Jon Furniss

After all the hype, we were very excited to see the Wachowski brothers’ supposedly cutting-edge adaptation of what was probably anime’s first big successful franchise here in the U.S. back in the 1960’s.

While the plot line of the film was barely groundbreaking, I thought the visual style and CGI effects were quite impressive. Colorfully fast paced. It might be too much to handle for some people (epileptics, for instance)…

The races were a lot of fun to watch; zig-zagging turns, the crescendo of roaring engines, somersaulting vehicles, loopy tracks, exotic scenery, the raging saboteurs, the flashing lights… vaguely reminiscent of the pod races in The Phantom Menace, but with more sugary goodness. It’s definitely like a “live cartoon,” and it’s a great family film in all its cheesy retro glory. We left the theater feeling dandy!

And yes, while I thought that the film had outstanding visual kinetics, I felt that somewhere in the pool of special effects, the characters themselves seemed to fade into all the lights and noise. The movie certainly appeals to a younger audience, as it seems that most of the scenes struggled to jump-start your attention and just couldn’t “sit still.” But then again, it is a kids’ movie. The story was “cute.”

Oh, and does anyone else think it’s weird to hear Speed say “shit???”

All in all, it was fun, exciting, and entertaining!

- Joyceline

So Thursday’s post was the first of (hopefully) many guest posts by Joyceline. As I’m sure you can tell, she’s pretty awesome. She’s prettier than me (which isn’t hard) and she writes better too! The other exciting thing about that post is that it was the 100th post for this blog, so yay, let’s celebrate!

School is almost over for me, I’ve got two more days of classes and then four finals next week. I should have all A’s, except for my economics class, which at this point I don’t even know whether or not I’m going to pass. But then after that is summer! My busyness will continue, but life will be much lighter and easier with this burden off of my shoulder. I’ve got lots of fun plans for the summer, so it shall be cool.

I also intend on updating much morer when school is at an end. It’s not that I spend a lot of time doing school work or even a lot of time at school, but the weight upon my shoulders somehow stops me from actually doing things other than lying around and not accomplishing anything.

I’ve been reading a lot lately. I love reading, but I don’t always like myself when I’m in reading mode. When I’m in reading mode every spare second I get is spent reading and not doing anything else. I read before I go to bed, I read when I wake up, I read when I eat, I read alla time. I then never end up doing things like playing video games, or watching TV (I’m at least a couple episodes behind with Lost), or surfing teh interwebz, or blogging. But yeah, reading is still cool.

I’ve started reading Star Wars novels again. I think I read my first ones back in like fourth grade or so and I instantly fell in love with the Star Wars expanded universe. I just read The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which many diehard Star Wars nerds consider the final trilogy of the Star Wars Nineology (I know that’s not a word, so shut up!). I am now starting to reread the Star Wars X-Wing series, which is my favorite Star Wars series. It follows Rogue Squadron, the guys who blew up a couple death stars and such. Wedge Antilles and Corran Horn are my heroes and the two Star Wars guys who I have mancrushes on. So there.

Anyway, I guess my point is that if you’re a nerd at all, especially a Sci Fi nerd or Star Wars nerd, then check out some expanded universe stuff, because there’s lots of fun stories out there. I can recommend some books if you want to know any to read. =)

On a completely different note, Iron Man was pretty incredible. I saw it twice, and it was excellent both times. The humour was well placed and actually funny instead of the far-too-corny superhero comedy you normally get. The action scenes were intense and exciting and all edge-of-your-seaty. The story moving along scenes were also all well done, the movie did not seem to move slow at any parts. So yeah, definitely go see it, it was excellent. I give it two stars and five thumbs up, or something like that.

So let’s talk about The Office… What is going on? It’s not funny any more… It’s still interesting, and I definitely haven’t given up on it. But it is incredibly awkward and depressing. Like, I don’t even know how to describe how I feel about it, because I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. It’s so depressing and awkward at some parts that when something funny actually comes up I feel guilty laughing about it. Oh, and Jim is a jerk. I still love him and consider myself most like him in the show, but he keeps being mean to Pam. It’s funny… but mean. Haha.

And that concludes our evening. I also promise that I will bring you the next part of The Best of My Bookmarks sometime before the end of the month. And I have some other ideas/projects that I will be working on, so I’ll let you know what’s up with them when the time comes.

There comes a time in every man’s life where he has to say that there come’s a time in every man’s life.

This is not one of those times.

