a firework show for a divorce? Who has a gathering of any sort for divorces? And then I wondered if they stuck that in there just to see if anyone actually reads their posters. It's a mystery, but a funny one. Vanilla Sky: Was pretty good. It doesn't explain much until the very end of the movie, so a lot of it was spent being confused and wondering if it was actually going anywhere. But, once the curtain was lifted and I knew what was going on, it all made perfect sense. I'd say a second watch would clear up even more. If you like trying to figure movies out or being tricked as the story progresses then this is your film! Otherwise, I can only recommend this as a "if you have it, go ahead." Not a Must-See, but interesting if you can get your hands on it.

This is amazing!

2008-08-03T11:07:00.002-05:00

Just had to post this link: http://cootiedoon.deviantart.com/art/Sushi-Cake-89856201 It's a sushi cake, but it has no actual sushi in it. Look how amazing it looks!

The Kite Runner

2008-08-03T02:22:00.002-05:00

I just finished reading the Kite Runner. It was an amazing book, one of the best I've ever read. I just couldn't stop reading once I was on the second half. Just really really well written and an amazing story as well. The imagery is so detailed it feels like you are there for everything that happens in the story, like you can look back on events in the book and think of them as your own memories. If you're going to read a book this year, I'll make it easy for you. Read The Kite Runner. After work today, Bryan and I went to Racy's with Colin. However, they apparently closed early (this happens from time to time). So, we went to Holiday and got a bunch of post it notes and a large marker. We wrote a bunch of messages expressing our despair over the premature closing of this fabulous coffee shop and posted them on their door over their posted hours which state that they are open until midnight. If you can't read the post-its... from top to bottom, right to left: "I was but 2 punches from a free beverage" "We really just wanted a drink @ 11:30" " " "^ This post-it was intentionally left blank" "Sad face" "So much so that we went and bought these post its and marker" "Where else to go Saturday night when <21?" "I don't like coffee but smoothies are good" "smiley face" "Drew, Bryan, C-Low" We went to Jeff and Jim's instead. Maybe next Saturday they won't close so early.

Idiocracy

2008-08-02T02:53:00.005-05:00

I am tired today. Here is some new stuff. From the guy that made Office Space comes a movie about an average man with an IQ of 100 who is frozen and wakes up 500 years later to find that he is the smartest man in the world. It was very funny and entertaining! I don't think this one actually made it to theatres and I can't figure out why. The production quality was high, the actors are well known, and the story is very unique and good. I could be wrong, maybe it did hit theatres in select locations or something. Regardless, I think this sleeper hit deserves more attention. So, I'm dating again already. Her name is Jenna. Needless to say I am fairly hesitant to start again already. But, Jenna was pretty excited to ask me out so I figured I should give it a shot. We'll see how it goes. Lastly, Metallica announced the release date for their new album. It releases worldwide September 12th! The official track list for the album does not include Brothers in Arms much to my dismay. I was really looking forward to hearing a studio recording of it. Alas, it wasn't in the cards.

Bryan's 20th, Persepolis, Other...

2008-07-30T01:58:00.003-05:00

It's been such a busy weekend I haven't had time to update at all. Let's see... I don't even remember what I did Friday anymore. I know it was something, but what it was escapes me at the moment. Anyway, Saturday was Bryan's 20th birthday. After I got off work I went over to Kevin's and we watched Batman Begins, played guitar and video games. Around 7:00, Bryan was back in town from a birthday trip to Minnesota with his family and we met him for dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. The gift I got Bryan was a bit of brilliance, I think. I got him a miniature pet cactus! Here it is with Bryan holding it at Racy's: He pretty much loved it. Best birthday gift ever. I've been hanging out with Brian Burce (not the one that just turned 20) and Jenna a lot lately. One day last week Brian suddenly decided he wanted his lip pierced. So, Jenna said she'd do it for him. I said I'd film it. And so here you have it! Ta-da! Good times. On Sunday we went and saw Dark Knight again. I didn't need or particularly want to see it again, but Mike said he's pay for me and wanted to go see it again. So we saw it again and it was good. Again. If you haven't seen it yet, you probably should get on that. Oh and before the movie I got to ride Bryan's moped around! Woo! Yesterday Bryan, Brian, Jenna, Sarah, and I went to see Persepolis at Back Alley Movie Night. It was a pretty cool set up. They just put a huge projector up in a back alley downtown and show a movie. I've never gone to it before but I was interested in seeing Persepolis. This is what it looked like, excuse the quality of the photo... My cell phone camera is not the greatest: People have a bunch of chairs set up and in front where it says "Whys" is where the screen is. Anyway, Persepolis was very good! I enjoyed it quite a bit but thought the ending was a bit abrupt. It was very entertaining though. I recommend it!

Back to Business

2008-07-23T00:11:00.002-05:00

Blade Runner: was a big let down for me. I had expected a lot having heard a lot of really interesting things about it. I have not read the book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick) yet, but it is sitting on my desk waiting to be opened after I finish Kite Runner (I still am very excited to read the book and remain optimistic it will be better than the movie). I did not feel any connection to this story or the characters. Everything was so flat. The villains sucked, I felt no sympathy for the hero, and the bad guys died too quickly. None of the interesting concepts of the book really shown through like the subtle undertones of android ethics and if there truly is a difference between humans and androids that are fully human in their anatomy and thoughts. A lot is left untouched or unexplained. Everything was just set up pretty poorly I thought. A shame considering this movie is very highly regarded and even has a large fan following. Mr. Brooks: A Pleasant surprise! Dane Cook's best film to date (although not really his movie, he does really get to show off his non-comedic talent while sharing the screen with Kevin Costner). It was great and I really enjoyed it! The characters and story were all very well weaved and it kept me entertained and interested all the way until the great ending. All I can really say is "Wow, I really liked this." I recommend Mr. Brooks!

Things Fall Apart

2008-07-19T23:11:00.010-05:00

The Short Story: Veronica broke up with me for an older man she's known over the internet for a few weeks whom she's never met after she got to Hong Kong. The Long Version: Disclaimer--- This gets long. I have a lot to get out. If you do manage to read the entire thing, I am happy that you took the time. I never thought I'd be making this post. It's been a pretty bad week, and now I have to make sense of it all and try to explain it. If the Short Story didn't make sense to you, that's probably normal. I didn't really get it either. Anyways, the story starts when we started dating. We were a lot closer than we were when she broke up with me. We had some fights as everyone does, usually caused by her having tantrums. She wondered why I put up with it. The answer I gave her for the times she questioned my motives were that her pros outweighed her cons and I really enjoyed her company despite her frequent outbursts. The next part of the story starts when I begin college. It's Veronica's senior year in high school and I am busy with work and my own schooling. We start to grow distant, as expected, but more than is needed. I don't make much time for her and spend a lot more times with my friends. She is sad, but deals with this well. I was grateful. I was not very affectionate to her at all and almost never told her what I was feeling. I don't often show my emotions to people: I'm not good at it so I don't like to. Somehow, we make it through that first year. Now, she is about to leave for Hong Kong for six months. She went last summer, but not for nearly this long. I try spending as much time as I can with her, taking her places (not as many as I would have liked, I didn't have any money at the time) and such things. We have our goodbye and say that we'll miss each other. She says she hopes that we can still be together when she gets back. Now, she's in Hong Kong. Someone that she knew over the internet confessed his love for her (I think that's how it went) and she starts talking to him on the phone a lot. I noticed when I called that several hours were shaved off of the phone card. Things get "serious" with the new guy and she is forced to choose between him and me. So, naturally, she breaks up with me. I say this jestingly because I think it's kind of ridiculous. She says she's grown up a lot and it's time to let old memories die. I was never there for her when she wanted me, I was so distant, ect. Now, I think I was starting to do a good job of being for her again when this happened. She cited my first year of college in her terms for breaking up with me and basically made me out to be the bad guy by exaggerating my inattention to her so she would feel less guilty. She says that she's grown but ironically the way she chose to end our relationship (slummy, underhandedly, much like a jerk) seems to contradict that. I find it embarrassing that after growing so far she does something stupid like leave me for someone she hasn't met. Maybe I should have held her to her word about wishing to stay together until she came back and made her do it in person. It would have given her more time to think about it and more time for me to prove myself to her. She didn't really give me any chance to prove myself or win her back over. I guess when you break up with someone that's not what you think about. But she must have known that I wouldn't want to let her go so easily. But, she is already so attached to this new guy that it makes it impossible for me to get her to see past that. I wish she was able to see past the new guy that blinds her. Instead, she turned her back on me! After all I've done for and with her, and all that I still wanted to experience with her with me! Since she had someone else to fall back on it wasn't even hard for her to do. I offered her a lot in return for taking me back, promised her things would be different. Better than they had ever been. But she didn't want any of it. You know, this would actually make more sense if she found someone in Hong Kong that she liked. But leaving someone who she couldn't see for someone who she also couldn't see leaves me baffled. She has some nice plans laid out already. She's not going to Eau Claire anymore, and rather will go to school by the new guy on the East Coast. Okay. It's hard to even write this it's so embarrassing. It's like a bad dream: having her go from loving me to breaking up so quickly and using old events that haven't happened recently as reasons. This all being said, I regret not spending more time with her when I could have. I wish I could make a few more memories with her and I really miss seeing her. I missed her before she broke up with me and this is well... a large strike to bear, especially from a loved one. I did make a few attempts to win her back, but all had no effect on her. As I said earlier, she has another person that will back her up on the break up and in fact encourage leaving me. Now I spend most of my time learning how to play songs on her guitar that remind me of her (mostly Coldplay. I can play a lot of their songs now). At first I blamed only myself for this because I never spent enough time with her. I said "I never knew what I had, until she left me!" While this is still somewhat true, I now see that she deserves just as much of the blame. In spite of all that she's done against me, I can't help but continue to miss her and wish she would reconsider the decision. However she made it abundantly clear that she will no longer consider having me back. She may be happy about the new guy, but I've never been more...sad, lonely, depressed, jealous, upset, crushed, and disappointed in my life. We are no longer speaking to each other. Other News.... My New Job: I am liking Holiday a lot. I don't have much to say about it other than my coworkers are great, the customers are always interesting, and the discount is nice! I get to see a lot of people I know from town there so it's fun. Unfortunately, it's a lot of standing so I'm usually pretty tired by the end of my shifts. The Dark Knight: One of the best movies I've seen in a while. By far my favorite super hero movie of all time. It had great characters, great actors, a great story, decent action, and it was absorbing! I really recommend this! The villains were amazing: Joker and Two-Face couldn't have been better! I won't ruin anything for you, see it for yourself! Health: I've lost 23 pounds since I cut back on soda and started exercising more. Other: Couldn't think of a category for this, but I guess we can call it Unfortunate Events. My watch of 3 years finally broke for good. It's not even wearable anymore. I was thinking about getting a watch from Tokyoflash, but now I'm starting to have second thoughts. It's a very minor conflict but... When I take showers in the morning, I count on looking at my watch on the counter to tell me what time I need to be out by (I take slow showers) and the ones at Tokyoflash require a button press to display the time. So, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. Yeah, I know. I think of the strangest things. I miss my watch! What a bad week!

