The Japanglophile's Tearoom

Pitiful, I know.

2007-09-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

Another 2-month gap? Jeez. I don't really have any excuse. I'm just lazy as hell.

News? There's lots of it.

School's started, which is a drag but it's nice seeing all my friends every day. Before the yearly advent of school, I went on a trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. That was fairly fun- I might post some pictures later.

I only saw two movies this summer, Stardust and Rush Hour 3. They were both fairly good, but stardust wasn't very true to the book.

This is an embarrassingly short post, but I'm hoping I can motivate myself to post more often from now on.

Spanish is so tiring

2007-07-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

I've been continuing my classes at UCR, and therefore have not been able to post the last couple of weeks. What a pain, pages and pages of homework and such. Everyone in that class hates me, I think. They don't really listen to me and they usually only laugh at my mistakes. But I'm being emo. It's alright because it'll be over in a week and then I'm home free...

Until normal school starts, that is. Bleh. I've got quite the schedule lined up for next year:

AP European History, AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Psychology, PE, American Lit, and IB Economics.

My mom wants me to drop a couple, but I think I can handle it.

Basically, I'm going to have two weeks at the start of August of absolute downtime, and then we have a two week trip out east, and we get back the day before school starts. Summer's being all short-ish this year.

Short post, but I'm tired. Besides, I don't have much news.

Oh. Wow. Fire.

2007-06-28T10:59:00.001-07:00

So, some people might have heard about the big fire here in Riverside. See, there was this lot that was being used by a plastics company to store bits and pieces of stuff, and somehow it caught fire and everything went bye-bye. There were these noxious black fumes coming from it, and they even told people downwind to stay inside. Thankfully, though, most of the smoke passed over my neighborhood before it settled. I feel sorry for the people on the other side of the mountain though.
My dad and I think it might be arson perpetrated by the owner for insurance, since everything on the lot was unsellable. I guess that sending toxic smoke over several neighborhoods is an ok way to make money, right?

Here are some pictures.

So I go/

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2007-06-28T10:52:00.001-07:00

Summer School Spanish and Communism in Three Dimesions

2007-06-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm in Spanish 4 at UCR now. I just finished my second class period. It's been a real struggle, but I can keep up ok. One thing has me pissed off to hell and back, though.

In this class, we have 5 required textbooks, all of which are available at the UCR bookstore. As you walk in to the UCR bookstore, you are confronted by a giant plastic bear perched on top of a plastic blur mountain with the letters ''UCR'' emblazoned on the side. Continuing past the eerily staring animal, you enter the bookstore proper, where a multitude of books, clustered to the right half of the room, appear as unwanted as lepers. Directly ahead, a sign hanging above a set of stairs reads "TEXTBOOKS ON LOWER FLOOR". Nothing so far poses any sort of problem. The problem is the other half of the bookstore, which is entirely taken up by a gross display of pure consumerism. The same three letters ("UCR") cry out desperately for your attention from notebooks, mugs, pillows, t-shirts, sweatshirts, pencils, teddy bears, paperweights, pom-poms, foam fingers, pennants, license plate frames, bumper stickers, posters, postcards, and all other sorts of despicable paraphernalia. Unfortunately, my suspicion is that the same scenario repeats itself across many campuses nationwide.

My simple question is: Why? Why are these sorts of things necessary? Either it is just an attempt of the university to make more money, in which case it's monetary greed, or there's actually a market for UCR ashtrays. In the latter case, we deal with a different kind of greed, the desire to keep bits of the past. In some ways, this greed is worse because it feeds the monetary kind of greed. Avarice is horrible enough when applied to money, but the inability to move on and the need to hold on to the past is evident of severe societal problems. Putting the UCR bookstore aside, why is our culture as a whole so obsessed with the material? Not just the material, even, but also the past- it's like people constantly need material goods to remind themselves of deeds or accomplishments. There's a word for that, you might say, and it's perfectly acceptable- people are entitled to their 'trophies'. I wholeheartedly agree that trophies are important, but not everywhere or for every deed. However, our society feels like it needs to be rewarded too much and too often, more than likely for menial accomplishments. One would hope that the pride of the accomplishment itself would be easily remembered.

In any case, while this rampant consumerism was raging through half the bookstore, I went downstairs to try and find the textbooks I need for Spanish. Lo and behold, even though they had all sorts of UCR artifacts, they only had one of my textbooks. That was yesterday, and another two came in today, so now I have three textbooks out of five.

Things will work out in the end, though. I'm not really angry that the books aren't there, I just fond the social ramifications interesting.

So I Go/

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2007-05-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

On the side of a plane.

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2007-05-25T14:41:00.001-07:00

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2007-05-25T14:33:00.001-07:00

See the cat? See the cradle?

Yay!

2007-05-20T14:59:00.001-07:00

Look what I did!

Neighborhood Observations

2007-05-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

Today I walked through my neighborhood, not looking for anything, just seeing things. Ans because I was seeing, not looking, I noticed things, and thought about things.

