“Hi there, long time poster, first time caller. My name is Ryan and I’m a gamer.”
PAX tickets went on sale a couple of weeks ago and I was lucky enough to get tickets ordered the first day. I hear now that tickets are sold out for the 3 day passes. Tough luck 
Last year was the my first year attending pax and I broke my “PAX virginity.” This was also the time that I first met my now girlfriend and love of my life. I’d say this is a rather big event for me now and I’m excited for this year and many years to come.
I never really posted about how last year went and thought I’d share a few stories on my blog. Right off the bat things were kind of hectic when we rolled into town late on Thursday. We dropped off our stuff and then headed over to a local pub for a Harry Potter pub crawl 
I spend too much money, drank too much alcohol and passed out that night. All in all, good times!
The next day, hungover was spent attending the event and enjoying all the pretty sights and grabbing cool swag. I got to see upcoming games and try out a few of them. The next couple of days went like this and I saw many awesome goodies, but the one thing that sticks out in my memory was the PAXtra life party at the Fox Sports Bar & Grill. This was when I first met my girl and I fell in love at first sight. This year I’m definately going to be getting tickets for the party. I’m excited to go this year with my girl! Many a things to introduce her to and exhibits to see. 3
Does anyone else have PAX stories to tell?
Original post by mooch
Ξ December 27th, 2011 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Moo |
I thought I would give my two cents on my thoughts on something sweeping the internet currently regarding the gaming scene. In case you haven’t already read about it, Penny arcade published an article about a reader who submitted an e-mail string into PA that contained a conversation they had with the folks at “Ocean Marketing.” The string contained some of the most terrible customer service that I’ve seen. Being someone who is employed in a support role I felt the need to share this.
Link to Article…
The e-mail started out as a simple request of a customer asking for an ETA on when their product would get shipped. In case you were wondering, the product in question is a retarded looking controller called “the avenger” controller. Link to their website. The support individual was rather non-informative during the entire first bit of the conversation and was basically on the standpoint of “it will get here when it gets here.” The customer just wanted to know if he would receive it before christmas time because it was promised to be shipped days prior.
What SHOULD have happened is the company state what the issue was along with some sort of apology and not give an asinine response of “it’s on a boat, stuck in customs, there are many people wanting this and you’ll have to wait.” But that was not the case… The e-mail string continued to non-stop badgering from the company to the customer making personal attacks and claiming that they were holier-than-thou.
Luckily the customer contacted Penny Arcade and Gabe had his two cents to add. He was included on the e-mail string and things really got interesting. Back and forth the person at Ocean Marketing claimed he was hot shit and Penny Arcade couldn’t do anything to him. Little does he know the power of the internet…
I’m not sure what is going to become of this, but I’m hoping it spawns at least a public apology from the company to the customer. I highly doubt it, but we shall see. At least it will provide me with some entertainment as the issue presses on.
Original post by mooch
I’ve brought the site back online since ages past. Doing so because I am on a new internet connection now that has proper bandwidth for this sort of thing and I feel that I can host my own server much easier as I have been doing for ages.
There have been some drastic improvements in my life since I last wrote on a blog. Days of old I was unemployed, then I was in a dead-end job that I didn’t really enjoy and hated every minute of it. Then I found the job that was just right for me and ended up enjoying it right off the bat. I work at a healthcare software company providing software support for customers and IT professionals. The troubleshooting day to day is quite exciting and I cherish every day I get to work here.
After my job I knew I had landed something great, but I always felt there was something missing. Companionship is what I yearned for. Just over 3 months ago I was contacted by a childhood friend living in Seattle and he told me he had met this girl he thought was perfect for me and wanted to set me up. I was hesitant at first because it was going to be a blind date hook-up, so to speak. After exchanging e-mails for a good part of time I really wanted to meet her in person. It just so happened that I was at PAX this year and was in her area. I asked her to come to a PAXtra life party for charity and that she and I could meet. The first time I saw her walking towards me on the sidewalk I felt what love was like. This beautiful girl smiling at me just warmed my heart and of course I had to hug her. So we waited in line and once inside we enjoyed drinks and chatted for a good while until the night was through.
