Saturday, October 15, 2005

   Posting for sake of posting . . . . .
From my new obsession:
"Two by two, hands of blue . . ."

"She made fresh bao?"

"I won't have you drinking any of that shiong-mao niao!"

"Ta ma de . . ."


From the expansion to my previous obsession:
"You are about to attack a neutral faction. Doing so will lead to war . . ."

"You have taken control of Ravenna. How shall you take care of the inhabitants?"


From work, which is obsessionless:
"Excuse me? Do you have any TURKEY GRAVY? I really need TURKEY GRAVY . . ."

"Do you have the cleaning stuff for disinfecting clothes?"

"Ooh, is that mine? Is it not working? Alright! That means I get to throw it down the hole and break it!"


We had dinner at my brother's house last night. He wasn't there. I left before he got there. He has a lot of the Thanksgiving leftovers . . . in other news, I've been singing "Ballad of Serenity" everywhere I've been. It's a catchy song, yo. Alright, I'm gonna watch more Firefly. Zaijian!


Random SomeGuy Trivia: When the choice in high school came, I chose Industrial Education like a lot of other guys. Within that, I chose Metalwork over Woodwork or anything else. Within Metalwork, I ended up churning out more horseshoe nail and railroad spike sculptures than anything else - even sold a couple of the railroad spike ones for some decent money to a teacher . . .
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Friday, October 14, 2005

   Dayum, Firefly kicks ass . . .
Wrote my test,
finished fast,
hope this feeling deems to last,

It wasn't hard,
Seemed easy,
Feelin' mighty good in me . . .


Hit the pub
After that,
Mind is spinnin', 'joyed the chat,

All beered up,
Bouncy free,
Feelin' mighty good in me . . .


Boy my life's,
great to be,
Since I watched "Serenity",

I'm feelin' mighty good in me . . . . .


So yes, the Firefly kick continues. You ever notice when I get into something I get pretty much obsessive for the next while? It's a fun character trait, I reckon.

Oh yeah, I may or may not have caught a cold from my brother or my stepdad. Throat's a little hoarse now. The beer seemed to tide it a bit, though. Just sayin' . . . so yes, everyone be responsible with the stuff if you're legal, ya dig? It's better for everyone that way.



Random SomeGuy Trivia: In completing my credits for my English Major, I'm finding I'm enjoying the "old" stuff a whole lot more than a lot of the other stuff. I mean like, Chaucer and everything in Middle English, Shakespeare . . . I've got a Beowulf class next semester . . . . . I guess that's mostly because I just really like seeing where stories started. I like stories, y'know?
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Thursday, October 13, 2005

   More dialogue for you:
I go into CNL Media the other day with 4 DVD thingies . . . I forgot "Ong Bak", though. Damnit.

You're only getting "Firefly" now?
I only saw the movie yesterday.
Heh . . . I've seen it three times already . . .

Yeah, that CNL guy cracks me up . . . fun guy. He offered me more Kingdom of Heaven advertisement - I declined, though.

Umm . . . . . oh yeah! Photobucket's working again, so here we go . . . my ultra-hardcore-temporary-kitchen-thing!

(Grainy, I know. That's what you get when I'm balancing on a rotating chair while trying to hold a webcam steady above my head.)

I have an "Alliterative Morte Arthur" midterm today. It's mostly just translation, and then "what's interesting about the passage." Yeah, Middle English is fun.


Oh yeah, I didn't mention it right away. "Firefly" does indeed rock all manner of ass. Again, Kaylee is adorable and I loves her. Can't wait to watch through stuff with commentary and stuff. I do wish I could read Chinese, though . . . that, and understand Mandarin - I feel as though continuing to ask my mom to translate Chinese curses would be kinda bad for our relationship.

Alright, studying time. Peace!


Random SomeGuy Trivia: I used to always say that if I were European, I'd want to be Scottish. Why, I'm not really sure . . . I think it's the claymores . . .
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

   If you can't do something smart, do something right . . .
So . . . . . "Serenity" rocks really hard. Like, really really hard. Gritty, visceral action, completely loveable cast with their quirky and cute Western/Chinese dialog, annnd . . . a little insane psychic girl who like, kills things. Kaylee's a cute, homely pervert too. I love her. Clearly, this is good stuff. Go watch it. Now. And give them enough money so they can make a sequel. Certain people want that . . . me too, now.