I Can't Say Enough Good Things About Akira

2008-07-12T17:20:00.006-05:00

It seems like not enough people have seen the 1988 classic anime movie, Akira. I put this on the required viewing list for anyone that asks me for movie recommendations. I have seen it more times than I can count. The movie is based off of a graphic novel series by the same title and it was directed by the author. However, I'd never bothered to pick up the book because I figured I'd seen it all already - and it is all together about 2,500 pages spread over 6 books. Well, I finally decided to do it and just finished them last week. And I gotta say, I had only seen the tip of the iceburg! It was brilliant, amazing, epic, and nostalgiac! Much to my glee, I found out that they are making a live-action Akira movie (this means it will have actors, rather than animation) due out in 2009. It's going to be split into two movies and will be telling the exact story of the manga. I loved the original movie, but I really can't wait to see this! The first movie is due in 2009 and will star Leonardo DcCaprio as Kaneda and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tetsuo. All in all, not only is Akira my favorite comic but also probably one of my favorite books of all time. Moving on, Afro Samurai starring Samuel Jackson was very interesting. It was very funny at parts, had a lot of great action, and the story was great once it got going. The only problem I had with it is that Samuel Jackson has too few speaking lines, and he's the main character! (he probably charges by the syllable). Anyways, it was interesting and I really loved the ending. I would only recommend this to people who find the title "Afro Samurai" appealing, however. An Afterthought: I am looking for talented artists with experience in comics to work with me on turning my book, Spicy Licks, into a comic. I have the entire story already outlined, but I think that this super hero story would make a better comic than a book! The only problem is that I can't draw. So, if you're interested, contact me.

Hancock

2008-07-08T01:02:00.002-05:00

It's been a busy week! My first week at Holiday was packed full of hours, so that's mostly what I've been doing. On Saturday I spent some time with Bryan and Colin. And on Sunday I spent some time with the other Brian. I went over to his apartment since I had yet to see it and his room-mate had been wanting to meet me. Ended up being pretty fun and I spent the night. Today I had guitar lessons with Michael and afterwords Bryan met up with us to go see Hancock. It looked good. It had potential. But, it fell short in so many ways. It couldn't decide whether it was a comedy or an action film. If it had picked one and either made more jokes or gave the film a more serious feel it could have been better. But the main two things holding it back was the poor cinematography (the movie is mostly a bunch of close-ups on the actors' faces with the camera going in and out of focus so you can't ever see the whole scene) and the ending. Actually, the whole second half of the movie just went in a crazy direction that I like at all. Can't say I recommend this.

Work

2008-06-30T23:15:00.004-05:00

I got the job at Holiday! It's a gas station on Gold Road and I just had my first day today. It was fun and the people seem friendly. Can't wait to get further acquainted with them. After work I had a guitar lesson with Mike. I'm learning a lot, guitar is a lot of fun!! In movie news I saw Get Smart and the new Futurama movie, The Beast With a Billion Backs. This movie was much better than the first Futurama movie, Bender's Big Score. I actually really liked this one and laughed a lot. The only problem I found with it was its abrupt ending. Oh well, I recommend this one especially if you are a Futurama fan! Get Smart was good. Steve Carell plays a somewhat competent character which is a nice change for him. But, it's not enough of a change. Steve Carell is talented, he needs more role variety. This movie was entertaining and a good summer / date movie. I finally decided to start using my Deviant Art account after using the service to look at art / themes / wallpapers for ages without contributing anything of my own. Well, look out Deviant Art! I've submitted a few comics and photo manipulations of my own, along with the first four chapters of my new book I'm working on entitled: Spicy Licks and the Menacing Menace. View my gallery.

Fargo

2008-06-28T00:52:00.001-05:00

Everybody that wanted to see this movie has probably already seen it, but I'll make this post anyway. I just finished watching Fargo and I enjoyed it so much I felt compelled to mention it. So, there you have it. Good movie.

The Love Guru, Swordfish, Job Interviews and More

2008-06-25T01:44:00.009-05:00

First, a few movies: The Love Guru Was okay. As far as comedies go, it didn't make me laugh nearly as much as Austin Powers. It's too bad, but I kind of expected it wouldn't be a riot when the bad reviews started rolling in. The film was incredibly linear even for a comedy, jokes were almost entirely based on physical humor (if you're into that, this might be your flick) and the central love theme was very implausible. I doubt that someone like Jessica Alba would (or anyone really) would ever fall for someone like Guru Pitka (Mike Myers; aka person with ridiculous beard in image above). Can't say I recommend this. They tried too hard to make jokes funny that had no shot to begin with. And the few moments that did seem to click were just drug down by the several weak attempts everywhere else in the movie. This movie had a funny premise, but the script was not up to par for a Mike Myers movie. For shame, Mike Myers! Swordfish Now this is a movie I enjoyed. Aside from the computer jargon which made no sense, it had a great plot and great characters. The movie didn't have your typical action flick bad guys, it was a little more complicated than that. Initially, the villains are portrayed as evil, sacrificing whoever they need to to reach their goals. But, later in the movie it is revealed that they too are fighting for what they believe to be noble ideals. The fresh and exciting action along with very interesting plot make this a very memorable movie. If you haven't seen Swordfish yet, I highly recommend it. And now, a game: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots My goodness, it's finally here. The last installment in the Metal Gear Solid epic, Guns of the Patriots. This game has been hyped for months now and Hideo Kojima didn't disappoint. The story picks up where Metal Gear Solid 2 left off, playing as a much older Solid Snake. It is sad to see the main character grow so old after spending so much time playing as him when he was younger. Otacon is my favorite character and they did a great job of keeping him that way. Raiden returns after disappearing after the events in MGS2 and is looking a lot like Gray Fox. Raiden's character was much better than in MGS2 and it was disappointing to not be able to play as him in this game. Other than not getting to play Raiden at all, this game was great. It was very cinematic, had an amazing story, and great new elements. I do however have a few gripes. 1. Not enough gameplay! This game is almost half movie! 2. Seriously, why would you make Raiden so amazing and then not let us play as him? 3. Not enough plot twists for my tastes. Metal Gear 2 had so many delicious plot twists and seeing everything unfold as I expected was a disappointment. On the other hand, it was a good ending to the series. It was very sad, as expected. But, I think you will be surprised by the secret ending that plays after the credits role. I found an amazing wallpaper. It's the best one I've seen in a few months: Click here to view the just the wallpaper by itself. Yesterday I had a job interview at a Xenex convenience store. The interview went well and I was offered the job. However, the place is over a half hour drive away. For that reason, I will have to turn it down. Fortunately, I have another interview lined up tomorrow morning. Today I went and got the treasurer box for JCS. This year we will start off with $255. Justin, the previous president and Shinno Sensei talked with me for almost 2 hours about upcoming and important events for JCS and treasurer duties. It sounds like a lot to keep track of, but I think I will be fine. Speaking of a lot to keep track of, I have a lot of Study Abroad forms due on July 3rd. I have been working on getting them filled by finding a faculty reference to use. Kakegawa Sensei said that she would recommend me for the trip. Then, I need to have a doctor fill out one of the forms saying that I am physically fit to travel. That, and I need to fill out grant and scholarship forms along with accomodation needs and so on. It's quite an ordeal, but I suspect that after these forms are turned in, the worst of the paperwork will have been completed. After getting the box, I came back home and we went to pick Mom up from work and go to her work picnic. It was tasty and all, but I definately ate more than I should have. After the picnic, I went bowling with Bryan, Kayla, and Larry. It was a lot of fun and we got free games (I finally got to use my free bowling coupons I've had for years). After bowling, we went to Shanghai and hung out there for a while, eating more food. Shanghai is always good times.

Gandhi Fest, Other Fests

2008-06-22T23:49:00.003-05:00

This weekend Bryan was house sitting for his boss. Basically all he had to do was tend to their animals. Mike and I went over there for Gandhi fest on Friday. The house is really nice with dual HD televisions and a huge work station with 6 shuttle computers and another office with more computers and monitors. Both Mike and Bryan had seen Gandhi before, but I hadn't. Gandhi fest is where you watch Gandhi and whenever he fasts you eat as much as you can - for moral support. We went out and got a bunch of food to eat after going to Racy's and then came back for Gandhi fest. It is a really long movie. 3 hours and 11 minutes long. It was a very good movie, despite the excruciating length. So, my first ever Gandhi fest was a success. Saturday Bryan was having a Guitar Hero party with a bunch of his coworkers and coworkers' friends. We relocated to someone else's house rather than having it at Bryan's boss's house as planned. Instead, we were at Beth's house. It turned into a Rock Band party and was a lot of fun. We were all pretty tired at the end of the night. Today we watched Blazing Saddles by Mel Brooks which was pretty good. We also played some video games and took the dogs out for a stroll. It was a pretty exciting weekend.

Kung-Fu Panda, Veronica Goes To Hong Kong Part II

2008-06-20T14:23:00.003-05:00

Veronica is going back to Hong Kong for the summer and through the fall semester of school. So, she came and stayed with my family for Wednesday night and Thursday. I'll be watching over her fish and guitar while she's gone. On Wednesday night we ate at Burrachos with my dad and sister and then I helped her move all the rest of her stuff to storage that she couldn't bring with her. When we got back we watched Semi-Pro which I had heard a lot of good things about. Unfortunately, it wasn't really funny at all. I laughed once or twice, if that, and I think I was being generous. Disappointing! Thursday we went and saw Kung-Fu Panda with Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan. It was really good!! This is the best looking animated film I have seen. It was a really beautiful looking film. The story was more Disney than Jack Black, but I expected that. Since it was Disney, it was all very predictable and had a linear plot line with all of the basic elements. But, I still think this is a gem. The art style and characters are great and it has its funny moments. After the movie we went to Shanghai for happy hour sushi/dinner. It was great as usual. When we were done with dinner, I drove her to her friend's house in Minnesota where she would spend her last night in America before going back to Hong Kong. Have a safe trip, Veronica! At least now I have a guitar I can practice on for a while. Also, I finally got a job interview! It's at convenience store called River Country.

