Sunday, January 16, 2005

This Week in Stupidity [Jan. 9-16, 2005]

For all (see also: none) of you interested, the second chapter of New Planeteers is now in the OB Anthology. School starts on Tuesday, and frankly it's about time. I'm not a big fan of school or anything, but this past month has been as boring as hell. I miss having a job during my winter vacation. It gave me a reason to get out of the house, social interactions with people other than my grandparents, and money. With school starting, 2 of those factors will come back into play. I realized my version of Trillian (which I use for AIM rather than the actual AIM program) was a bit old, today. When I first downloaded Trillian, they were on version 0.76. That's right. They hadn't even made it to 1.0 yet. I decided to check Trillian's website today for an update, only to find that they were all the way up to version 3.0. Even the program's icon was an entirely different color. I planned doing this a month ago, and here it is. This Week in Stupidity. What exactly is it? It's another segment I'll be featuring in my blog for the sake of having something mildly interesting to say every week. I'll be covering a few news stories from the past week, then commenting on them. No, this is not another "Vs. The World." It's entirely different. I won't be quoting the entire news article. See? Different. This Week in Stupidity [Jan. 9-16, 2005] Lately, this picture has been circulating the internet as a satellite view of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. I can see about 2 things wrong with this picture. For one thing, that ain't India. It ain't even in Asia. That's off the coast of Florida. You can tell because the land mass isn't circumcized. Also, when did Tsunamis start coming in spiral patterns? Last time I checked, they were big ass waves, not hurricane-like funnels. In fact, Tsunamis are caused by massive quakes. If anything, water should be pushed away from the epicenter of the quake, causing the large waves to expand outward until they reach shallow waters, crash against the coast, and build upward into a much larger wall of water. I mean, duh. President Bush (come on, you knew it was coming) has stated that maybe (just maybe) he expressed his opinions during the war too harshly during his first term. First of all, he thinks that some might interpret the phrase "bring 'em on" toward the Iraqis attacking US troops as "defiance in the face of danger." However, he assures the press that it "certainly wasn't the case" and he only said that to make it clear that he "fully understood" the troops. I could bring up his war record, but that would just be redundant. Sticking with the subject of Prez. Bush (because it's just so much fun), GW is urging Congress to pass a bill that will cause major changes to the privatization of social security. Keep in mind Bush's plan for social security is not only disapproved by Democrats, but quite a few Republicans as well. Way to take a stance many of your fellow party-men also oppose, G-Dub. And there's your week in stupidity. Stay tuned for next week, when I'll likely be prepared with something more interesting. Much Love

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Saturday, January 15, 2005

OMFG teh ph4nt4st1c 4!!!!!11one

Well well. Looks my DSL arrived a few days early. Ladies and gentlemen, I am now surfing the internet at a noticably faster speed! *happy dance* To celebrate, I took half an hour out of my day to download about a dozen mp3s of hit R&B songs from the 1990's. I also viewed a few movie trailers from apple.com. I'm now out of ideas. A while ago, I mentioned that my car had to go to an autoshop to get an axel replaced. While the car was there, the mechanic noticed a small oil leak. He said he could repair it, but it would involve replacing a portion of my car's engine, which would cost him $700 to repair (including labor charges). We all freaked out, so we went to the garage across the street to get a second opinion. The mechanic there said they'd only have to repair it rather than replace it, but the real challenge would be finding the exact spot of the leak itself. His estimate? $400. Needless to say, we went with the cheaper guy. End result? Because the mechanic ended up having to do a lot less than he thought he'd have to, the repairs for my car only costed $165. Eat that, first mechanic across the street! MTV aired a quick promo of the upcoming Fantastic 4 movie. BOOYA! I have to say, it looks a lot better than I thought it would. Jessica Alba pulls off being blonde well enough (although a nameless friend of mine thinks her hair looks brown instead), the Human Torch is flying like a mad rocket, and I think Thing just killed a truck driver to save a guy from getting run over. Now if only the real trailer would come out, so I could get a more accurate look at this film. Much Love --EDIT-- Being the idiot I am, I forgot to link to the Fan4 preview. It's up there, now.