One thing I saw was one one of my neighbors' houses. It is a wholly unremarkable house, exept for one minute detail. You see, the house and it's yard are above the grade of the street, and the edge between the two levels is lined with a wall (also unremarkable). The surface of the yard is level with the top of the wall, and the street is level with the bottom. Although the purpose of a wall is to be impenetrable, this wall had a crack in it. The neighbor's lawn required copious amounts of watering to keep it a uniformly green and bland as possible; more, in fact, than the grass could handle. The excess water spilled through the crack in the wall and out onto the sidewalk. Because the neighbors perpetually water their lawn, there is a constant stream of water, always at least a trickle, flowing across the cement into the gutter. Now, where there is water there is normally some form of life, and in this case there's a gigantic algal bloom occupying the space where the water most frequently travels. I just found it to be an interesting concept, a bloom of algae in the middle of suburbia, surrounded by the gray of concrete and the black of asphalt; that you could have a marsh on solid cement.

The world would be a more interesting place if more people would imitate the way the algae sticks out, green and red hues, and purple, instead of becoming grey like the concrete masses.

Deeper than our usual fare, I know, but I felt like writing down what I was thinking about my neighborhood. There might be more of these installments.

-C

Sheesh

2007-05-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

It's been almost almost a month since I last updated...and I promised to be good this time.

Oh well. Things have been busy, studying for the AP History test and whatnot. I took it on Friday, and it was surprisingly easy. I think it was just like swim meets- there was WAY too much hype. I was so psyched, though- I doodled all over the test booklet, and thought I'd lost the drawings forever when the were collected, but it turns out we get them back.

I had the chance to go to the local photography museum yesterday. They had an exhibit on a news photographer in China during the Cultural Revolution, Li Zhensheng. His work was full of stark images of people being prosecuted under Mao Zhedong. Seriously, the communist culture of china was like a paranoid cult, which rooted out anyone with any measure of doubt.

Don't worry, I'm not going to go into anything especially deep. I was just really awed by Li Zhensheng's photographs.

Adios.

An Explanation

2007-04-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I though I should offer up an explanation as to why I've been posting lots of multimedia lately. I'm really busy right now, and I find it easy to just snap a photo with my phone and send it here, with a couple sentences of text. So I'll make posts from my computer every once in a while, but most posts will be from my phone.

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2007-04-13T21:40:00.001-07:00

Yum @ jalapeno pizza

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2007-04-10T19:31:00.001-07:00

Evidently this is a truck that belonged to Charles Manson that got stuck in the mud as Tex Watson tried to escape the police.

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2007-04-08T11:19:00.001-07:00

Made this the other day-it's on my swim bag.

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2007-04-06T16:53:00.000-07:00

Spring Break

2007-04-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

Well, it's spring break!
...not much else to say. Lotsa studying to do, taking the AP US exam sometime after spring break. I suppose I should probably know when, but oh well.

Saw 300 the other day. It was alright. Lots of gore, and no regard for accuracy (sound familiar? That's right, just like Apocalypto.), but it was a very good movie.

Also, in recent times, I've come across a great movie titled "Dear Wendy". It's an excellent film about a group of pacifist gun nuts who live in a coal mining town and call themselves "The Dandies". Definitely worth checking out.

Adios.

My family mystifies me sometimes.

2007-03-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

I know this is a very frequent topic amongst blogs, but my family is WEIRD. Today my dad says to me "Hey, let's eat out tonight so that I don't have to go grocery shopping till tomorrow."

So we got takeout from a Japanese place, and after we ate he says "Would you guys mind cleaning up the kitchen so I can get the groceries we need for tomorrow?"

Later this evening, he came back with luncheon meat, lettuce, cheese, soda water, gatorade and six jars of instant spaghetti sauce. I went to put the spaghetti sauce out where we keep all our instant foods, and found that there was already some there.

Turns out that without realizing it, my family has stockpiled 25 jars of the stuff.

That's a lot of sauce. I'm afraid that it might break out of the jars, meld into a malevolent blob, and crawl into my room to devour my arteries.

So, I took the literature part of the CAHSEE today...

2007-02-06T19:51:00.000-08:00

"So, I took the literature part of the CAHSEE today...

Ridiculously easy. I could have done it with my eyes closed."

This is from the draft of the post I started composing about a month and a half ago. Sorry, I've been lazy. Since then, I've taken the other part of the CAHSEE, which was also very easy. The lack of difficulty was actually kind of depressing after all the hype. Speaking of tests, I signed up for the A.P. US History test, so expect more details on that.

Also, swim season has started. The events that coach has me swim seem to have fallen into the pattern of the following:

200yd Free
500yd Free
One leg of a 400yd relay

Although today, as I was swimming the 500yd Free, the person who was my lap counter got mixed up and as a result I only swam 18 laps out of 20. When I finish, though, I usually get around 7 minutes (my best is 6:57). It's no big deal, though; the other school didn't have a JV team, so our JV guys won by default.