Fathers' Day 2008

2008-06-17T01:20:00.003-05:00

We went to Minnesota as usual. It was a lot of fun, but I forgot to bring my camera in, so... no pictures of that. We did go to Aunt Kathleen's house though and I got some pictures of Brian's new dog. She's looks like a really cool dog.

Tag, I'm It.

2008-06-13T02:55:00.005-05:00

My cousin tagged me. I'm supposed to tag 6 other people, but unfortunately this tag ends with me. I don't really know any other bloggers other than Veronica and she never posts! So, I'll answer the questions, but I have no one to pass it on to. If you like, feel free to answer the questions on your own blog or website. 1. What were you doing 10 years ago? in 1998 I think I was in 3rd grade. And it would be summertime...So, I was probably spending time at home. I don't think I really did much with friends during the summer. Also, probably drinking Dr. Pepper and writing short stories. 2. Five items on today's "to do" list: It's the summer, I don't have much that needs to get done today. But, for the weekend I would like to: 1. Fill out loan application for campusdoor.com 2. Fill out FAFSA form for Ford Loan 3. See a movie 4. See Veronica before she leaves for Hong Kong 5. Make Japan trip payment by Sunday 3. What snacks do you enjoy? Anything sweet. Also chips. Chips and salsa are really good. I enjoy many snacks. 4. What would you do if you were a billionaire? Probably waste money on a "financial advisor." Also, I'd buy super computers for me and my friends. And a house. Maybe two houses. And Chicago. 5. Where would you live? When you can afford to live wherever you want, why live anywhere? I'd probably just travel between a few places I like. There, that's done. I finished two games recently: The World Ends With You: By far the best game so far on the Nintendo DS. And that's saying a lot considering all the wonderful titles that have hit the system so far. I have never felt such satisfaction from a portable game. The story was incredible. And the plot had so many secrets that could be uncovered. After unlocking all of the secrets you have one masterpiece of a story on your hands. It has a great art style and a great soundtrack to accompany it. Not only that, but the gameplay was a lot of fun, too! Bioshock: This game really has "creepy" down. This game is pretty freaky to play with the volume turned up. This is one of the better PC games I've played. I loved the story and plasmid system. You get a bunch of powers called plasmids that allow you to shoot ice or lightning or bees at your enemies and even use telekinesis. That's just the surface of it, too. If you're not much for games I hear this is being made into a film. So, look forward to it! That's all for finished games. Today I picked up Ghandi and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (game). I'm excited for them both!

Looking Forward To...

2008-06-05T18:44:00.003-05:00

This +

This

That's right - Guitar Hero: Metallica has been confirmed! I can't wait! I'm also excited for the New Prince of Persia game coming out this Holiday Season! In other news, I installed Linux on my computer. I'm now dual booting Vista and Linux. I like it a lot so far. It only uses about 5% of my RAM compared to Vista which uses 40%. Nice!

Weekend, Movies and a Book

2008-06-02T17:10:00.003-05:00

This weekend was a lot of fun. On Friday, I had dinner with my parents and Bryan came over. We installed the new fans for my computer as mentioned in my last post. I am still pretty underwhelmed by them. I thought with all the reading I did on the different types of case fans I had made a good choice. Oh well, all I need to do is get some 3 pin to 4 pin connection adapters and I can hook them both up to fan controllers to lower their speed. This should fix the noise problem at least. Michael also came over on Friday and we just hung out here. On Saturday my parents left to go on some trip. I did some errands during the day - got a battery back up for my computer so it is now safe from lightning storms. In the evening I got together with Bryan and we went to Shanghai to spend that $20 card that Larry got me for my birthday. We had a buffet of sushi. I tried 章魚(octopus) and 鰻(eel) for the first time. The octopus was very good but much less chewy than I had braced myself for. I think that part got hyped too much. The eel was alright, but I thought it was kind of bland for how tasty I was told it is. After Shanghai, Mike met up with us and went to Racy's. Sunday, I woke up and my parents were still away. So, I had some pizza and got ready for the day when Larry called and asked me to come play softball with him and some friends. So, I dropped off Mackenzie at her friend's house and then went to play softball. I wish I would have known I would be in the sun for five hours before I forgot to wear sunscreen. We played ball with such bright characters as Justin from JCS, Kayla from JCS, Tom, Andy, Dane and so on. After the game, people started to disperse and it was just Justin and I left. Mikako Sensei came by to pick Justin up and bring him to the Taste of Eau Claire. She said that I should go to. Having no plans, I said I would. I had never been to Taste of Eau Claire before. It's a large gathering of restaurants from all over the city displaying their food for sampling in Phoenix Park. It was fun, I didn't eat much though. That about covers the weekend. Now for some movies and a book: Broken Flowers. A Bill Murray movie! Not a whole lot to say here. It's a lot like Lost in Translation. If you liked that as I did, I think you will like Broken Flowers. It is about a man who finds out he may have a son of nineteen years old who he has never met. He embarks on a road trip to visit possible mothers who he has not seen in decades to see if he can possibly find his son. I should warn you however that the ending is not very satisfying and seems to cut the movie short. That aside, I recommend this movie. うなぎ(The Eel) A Japanese horror (I question this categorization. It was more of a drama) movie from director of 黒い雨(Black Rain), Shohei Imakura. It was a good movie. Not many twists or anything, all pretty predictable. Also, I didn't understand why the woman tried so hard to impress a man who showed no interest and in fact continued to discourage her. I didn't think the relationship was very believable. Actually, I think this movie had a great lesson that I had not seen yet represented in a movie. If you can find this one, I do recommend it. Finally, a book. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Known for its famous line "So it goes," Slaughterhouse-Five is already a widely known book. I suppose that most people have already read this. This was my first read of the book and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The book focuses on a weakling in World War II named Billy Pilgrim who was a prisoner of war in Germany and survived the Dresden fire-bombings. He is a peculiar man who seems to live the events of his life in a random order, time traveling back and forth through different occurrences. Predicting and reliving his own death, then going back to the night of his honeymoon he seems to drift through life infinitely. It truly is a wonderful book, incredibly interesting, and shows a fascinating view of life and war.

Computer Fans

2008-05-31T01:30:00.002-05:00

So I bought a pair of these: fans for my computer. My case seems to run hot and I wanted to cool it down by replacing the stock fans with fans with a higher CFM rating. I paid 20 dollars for the pair and I am starting to regret it. It seems that so far all these fans have managed to do is make my computer sound like a vacuum cleaner. It's much more noisy compared to how it was before replacing the fans. These fans do move much more air than the stock fans that came with the case, but I dunno what to do now. The temps haven't improved at all. I think I will go and get some fan adapters tomorrow and hook the fans up to my fan controller. If I turn the fans down to a lower setting and keep still keep the temperature down, then I will be in good shape. If not, I might just put the old ones back in.

A Little Late, But...

2008-05-25T21:00:00.001-05:00

Indiana Jones, 19th Birthday Party

2008-05-23T01:28:00.004-05:00

It's been a lonnnng week. But, a good one. The first big thing is, did I ever mention that I got an A on that research paper I did? Well, I did, yup! All that work payed off. Secondly, I'm all moved in to the house now. On Sunday, we celebrated my birthday for the first time with my grandparents. Yayyy. Then, nothing much happened on Monday or Tuesday. Wednesday was a big day. I went and got my driver's license renewed and Mackenzie passed her driver's test finally so we both got licenses! Then, I reinstated my car insurance so I can drive again! Then, I went and sold a bunch of my old video games and with that I was able to get a free copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 and half off of Rachet and Clank Future. Not bad! I wasn't expecting all those old games to go for so much money. I filled out a bunch of job applications. Blockbuster, Family Video and Petco all look promising. They all seem interested in me. That night, Mike called me and said that he had free tickets to the midnight show of Indiana Jones 4 if I wanted to go see it. I said I'd go. It was pretty great. It was a lot like the first three. Lots of action, very exciting, and plenty of paranormal mysteries. It was a good conclusion to a good series. Today I finally got my car fixed so it doesn't shake anymore! Also, with my new great GPA I save $150 on my car insurance! Great news. At 7, my friends and I met at Outback Steakhouse to celebrate my birthday. It was a lot of fun. They got me gifts. Bryan got me Paris, Je T'aime - a great movie: highly recommended. Kayla and Larry got me American Beauty. And Mike got me that free Indiana Jones movie I guess. Haha. Outback got me a free sundae. After dinner, we went over to Bryan's house. And a big fire. A cool owl came over and hung out with us for like two hours. We named it Owley, the owl. He was pretty cool. His eyes had the intensity of the fire we cooked over. Larry showed up after work and scared it away. Very sad. But, he gave me a Shanghai Bistro gift card. Which is ... great. I only get free food there everyday.

Finals Week Semester 2

2008-05-17T23:28:00.004-05:00

School is now over for the summer. This week has been finals week and fortunately I had almost no finals to take. All of my classes that didn't have a final had some sort of paper to write, however. But, after I was done with those, it was all easy! On Monday Mike and I had to do our skit for Japanese class. So, we got that out of the way early. Everyone performed their skits and they were great!! Justin and Tom's was by far the greatest - probably the best skit in the history of skits:

I converted the skit tapes to digital and made a fancy DVD of the production for Kakegawa Sensei and so I have videos of all the skits. Here are the top two - Justin / Tom and Julia / Michael. Enjoy! (sorry no subtitles, but I think you can understand basically what's happening):