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Thursday, January 13, 2005

A little bit of

Well, I ordered DSL a couple days ago. It should be activated just in time for... oh look! The day school starts. Because nobody demanded it, I'm bringing back the Cartoon Chronicles next week. This time, it's personal. Okay, not really. Actually, I'm changing the format to better fit my lazy lifestyle. Rather than pick a sub-genre of cartoons (like superheroes, meddling kids, or educational TV), I'm just gonna go free-style. I'll review whatever cartoon I want, regardless of its subcategory. This means that I could review the Smurfs one day, then the Simpsons the next. There's so much stuff I want to cover, and I don't feel like categorizing it. Also, the Chronicles won't take up every one of my entries. I'm really just reserving them for whenever I have nothing better to talk about. Lucky you. Right now, I'd like to bore you all with a little show called Battlstar Galactica. Now, I had never actually heard of this show until recently. In fact, I think I might have seen an episode of the original 1978 series, and changed the channel 3 seconds into it. But recently, the Sci-Fi channel has re-made the show, making it... um... good. And watchable. In fact, I don't see how the original show got a fan following at all. Anyway, the new series is about the end of the world. Stop when this starts to sound familiar. Mankind created artificially intelligent machines to do all of their work for them. Eventually, the machines became fully self-aware and rebelled, beginning a big-ass war. You follow? Anyway, this show puts a new spin on the "machines take over" idea. In the Matrix, the machines took over to protect themselves. In I, Robot, the machines took over to protect humanity from itself. In Terminator, the machines took over because they didn't need humanity. Why did they take over in Galactica? God. Yeah, these machines have religion, and they believe God wishes them to cleans the universe of humans. I know, it's weird. But it's one of the best reasons I've ever heard for machines to take over the world. Religion makes people do some stupid shit, and it's making these machines declare war on humanity. Right here is where I'd make a joke about how they expect to have a dozen iMacs serving them binary code when they get to heaven, but that would just be insensitive. I was originally going to avoid this show, but the idea of machines waging war in the name of their god seems familiar, somehow. It's almost like it's reflecting current events in some way, but I can't think of any examples. Much Love

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Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Mmmm, organized crime...

I was listening to Simple Plan's "Welcome to My Life" when it hit me... unless I missed the point of the song entirely, the guy who wrote that song has never watched The Breakfast Club. The entire point of the movie is that they do know what it's like to be like you. The geek was afraid of failure enough to bring a gun to school, the popular girl didn't even like her own friends, and the rebel had an abusive father. Everybody likes to think the grass is greener on the other side, but it's the same dry, greenish shade of doo-doo brown. The only difference is the ineffective crap you've been fertilizing it with. Okay, I think I just got lost in my own metaphor. Point is, that movie got me through high school, because I knew at least half of the school was also dealing with total bullshit. I talked to AzureWolf, and we both apologized to each other for wasting valuable Otaku Lounge space. Besides, how could I start a fight with someone with such a great birthday? I was looking through my phone's features, when I discovered a World Time feature that tells me what time it is in other parts of the world. Interestingly enough, California is exactly 12 hours away from Abudhabi. Why is that interesting? Well, now I have a place to mail that annoyingly cute cat that hangs around my house. ... Oh, go watch an episode of Garfield. Much Love

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Sunday, January 9, 2005

Shoot me. Shoot me now.

This is exactly why I spent less time in the Otaku Lounge last year. I just knew I was gonna say something relatively simple, and it was gonna blow up into an argument. Someone says "some people in the US follow Darwinism, and people around here think their religion can coincide with it." I say "Buddhism can coincide with Darwinism," and they proceed to tear it apart because they weren't including Buddhists when they said that. In the end, they tell me I was ridiculous to assume he was talking about the US population when "the US population" was the very first thing he said in that thread. And I quote... Only 55% of the US population believes in Darwinism, and most around here have an ill-concieved notion that Darwinism can somehow coincide with their religious beliefs. --Him. Is interpreting "most around here" as "people in the US" really that ridiculous if it's the same sentence where you said "the US population"? --Me To put it bluntly, yes, Manic, yes it is. --Him So like the title of a subpar sitcom with an overused premise formula, just shoot me! In other news, I completely forgot to attend AnimationHQ's online chat with voice actresses Kira Vincent Davis, Nancy Novotny, Hillary Haag, and Monica Rial from ADV's new series Wandaba Style. This is bad not only because I missed a chance to chat with more voice actors, but I'm also a chat room operator. Without school or a job to keep track of (I'm still on winter break), I completely forgot yesterday was Friday. I didn't remember until primetime TV came on, and the chat was already over. Yes, this means I keep track of the days through primetime TV when I'm on vacation. I got my 2005 calender. It's Dilbert. So every month, I get to read one strip about office humor. This reminds me... Note to self: buy Office Space on DVD. Consider decorating blog with minimum 15 pieces of flare. I just got my car out of the shop. My left axel was messed up, so it had to be completely replaced. It's official. Not counting gasoline, I have officially spent more money repairing my car than I spent buying it. I should've bought a used car made in at least, oh, the 1990s. Much Love

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Friday, January 7, 2005

Do not lose heart...

