Mini-Reviews 21

It's still Friday!!


The Simpsons Movie-- Meh. Introducing an actual plotline, drama, and romance doesn't work completely with The Simpsons. Sometimes it really does. For instance, the tape that Marge leaves Homer is honestly heartbreaking. But the first half of the film is boring, with the last 20 or 30 minutes being the only thing exciting or at all interesting. And, surprisingly, not as funny as I expected. Funniest moment, though, is when the polar bear kicks the fox. XD

Holy Hell, I did something

So, I've been making a lot of entries lately, but, son of a bitch, I did stuff today.

And by stuff, I mean I was bombin' around a variety of shopping centers with some friends.

We went all over the place: Heroes Your Mom Threw Out [comic book shop, which was fuckin' closed!], Rite Aid, Walgreens, Toys 'R' Us, the Arnot Shopping Mall [FYE, GameStop, a couch and recliner store, Waldenbooks, Spencer's, a pet store, Victoria's Secret, JoAnn Fabrics], Dix Sporting Goods, Kohl's, Wal-Mart, K-Mart... I think that's every place we went.

Not really any amazing stories from the day that I can think of... I know there are some, I'm just drawing a complete blank. Which is good, because in truth there are probably so many amusing tidbits that I'd have way too much typing to do. We did, however, get lost on the way to the comic shop. Only because they had moved their place of business and left a note on the door with the address. Finding it was sooo much fun. XD

But, yeah, I had quite the adventurous, entertaining day. (^_^) Unfortunately, I think I missed my chance for an awesome phone call. :( Bummer of a way to end the day.

Bathroom Exploits

So, spent the majority of today helping [read, mostly watching and learning while helping where I could] Tim [the maintenance guy] work on the bathroom floor some more. Replaced all the floorboards that needed replacing, put down floor leveler, and started putting down the tile, which I think looks really nice by the by. Got more than half of it down, so almost done. Also, lifted the corner of the tub so that it doesn't leak over the edge anymore. Woot! So, the problem won't repeat itself any time soon hopefully.

Unfortunately, the toilet's leaking now and needs a new hose. At least it's the clean water running into the tank that's leaking and not sewage. Whew. But, not a huge problem, we've just had to turn the tank on to fill and flush then back off again. Not a big deal, had to do that for years at the old house, haha.

But! The current problems are almost fixed! I'm sure more will go wrong. The lighting fixture worries me, but, we'll see, we'll see.

I Suck (Not A Gay Topic)

Yeah, I stole it from you, G. What're you gonna do about it? =P

So, I've fallen into a sedentary lifestyle. Hell, falling is too active a word, allow me to rephrase: I've slowly slipped, purely through gravitational pull and no exertion on my part, into a sedentary lifestyle. I've just stopped working on damn near anything: vids, music, reviews, anything. The only thing I still maintain is the weekly mini-reviews, and that really is the least I could do; it requires nigh no effort. The only thing I do is play vidgames, watch movies, and listen to music.

My hopes are, though, that now I'll shake that off and get back to work on something. I've been sitting on this spoken word album for one excuse or another, the latest is that I have no artwork involved whatsoever, but fuck it, I'll just record it, zip it, and put it up for all five of the people who'll listen to it. I've got vids I want to get done [I'm sorry to everyone who've been waiting on me for vids, Shep, brody, I still want to do that vid with you Franny, I promise!], and some other ideas I don't want to get into in case they fall through for whatever reason.

But, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if any of this'll actually happen. The biggest reason for my sudden apathy and lack of activity is a direct result of my severe lack of motivation. It's really one of the few major problems I have in life, I just don't see a reason to do things. For instance, why did I drop out of high school? Well... actually, because I had just stopped going so it only made sense to get the paperwork out of the way and make it official. But I stopped showing up in the first place because I just didn't see the point and couldn't find a good enough reason for me to go. The only reason I kept going as long as I did was because of my girlfriend at the time and the friends I had. But after breaking up with the girlfriend and the majority of my friends stopped wanting to spend time with me, I had no reason to go anymore.

Or take my inability to gain employment. I'm really not that upset about it. What's the point? Yeah, I'd like to have a paycheck, but, not terribly. I'd just buy vidgames and movies, after all. Sure, I could save up and get an apartment, get out on my own. But to what avail? So that I have someplace to sit by myself and watch movies and play vidgames when I'm not working? I don't see people for days as it is, I really don't think that would change if I had a different place of residence. I just play vidgames and watch movies alone, unless I see someone on Xbox Live, and then I'll play a vidgame with them, but still ostensibly alone. I can do that now, and without having to deal with the general public. So why bother getting a job and moving out to do the same things I do now?

There are numerous examples of my apathy and... what's an antonym for motivation? I can't think of one... anyway, there are many examples, but I think you see my point. If I can find no good reason to do something, I find it very difficult to motivate myself, even if I know I should. If I don't know why I should... *shrugs*

So, what was I saying? I think I got distracted, this whole entry is kind of train-of-thought writing that I'm not even bothering to reread... oh, right! Getting around to working on things, music, vids, life. I'm not sure if I'll ever actually do these things as it's becoming increasingly difficult to find reasons for motivation. But I hope I do, maybe starting tomorrow, in fact.

Okay, that's enough. I hope this entry makes sense to someone and isn't too much of a jumbled mess. XD

Mini-Reviews 20

The Basketball Diaries-- This film has been on my list of movies to see for, like, ten years now. Good movie, even though it feels a little rushed. DiCaprio's performance is great, and it was interesting seeing a younger Mark Wahlberg.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginnings-- If you've seen the 2004 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and enjoyed it, here's more of the same, so enjoy. If you didn't, you won't dig this one, either. Has some interesting little explanations that tie into the remake as well. If you haven't seen either of these and you decide to watch this one, I hope you like blood, gore, and screams.