Continually we made it a routine to visit each other each weekend back and forth, driving the 3+ hours back and forth from portland to seattle. Every chance I had to be with her was absolutely amazing. It wasn’t long until i asked her to move down to portland. I was scared at first since she’d be packing up and moving down here for a boy. Earlier this month we moved in together and it has been bliss. I’m thankful for the time I’ve spent with her and hope there are many more years to come. I love this girl and I feel my life is whole because of her.
Long story short: Life is pretty freaking awesome right now.
Just a heads up, I’m going to start adding content over the continuing days and make sure I get some decent information on here for the internet to enjoy. The last 5+ years of posting has been great even though it might be for naught (i.e. very little page views). Regardless I think it is therapeutic to me and think that writing is a good thing every now and then.
For now, I bid you adieu. Take care and have a happy and safe holiday season.
~mooch
Original post by mooch
I went ahead and removed all of my previous posts from my blog. All 5 years worth. It’s all backed up in SQL and all that great stuff, but I wanted to start anew with a new version of the blog. I’m going to make less of the sob story posts and still speak my mind, yet work more towards more interesting topics that others wouldn’t mind reading. So that’s my story. I hope you enjoy it.
-mooch.
Original post by mooch
Ξ December 2nd, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Anime |
Whoa! What’s this, an actual post? Craziness, but hopefully more to come.
I’ve always loved animated works, but until recently I wasn’t really a fan of anime. I had seen most of the well known ones and enjoyed them, but didn’t watch anything on a regular basis. Since the beginning of this year though I’ve been watching a ton of anime including series, OVAs, and movies. After watching over 50 titles I can say anime is included in my love of animation, and I thought I’d catalog the stuff I’ve seen this year.
First though, what changed to make me watch anime more readily? This comes down to a few factors, but the biggest is availability. With Netflix I can get DVDs, and they have a good selection in their Instant Streaming section which keeps getting better actually. Hulu also has a good amount of titles for stream, along with a few other sites that offer both free and premium services. They even have some series that are simulcast as they’re aired in Japan which is pretty cool. Lastly, there’s an active online community of fansubbers that offer translations for free for both current running and older shows. As with most things the internet has simply made anime easily available.
Probably the second biggest factor is that I’ve become familiar and comfortable with many of the common tropes. Some stuff that I used to find annoying I can move past now without it affecting my enjoyment of a show. Also anime has become pretty insular using a lot of tropes as homage or parody, and now I can understand when it’s being done. If you’ve watched any anime you’re probably familiar with a lot of the tropes; school kids saving the world, oblivious male leads, love interests can’t express their emotions, antagonists are batshit insane, harems, fan service, school cultural festival, parents don’t exist, etc. A lot of the shows I like either avoid these or use them as jokes, but overall they don’t bug me as much anymore.
Now to the list! I’ve seperated them into three loose categories based mostly on my own critical review. The Great list is titles that are very enjoyable, engaging, and have very few flaws. The good list is all enjoyable titles that have more than a few flaws or something that’s holding them back, e.g. a bad ending. The mediocre list covers a lot of ground from downright awful shows to simply entertaining though formulaic or mindless. If you have any interest in animation or anime specifically I’d recommend most of the shows here I’ve put as Great/Good.
I’ve completed more than 50 shows which is kind of crazy, and that’s not even counting rewatching some of my favorites from before this year. There’s a couple exceptions, but for the most part I’ve not listed sequels separately. I still have quite a few titles left that I’d like to watch, but I probably won’t be going through them at this same pace.