Wow. It looks like Playstation 2's recent holiday demo game disc contains some kind of an error that will completely erase your memory card. Mike found that out the hard way. I can still hear his screams echoing in the wind. For all my sci-fi geeks out there (all... um... none of you), I have some interesting news about Stargate and Farscape. If you're unfamiliar with either show, skip to the next paragraph. If you were one of the 3 people worldwide who watched Farscape, you might like to know that Ben Browder (who played leading man John Crichton) is joining the cast of Stargate SG-1 as the fourth member of the team. With Richard Dean Anderson's character (Col. Jack O'Neill) being promoted to a "behind the desk" General (so, uh, General Jack O'Neill, then), the US Air Force flag team SG-1 has been short a member for about a year, now. Browder's character will be joining in as a Colonel who will command the team when Colonel Sam Carter is gone (the actress, Amanda Tapping, is having a baby and won't be in the first few episodes). I can't help but wonder how well Elektra is gonna do at the box office. I mean, they dumped it in the winter as a mid-January release. Studios only put crappy movies doomed to fail in January. In fact, winter is the "movies you're just gonna rent in a few months" season. With the terrible critic reviews Daredevil got, I'm surprised Marvel and FOX even decided to go through with this Elektra spin-off. I'm still gonna see it, though. And no, it's not just because Jennifer Garner is hot. There's also the action. The hot Jennifer Garner action. On another note, my New Planeteers story is up. Well, the first chapter is up. I've just finished outlining the second chapter, so that should be fully written in a day or two. Much Love

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Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Turnin' it up a notch... BAM!

For all the other R&B music fans out there (all 1 of you), I would like to direct your attention to one John Legend and his debut album, Get Lifted. You might have heard his current single, "Used To Love U" with Kanye West. Well guess what-- the rest of his album sounds nothing like that! And I mean that in a good way. "Used To Love U" is one of the 2 or 3 songs on the album that sound like modern R&B. The rest of his CD is, musically, right out of the 1970s. His sound has a very "classic soul" feel to it. Even his vocal stylings are unique to the whole "let's all try to sound like Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson" theme going on these days with male R&B singers. I highly recommend it. The preceeding endorsement of Get Lifted by John Legend was in no way connected to Sony BMG, John Legend, or Kanye West; and was not a paid advertisement. Now show me the money! I got a rather strange instant message earlier. It was from Melissa, who mysteriously got ahold of my screen name from an unknown source. Drew, I'm looking at you. Anyway, we were both on the Yearbook staff in high school, and we haven't really talked since. We caught up a little over AIM. I even let her in on the secret of my final weeks working for Cunningham Research: the manager had us completely make-up (see also: fabricate) all of our surveys shortly before he was transfered to a new branch. We were bad to the bone... just don't tell the corporate office. My all-new Planeteers story is coming along nicely. So far, I've outlined what's going to be an ungodly long first chapter. I'm starting to have second thoughts about writing it, though. Not because the story is turning out badly; it's just coming out too damn seriously. I'm only introducing the main characters in the first chapter, and so far I've got drug abuse, attempted murder, domestic violence, exploding cars, ect. I was half-way through my outline when I realized this shit was too good to waste on a remake of the freaking Planeteers. I need to make this into a script, take out a few trademarked references, and take this to Hollywood. But don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to hype-up my own work. *wink wink, nudge nudge* By the way, the title of the first storyline (yes, this means I have a second story mapped out for the future) is New Planeteers: Call of Nature. Coming to an OB Anthology near you. Much Love

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Monday, January 3, 2005

Too... much... gumbo!

Every New Years day, my grandmother makes her famous gumbo. For those of you unfamiliar with gumbo, it's a kind of spicy Southern stew, usually consisting of a variety of meats and seafoods. My grandmother's, for example, contains chicken, shrimp, chopped link sausage, and crab. She made a huge (repeat, huge) pot of gumbo, and I've been eating it non-stop all weekend. Don't get me wrong, it's really good. It's just that the pot is still full. I've been eating bowls of this stuff for lunch and dinner for a couple of days (as have my grandparents and mom), and it doesn't look like there's any less of it. The pot is bottomless, I tell you! Even though it's cancelled, I love this She Spies show that comes on (in syndication) every weekend. 3 female ex-cons are recruited by a clandestine government organization, out to rid the world of evil-doers. Comedy and fan-service ensue. This show does anything but take itself seriously... Jack: "Hey! Come back here. I ordered a Diet Coke. Not this generic and fizz-free soft drink that looks like a prop on some first-run syndicated TV show." Jack: Dr. Franco, it's happening again. The unshakeable feeling I'm a sidekick whose only purpose is to give exposition in an action-adventure show! Cassie: "Would've been better with ninjas." Shane: "That's what we were saying." DD: "You think so too?" Cassie: "Absolutely, the noises they make and the way they always travel in groups. And how about how they let one finish fighting before the other jumps in?" Shane: "Yeah, we forgot about that. They are so polite." DD: "I like that about ninjas." Although I don't want to make any resolutions this year, there is one thing I promised myself I would do back in December-- beat Kingdom Hearts. It's not that it's hard. It's that it got buried beneath my DVDs, X-Men Legends, and anime. I totally forgot about it. I think my next stop was Halloween Town. I've come up with this crazy idea for an all-new incarnation of the Planeteers from the old Captain Planet cartoon series. In my version, they don't even call Captain Planet. I haven't decided if it's whether they don't know they can, or if they just can't. Anyway, they end up relying on their wits and creativity to solve their problems; rather than trying, failing, and calling Cap Planet to clean up the mess. And get this: whenever they find a corporation that practices unlawful waste disposal, they simply call the feds on them. The villains won't be nearly as flat and 1-dimensional, but a bit of campiness will remain. If I gain some self-discipline, I'm gonna try to write up the first story, and post it in OB Anthology. Much Love