After the skits were over, Kayla, Larry and I went out for lunch and relaxed for the rest of the day. Then we flew kites in the parking lot. Actually this week was a lot more boring than I thought it would be. I may not have had much for finals but it seems that everyone else did. So, I was bored a lot. There was another crazy thing that happened though. On Tuesday we went to Shanghai for some free food. After we were done eating, Chris had a brilliant idea. He said: "Hey Drew! I bet you five dollars you can't eat a knock-out roll." I promptly shook his hand without really thinking about the bet. Before I knew it, Larry and Mike were telling me horror stories of other people Chris had made this bet with. They had seen people fail too many times, they knew how this would turn out because it is always the same. For those of you who are not familiar with Shanghai Bistro's famous Knock-Out Rolls, they are sushi with habanero peppers, chille sauce, tabasco sauce, some sort of other spicy sauce and a fistful of wasabi. I had never seen a knock out roll before and I figured that it was possible to eat an entire one. It is just food after all. People could have told me it was impossible to eat all 8 pieces as much as they pleased but I wouldn't have believed them until I saw for myself. As the roll was being made, the chef said that he could only eat 2 pieces before his face would freeze up and make it impossible to eat anything else. He also described an interesting situation in which a person made it through 4 pieces before having to go to the hospital. Wow. He described eating a piece like "eating hell" and Larry described it as "eating a desert on fire." I was ready. The sushi looked deceivingly colorful. The amount of wasabi in each roll is absurd. Even the smell was powerful enough to make my eyes water. Anyways, I tried one. With each passing bite, the pain grew worse and worse. Tears ran down my face, and it was incredibly hot. About when I thought there was no way for it to get worse, it did. My friends, looking quite concerned agreed it would be okay to spit out what was left and they would count that one as eaten. So, I did. Mike saw how crazy this was and said he would like to try one provided he had an ample supply of beverages. He gathered three glasses of water next to him and prepared to eat. He lasted about half as long as I did before expelling the rest on to his plate. Showing mercy, Chris said that if I could eat one completely, the five dollars would still be mine. Me, not wanting at all to put another one of them in my mouth thought that I had already gone through all that and if I didn't eat at least one, it would have been all for naught. So, I put another one in my mouth. I managed to eat it all, and victory was mine. Kind of. Nobody really won. I guess it was good entertainment. The week was slow after that until Friday. Friday I got up and finished the Japanese skits DVDs and met up with Bryan for lunch. He practiced for his skit which he would be giving at 1 that day. After lunch, I went to his class to sit in on the skits. Shiho came too. Bryan's skit won best skit and he won best actor in addition to that. Nice! After skitting, we went to Shanghai for some sushi to celebrate (no knock-out rolls this time. Too be honest, they really are not worth the money to even try it. The restaurant should pay you to eat them). When we got there, we saw a lot of JCS people who seemed to have the same idea as us. We sat next to them and talked and had sushi for a while. Friday night was fun. Bryan and I took a stroll on Water Street, got rained on, and then went back to my dorm to watch some Mission Hill. After Bryan left, Phuong came over to say bye to me since I would be checking out the next day. She left around 2 and I went to bed. My dad said he would be coming to the dorm to help move out the next day around ten. So, I set my alarm for ten and went to sleep. I wake up at nine to hear him knocking on my door telling me to start packing stuff up. We spent the day moving stuff out of the dorm and into the house. Now, I am very tired. But, I am back home now. Happy summer!

最後のコーヒーアワー２００８そして、JCSの選挙

2008-05-11T01:03:00.007-05:00

It's been a big weekend and it's not even over yet. Mostly it's been a lot of JCS stuff going on. The last week of actual classes is now over and all that remains is Finals. It will be very easy for me since I have only one real final (Econ). At the end of next weekend, I will be done with college for the year and back at home. I will miss it here, but soon I will be back. On Friday after class I went to the last coffee hour of the year!! It was a lot of fun. Someone brought squid-jerky... I thought it was very strange. All of the Japanese people loved it, though.

People eating Squid Jerky 掛川先生！！（Kakegawa Sensei) A Few of Us

After the last coffee hour of the year I walked up to Mike's dorm to practice our script for our Japanese skit. We are doing select scenes from Pulp Fiction. We now have it memorized and are ready to go on Monday! After that, I went to the KT End of the Year Cookout for some free food and talking to people from the dorm. That was a lot of fun... Then, Bryan came over for a while. Eventually we went over to Mike's dorm again but he was out seeing Iron-Man. So, we decided to go home. Bryan had to work in the morning so he had to go to bed. I decided to visit a new friend working Security at my dorm who's name I can't pronounce yet. Seriously, her name is like sixteen syllables. That was fun, she is from Mongolia so she had a lot of interesting things to say. At 3, we finally turned in for the night. Today was also a big day. I went and visited Bryan at his work, ate lunch with him, and around 5:30 the JCS End of the Year BBQ started. Unfortunately, the weather was not as nice as the KT picnic so we had to have it indoors at KT. We made things in the oven...kind of like it was a grill - only not.

Maiya-chan playing Ping-Pong.

I beat Kakegawa Sensei at Ping Pong. It was such a fierce match that no pictures could be taken that were not blurs. Before the final blow was dealt she vowed she would lower my grade if I beat her! I was not deterred however, and scored the winning point. The festivities lasted until 9pm. New leaders of the club were elected since all of them were graduating...very sad. JCS just won't be the same without them! The new President is now Kayla Ambers, the new Vice President is now Tom Koheler and finally the new treasurer: me!

On the upper left in the black shirt is the 100 and 102 Japanese Teacher: Mikako Sensei. The middle back is me, and to my left is Melissa Pipkorn, the previous JCS Treasurer. On her left is Justin Aukema, the previous president and a great guy. He will be going to live in Japan for the next two years in Chiba. When I am in Japan next spring, I will try to visit him. I am very much looking forward to going! On the bottom right in the white shirt is the new JCS President, Kayla Ambers.

Jyane - Peasu!

Weekend, Finally

2008-05-05T00:33:00.007-05:00

It's finally the weekend! It's been busy... The research is going well, I've been working on projects all week. We have to perform an 8-minute skit for Japanese class - Michael and I are doing "Scenes from Pulp Fiction." Friday was payday. I turned in my annotated bibliography for my English research paper, had lunch with Mike, and cashed my check. After that was Coffee Hour - next week is the last one!! Sad... Shiho bought us all food and drinks because she will miss us all. After coffee hour, Bryan and I went to our work picnic, which got rained on... It was alright. We got some work pictures taken but the weather was so dreary that no one stayed very long. After the picnic, we went back to Bryan's dorm and watched Lost in Translation. I remember it being alright the first time I saw it, but this time it was one of the best movies I've ever seen. I don't know what it was about a second viewing that radically changed everything, but I really loved it. If you've yet to see it, watch it! Watch it twice! Saturday was the Festival of Nations trip for my dorm. Mike and I signed up and got up early to go. It was a lot of fun, although I think it was too long of a trip. I was very tired by the end. Also, the food is very expensive as usual.

Japan Display

Melon Carving (Thai)

Flags

Another big part of the show which I haven't gone to in previous years is the dancing. They had a lot of really great dances. My favorites were the Chinese and Indian dancers. The Filipinos and Irish were also very impressive. The Indian dancers were too fast to get a clear picture of... Dancers:

Japanese Parasol Dancers

Chinese

All of the dancers

After we got back, we tried to make reservations for the new Red Robin restaurant in town, but they were full for the weekend. Bryan and I watched The Graduate with Ryan Rico. It was a very strange movie. It was funny, but I don't see how it's in the "top 500 movies of all time" list. After the movie, we went and found Mike and went to Racy's. Today after work I went over to my parents' house and looked over some Nagasaki Trip forms. I filled most of them out and aside from not being able to find my passport at the moment, it looks like I'll be going to Nagasaki next Spring! It was a good weekend; School's almost over...

Curse of the Golden Flower

2008-04-28T00:40:00.002-05:00

I got this from the library on Tuesday. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it since the trailers were all very vague and not particularly enthralling fight sequences. But, I decided I'd give it a try since I usually like movies of this type and I was not disappointed. In fact, it's one of the better movies I've seen in a long while. I don't want to spoil anything, but it was very engaging and the ending is one of the most depressing endings I've seen. I love movies that have sad endings. And let me tell you, this one ends on a big downer. For those of you that aren't fans of sad endings, the cinematography is marvelous and the characters are so easy to get excited and/or cheer for. All throughout the film, I kept looking at the lead actress and thinking that she looked very familiar. Where had I seen her before...? I looked her up and she's Gong Li. Turns out I'd seen her several times before - in Raise the Red Lantern, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Hannibal Rising. In Memoirs of a Geisha and Hannibal Rising, she plays the part of a Japanese person, but she is actually Chinese. Saturday, Bryan and I went to Shanghai for sushi supper. While we were there we ran into Kayla (who is in my Japanese class) and her family. The sushi was great, thanks for asking. Next weekend is Festival of Nations! Alas, before the weekend...I have a lonnnng week of lots and lots of schoolwork ahead of me.

Roadblock

2008-04-25T17:42:00.002-05:00

I found out another unfortunate thing about the Nagasaki Program last night. Turns out the Spring Semester goes from early March until late August...about when classes start at UWEC for the Fall semester. Not only is this six months, but it would also mean having a giant break between Christmas until March. What am I gonna do with that time? And then no summer break. It would just be one big string of classes after I get back from Japan. I don't know what to do about that, it seems like a deal-breaker to me. Not to mention, Bryan is going to Kansai and his semester schedule is the same as UWEC. So, we'd only be in Japan together for 2 of the 6 months. More bad news: my lights burnt out in my dorm! Might not get new ones until after the weekend. It's very dark. Now, for the good news. I got an A on that Clockwork Orange essay I spent a lot of time on earlier this month. Also, I got an A on my Japanese unit test. I'm getting an A in each class now aside from Logic, so things are going well. It upsets me to think that at the end of this semester my GPA will be well over 3.0, the requirement for the Kansai Gaidai Program. I was so close to getting in, and the trip isn't even until Spring 2009.

Whew

2008-04-24T22:26:00.003-05:00

The new Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine show is out:

Watch it here

I managed to get a lot done today. I payed for classes, registered, finished a lot of assignments, and finished an enormous 2 part 39 page lesson plan for Photoshop for my work. It was a very productive day I'd say. Here is my tentative class schedule for next year:

As you can see, I decided to go the Sociology route. I don't quite know what sort of career field that offers, but sociology really interests me (it's just like my favorite field of psychology: social) so I'm sure it'll work out fine. Any idea what a sociology major / Japanese minor can do in the workplace?

JCS Website

2008-04-24T12:38:00.002-05:00

The Japanese Cultural Society website is now complete and online!

JCS Website

Fabulous

2008-04-23T13:07:00.003-05:00

Weather. It's pretty much amazing outside. School is coming to an end, but it will feel like a tiny eternity for me because it's been an uphill slope so far and it looks like it's only getting steeper. I have so much stuff due and a lot to keep in mind/be concerned about. Also, I register for classes for next year tomorrow and I still don't know what I'm going to register for yet. Also, I have to pay a bunch of bills before I can register and I'm still short. I want to change my major so I went to see my adviser yesterday. She recommended I enter the Psycholinguistics field since it focused on what I was interested in, but I'm not sure. Sociology is also something I would consider, along with Human Resource Management. I don't know what I would do with a Sociology degree, it would be a lot like Psychology I think. I'll need to pick one and take a class or two for it next semester, along with Japanese 301, English 221 (Origins of the English Language), History 152 (History of Japan), and other than that I don't know. Aside from picking classes and paying for them I also have that large research paper for English I have to finish, a lesson plan for photoshop for my work, a festival of nations trip next weekend, the JCS website, Nagasaki trip forms and money/scholarships, filling out a FAFSA for next semester, finishing getting loans for next semester, a final paper for Philosophy 150, ect ect. In short, too much too worry about. At least the weather is really nice. Edit: Also, my watch officially died. It was getting old anyways.