GREAT
Bakemonogatari, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Planetes, 5 Centimeters per Second, Rebuild of Evangelion, Kara no Kyoukai, The Tatami Galaxy
GOOD
Durarara, Black Lagoon, Darker Than Black, Full Metal Panic, Macross Frontier, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 1, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Paprika, K-ON!, Sword of the Stranger, Toward the Terra, Voices of a Distant Star, Eden of the East, A Certain Scientific Railgun, Toradora, Spice and Wolf, Baccano, Time of Eve, Giant Killing, Haibane Renmei, Fate/stay Night, Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, Paranoia Agent, Gunbuster, Diebuster, Death Note, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Sora no Woto
MEDIOCRE
Claymore, Nabari no Ou, The Girl Who Leapt Through Space, Strike Witches, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2, Black Rock Shooter, Devil May Cry, Freedom, A Certain Magical Index, Angel Beats!, High School of the Dead, Seitokai Yakuindomo, Ookami-san and her Seven Companions, Occult Academy, Asobi ni Ikuyo!, Kaze no Stigma, Maria Holic
Original post by ocswing
Ξ November 24th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Moo |
So here we are again. Same situation a year later. Hell, possibly a decade later where we see the same tale of Ryan repeat itself. Self deprecating lifestyle of solitude. Living alone partly by choice and partly because he is afraid of failure. That’s the honest truth of it all, you know.
In growing up I’ve always gotten the overwhelming sense of guilt not to fail. The type of guilt that I’ll feel that it is my fault if I take a huge chance by laying it all on the line and then in some catastrophic event I’ll lose it all. In some places I’ve learned to let slide through not being the best throughout school because I didn’t see the point in it. I take a situation and think “what does it take to succeed?” and more often than not I find that just getting by is the key to succeeding.
One awful shortcoming I’ve found is that I don’t have any companionship and I don’t know where to begin in solving that. I suppose that the main solution would be to just stop the charade of being a fatty and finding solace in masturbation and eating and drinking alcohol. That really isn’ the solution to life’s problems. No matter how much I try and make it work it isn’t enough.
I look at my friend’s fucked up situation and all the drama he went through. You know what? I think it takes drama to make things work. I can just sit beside in the bleachers saying “Oh they’re going to fail! Give it another year or two and blammo!” Fuck that. You know what? Shit happening is what keeps you together. It means you have history. It means you have purpose.
I want purpose.
At the moment I an engineer on a team of individuals that support a software product. One software product that I honestly feel is pretty damn simple and I could make something similar and market It for myself. Now that’s not legal since I’m legally bound to not compete with my company. I’m not saying I’m about to go out there but what I am saying is that I COULD do it. Why with my technical and software expertise could I not end up designing the next best thing? Sure it takes time and money, but the truth of it really is that It just takes time. The money part works it’s way out eventually. Saying that “Oh there is too much competition out there” is another bullshit excuse. The leaders of tech did not get there by chance. They did it through hard work and determination.
So here is my list of things I want to do that I’ve outlined here…
- Realize that failure is okay. It is only failure if you don’t pick yourself back up and start over. I did this with my old job. I thought losing my job at Tek was a failure on my part and that it was a failure not to have them hire me back. That’s not a fucking failure. That was there loss and their choice solely. I had a great experience in my job thereafter. Met some great people, got to have tons of laughs, several good times and bad, and generally just enjoy life for what it was. Sure I had hard times throughout this also, but I worked through them and feel better for experiencing this.
- Your life will repeat itself and that is fine. Just keep trotting through the worst of it and you’ll find a better tomorrow.
- Work on finding someone to love. Each day try and meet somebody new, even if it is difficult, just know that you’ll feel better because of it.
- You can succeed. Work on goals and seeing through to them. Follow through with your plan to develop software. It doesn’t need to be a fulltime thing, even if you are just an hour out of your day looking up a programming language, or fiddling with some scripts – it’s still more than you’re doing now.
- Become fit and learn to love yourself for who you are. Diet more, eat better foods. Your body is the only one you’ll have. Take care of it and don’t let food be the stressor in your life, but enjoy it and exercise daily. Even if just 15 minutes to start for the first few months – ITS MORE THAN YOU ARE DOING NOW AND EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS.
Original post by mooch
Someone asked me today to tell them about the worst dream I’ve ever had1. On one hand, it’s an odd question… Actually, it’s a really weird question… especially in the break room on a Monday morning during football season. Whatever happened to just asking me about my weekend and whether or not I watched the game? Those are solid social rituals that we’ve been perfecting for thousands of years. We don’t need to mess with them, man. We don’t need to add an “i” to the front and give it a hip logo that highlights its individuality.