Ah, so now I know that I must buy a ton of DVDs tomorrow before work. I can NOT sleep in. I MUST NOT sleep in! The brother picked up "Kingdom of Heaven" today, so that's a plus. That just means I only need to buy . . . "Unleashed", "Last of the Mohicans" (it's cheap now), "Otogi Zoshi" disk 4, and . . . the full series of "Firefly". Yeah, I'm hooked . . . bye bye money . . .

Funny story, though. I don't know why, but that DVD store seems to have given my brother a package of "Kingdom of Heaven" Advertisement as well. So like, a big "Own the DVD" poster, a little bag of fairly large square buttons, and this window sticker thingy. My bro won't say much more about it, though, so whatever. I have a lot of Orlando Bloom on my walls now. That can't look good for me . . . y'know, being a guy and stuff . . . not that I'm conscious about this sort of stuff . . . . . much . . . damn.

We're getting a new kitchen starting tomorrow. That said, we won't have regular access to a kitchen for about three weeks. We're goin' to the aniki's house every night for dinner now, I'm told. Meantimes, the little bar downstairs behind me (right this minute) has sorta become a mini-kitchen. I took a picture, but photobucket's goin' through maintenance, so I'll hafta post that next time.

Annnnnnd . . . . orange juice is tasty. See ya!


Random SomeGuy Trivia: Though Greater Vancouver is definitely my home where I've grown up, my birthtown is Kelowna, British Columbia. It's a small city in the Okanagan Valley (famous for orchards and stuff and a lake monster). We were there for maybe 2-3 years, so I don't remember much about it. Extra fact, I'm the only one out of the three of us (my brothers, I mean) not born in Alberta . . . probably explains why they're huge compared to me . . . meh.
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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

   Yum, Thanksgiving dinner . . . . .
I know, it's not a Metallica lyric for the subject. Meh. Aurus was the only one who noticed anyway (and she rocks for it) . . .

So yeah, Thanksgiving Dinner on Sunday night . . . very good. Lots of fun. Good food, good drink . . . and the young Taiwanese neighbour kids jumping on me all night (5 year old girl and 3 year old boy). It was fun, though . . . still, I quite enjoyed it when I calmed them down in front of old '40s Superman cartoons. Funny thing, though, those kids totally ate up those shorts! The boy, especially . . . heh, when things were getting tense in the show, he actually shouted "bu yao!" ("don't do it!"). Ah, kids . . .

Y'know what else is fun about holidays? Time and a half pay at work!

Y'know what is less fun? Waking up 15 minutes into when your work shift would have started. Burn on me. So yeah, a 13:00-15:00 shift turned into a 14:20-16:30. Ah well. My family came to me and we all went out for dinner (Mom's birthday also on Thanksgiving this year).

Oh yeah, turns out the brothers and I got her tickets to "The Diary of Anne Frank" show for her birthday. The aniki rocks very hard, and now I owe him money.

So let's see . . . . . I'm gonna go see "Serenity" today. I dunno, I've had someone telling me to see it, so now I feel I must.

That said, on Wednesday I'm goin' DVD shopping. It's gonna be pricey . . . . . "Kingdom of Heaven", "Unleashed", "Otogi Zoshi vol. 4", "Ong Bak" (that one's a purchase we forgot), and . . . heh, the entire series of "Firefly". Again, someone, telling me to see, I must . . .

I need to clip my toenails. See ya!


Random SomeGuy Trivia: I lost my first tooth - correction, my first two teeth - at the age of 5 or 6 (most likely 6). It was scary, because they were my two top incisors, they were getting loose, so my dad put me through the tooth-extraction process . . . . .
He sat me up on the bathroom counter, wrapped a thing of dental floss around both of them, braced my shoulder with one hand . . . and with the other, yanked hard. Needless to say, the idea of pulling loose teeth was a bit of a scary thought after that . . .
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Sunday, October 9, 2005

   Exit light, enter night . . . . .
No one was home when I got back from work last night . . . curious . . . . . on the other hand, I finally got to disarm our new (and MODERN) house alarm for the first time. Y'know, when it gives you 45 seconds to put in the code and all that before blasting you with the laser turrets. Man, technology owns . . . way better than our old noise-maker alarm that didn't do squat in a real-world situation . . .