Little Sibs Part II

2008-04-21T00:02:00.002-05:00

Today when we woke up, we decided to go eat on upper campus. But, it was still too early and it was closed. So, we went for a walk over to the ShopKo Plaza. There, we ate at Wendy's. It was super nice out today, about 70 degrees. After lunch, we went to ShopKo and looked around for a while. We met Bryan back at hilltop and then we went bowling. Mackenzie went back home later in the day and then I did regular Sunday stuff like laundry and visiting Bryan at work. Did I mention the weather was really great today?

Little Sibs Weekend

2008-04-20T00:46:00.003-05:00

It's Little Sibs Weekend at UWEC! That means that little siblings are coming to campus to spend the weekend with their big sibs. My sister came today. First, we ate lunch and went and saw where I worked. Then, after that we watched Garden State. It was really good, we both liked it a lot. It was very well made. The cinematography and soundtrack were great! After Bryan got off work, we met up with him and his little sib. We trekked up to his dorm and then went back down to go find some food on Water St. We went to Jeff and Jim's, ordered pizzas and waited for them to get done. Then, we went and ate them at the Haas park. After supper, we went back up to Bryan's dorm while waiting for The Dark Side of Oz to start. Supposedly, when watched with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon album playing in the background, The Wizard of Oz syncs up perfectly. So, we were all very excited to see this. Unfortunately, I have to say that it was horrifically awful. It was torture. It did NOT sync up at all. And here's the good part: The Dark Side of the Moon is about 1/3rd the length of the movie. That means when they ran out of music, they restarted the album. We heard the same songs THREE TIMES. And there was no dialoge in the film at all, just the music. I think that they could have played Fade to Black 40 times in a row and it would have had the same effect. Sad, I was really hoping this one would be true. I have no idea what people are thinking when they say "it matches perfectly."

Research

2008-04-18T23:49:00.003-05:00

For English class I am working on my final assignment, a large research paper. My topic: bilingual education vs. immersion schools. I've never done such a large paper before so it's a daunting task. Each of my sources is at least 20 pages long. Out of my ten sources that I found, I've only actually read one in its entirety. We only meet once a week or less for English class now, giving us more research/library time which is nice. Some days I only have one class because of the break. Today I had only Japanese in the morning, then I researched until lunch, went to the bank to cash my paycheck and went out to lunch with Veronica. After lunch I went to Japanese Coffee Hour, which was a lot of fun as usual. Larry and I are designing the official webpage for Japanese Cultural Society. This is the look we came up with: What do you think? This weekend is Little Sibs weekend at UWEC. Tomorrow, Mackenzie is coming over for the rest of the weekend. Not really sure what we'll do yet.

Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show!

2008-04-18T00:30:00.001-05:00

See all episodes on Youtube! Enjoy!

Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show Official Website

Finally

2008-04-14T16:44:00.003-05:00

So I sent in my rebate form for the Corsair RAM I bought back in December and I just got the rebate now. It's really great RAM and I got it for half price with rebate, but wow. That's 5 months of processing. Update: I'm fairly certain I will do the Nagasaki program now. Also, 3 more images added to the profile picture rotation.

21

2008-04-12T12:37:00.003-05:00

21 was great. Veronica and I went and saw it last night. It's about a brilliant MIT student who joins a group of other brilliant MIT students who fly to Vegas each weekend and make a killing counting cards in Blackjack to pay his ridiculously high tuition for Harvard Med. It has Kevin Spacey in it (the guy that played Lester Burnham in American Beauty) which is always a good thing. It sure would be fun to be able to count cards like they do, but such a talent is reserved only for the gifted. It would also be nice to be a brilliant MIT student. It was a very exciting movie and I recommend it to everyone.

Accepted

2008-04-10T22:23:00.004-05:00

I was officially accepted into the Nagasaki Study Abroad program for Spring 2009. Now I learn that you can't live in the dorms at Nagasaki, you must live with a Host Family. This idea doesn't excite me too much. I would feel like an incredible burden, I don't know if I even want to do it anymore... not to mention it's an estimated 12,000 dollars or so. I need to decide within 3 weeks and make a $150 payment if I'm going. In other news, I was talking to Larry about my computer's ventilation, and I think I might have to do some projects in order to add another fan on the top or something. I'm not very good with handiwork, nor do I have a dremel though so I don't know what to do about that. The case is very quiet, but the price that I pay for that is the heat. I would also really like to sand the side doors to the case with a power sander and repaint it so that it has a matte finish rather than glossy. I hate glossy surfaces. The rest of the case is matte, except for the doors. Bryan and I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the first time. Oh, the 80's. It was actually very funny, and very interesting to compare and contrast current movies with this one and what has changed. I noticed that there was a lot of sexual discussion, but it was much more blunt. Now, it's dealt with mostly in innuendo and insinuations. The general conversation lingo was funny just because it sounded unusual. Of course people don't say things like "bombdiggity" and "cowabunga" anymore, but I'm sure they did in the 80's. The movie was a bit risque I thought, especially since it was intended for high schoolers in the 80's. Or maybe I was just expecting such a dated film to be much more tame. I thought overall this was a pretty good film that withstood 26 years of time very well. I have had a lot of papers to write lately. School work is getting pretty heavy, and also I have a work project going on. I have to write the lesson plan for Advanced Photoshop Techniques and it's a fairly daunting task considering the limitless amount of things you can do with Photoshop and also the intricacies of the procedures. Also, the weather has been miserable this week.

JCS Travels

2008-04-06T00:26:00.003-05:00

Missed a good shot for an April Fools' Joke. It seems like every April Fools' Day I never have any good pranks planned. I always realize the day before "oh shoot, tomorrow is April Fools'! Ah well, too late to plan something now." Oh well, hopefully you had a good April 1st. I heard of some great pranks, such as this one. This week has been busy with a lot of papers due, and one more large paper due Tuesday. It's on the cultural analysis of a film. I chose A Clockwork Orange. On Friday, Japanese Cultural Society (JCS) went to Robbin's Elementary school to help the kids make boys' day carp (鯉) and play games with them. When we played games they cheated a lot. I guess I forgot how much second graders cheat. After that, Shiho read them all a story - it was really funny I thought. Shiho is very eccentric. After we were done at the school, it was getting to be 4:00 so we decided to go to Shanghai for sushi happy hour. After that, we stayed there for dinner. Larry showed up for his shift at 5:30 and then he came by to chat for a bit. After Shanghai I went over to Bryan's and we watched Paprika, a strange surreal film from the makers of Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers. It was very strange and confusing. Bryan liked it a lot he said, I was confused the whole movie. It was a lot like Perfect Blue in the sense that it was creepy and confusing. I will say that it had a fantastic soundtrack, though. It also tried a lot of new things, so I guess it gets points for being bold. I dunno if I liked it, I still need to think about it more. Then today Bryan, Chris, Veronica and I watched the Big Lebowski. What a poetic movie. It's great. I think it was better watching it this time than the first time I saw it. Bryan and Veronica watching it for the first time also loved it.

Sold!

2008-03-30T01:49:00.004-05:00

If you were interested in buying that emachines of mine, you're too late. It just sold for $200 to my good friend, Magan. It's great I found someone locally to buy it because it would have been a pain to ship it (and expensive, too). Spring Break is over now and I've been back at class for a week. Bryan decided he's going to Kansai Gaidai without me. So, I think I might go to Nagasaki the same semester (next spring). What do you think? New Things... American Gangster was interesting. It was long. Denzel Washington was good as usual. It was based off real people and events. Um... I don't know really what else to say about it. It was average. I think I looked forward to it too much. New computer parts... I got a microphone so I can do free video conferencing now. I got a card-reader (the USB port on it always works, unfortunately the SD Card reader which I bought it for I've only gotten to work once). Finally, I got a display screen for the front panel. Bryan is thinking about making a website for himself. So, he asked me to design him a layout. I created this little gem for him: I think it looks pretty slick. It's still a work in progress. Today was Dad's birthday party (his actual birthday was yesterday). So, today we went out to eat and celebrated. After that I came back for the first Japanese Cultural Society meeting since before Spring Break. It was a lot of fun, there was free food and a lot of people showed up. It ended up lasting about 5 hours (we watched a movie after the discussion). After the meeting - Kayla and Mike came up to my room and then Veronica showed up and we all went up to Mike's dorm to watch Pulp Fiction (Mike's first time). While doing that, I learned how to play more songs on the guitar. Lots of fun. Very tired now.

Happy Spring Break

2008-03-21T23:08:00.003-05:00

It's been Spring Break for a week now and it's almost over. Not a whole lot's happened. Mostly I've been working and watching movies. I got this beta fish for Veronica for her birthday. She hasn't been over in a while though so it's living with me at the moment. She hasn't named it so I've just been calling it Beta. Today was payday! I ordered a few more computer parts. It's true what Bryan says I guess: "You're never done building a computer." Bryan picked me up after work and we went to get cash and then grocery shopping. After that, I went to a mega-church with Bryan's family. It was highly unexciting. With a name like Mega-Church you'd think it would be more exciting than regular church. All we did was stations of the cross (this is what my church calls it, they called it something different though) which I've done about a million times. New movies: The Departed Wow, this was a great movie. Jayne recommended this one too, I guess that makes her 2 out of 2 on recommendations. It was directed by the same guy that did Goodfellas which also won many awards. Very interesting and exciting, highly recommended, and the best ending I've seen in a movie so far. Animal House: I've been meaning to watch this for a while now. Everyone has seen it and everyone loves it so I figured it must be good. Bryan and I watched it. It was alright - kinda funny, mostly stupid. At the end all of the drunk party-goers get kicked out of their school for having extremely low GPA's. Then, what do they do? Revenge of course. Further stupidity ensues, et cetera... What I don't get is why pay the money to go to school for 7 years when they're only doing what they could do without being in college and could do without having to fight for the right to do it (keep their fraternity alive). Not to mention college is expensive. This would make more sense if it was made as a satire of college students who exhibit this behavior, but it wasn't really. It was made for people like that. Reach for the stars, I guess.