We don’t need to produce a no-sugar added alternative or make sure it’s energy efficient. We don’t need to force them into skinny jeans.2 These are time-honored traditions! You ask me how my weekend was, I say it was fine… I ask if you watched the game, you tell me you did but you were really disappointed by the gladiators’/bestiarii’s/jousters’/quarterback’s performances in the final quarter… and boom, social glue. You don’t actually care what my weekend was like and I don’t actually care that you don’t actually care. It isn’t about my weekend. It’s about social bonding! Reinforcing our tenuous social relationship in an ever-expanding web of social intricacies! We are ONE, brother!
Or we were up until you asked me about the worst dream I ever had anyway… because that was weird.
So anyway, the point is, someone asked me about the worst dream I’ve ever had and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Some of it was surely the fact that he’d taken a left al Albuquerque (“Oh, I know! Can you believe Randy Moss’s catch in the end zone? It… wait, what did you ask?”) but his little divergence from our regularly scheduled social reinforcement techniques didn’t account for quite all of my uncertainty.
What is the worst dream I’ve ever had? And if I control my dreams, as I do, does it even count? How much worse would they be if I couldn’t… Oh right, talking to the guy. I muttered something about being naked in public and escaped. And now here we are, trying to answer the question for real. (Incidentally, I’ve never had the naked-in-public nightmare before… but it was a safe and predictable enough answer, right? I mean, who even asks people about their dreams by the water cooler?! Someone who has no respect for social boundaries, that’s who! And I’ll bring the conversation back around to something known, familiar, consistent, and wholly impersonal, thankyouverymuch.)
So in any case, I know precisely what the worst dream I’ve ever had was. But in order to understand why it was so terrible, we’ll need to back up a bit.
I’m not sure if I’m technically a lucid dreamer or not. The totally, 100% reliable sources3 available on the Internet tend to agree4 that a lucid dream is one in which the dreamer knows that he or she is dreaming. I don’t always know that I’m dreaming. In fact, now that I think about, I’m not sure I’ve ever actively, consciously known I was dreaming… with the exception of one, terrible case. We’ll talk about that one in a minute. But other than that single instance, I can’t remember actually thinking while in a dream, “Hey, wow, I’m totally dreaming.”
Okay, fine, so… lucid dreamer. What is it called when you have control over your dreams? Is that just normal, everyday dreaming? Whatever that is, that’s the kind of dreamer I am. The level of control tends to vary for some reason but there’s always some level of control5. It runs the gamut from the Ubermensch option where I can change the dream entirely and do whatever I want to, wherever or whenever I want to do it… to the Censor option where I can just gray out the things I don’t want to see or feel… to just the normal, garden-variety stuff where I can either rewind/fast-forward to scenes in an existing dream, replaying the parts that I want as many times as I want to or fast-forwarding through parts that aren’t nearly as interesting, or make a change to the dream that is consistent with the universe as it exists in the dream.
Ubermensch!
The rarest option open to me is being able to do whatever I want while in a dream. This is depressingly rare. I honestly have no idea why it’s so rare. It doesn’t really make sense, does it? I mean, if I have some control over a dream, I should have all control over a dream, right? But maybe this is where the whole I-don’t-actually-consciously-know-that-I’m-dreaming thing comes into play. In any case, this happens in no more than, say, 5% of my dreams, probably even less than that… and to further complicate things, it happens only in the “nice” dreams. I’ve never had that kind of control in a nightmare… which is too bad since that’s probably when I’d most like to use it. (“OH GOD THE SPIDER IS ABOUT TO EAT MY FACE… YAY, PONIES!”)
The last time I did this was late last year. The dream was something about simply being in a grocery store, being unable to find the creamed corn6, and being utterly devastated by this failure… And at some point, I said to myself, “Self, you know what’s better than the Quest for the Creamed Corn? Steampunk. Maybe… action/adventure with a touch of high romance. And a mustache. And a blimp, definitely a blimp. Let’s do… steampunk Indiana Jones.” And a monocled man with a mustache of truly epic proportions, a perfectly pressed three-piece suit, and an impressively expensive timepiece with an engraving that read ‘To Anise’5 proceeded to invite me aboard a chartered dirigible to explore a Lovecraftian set of ruins across the sea. (Oddly enough, there were no Old Ones was not involved. It seems like this would’ve been their scene, right?)