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Saturday, January 1, 2005

New Year, New Layout

ph36r the new layout! ph36r it...!!!!!111one Seriously, though. I decided to switch from a Beast theme to the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide movie. Don't panic.

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Thursday, December 30, 2004

This Year in Stupidity - 2004

Because the title "A Year In Review" is overused. Since 2003, one man the Democrats had pegged as their presidential candidate was one Howard Dean. Even before the spring Primaries, "Vote Dean" stickers were everywhere. Then Dean went and ruined it all by turning into a WWE pro-wrestler on the microphone, followed by shrieking like some kind of man-banshee on E. With Dean out of the picture, the Democrats had only one choice... John Kerry. What can I say about this guy? He was as boring as hell. 80% of all Americans didn't even know his name. He was often referred to as "Not Bush." Bush won the election, but considering the competition, are any of us really surprised? Which also leads into MTV's Vote-or-Die campaigne. Apparently, America's youth chose both. Bush won the popular vote this time, and I honestly believe it's because a lot more young people are conservative than MTV are aware of. Moving out of politics... well, not really... Janet Jackson offended people across the nation when her right boobie fell out. This was the most offensive thing ever to be shown on US television, as nobody on Earth has ever seen a woman's breast before. Meanwhile, Viagra and beer commercials went completely unchecked. This caused the FCC to work overtime, leading to a campaign against Howard Stern. Because if there's anything more offensive than a bikini-clad woman getting spanked by a midget, it's not being able to see it. Fearing competition from her daytime competitors, Oprah gave everybody in her audience a car. The following week (and I kid you not), Tony Danza gave members of his audience a free carwash. That same week (and I'm completely serious), Colin Quinn gave everyone in his audience a free Metrocard. Jennifer Lopez got married to... you know what? Nevermind. Too easy. Britney Spears got married to Jason Alexander. I know what you're thinking, but it's not the guy from Seinfeld. The marriage lasted for a whopping day, before it was annulled. In a completely unrelated story, the president is worried gay people are violating the sanctity of marriage. Yeah, maybe that guy who married Liza Minelli, but that's really about it. Anna Nicole lost a ton of weight, and now she looks bbbeeeeeeaaaauuuuuutttiiiffuuuuuulllllllllllllllll. Paris Hilton banged some guy, sold the footage on video, hit the road with Nicole Richie, and thus increased the patronage of her family's hotel chain. That's hot. Dave Chappelle became Rick James, bitch! Then the real Rick James passed away. Joining him in the afterlife are Rodney Dangerfield, Christopher Reeve, Janet Leigh, Julia Child, Marlon Brando, Ray Charles, Johnny Ramone, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Jerry Orbach, Ronald Reagan, and Tony Randall. An 8.9 earthquake caused a massive title wave/tsunami to hit Southern Asia, escalating the death toll to tens of thousands of victims. Donald Trump told a hell of a lot of people "you're fired," and proceeded to point at them with his entire hand. Ashlee Simpson got caught lip-synching on Saturday Night Live, and thought she could cover it up by having a hoe-down. Bill O'Reilly got caught making an obscene phone call. Yet he still tries to maintain his pretense of dignity on his show. After telling the public he wouldn't be taken alive, Saddam Hussein was found at the bottom of a hole, where he proceeded to not only surrender, but piss his pants. Actor Jude Law starred in every movie this year. Yes, all of them. Rapper Eminem continues to be controversial, but also proves that his music gets more boring every year. The jewlery store Tiffany's had an unusual increase in sales. In a completely unrelated note, Kobe Bryant admitted to cheating on his wife. A spectator threw a drink at Pacers player Ron Artest. Artest retaliated by beating the living crap out of the guy standing next to him. And there you have it. Indeed, this year had a lot of stupidity and sadness. What wonders await us in 2005? Only time will tell. Until then, hold your head up high. Because once the shit hits the fan of the new year, you'll be holding it down in shame for a long time. Much Love

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