So let's see, what's interesting . . . . . not too much right now. Other than a box of light bulbs that really gave me hell at work, not much. I'll talk about this box of lightbulbs, then . . .

So there I am, about 3:40pm, 2-3 hours into my shift. I get to this box of light bulbs that need to be shelved. So, naturally, I grab for that lovely yellow boxcutter that I always keep in my back pocket (it's a Superstore thing, I'm sure). Anyway, I think that tip of blade is getting blunt, because my cutting hand slipped while cutting, the knife popped off the box, and my right middle finger managed to slam the edge of the box under the cuticle . . . . . so yeah, that started to bleed slowly. A little put off, I went back to the incision . . . . again, the knife slipped out. THIS time, however, my right hand missed the sharp, dry edge of cardboard; instead, the knife blade jumped and made its way across my palm . . . so yeah, that started to bleed as well. Not a lot, though, since it was a really clean (and shallow) cut. It wasn't like, a "raw chicken" degree cut or anything . . . so yeah, that was Saturday at work. Two write-up worthy injuries in the span of maybe 5-10 seconds.


Umm . . . here's a picture of my bandaged hand to get a sense of where I smoked myself:


And . . . . . for grins, here's me in all my geeky ninja glory:

(It's the hair that makes it look good, clearly . . .)

Alright, I need to shower. Peace!


Random SomeGuy Trivia: So we all know my alleged real name is James. Here's a more interesting name thing. Anyone remember "The Girl" from my early years of myO? If not, basically she was the person whom I spent a lot of time thinking about for all sortsa fun, angsty reasons . . .
Anyway, she shares the same name as my younger brother. That's gotta be a little weird, huh? It gets better . . . . .
This shared name between "The ototo" and "The Girl" . . . . . is Jessie. Needless to say, being in a post-Pokemon world . . . . .
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Saturday, October 8, 2005

   I can't remember anything, can't tell if this is true or dream . . .
My brother's playing "Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion" right now. I'm on my mom's Mac. I can't decide if I'm sad about not being on the other computer right now or not . . . I mean, if I were, I could be playing the game, or be online chatting with people, or watching the new Smallville episode that I downloaded . . . . . heh, clearly, I wish I were on the other computer right now. Ah well . . .

So wow, I've been working a lot lately. I think I'm clocking 24 hours of work this week, which ain't too bad for a part-timer, yo. Ah, my whole body's funked up now. Heh, and of course I'm having another long shift today, so "pwaf" to me. Ah well . . .

OH! Important question! What should I get my mom for her birthday on Monday? I don't wanna get her more "gadgets" or anything . . . and I 'could' bring home flowers from work, but y'know, it's fun for people to open stuff. If not gadgets, then I'd usually get her like, a scarf or mittens or something . . . . . so now she has a lot of those. Also, clothing in general is probably a silly idea since she like, gets herself a lot when she goes on vacation (which she does a lot more now too, which is good for her). Hmm . . . . . decisions decisions . . . ah well . . . . .

Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend is going on right now. That's nice. The big annual dinner's on Sunday. I can invite my own friends and stuff, but they all still have their own familes nearby to have dinner with; too bad. Also, I'm working 3 out of the 4 days. "Pwaf" again. Ah well . . . . .

I really need to start watching those FMA episodes . . . y'know, since I have 'em finally . . . . . ah well . . . . .

And now I'm thirsty. Everyone, be well!


Random SomeGuy Trivia: For an English Major, I read a LOT less than you'd imagine I would. Class texts aside, I don't really have a whole lot of books that I read a lot; no large collections of series or anything. Worst part of all, the majority of my non-school reading all takes place in the bathroom . . . too much info? Ah well . . . . .
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Thursday, October 6, 2005

   Master of puppets I'm pulling your strings . . . . .
(The following is a recreation of a true event . . . the names and slogans have been changed for my lack of really remembering them . . .)


Hello, Electronics Boutique, your one stop shop for all your gaming needs, Ben speaking, how can I help you?