This Film Not Yet Rated.
While the Ubermensch option seems to only be available for “good” dreams, this “censor” option appears to only be available for bad dreams. If something terrifying is happen, I sometimes, but not always, have the option of somehow censoring what it is I’m seeing or feeling. The funny (or maybe “perfectly normal”… I don’t know) thing is, it’s hard work to do this. I can’t simply just gray something out. It’s like the Dream Me has to get whip out the eye of newt and concentrate really, really hard… and maybe, just maybe my Fog Of War spell will actually work. The scarier/more traumatic the dream is, the harder it is to do this… and Dream Me knows she has to work her ass off to do this.
It’s like the flying dreams. Everyone apparently has flying dreams. I have no idea how these manifest for everyone else but for me, a flying dream is one in which Dream Me realizes that she has the general capability to fly; it doesn’t actually mean that Dream Me does fly. Dream Me may or may not be able to do it. It requires the utmost concentration and everything has to be perfect. Dream Me has to be running fast enough… there has to be enough of a wind behind her… she has to generate enough lift (and, by the way, apparently my dream flying does not involve flapping my arms; my arms have to be out to my sides but apparently that’s just for balance because I generate lift like a Jedi mind trick… that’s where the concentration comes in)… and even if she does happen to make it into the air, it takes more and more effort to get higher… and it takes constant concentration to stay in the air. If she doesn’t keep her concentration Just So, she starts floating back down… and it’s always a terrible feeling of failure. Dream flying is hard work.
Anyway, like flying, the censor option takes work. Everything has to be Just So in order for it to work. Dream Me has to tap down the fear or the horror or the crippling sadness long enough to make it happen and she doesn’t always succeed. That sucks for the both of us. (The one of us?)
In Order To Make Apple Pie, You Must First Invent The Universe
Most commonly, I just change my dreams within the context of the dream. I can replay scenes I really like over and over which is nice, albeit rather staid, or I can fast-forward to future events. (The latter description isn’t quite accurate. As it is, it presupposes that the dream is a constant and that I can simply shift from Point A to Point B along a known dream landscape. Somehow I doubt that’s how it actually works. It’s probably more likely that I’m just starting a new scene in the same dream universe that, as with everything else, is getting generated on the fly. That said, though… dreams as a constant, predetermined landscape. That’d be a good story. It’s probably already been done. Blast.)
Beyond simple replay/restart options, I can generally do anything in a dream that is consistent with the dream universe. For example, I had a dream a few nights ago that I was defending a fortress from invading forces. The fortress was the It’s A Small World castle except, you know, citadel-sized and… you know. MILITANT! POWERFUL! STRATEGICALLY SIGNIFICANT! Also, lots of water. Unsurprising, I suppose. Anyway, the citadel was the It’s A Small World castle and the invaders were apparently disgruntled Gryffindor students since they were wearing the Gryffindor Quidditch uniforms. Anyway, I was just a random stormtrooper in this thing (wearing a blue and white Quidditch uniform, I should note9) and at some point I decided we needed two items: trebuchets and flying carpets. (Pro tip: That clock tower thingie on the front façade of the It’s A Small World castle is actually a secret launching pad for aerial defense units.) Now, one could argue that flying carpets aren’t entirely consistent with the universe as I’ve described it. A flying boat with singing marionettes, maybe. A tricked out Firebolt, maybe. A flying carpet? That’s totally on the other side of the Disneyland park. But it was blue and white and bore the same standard as the rest of the It’s A Small World Defense Force, so I’m going to say it’s close enough. ANYWAY… so we start flinging pieces of our broken citadel walls at the Gryffindor invaders (yes, complete with recycled footage from Return Of The King), a bunch of additional blue-clad Quidditch storm troopers start pouring out of the clock tower on their magic carpets… and I decide I’m too old for this shit, hop on my carpet, and fly up to the command center that’s hovering over us exactly like a Naxxramas necropolis except entrants have to move the bricks around to get in like Diagon Alley.
I forgot where I was going with this last one.
The point is, though, that I can and do change my dreams all the time. I’m not necessarily aware that I’m dreaming – I never really have that flash of realization (“This is a dream!”) while in a dream – but I have enough control over things that the good dreams are really spectacular and the bad dreams aren’t as bad as they could be.