Mirror's Edge

Shep wanted to know about Mirror's Edge, so, here we go.

IIIII like it a lot. It's far from perfect, but, I still had a lot of fun with it. It's a refreshing change from all the FPS games.

It's crazy short though. I beat it twice in two days, once on Normal last night and I beat it a little while ago on Hard. The Story Mode, anyway, the Time Trials and Speedruns are a whole other matter entirely.

Some issues with it, though. For one thing, the cutscenes look like butt. I just don't dig the style of animation, it looks cheap and poorly-made, I don't care if it's supposed to be stylized. It looks great when it's still, but as soon as it animated, ew. Looks like one of those crappy cartoons on Adult Swim.

In addition, the controls sometimes just don't work. There's a few instances where you will not be able to figure out why Faith isn't grabbing the fucking ledge. Specific moments where she'll only do what she's supposed to three or four times out of ten. And you won't even know why you can't make it, it just seems random. But there're just a few instances of that, so it's not a huge deal, just worth mentioning.

A couple minor issues: all the white can sometimes blur together and make distinguishing things difficult. That may be just on SDTV's, though, I imagine it's clearer in high definition. And, of course, there are some instances of cheap deaths, but, what platforming game doesn't have those? It's certainly not rampant, just mildly annoying.

Oh, I almost forgot my biggest problem! The load times. When you first start up a level, I don't mind a long load time. And the load time for your last checkpoint after a death is remarkably short, usually. But each chapter has at least two, I think, moments where the game stops and it reads "Loading Level" at the bottom left of the screen. And it'll sit there for a good 10-30 seconds. It's annoying as hell. Maybe this isn't such an issue with the PS3, and won't be for the PC, I don't know. But it's certainly present for the 360 version.

Some good things? The score, I like the music a lot. The voice-acting's good, as well, though the story itself is kind of meh. Not bad, just unsurprising. The gameplay itself is terribly fun, the parkour aspects of it especially, and the gunplay isn't bad. Nothing really broken or poorly-implemented that I found in my two playthroughs.

And there you are, some of my quick thoughts on Mirror's Edge. Final summation: if you have a PS3 or 360, play this game. If you've got a PC, give it a little time, it'll be out in about a month.

I need to stop being gone all day.

So, hey, another long day wherein I wasn't at the computer much. I spent most of the morning clearing out some of the shit off of my computer because I desperately needed more space [which I'll get into later] and then ran the defrag for the main HDD. Whee, so, that kept me from the computer most of the day. Then, I was helping [mostly watching] Tim, the maintenance guy, fix our bathroom floor [which I'll also get into later in this since, like, two of you even know what the fuck I'm talking about XD].

And! I got Mirror's Edge today, squee! (^______^) So terribly excited, and really, really hoping it doesn't turn out to be an awful game. Haven't been able to get into it, being busy all day and such, and I'm putting it off for tonight because I want to try and get to bed early. But, more importantly, I'd much rather talk with what few friends are still online by this point in the day, and if I start playing my new game I'll become engrossed and start unintentionally ignoring them. Not good. But tomorrow, I'm playing the shit out of that game, let me tell you.

So, the bathroom floor. While we were looking over the new place before moving in, the first thing I noticed was that the floor in the bathroom was damaged as hell from water. The toilet was sinking into the floor on the right side and was leaning far enough that it made the tank drain drip by drop and refill itself repeatedly all day long. No fun. Long story short [too late], the front end of the tub, the end with the faucets, had settled into the floor and tilted the wrong way so that instead of the water running to the corner of the tub where it can sit and drain back into the tub and not cause problems it was running to the other edge out on to the floor and soaking into the floor. This probably would not have been such a big deal, but, instead of plywood the floor had been cheaply redone at some point and they used OSB [Sterling board] which acts like a sponge as soon as it gets wet, apparently. So, instead of the water drying up, it was trapped in the OSB and just causing as much water damage as it could. But, anyway, replaced the floor where it was damaged, and now my toilet is level! And, we replaced the toilet seat, which bit me a couple times, so, yeah! No more bitey toilet seat!

Okay, the space issue on my computer is next. As I was looking through my music files today, deciding what could go and what I really didn't want to ever delete,I came to the realization that my packrat tendencies extend to the internet. Specifically when it comes to downloading music. It's far too easy to find and download an entire discography of a band via torrents. XD So, I'd hear a song I like, look 'em up, then download their entire discography and keep it around. Maybe listen to it once. As you can imagine, it put quite a strain, especially since this computer's shit and does not have very large HDDs. A short explanation for that one.

So, to conclude this, I'm going to try and post here more often and treat it like an actual blog. The reason I don't is because I either can't remember all that happened by the end of a day, don't think it's really worth typing about, or don't have anything worth saying. So, no way in hell is it ever going to be a day-by-day rundown of everything I do, but, I'll try to post the more worthwhile or interesting things instead of never getting around to it. Like the bathroom floor thing, I could have posted about that weeks ago, just, didn't feel like it. Well, no more of that!

Mini-Reviews 19

Meatballs-- 1979 summer camp movie with Bill Murray. That's right, a 30-year-old film. Anyway, it's not that great, heh. Some funny moments, but that's about it. It's just not a well-made, cohesive film.

Y'know what I miss?

Having friends to hang out with. Those were pretty good times, pretty good times.

Mini-Reviews 18

Blood and Chocolate-- In the beginning it's ridiculous and somewhat pretentious. It gets better, though, pretty quickly. Around the time Aiden and Vivian are falling in love. And remains good for the rest of the film. So, over-all, it's pretty good, but if you're not a fan of these kind o' movies already, don't expect to have your mind changed by this film.