Hi, how are ya?

We're pretty good here.

That's good . . . . . um, I wanted to know if the "Rome Total War" expansion was in yet?

Um.. yes.

Yeah-heh-heh!!! Eheh . . . awesome, thank you.
No problem.


So that was yesterday morning before work . . . I'm happy now. Also, when I got to EB the guy could tell I was the one who called ahead . . . we had some good laughs.

Other than that, a guy from work scored me the last half of "Fullmetal Alchemist", so I can FINALLY finish the series. I'm happy about that.

I don't have to read Dickens anymore - we're onto a new book which I haven't quite started up yet.

I've been listening to a lot of Metallica lately. They make me happy too.

That is all.


Random SomeGuy Trivia (in Tanka form):
Spiders at my house
I always catch and release
And view webs out back
Spiders bug me not at all
Bees, though . . . they traumatized me
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Tuesday, October 4, 2005

   Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire . . . . .
Man, I've been very uninteresting around here these past few days. A shame . . . I should get back on top of that some time . . . . .

Lessee . . . I'm working a lot this week, so my days away from school are all work days. Leaves little time to play games and stuff . . . or watch DVDs . . . . or stuff . . . oh yeah, I STILL don't have "Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion" yet - there've been shipping issues. I'll check today on my way to school, maybe. To satiate my Roman bloodlust, meanwhile, I picked up "Shadow of Rome" for PS2. Fun gladiator/stealth game, very over the top violent (y'know, chop a guy's arm off, beat him with his own arm for a bit, then cheer a bit, then the crowd throws you a big sword, then you chop of the guy's head, then you pick up his head and show it to the audience, and then they cheer some more . . . good times . . .).

Other than that, I'm still behind in all my readings (that's a given by now, methinks), and . . . I picked up a funky book about surviving a zombie invasion (thanks go out to Molly for the recommendation). And yes, I know there's an irony in reading a book about how shotguns are in fact inferior zombie-killing guns than .22 hunting rifles instead of reading school stuff. Meh.

Umm . . . I've also heard that my last few packages have started arriving at people's houses. I have also learned that I mixed up the letters in the packages, so the one sent to Virginia ended up with a message for someone in Florida. I felt dumb.

That's about it, then. May you all have a happy . . . . . what day is it today . . . . Tuesday.


Random SomeGuy Trivia: I am in fact not the original "SomeGuy"; the original one was a dude from kung-fu. One dark night about . . . I dunno, about six/seven years ago, he came to our house and rang the doorbell. My younger brother looked through the peephole, and didn't recognise him (porch light was off). He left the door and came back (as befits "stranger-conduct"). I asked, "who was it?" He goes, "I dunno, some guy . . ." I checked the peephole, recognised the guy immediately (the guy from kung-fu who got married in July, in fact!) and let him in.
From that day on for the new few months or so, my brother always greeted him as "hey some guy". During the year or so, I just liked the sound of it and it became my official internet-name.
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Saturday, October 1, 2005

   Goldwing: A movie I swear I didn't imagine . . .
I have a feeling this one could be a patented SomeGuy Long-assed post(TM) . . . anyway, this one takes me back a long time . . .

So I'm from one of those families that always just sorta had these tapes of cartoons on the video shelf. More often than not they were probably taped from "real" tapes using the 2-VCR maneuver and all . . . but in any case, you'd end up with these super-tapes full of 3 other tapes' worth of shows. We have a few of them still, way back in the shelfs somewhere . . . I know there's at least one or two of "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe", a couple of "Transformers/GI JOE" . . . maybe some of those Transformers tapes also have some "Go Bots" on them (for those of you too young to know, Go Bots lick the metal nuts of the Transformers big time). But there was one odd little movie-thing that just sorta happened to be on one of these compilation tapes . . .

So why is this movie "Goldwing" so important? Well, for one thing I do believe it's actually the very first anime I have ever seen in my entire life many, many years ago. Of course I didn't know it was anime back then. I didn't even really register that they were drawn in a different style. What I did notice, though, was that the voices didn't always fit with the mouths (like early in the film when a truck-driver gets run off the road, sticks his head out the window and shouts "Hey watch it!" through his clenched teeth while shaking his fist). A lot of animation bits were reused a bunch of times (like a certain part of throwing a missile into other missiles and them all blowing up), and that the guy had a recurring slow-motion transformation sequence . . . . . it was also violent as hell and people were dying all over the place . . . well, more or less . . .