The Dream
Now that we understand all of this… we get back to the worst dream I’ve ever had. I had the dream the night of September 9, 2009.
I grew up in an agricultural area. My paternal grandparents lived on some acreage in the Central Valley, surrounded by their own almond orchards as well as peach and almond orchards in neighboring fields. You came up to their house on the appropriately named Peach Avenue. On your right, you’d pass by the high school (there was only one then and there’s only one now)… then on the right, the pool where I started swimming lessons when I was three and just past that, the park and rec center that the local Kiwanis club used for their annual Crab Feed… then on the left, the odd salmon-colored mom-and-pop market on the corner where Grandma Anne once bought my sister and me candy necklaces when we were visiting her… then on the right, an aging almond orchard that was past its prime… and then on the left, Grandma and Grandpa’s House9.
Grandma and Grandpa’s House was a sprawling, one-story affair just off Peach Avenue. There were two driveways: 1) the main driveway was a circular affair, running just in front of the house in a semi-circle around a beautiful, massive evergreen, both beginning and ending on the street; 2) the secondary driveway was a straight and unostentatious number, running straight past the house, the backyard, the grape vines, the neighbor’s well-trimmed hedge, to The Shop. The Shop was a huge building on one side of a huge open area behind the tree line, one filled with sawdust, spiders, massive machines, and Do Not Touch. If my sister and I were lucky, we got to play on the sawhorses, watch Grandpa make amazing things, play with Spot or Cat (Grandpa wasn’t one for elaborate names), or run around The Shop and pick up nails and screws from the ground outside so all the God Damned Tires would be okay.
Anyway… The dream took place on the driveway that lead to The Shop. It was a long, simple affair… dusty blacktop from the street until it faded into the sand by The Shop… a low brick wall separating Grandma and Grandpa’s property from the neighbors with a stubby little hedge running the length… and on the other side, a fence made of gnarled wood separating the driveway from the backyard. The fence was plain wood and about a foot of ground just on the other side of it was filled with flowers and grapevines before the cement of the backyard’s bordering walkway began. About halfway down the driveway, the simple wood fence rose into a covered walkway. The grapevines had covered his as well – though not so covered that the sunlight couldn’t get through – and Lady’s Fingers dangling through the top and along the sides.
If you’ve never gotten to smell sun-sweetened Lady’s Fingers on the vine, or to reach up and pull one off and pop it into your mouth, you’re missing out. The scent is warm and sweet, especially if the sun is out and the fruit is just a little bit warm. You can pop them off the vine, dusty and sun-warmed and perfect, and eat around the little triumvirate of seeds right in the center.
In my dream, I was standing on the driveway side of the little wooden fence, looking into the idyllic back yard of Grandma and Grandpa’s House. The yard has always been beautiful… bright green lawn, a cement path running around the perimeter of the yard, just inside the tree line… a beautiful maple tree rising out of the middle of the lawn with a swing dangling from one of its branches (I’d fed god knows how many silkworms from that tree)… a covered area with white wrought-iron tables and chairs… a few Queen Anne’s cherry trees on the far side… Shady. Beautiful. Perfect.
On the other side of the little wood fence stood Grandpa, Grandma Anne, and Grandma Mary. I wish I had the words to describe how they looked. They were in the sun, their skin just a tiny bit dusty, the way it always gets in that area if you’re outside for a while. Grandpa was reaching up into the grapevines to pull down a few handfuls of Lady’s Fingers. The best fruit was always the sun-warmed pieces that Grandpa picked fresh and wiped off on his shirt for you. Grandma Anne was wearing gardening gloves and was holding a pair of pruning shears. Grandma Mary was wearing that floppy hat of hers, the one she wore when she was gardening at Grandma’s House, and had a few grapes in her hand.
It was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen, ever experienced. I could smell the Lady’s Fingers on the vine, could feel the sun on my shoulders, could have reached out and felt Grandma’s dry hand close firmly over mine like it always did. I could have asked Grandpa for one of those perfect grapes… once again tasted that warm, dusty sweetness. I could have told Grandma Anne how sorry I was for breaking one of her favorite dishes when we were making cookies that one time or how much I loved the books she kept around just for us. I could have told Grandma that she was my hero, that I cry for her every day but try not to, that I love her so much it hurts.