I don’t know if I have ever had one of those times. I don’t know if I know humanity well enough, or that I ever will feel secure enough to represent every man (and I use the word “man” in the general mankindy, man, woman, child, hermaphrodite, eunuch type of sense) who has had a life. So I probably just won’t.

On a completely different note, last month I had the goal to meditate for 15 minutes each day. This, like pretty much everything else, I failed miserably, but when I actually did it, I felt great, and it was nice and all. I just don’t really have the self-disipline to get myself doing this. In high school, however, in my theatre class, we did some yoga, and guided imagery and such, and that was always backed up by some pretty awesome/relaxing music and such, which was a huge help in the meditation and mind-easing process. I had, of course, pretty much forgotten about that and left it in the back of my mind when I had started trying to do my meditation last month. Then in my Organizational Behaviors class we spent a couple of classes talking about stress, and my professor had us do some relaxation and guided imagery with that amazingly relaxing music again, and it was heavenly.

Then, a little bit ago, to make things just work out perfectly, I got a comment from Chris Hughes over at Meditation DNA, who set me up to try out some of their relaxation music. And it’s awesome. I think that this will definitely help me out with any meditation attempts I make in the future (which will absolutely be sooner, and more frequent, now that I’ve got this). They’ve got all kinds of different audio meditation tracks each about twenty minutes long. You can sort them by focus (which ranges from insight to sexuality to wealth), by brain wave, by vocal type, by Chakra, and by Qi element. They also have a whole bunch of information on meditation in general, ranging from stuff for beginners, to information to long-time meditators. If you’ve ever wanted to meditate, or you have meditated, or you want to get rid of some stress and annoyance from your life, this will definitely help. Just sitting here on the computer listening to it, is completely relaxing me.

It’s way awesome, so definitely check it out.

Last night I had a dream involving Transformers, Power Rangers, and my co-workers at Best Buy as the cast. It was transformers because Optimus Prime was there (and he was in cartoon from the outside, but not from the inside), it was Power Rangers because instead of him actually being Optimus Prime he was a giant Power Rangers robot that we could get in. And I wasn’t in the dream, I was the omniscient third person, floating around, like in edit mode in Forge in Halo 3. I don’t know what the evil was that they were fighting, but I’m sure it was evil. It was a monster of sorts. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the Cloverfield monster. I will probably get sued for having this dream because of all the copyright infringement. But I welcome lawsuits, because even though I cannot afford it, it would mix up my life and make things interesting, and I’d have to get a lawyer, and I could go around saying, “I have a lawyer!” But he probably wouldn’t be a very good lawyer because I don’t have any money.

Did you know that I never proof read anything? Because I don’t. Sometimes I do, by accident when I’m scrolling back through things I’ve written and I’ll correct a typo from three years ago. Maybe if I proofread and revised and such people would give me money for words.

On that note, if anyone likes to pay people who like to string words together sometimes with a direction and sometimes without it, let me know.

I want to date a vegetarian. She probably has brown hair, but sometimes it can be red or blonde. She is also smarter than me, cares about the world, and will change my worldview at least a little bit. She will make me a vegetarian too and I will cook for her delicious foods that don’t involve dead animals. She also has a loft apartment somewhere and makes more money than me. We’ll have sleepovers and dance on her hardwood floor to music that I’ve never heard of before, but that is fantastic. We will also travel to at least one foreign country every six months.

I need to start making goals for myself again. After I failed them in the past I kind of just gave up on myself. But today I learned in one of my classes that motivation is from the inside, so I figure if I’m ever going to do anything I have to get myself to want to do that. Unfortunately I’m a very hard person to convince to do anything, so I could use any help I can get. So does anyone want to give me goals? I also want to schedule my life, so I know what I’m doing. I am constantly running out of time. If anyone wants to schedule my life, here are the things that I have scheduled right now, so let me know what to do:

Sunday morning - church

Monday - Leave for school at 7:20ish, get home at 12:20ish. Work from 2-10ish.

Tuesday - Nothing in the morning, although I have lots of stuff that I need to get done. Work from 2-10ish.

Wednesday - Same as Monday.

Thursay - Same as Tuesday.

Friday - Same as Monday and Wednesday.

Saturday - nothing

The things I need to get done: Make lots of phone calls for a business venture I am currently somewhat slightly involved in. Writing stuff that maybe I can eventually get published some day or something. Bettering myself as a human being (working out, reading, learning to cook).  Watching lots of TV and movies.

Last night I received you are a little bit happier than i am