Hairspray, Memoirs of a Geisha, I ♥ Huckabees

2008-03-18T12:33:00.006-05:00

First, some blogely news. I added the button for version 3.0 on the link me bar to the right: There is now a button for every blog layout since its creation. Now, on to the movies... Jayne recommended this to me. She said I muuuust see it. So, I watched it (first movie on the new computer) and it was pretty good. I didn't especially care for the music, it was all too upbeat for my tastes, but the story was good and the characters were funny. Christopher Walken was hilarious as usual. Also, John Travolta as a woman was very funny: John Travolta is on the left. The only thing that bugged me was how unrealistic the character Link was. Since when is the good looking, popular, famous guy ever the one with good values and morals? The next movie is... Memoirs of a Geisha. I wanted to see this one in theaters but never got the chance. This was a pretty good movie, but there was one problem. The whole script is in English, but none of the actors speak English as their native language. So, you get this pseudo-Japanese mixture... They all speak English, but with heavy accents. And, they throw in random Japanese sayings and words without subtitling them. It was kind of strange. I think it would have been better if they would have just done it entirely in Japanese or entirely in English. This didn't really distract me from the greatness of the film, just something I think they should have done differently. It was a good movie and I recommend it. Finally, I ♥ Huckabees. This was strange. It was an existential comedy with a lot of odd characters. Such a bizarre movie, yet very funny... And also, very existential. I guess if you like things that are different, this is definitely your film. It's funny and very interesting as well. And a final note: At work I learned how to make surveys through the campus website, so I made this. Please take this so I can finish my extensive research report on the pros and cons of Popsicle consumption and enjoyment.

Fine Art Taco Photography

2008-03-17T14:02:00.003-05:00

Buy Prints

"The texture and dynamic angles on the tacos are compelling to say the least. The rippling curves of the shell, and over exposed lighting somehow bring out the inner soul (cheese?) of the taco. And its rather interesting to see you went with hard shell...would soft have the same wide range of complexity and emotion? The entire collection leads me to only one questions to the ARTIST......did you eat the tacos after?" --RA "The taco. Upon it's side, clinging to life. Awaiting inevitable digestion. Such grand metaphorical scale can only be described as genius" - Dr. Gonzo "Probably the best fine art taco photography I've seen" - J. H.

New Computer!

2008-03-15T01:42:00.003-05:00

Happy New Computer Day! On Wednesday my motherboard and disk drive came in the mail and so after work we built my new computer: Finished wiring it up, just gotta close the door and plug it in. Day: Night: It works fantastically. There's an extra gig of RAM coming sometime soon, and next week I get the control panel and card reader for it. For those interested, here are the stats: 2 GB RAM (currently, will be 3) 500 GB Hardrive Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe Motherboard AMD Black Edition Dual Core Brisbane 5000+ Processor EVGA GeForce 8600 GT Graphics Card 600W Power Supply And now, let the selling of the old computer begin! Who wants an emachines?

Evolutionary Advantage?

2008-03-10T22:58:00.002-05:00

I was reading this article called The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over by Deborah Blum and it raised some questions that I've had before but wasn't able to completely express. What is the evolutionary advantage of aggressiveness? Males are predominately aggressive, bloodthirsty and cuthroat. Females are innately passive and gentler. So my big question for the day is this: What is the evolutionary advantage of aggressiveness? What good does having males such as this do? Note that not this includes not only humans but a very great variety of species including apes, fish, elephants, dogs, the list goes on. Men commit the majority of violent crime. Name all the vicious female dictators you can. Name all the male ones. See what I'm getting at here? If you think about it, would the world be better off with only females or at least males who are highly feminine? What would be the ill effects of removing all that aggression from the gene pool? All aggression could be used for is harming other humans (or animals) and how does that benefit anything?

Bad News

2008-03-09T01:14:00.006-06:00

I got declined for the Kansai Gaidai study abroad program. Bryan, on the other hand got accepted. The reason is my GPA which is too low for the program. Too many over-qualified people applied this year. I did however get accepted for the Nagasaki program - which is more expensive and not on the main island. So, we'll see. I'll have to think about either going on that one or waiting until next year. I just got this news yesterday. In some good news, I finally got paid yesterday. Veronica came over and we went to the bank and around to other places to go grocery shopping and stuff. Then, Bryan and I went to the Japanese students' (the ones from last Friday) going away party. It was fun, and it was at the Green Mill/Holiday Inn so we got free pizza and stuff. They seemed like they had a great time here and a lot of them go to Kansai Gaidai so hopefully we'll be seeing them there! This is a picture of the students. On the left there is Paul, the person who invited Bryan and I. Ordered my motherboard and disk drive. Computer goes up on Wednesday! Today I saw Be Kind Rewind with Veronica. It was okay, not as funny as I had hoped. They didn't show enough of the actual movies they were recreating. It was alright. Not nearly as good as Paris, Je t'aime however. Bryan and I went and saw this at the Davie's Center tonight and it was very enjoyable. It's a collection of 18 short stories from many famous directors and actors. Some of them were hilarious, some of them sad, some of them just strange. And it all takes place in Paris. There were so many memorable moments, I would definitely recommend this! Very good!

これでは気が変になりそうだ

2008-03-05T20:22:00.004-06:00

Wednesday. Only two more days until I'm finally paid. It's been 9 weeks without pay and I don't have any more money left in my declining account for my meal plan. That means that I'll either have to eat just one meal a day, or have a lot of cash or something. I guess I can't afford to eat 2 meals everyday, but I can't afford to stock my room with alternative food, so... Now I'm out completely. I signed up for rooms yesterday, I'll be in the same room and dorm next year. I'm trying to think of cool dorm layouts, I want to have at least a snazzy set-up if I'm going to be stuck in the same spot. If that Study Abroad thing doesn't fall through then I'll only be living there for a semester and spend the rest of the year in Japan. I miss Japan. But, I also want to go to China, Australia, and Russia. I'm still considering majors - I'm currently still a Psychology major but the other one I'm thinking of is Economics. If I major in Economics I wouldn't have to go to Graduate School to get a job right out of college. I still could go of course, but I wouldn't have to go right away like I would with Psychology. Psychology is very interesting, and I would love to be a Psychologist, but I don't know if I'm ready for that much more school. What do you think? I started a fitness program thing today. Well, not really. More like I just made one up and started doing it. I'd never really done workouts before so I just figured I'd go down to the fitness room, work out for an hour and then repeat every day. If I got tired out then I'm doing it right, if I didn't get tired out then I'm not doing it right. So, I did that and I got tired out so I'd say it was pretty successful. I'll just have to keep doing that on my free hours. Oh, and Bryan and I are going to go see that Paris, Je t'aime movie on Saturday. Also, I found a watch I like:

Happy March!

2008-03-02T01:59:00.004-06:00

This is gonna be a long one. First off - I turned in my study abroad application and I had my interview with an international studies adviser for Kansai Gaidai. She marked me off as "Highly Recommended" for the trip. So, now that that's all turned in, I don't have to worry about it for a while. On Tuesday after the interview we did library club. This week: United 93, Raise the Red Lantern (Chinese foreign film), Disturbia, Crash, and Little Nicky (Bryan hadn't seen it yet). On Thursday I saw Distrubia, which was okay. It was ... ya-know: A summer film, which is what it was. I heard a lot of people talking about how good it was so I thought I'd check it out but it was definitely nothing special. On Friday after classes I watched United 93 which was very good. Very exciting and also very sad. That's pretty much what I expected though. Overall, it was better than I thought it would be. I think they did a great job. For those that don't know, it's a movie about one of the hijacked planes on September 11, 2001. A person Bryan and I work with (his name is Paul) was showing some Japanese students around the campus this week. Paul wanted us to get to hang out with them on Friday since he knew we were interested in that kind of thing. So, we went to the recreation center and went bowling with them. Followed by some pool. Something amazing happened when we were playing pool. It was two of the students versus Bryan and I. All balls were in except for the 8-ball. I took a shot, hit the 8-ball, and the cue ball bounced off the table. Seconds later, the 8-ball went into the pocket, losing the game for us. Best loss ever, I'd say. After that, we were all invited over to Paul's house for a party he was having. Niji (we went to high school with him) showed up and tagged along. As for the party, it was boring so we didn't stay that long. Bunch of noisy people yelling and dancing to sucky rap or something. We wandered around Water St. for a while, mostly people watching. Then, we went over to Racy's coffee shop. On the way, I found a $5 dollar bill on the ground (niiiice!) so I got to actually order something at the shop. We hung out there for a while and then decided to start the journey back towards Bryan's dorm. When we got back we watched Little Nicky (which by the way was not as good as I remembered it. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Pretty horrible.) After that, it was about time to call it a night. Today I woke up and went over to Bryan's work to eat lunch. After lunch, I came back to my dorm and it was 2pm. I thought Veronica would be coming over to do something since she always complains about how I don't spend enough time with her. But, her friend Sam was in town so she was out for who-knows-how-long. I decided to put in the movie Crash. This movie also exceeded my expectations. It's mostly about racial tensions in Los Angeles. Living in the north, I don't really even consider race an issue but it seems a lot of people are still struggling with it if this movie is an accurate representation of reality (it's a 2004 movie). It's not like Wisconsin is that racially diverse anyways. I thought that this movie would touch more on sexism too, but I hardly saw any of that (other than typical male/female stereotypes). It was interesting and held my attention. I'd say this is a recommended film. It was very sweet and touching in spots, also sad. The only con I'd say is that by bringing these racial problems to the surface on the big screen they may also be acting against their goal and perpetuating these racial stereotypes simply by having them in the film. I suppose such things can't be avoided with a movie of this type, though. Veronica finally showed up as the end credits started rolling. Bryan stopped by shortly after, because his shift was over. We went to eat, then Veronica left again. Bryan, Mike, Chris, Alex (old High School friend), and Dean (work friend) all went to see Jesus Camp playing at the Davie's Theater. I wanted to see Semi-Pro at Carmike, but I'm kinda glad I saw this, too. Wow, lot of movies this week. This movie was pretty terrifying. It's a documentary of the American Evangelical world. They brainwash their young children into this hyper-religious world. They're constantly referred to as soldiers and they always talk about how they're at war with secular America. They call the children their hope for the future. A little child will believe anything you tell them. I don't care how you slice it, it's still brainwashing. This movie didn't present itself as anti-evangelicalism, but rather as a neutral look. This is just my stance on the movie. The church leader was seriously scary. She was essentially, leading a cult with the children stuck in this lifestyle. It's a scary world and I feel bad for these kids that don't have much say in this. I wanted to find the speech that is given at the end, but I couldn't. I guess you'll just have to see this one for yourselves. Oh, I saw this trailer for a movie that looked pretty good at Jesus Camp. I guess they're playing this one next week: After the movie we went up to Mike's dorm. Mike taught me how to play Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here on his electric guitar - that was a lot of fun. He's going to start giving me lessons regularly soon. I've always wanted to play guitar! Wow okay, that's enough for today. Work in the morning.