I could have done all of those things. We could have gone back to sit on the covered patio and snacked on the dried fruit Grandpa always made. His pears were the best but the peaches were a close second. We could have walked down the street to the salmon-colored market and gotten a candy necklace. We could have done anything. I control my dreams. We could have done anything… something we’d always done, something we’d never gotten to do. Anything.
But we didn’t. I knew it was a dream. Suddenly, inexplicably, I knew it was a dream… that they were gone, that they had been gone, and that I would never see them again. This is the only time I ever actually remember knowing that a dream was a dream.
And I woke myself up and cried.
In some ways, it was the best dream I’ve ever had. I wish I could find the words to describe how real everything was… everything from the scent of the Lady’s Fingers to the warmth of the sun to the way I felt standing there. It was the kind of dream that would make you believe in the afterlife, in the eternal house of your forefathers, if you didn’t. It was that perfect.
But it was also a reminder of what was gone and what would never be again.
‘Bittersweet’ is used a lot to describe stuff like this but I don’t think it really does it justice. Is there a word to describe the bursting feeling in your chest, the burning of your eyes, the rush of gratitude, and the throbbing ache? If there is, that’s the word I’m looking for.
Anyway. I’m not sure how cathartic this actually turned out to be. But hey, bet the water cooler guy is glad that I didn’t really answer his question.
- Surprisingly, this was not my shrink. Even more surprisingly, I don’t actually have a shrink.
- Speaking of skinny jeans, I have constructed a helpful chart to aid in the decision-making process:
- lol
- It’s easy to achieve consensus when everyone’s primary source is Wikipedia.
- Or rather, there’s always some level of control in the dreams I can remember. I’ve never woken up, known that I’d been dreaming, and been unable to remember the dream… but if I don’t know in the first place that I’d been dreaming, well, those are outside my study sample, I suppose.
- Yes, creamed corn. It was that specific. Can you even buy creamed corn or do you have to make it yourself? For that matter, what is creamed corn? Clearly, this dilemma was at the forefront of my unconscious.
- I’ve heard a few times that it’s impossible to read in a dream. Since I’m not a lucid dreamer in the sense that I know when I’m dreaming, I can’t offer any insight into that. But whether you actually read the engraving on a pocketwatch or just know as the omniscient owner of the dream what the engraving says, is there any functional difference?
- Apparently my unconscious just assumes that two teams facing off against one another should be Red and Blue. I can’t decide if that’s a result of too many FPSes or too much Double Dare.
- This was its formal name: Grandma and Grandpa’s House. There were no naming conflicts with the maternal side. My maternal grandfather died before I was born so Grandma Mary’s house was just Grandma’s House. And yes, my grandmothers were Grandma Anne and Grandma Mary (though if anyone just said “Grandma” without the modifier, it was assumed to be a reference to the latter… unless it was followed by “and Grandpa”). Apparently this isn’t the only way to distinguish between grandmothers. My husband calls his maternal grandmother “Grandma” and his paternal grandmother “Granny”. That’s a pretty neat system.
Original post by blah
First off, I just wanted to mention nothing I say here will do this movie justice.
The movie itself was pretty cool. I came into the theater knowing Rodriguez’s style for this movie genre. It is akin to his work in Planet Terror, From Dusk Til Dawn, and even Sin City. If you don’t like humorous gratuitous violence and nudity then this movie isn’t for you.
You are introduced right away to the mexican BAMF who has been wronged, his daughter taken away from him and his wife had been killed by the “mexican” version of Steven Seagal. He is left for dead and then we come to several years later where we meet the real story where ‘Machete’ is now in Texas and he runs into a suspicious character hiring him on for a job.
Nudity and sex in this movie is presented in a humorous manner. Bringing the audience into the movie with the notion that “yeah, sex can be funny.” We often don’t see that in modern day movies where the writer / director will keep the subject light and the fact that somebody isn’t wearing clothes isn’t the end of the world. The US mainstream media still clings to the taboo that nudity and sex is wrong in a christian society when in all honesty its just a person in the buff and they can be fine to look at.