Alright, so here's the basic plot: an alien ship is being chased by another alien ship. The chased one gets shot down; "Jack", the main character, drives to the crash and checks it out. I forget how he gets into the ship . . . oh, maybe the alien psychically got him to come in or something . . . he psychically got him to stay, in any case ("Don't go..." "Haaaaah!!!!!")

The alien tells him about "Karzone", the evil bad guy leader guy. I can't remember exactly, but they may have been the same alien race . . . in any case, the dying alien gives Jack some super-powers and a robotic panther-thing named Pantera. Thus, Jack becomes "Goldwing", a hero-dude dressed in red with gold trim, and a helmet with a green visor - he gets a staff/axe thingy as a weapon too. His transformation sequence was kinda neat, though. He'd run slow-motion through this trippy colour-changing background plate, then he'd do a forward flip through the air and his clothes would change in mid-flip - all the while, the theme music would dramatically play. Hehe.

Anyway, Jack also happens to be the adopted son of this scientist guy - scientist guy also has two kids: a young girl and a teenaged boy who likes to eat. Scientist-guy is part of a team building the "Bronze Man" - basically, a large mecha that's designed to build cities under water (why, I forget). Needless to say, a giant robot is useful for other purposes, so Karzone sets out to capture it and stuff through the help of some princess with a whip/lazer-whip and an android named "Marzak" (you don't know he's an android 'til later, though, even though his fingers shot bullets).

So little thingies happen here and there, mixing in side bits about having a secret identity (y'know, when the family thinks he's a coward), silly humour for the sake of humour (the line "I thought it was a robot fly!" comes to mind), and other bits. The action was very . . . repetitive, but pretty crazy.

In the end, the princess turns out to be helping Karzone against her will (or something, probably her dad was overthrown or something). In any case, Goldwing (with the help of the Bronze Man piloted by the scientist-guys' kids or something) assault Karzone's ship, the big fight happens . . . Marzak changes sides, dies helping them win, and Karzone eventually gets sucked out of a hull breach and dies in space (presumably). Happy ending. Oh yeah, and a creepy little evil scientist guy under Karzone backs up into a radiator or something and evaporates/disintegrates. Fun times . . .

It was very retro, in that '80s style of anime like the old "Mobile Suit Gundam" or "Robotech/Macross". I also remember the opening credits song very distinctly. The lyrics were belted out powerfully by some female vocalists, and the words were like, "Goooooldwing Goooooldwing, Suuuuuuuit of pooooooowaaaah!" I remember bits of that tune, but not all of it. Because of that opening, though, it makes me think that maybe it was an OVA or something . . . . . but, I digress.

So what bugs me the most about thinking about this show? I can't find a single damn thing about it anywhere! IMDB's got nothing, ANN's got nothing . . . indeed, the only internet source about "Goldwing" comes from an abandoned Fortunecity website with very barebones info (the site is here, if anyone's wondering).

I know it's probably useless to say "has anyone seen this or know anything about this?" because well . . . like I said, for a while I actually wondered if this was even a real movie or not! I mean, the only people who even mentioned it would be my brothers . . . . . heh, maybe I should look for that tape . . .

I should ask Panda, she knows about stuff like this now and then . . . . . ah, we'll see. So yeah, that's "Goldwing".


In other news, I've finished mailing off the last of the Pocky and Naruto paraphrenalia. I also scored some Swedish buns the other day. Let it be known that Mimmi has some damn tasty buns . . . mmmm . . . . . alright, work tomorrow. See ya!


Random SomeGuy Trivia: The style of kung-fu I practice is "Northern Shaolin Lawhon Style". Basically, it's lots of jumps, lots of big kicking, sweeping motions . . . . . good times. I've also not gone to practice, in about two months . . . dang . . .


[EDIT: Okay, since I last checked, IMDB does indeed have a page about Goldwing. It is, unfortunately, extremely bare-bones. Well, I guess so long that I'm still sure I didn't imagine the movie . . .]
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