The Small Town Secret

2008-02-25T22:40:00.005-06:00

Last Friday, Veronica and I went and saw The Small Town Secret preform at Higher Ground. I know the lead singer/guitarist from my Psychology class last semester. His name is Pat, and their band is pretty good. They put on an amazing show and it was a lot of fun.

Pat plays the guitar behind his head for a crazy solo.

You can check out The Small Town Secret at Myspace. The rest of the weekend was pretty boring aside from seeing Kevin for a few minutes on Saturday. He came to town to celebrate his birthday this weekend. Sunday I worked and that was about it.

Funny Images

2008-02-21T20:23:00.004-06:00

I don't understand it either, but it sure is hilarious. The Japanese text reads: Azu Club. Azu doesn't mean anything as far as I know, all I know is that it's written as a foreign word. Speaking of Japan - Mike, Bryan and I have been sending in applications for Study Abroad for the next spring semester. We're aiming for Kansai/Gaidai on the main island near Tokyo at an international college. How amazing would it be to go to school in Japan? I have my interview with an international studies adviser on Tuesday. I must pass the interview to be eligible for the program, but I hear it's very easy especially if you've already been to the host country before. In other news, my first computer attempt tanked. Regrettable, but expected. I hadn't gotten my hopes up too high for I must never forget how much the Universe hates me. This is not the first time it has thwarted my attempts to get my computer to work. It was kind of an ordeal, and it took almost two days to figure out what was actually wrong with it (during which time I had no computer to use). It's the motherboard. That means, I won't get to run the computer until I buy a motherboard, which means I won't get to re-build it until March 13th, the day before Spring Break. [ This is the one I'll be getting. ] Oh well, I did get my old computer working again, and I'm using my new hard-drive at least. It's very fast.

硫黄島からの手紙

2008-02-17T21:13:00.004-06:00

I just reserved this from the library the night before we went to the library and it was already ready for me when I got there. This doesn't usually happen, especially not with such a popular movie. I just watched it tonight and it was really really good. One of the best movies I've seen. Definitely the best war movie I've ever seen. The problem with most war movies is that they're not critical enough of the concept of war. A war movie shouldn't glorify war. When is war ever a good thing? Iwo Jima shows the fear that both sides in a war feel in battle. The Japanese side think cowardice is worse than death, and many of them commit suicide. I don't think being a coward is a bad thing. No one is not afraid in war. I think if more people were cowards, the world would be a better place.

New Ink

2008-02-12T22:56:00.000-06:00

Cloverfield

2008-02-10T00:41:00.000-06:00

Yesterday after class Mike and I decided to go to Japanese Coffee Hour since it fit our schedules and we had never been to one. It's just an hour set aside every week for people in Japanese classes to get together in Jazzman's Cafe and talk in Japanese. It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of people from other classes along with the other Japanese teacher. We ended up staying for almost 3 hours. After that, I went over to Bryan's dorm and we started watching The Godfather, but 30 minutes to the end the disk gave out and we never got it to work. But that's okay. Today we saw a great movie. Cloverfield was, in summary, an intense experience. I didn't want to see it. I was upset that the previews don't tell you anything about the movie, I didn't even know what it was about. It wasn't until Mike said that we had to see it that we actually gave it a chance. I'm very glad we did because this is one of the best movies I've seen in a while. It was incredibly immersing and exciting, perfect for theaters. The crazy thing about it was it's a monster movie. I hate monster movies, they're stupid. Like Godzilla. What a horrible idea for a movie. This is a monster movie done so radically different that I liked it in a genre of movies that I generally dislike. How did they do it? Well, first off it puts you in one perspective for the entire movie. You see it all through the eye of a handheld camera in one group of people. Then, it shows you the attack from their view and the panic sets in. You don't know anything about what's going on. You don't even know a monster is attacking until 20 minutes after the attacks begin. This movie is cool because it shows, pretty realistically what would happen if a monster attacked New York City. It might not sound exciting in writing, but believe me it is very well presented and very well put together. I recommend it highly and I think it's something you'll enjoy very much.

Amazing New Invention!!

2008-02-07T23:16:00.000-06:00

Have you ever wished there was a more convenient way of telling what time it was? Well, look no further, friend! I have invented an AMAZING new way of viewing time. VIEW TIME Like never before with the Ankle-Watch!!! (Watchle™) AMAZING!! Now whenever a colleague asks you for the time, simply lift your foot up onto your desk, lean forward and squint to see the time, and then reveal your discovery to the world!! EFFICIENT AND STYLISH!! Your friends will be amazed, and you will have more of them to amaze!! AMAZE!!

Very Funny Website

2008-02-04T21:00:00.001-06:00

I added a new link, The Customer is Not Always Right. It's a hilarious website about business owners and employees vs. moron customers.

http://www.notalwaysright.com

Grandma and Grandpa's Birthday

2008-02-03T23:22:00.001-06:00

We went to Minnesota on Saturday to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa's birthday (their birthdays are very close together). Everyone had a fun time. After the party and I got back to the dorms I did some end of the week stuff like laundry and then went up to Bryan's dorm to eat and watch Terminator 3 with Chris. We had just watched Terminator 2 the day before, but Bryan liked it so much he was ready to see the 3rd one right away. I liked Terminator 3 a lot, and so did Chris and Bryan. It's a great series as it stands, but since there will be a fourth one (without Arnold this time) the conclusion is a bit uncertain. The 3rd one was a pretty good ending I think, so if they mess up the fourth one (which will take place during the epic war between humans and machines which everyone has been trying to stop from happening in the last 3 movies) then I can just disregard them making the fourth one (as I do with all bad sequels). Today I worked at BITS until 4. I got to help more people so that was fun. After work I ate supper with Veronica and two of her friends. Then, we watched What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams. It was alright. It's about what happens after death and soulmates trying to find each other and blah blah. It wasn't even an interesting take on death really. You go to heaven. Surprise. I mean how many movies have been made about that? Too many. The only neat twist they put on it is that after heaven, you can choose to be reborn if you want. Unless you go to hell. Maybe I was a bit harsh, it was still a very pretty movie graphically speaking. It had a few sad moments (sad is touching) and I'm sure that a lot of people would like it.

Another New Look

2008-02-02T01:11:00.000-06:00

My sincerest apologies to all two of my readers out there for "changing things up" so much, but you see being a former web-designer I still feel the constant need to "kick things up a notch," and so finally breaking away from default templates it is with great honor I present to you the new and improved Equilibrium verson 3.0. I hope you enjoy the look as much as I do, for I am quite fond of it. It took me a good eight hours straight to code it into blogger. Please let me know if you like it or not. Today I got done with classes at noon and had lunch with Mike. I didn't have much to do then until 5 when Bryan got off work so I just watched some TV, homework and new blog layout being done and all. After Bryan got done with work, Veronica came over and we went up to his dorm to eat supper. Then we went out to Blockbuster to rent Terminator 2 (we got tired of waiting for the library version) and watched that. Bryan liked it a lot, as I thought he would. Great movie that Terminator 2. And the effects stayed pretty current, which is great. I enjoyed watching it again quite a bit. I remember when DVDs first came out, Terminator 2 was the one to get. And in other news, here's a really funny XKCD comic I found to kick off the new month: Happy February.

Inclement Weather

2008-01-29T22:59:00.000-06:00

The weekend was average. I got my power-supply! Not too many parts left now, only about 280 more dollars until I can actually put something together. By my calculations, that's two months. On Sunday, it was Monica's 19th birthday - and also the day she got engaged! So we had an engagement/birthday party at Outback Steakhouse on Sunday. It was much better than last year's "celebration" for her 18th birthday party. Only 4 or 5 people showed up. In other engagement news, my former neighbor Katie Walther is getting married on February 22nd. Why people would want to get married is still a mystery to me. School has been busy, busier than last semester. A lot of reading is required for my English class, along with a lot of papers. The weather today was terrible, and it's supposed to be worse tomorrow. It'll be -35 with windchill tomorrow. Veronica had a snowday but still had to come to class here today for Japanese. After classes, I went to H.O.U.S.E. at the Davie's Center. It taught about safe renting, and I got a ton of papers from 15 or so different landlords on houses and apartments. I haven't gone through them all yet, but I think the best offer was a four bedroom house for 195 a month per person. Pets are allowed and water is included. He also said that utilities for the area were quite cheap, averaging about an extra 38 dollars a person. I found out that Chancellor's Hall is 4 bedroom dorms. So, we will try to apply for that and see if it's a possibility. Certainly would be less of a headache, but if we can't get in - it's off to a house/apartment for us. After H.O.U.S.E. Bryan and I went to the Library and got a few new movies while returning old ones. This week: What Dreams May Come. Bryan got a few including The 40-Year Old Virgin, which we watched when we got back.

BITS

2008-01-24T22:39:00.000-06:00

I had my first day at BITS today. Basically, I get paid more to do much less (as compared to previous jobs). The only actual work I do (other than homework) is assisting students who come to the desks to ask about computer problems. I solve their problems, and then go back to my computer and basically do whatever I feel like doing. Not a bad deal. I worked 4pm to 10pm tonight and it was pretty fun.

Blog Birthday

2008-01-22T21:25:00.000-06:00

↑Equilibrium turns a year old today. Happy birthday! Also, I had my first day of classes today. First was Japanese 202. Almost all of last year's class was there. There were some missing faces and a few new faces, including Veronica. Class was fun, basically the same as 201 except in a different room. After Japanese was two hours of English 110. It was okay. The professor thinks tries to be funny, but she isn't. I've never had a teacher that isn't funny when they try to be - maybe she's just trying to hard. Magan Dennis who just transfered to Eau Claire is in my English class. After English I had lunch with Mike and Bryan. After that, Economics. Mike is in my economics class, along with Jayne who just transferred to Eau Claire. Funny thing is Mike, Jayne, and I were all in the same High School Econ class. I love our professor for Econ, I had heard rumors of her atrocious accent from many different people and was overjoyed when I found out I had her as my professor. It's funny because her accent is about as heavy as it can get without it actually being a different language. She's funny. After class (Bryan, Mike and I all have Economics classes at 2 and get out at 3:15) we gathered together for library club (rescheduled to Tuesday this semester). I dropped off a sheet for BITS, returned my english textbook for a slightly cheaper ($41) used copy and also a few notebooks for classes. Then it was off to the library. None of my reservations were in. I got The Human Stain (adapted from the Michael Crichton book, I assume) and Vanilla Sky.