With that said, I have to say that I enjoyed Lohan’s bewbs in this film.
On the other end of this spectrum we get the violence factor. Now I’m a die hard fan of the Kill Bill movies and what they gave the movie watcher public. I think that Tarrantino gave us something that all movie makers should go off of. Bringing the bits and pieces of masterpieces of yesteryear into modern cinema. With this he also brought tons of gratuitous violence. And I have to say, if it is in jest, I’m okay with it. It’s not a horror film. You don’t have some teenage ditz running away from a guy with an axe, or a serial killer tormenting innocent people in a mind fuck. You have limbs chopped off, you have people getting impaled with swords. You have a force that cannot be stopped killing whoever the hell he wants to get some goddamn revenge. It’s great, it’s genious, it is just want I wanted in this movie.
Honestly I think he makes the Spy Kids movies just to even out the level of testosterone in his films.
So like I said, all in all the movie was very enjoyable. I left the theater with the sense that “wow, that was badass.” There were tons of good one-liners to quote for days and great moments in the film where it was so off the wall that you just had to slap your knee and laugh. In the end of the film there are a few hilarious moments if you can catch the references.
Just want to mention that I recommend this movie to any mature movie watcher. It was a great action trip and had a ton of humor to boot. I hope you’ll leave the movie pleased like I did.
Original post by mooch
* Just to start, want to let you know my reviews here on out will contain spoilers, so by all means stop reading, but only because of the spoilers, not because you dislike me. That’s just mean. *
So I just got through watching ‘The Expendables.’ I had a free moment and saw it had decent ratings on IMDB so I thought I’d give it a shot. As a whole I’d say this is 90% older men kicking people’s asses and 10% mindless drama. Here is a synopsis:
The setting of the film is there are old badass mercenaries that are given a ‘job’ to take out a ruling dictator on some no name island in the middle of nowhere. This rag-tag group of individuals is led by Stallone and barks orders in some nonsensical manner.
Speaking of which, half the time in this movie I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. When this gets to DVD I need to watch it again with subtitles. Between Stallone’s mumbling, Lundgren’s accent, and Jet Li’s engrish I was left wondering what the hell was going on for a good part of the movie.
We have a subplot with Statham where he feels heartbroken because of getting dumped, but the girl comes back to him because she got knocked around a little so he gets to play the gallant knight and rough up some basketball players.
So queue the assault on the island. We have a major character, a woman with daddy issues, introduced to us when she shows Stallone and Statham around the island. Turns out there is a third party that was funding a cocaine producing operation. Who knew?! Queue the dictator, Sgt. Batiste from Dexter and his kind hearted attitude. Stallone and Statham end up escaping and taking out a bunch of extras dressed up as soldiers in the process.
I just want to mention that there is a clear correlation between knives and how big the character’s e-peen is in this movie. That is all.
So the characters are wishy washy, Lundgren is kicked out of the group and is sad about it. We end up getting the group back to the island where the “rescue operation” commences for this one girl. We have some cocky british guy who you knew when he was introduced he was going to die in the film. Then we have Steve Austin giving his same tough guy routine that he can’t seem stray from because he isn’t an actor (hint: he plays a bad guy and he dies by getting lit on fire in the end).
I just have one question for Stallone: Why did he have the bad guy take the hostage girl with daddy issues? The guy clearly stopped in his tracks and grabbed the girl. WHY?!?! He could have gotten away easily with time to spare if he’d done that. Why be so cliché and attempt to take the girl that the good guys are clearly here to get. Maybe he needed a cleaning lady or liked her pretty paintings and wanted a mural or some shit. It’s almost like he’s never seen a single action flick, ever.
In conclusion, nobody could “get to da choppa” because it was blowed up, the bad guy dies, and Stallone gets to have his girl that is 30 years younger than him, but he decides he’s better off alone and takes the gallant routine and flies away, not getting any that night.
It wasn’t the “worst” film ever made. It is what it is: an action flick. I couldn’t expect anything else. I still can’t decide if the movie was brilliant or retarded. I guess I’ll let you decide.
Original post by mooch
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