Back in the Dorms

2008-01-19T23:38:00.000-06:00

I'm back in the dorms now. I moved back Friday afternoon. Classes start again on Tuesday. It's strange having such a long break, it feels like such a long time has passed since the last time I had class. I like this nice semester break they give us. Also, new blog layout is fully operational. It's very nice, but no sooner after I made it did I see other layouts that looked nicer still. I may change it again to give it a little something more. It's quite simple as it is, it may need more depth. More colors and tables, some sort of background. I dunno yet. I start work at BITS Help Desk soon. I'll be teaching people about software and making more than I did at Waldenbooks. But, I'll miss Waldenbooks very much. Their last day is January 26th. In movie news: Good Luck Chuck. I never understood the title. Where did Chuck come from? The main character's name is Charlie and no one ever refers to him as Chuck in the movie. Is Good Luck Chuck some sort of saying I've never heard of? The movie was good. The plot was completely ridiculous, probably the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard for an actual movie but it's a comedy so whatever. It was funnier than I expected, I laughed a lot and that's the way a comedy should be. It's Dane Cook's best movie to date. Employee of the Month was sadly formulaic and just not that funny. Good Luck Chuck was more of a relief. It gives Dane Cook movies new hope. Hopefully, Dane Cook will get to make more movies that are better than average. He's a great comedian, but so far his acting career has been lackluster. I recommend this movie. Full Metal Jacket. I assume everyone's already seen this one. I've always been 'that guy' that's never seen it. Until today. Since everyone's supposedly seen it, I'll just say what I thought. It's funny, sad, and intense - in that order. It was pretty crazy and I see why it's such a classic. The humor is dark most of the time and the war scenes are very engaging. One of the better war movies, and also one of the better comedies if you like that kind of humor. That's all for the movies. Today Bryan and I went to get our textbooks. Here's this semester's lineup: I got lucky. All of my books were rentals. Except for one. See that tiny little brown book over there on the far right? That book for English class over there. Guess how much it cost. $63.65 For that tiny little book. If we don't use that book a lot, I'm going to be upset.

Blogly News

2008-01-17T00:24:00.000-06:00

New Link Me button added:

I don't really know why anyone would want to link me, this blog isn't really that interesting - it's just a journal. But, they are available should anyone find something in it I don't see. Also, on the right sidebar you'll notice that if you refresh the page the profile pictures will cycle through. I added several pictures to be randomly used as profile pictures.

New Layout

2008-01-16T00:56:00.001-06:00

What do you think? I think it looks pretty nice. Thought it would be good to move away from the default layouts for a change. In other news, I bought my hard drive for the computer today from Best Buy - 500GB Seagate Internal SATA for $135. Nice! Case, Power Supply, and OS left to buy before I can assemble a working computer.

Oh and also, I thought this was funny:

Weekend

2008-01-13T00:44:00.000-06:00

At long last Friday came. I had been waiting for my processor which I ordered Monday night to arrive. It came right on time and I was very excited to finally get to upgrade my motherboard, processor, and RAM. Alas, the universe had other plans. More on that later - as I didn't have the motherboard from Bryan yet I couldn't do anything anyways. I waited for Bryan to come over, but he said he had to go to his brother's show choir concert. I dropped off Mackenzie at a Basketball game she was dancing at and dropped by Bryan's house on the way back. We had pizza and watched Hot Rod with his family again. We grabbed the motherboard and went over to my house to begin the upgrading process. We unhooked my computer and brought it downstairs to the basement for a more proper operating table. We opened up the case and look at the inside. There would be no way the new motherboard could fit in it. Yes, my case is a Mid-Tower, but apparently E-Machines doesn't like to stay industry standard with their case sizing. It's incredibly small for a mid-tower and the motherboard already in there is a mini-board which I didn't even notice when installing my graphics card. The universe doesn't seem to want me to have this computer. First, I can't upgrade the RAM, then I need the processor, now the motherboard doesn't fit - and I'm losing Waldenbooks making it very difficult to make enough money to buy the rest of it...to use any of what I've already purchased. The case for my new computer is $105 with shipping, the PSU is almost $80 with shipping, and the hard drive around $90. Those are the bare minimums I'd need to use any of what I have. That's not even including a disk drive (I'd have to take out the one on the old PC and use that to install the OS). The PSU from this one I can't use because it's so weak it would probably overheat everything in the first few minutes of being active, and I have to have the hardrive I plan to use for the new computer to install the OS on - once it's on a hardrive and motherboard it can't be moved without buying a fresh copy. I also don't think the universe wants me to have a car either, actually - what with the wheels becoming misaligned causing it to shake all the time and all of the parking tickets ($190 worth so far - that would have been enough for most of what I need for the computer, actually). Some good news: I got a free copy of Stranglehold with my processor. Newegg.com sure is super. However, Stranglehold, while it performs well on the 360 is so glitchy and broken on the PC that it's almost unplayable. I couldn't even change the resolution without it crashing, and even then the resolution stayed at 1024 x 768. So, I guess that wasn't really good news after all. Other good news: I finished reading The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. A great read, highly recommended. It's very funny, lots of touching moments, and very personal - the author isn't even the same person as he was at the start of his biblical journey. It's also a great cliff-notes version of the bible because of the fact that he had to read so many different versions of the bible along with books about the bible to ensure that he would get all the rules for his project right. This is also the same A.J. Jacobs who read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. All 33,000 pages of it. I bought the book he wrote about that one, too - It's called The Know-It-All. Anyway, big disappointment as far as the computer goes. We packed it back up and set aside all the parts for safe keeping. Bryan went home and I went over to Kevin's house. He goes back to Minnesota next Saturday. While I was over there we decided to go to Sara's "We Hate Panera" Party. A lot of people from Panera were there and it was fun. I miss seeing a lot of those people and apparently they missed me too. Saturday. Bryan calls and it wakes me up. He's finally up for seeing Juno. I meet him at the mall for lunch, then the movie. We've been looking forward to Juno without knowing much about it. It was very good. The whole movie just makes you smile, it's funny, and very different. It's a love story...kinda. It's a very unorthodox one in the sense that nothing is clean cut, it's all very complicated, and there's many variables. It's a lot like real life is. It's like real life except for the weird lingo or dialect they use. Especially Juno's character. I'm pretty sure no one actually talks like that on a regular basis. Strange dialog aside, it was a great movie - recommended to all. The actors were great - especially Ellen Page who played Juno (whom I haven't heard of until this movie).

Shabu Shabu!

2008-01-05T23:48:00.000-06:00

is a type of Japanese food involving a large hot pot of mixed meats and vegetables. Bryan and Kevin both had it when they were in Japan and loved it. About a month ago, Bryan told me to me that over break we would have to get together, go to the United Noodles shop in Minneapolis and have a Shabu Shabu party. Today was that day. The line-up for the trip to Minneapolis was: Mike, Bryan, Larry (driver), and myself. We left at 9:40 and arrived at a Dim Sum restaurant called Jun Bo around 11:30. It was pretty good - we ate a lot of crazy stuff: cow intestine, chicken feet,...a crab (okay, not that crazy I guess but I'd never eaten it before). The restaurant was good, cheap, and the service was fast. After eating, we went to United Noodles. It's an oriental grocery store where we knew we could get everything we would need for our shabu-shabu. We had been to United Noodles before. We once took a trip to the shop for Japanese class followed by eating at Fuji-Ya. Speaking of Japanese Class, on Wednesday the whole Japan crew (minus Anna) reunited to go and give a talk to all of the Japanese Classes at Memorial High School about the Japan trip. We answered all their questions, told stories, and told them how important it was that they go! Anyways, we got all we needed for the shabu-shabu, minus the beef which we would buy back in Eau Claire. We got back, bought some beef, and went over to Bryan's to start cooking. We invited Kevin and Veronica aboard our merry Shabu Shabu ship. Kevin looooves Shabu Shabu and he was overjoyed to come. It's always good to see Kevin, we don't get to see him much now that he goes to school in Minnesota. Bryan's family also enjoyed the food. It was a lot of fun. After the meal, we went back to my place to watch Hot Rod (which if you haven't seen, I really recommend). It was a pretty good day, and we will probably do shabu-shabu or something similar again sometime in the future.

New Year 2008

2008-01-01T22:30:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! It's 2008 and the celebrations were traditional: fondue and fun. ↑Equilibrium is almost a year old now! On the 22nd, I'll have been writing on it for a year. In 2007: 121 posts. We had Kathy, Andy and their kids over. They brought their new Wii - we played Wii Sports and Mario Galaxy. Here's Sierra on the first day of 2008! Thrilled as always! I also played some of God of War II which I just got for Christmas. It's very good so far. Anyways, Happy 2008, everyone!

Christmas 2007

2007-12-27T23:10:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas! Hope you all had a good one. This Christmas was great for me. On Christmas Eve after work, I packed up most of my stuff and came back to my parents' house. We ordered Domino's pizza, opened gifts, and then watched Hot Rod (Which was one of my gifts). I love Hot Rod, it's such a funny movie! Another gift I got from my parents was a set of new Logitech Speakers for my computer. They're perfect! The next morning, we woke up and opened gifts from Santa - I got a new keyboard and a car stereo. They're both great. Not to mention this snazzy new watch: This watch and more like it found at Tokyoflash.com. After gift opening, we got ready to go see our relatives in Minnesota for lunch/dinner/more gift opening. We picked up Veronica and went to Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Fred's house. We ate, played games, and watched the snow fall. At Grandma and Grandpa's house we opened more gifts. I got God of War II, lots of Borders and Best Buy gift cards, and a few other things. It was a lot of fun. The day after Christmas, after shoveling, we installed my new car stereo (which took a while). But now it's all installed and it's great! I picked Veronica up and we went to the mall. I got some books with my Borders gift card: The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs and Why Do Men Have Nipples? I also ordered Akira vol. 1. Can't wait to read them! After that, I got Balls of Fury at Best Buy. Then, we went and saw I Am Legend. I had no idea what it was about, but I like Will Smith and Larry said it was very good. So, we saw it. Veronica was shaking and scared the whole time, but it was very good and well done. I haven't read the book, but I suppose I should. Also, the movie was quite sad. After the movie, I went to hang up my new poster I got for Christmas. Yay Dwight! Haha, that Dwight. On a sad note, Rhiannon told us at work today that Waldenbooks would be closing down on January 27th when our lease expires - meaning that everyone is losing their job. After 22 years of being in the mall, the last bookstore is leaving. I'm pretty sad, I really liked working at Waldens. Oh, these signs came in today: Our store is not nearly big enough to have an "Only 5 minutes from here" sign and in fact I found it pretty funny so I took one and put it on my door.