My uncle got out of a 15-hour surgery last night, and according to the doctors he should have woken up by now, and he hasn't yet. Just a little preoccupied with that, but nothing to do but wait for it to clear up.

Also, to a specific person out there (you know who you are): I showed you! I finally updated!

Adios.

Haven't posted in a while

2007-01-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

..because I've had a lot of work lately. It paid off, though-I got into the Science Fair this year.
It wasn't all work, though, I've also been playing Twilight Princess, which is like Awesome in a Can.
So, last night there was a school dance, and my friends and I kept doing all kinds of crazy stuff. For example, They played "move along" by the All American Rejects, and I headbanged in the middle of the dance floor. It was funny because people made this little bubble around me that they were reluctant to penetrate because I was basically just spazzing in the middle of the dance floor. Then, my friends and I pushed into the center of the floor, and we all started disco dancing. We've all perfected the talent of being able to devise stuff that will get us weird looks from people.

I'll try to update more regularly. In the meantime, why don't you check out our band blog?

Winter Break 1337ness and Apocalypto

2006-12-16T08:19:00.000-08:00

First day of winter break. I have so many projects planned for these two weeks, I don't know where to start. All kinds of stuff, too. Anyways, I'm hoping to get a Wii this Christmas. Twilight Princess FTW.

I went and saw Apocalypto. Man, that was an odd one. Certainly a Mel Gibson film, though. TONS of gore, and almost no historical accuracy. And a lot of the supposedly Mayan stuff that they showed was Aztec. Mel: if you're gonna create a gore-fest, at least make it a little bit historically correct, please? I think the best part of the whole movie was when this guy got his face chewed off by a jaguar. Worst part? In the end, the main character is saved by the arrival of three European ships. I honestly hope to god that he didn't mean those ships to be the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria.

In Aikido the other night, somehow Russians came up, and one of the 'comrades' in my class nonchalantly stated "Oh, I hate those guys.". As my dad remarked, that's why Aikido is great: it allows you to get along with people whose guts you would hate in the real world. But that's another benefit of winter break: I GET TO GO TO AIKIDO MORE OFTEN! Ok, two extra lessons. But that's still cool.

Current song: "Panic-Oh!" by Los Abandoned

@_@

2006-11-28T20:49:00.000-08:00

I find biting the heads off of animal crackers VERY therapeutic.

Haven't published a post in a while.

2006-11-21T09:05:00.000-08:00

School's been busy, I've been lazy, whatever. I don't really have an excuse for not updating these past few weeks, other than that nothing interesting happened.

I would post a review of The Prestige, which I saw a while back, but word's can't really describe it. Just go see it.

I picked up a DS and a new game the other day: Trauma Center: Under the Knife. It's really cool, you get to do all different styles of surgery. Right now I'm stuck on an operation where I have to remove aneurysms from someone's intestine, but more aneurysms occur as you go. Verrrrry difficult.

I've been doing some more writing, nothing to speak of yet but I ought to have a couple stories posted on Fictionpress sooner or later.

Halloween was fun

2006-10-31T20:12:00.001-08:00

So, I dressed up as Frank the Rabbit from my favorite movie, Donnie Darko. Lots of weird stares during passing periods and stuff. The funny thing was, during lunch we had a costume contest, and most of the people(misfits-my mother insists i refer to them as "free thinkers") who understood who I was dressed up as were the ones most likely to also be participating in the contest, so when it came time for people to clap for me, there were few. Needless to say, I think it was a great costume, and I don't give any heed to what other people think. I'll have pictures of my costume up shortly.

Back to handing out Concentrate of Dental Problems to small childrens.

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2006-10-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

Ouch-my head.

2006-10-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't mentioned this before, but I'm doing a "Science Club" at my little brother's school. Sounds fun, right? Well it was, except for the fact that we had the first meeting yesterday and 175 kids showed up. that part was NOT FUN. Hopefully at least some of them will leave, but man oh man was that ever hectic. Otherwise, though, things are going really well: we have a meeting plan and are going to meet next week.

Other fun things: there was an Inti-Illimani concert at Caltech this weekend and I got my guitar signed by Jorge Coulon. YES! of course, I gotta say this now: I have NO INTENTIONS WAHTSOEVER OF SELLING IT.

other than that, things are pretty mudane, nothing much going on at school but we'll see.

ttyl

Movie Review: Jet Li's Fearless

2006-09-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

Well, that was great. It was poetic without being soppy and had lots of fight scenes without being corny. Go see this movie. Unfortunately it's Jet Li's last martial arts film...

-_- Not much to say this post.

Depressing

2006-09-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I feel kinda silly for posting about this, but I need to write it down so I can concentrate on my work. About a year ago, we found a praying mantis in our back yard and kept it in a terrarium so it could survive the winter. While we had it, it laid eggs.
It eventually died, and my mom said that it's eggs would never hatch. The rest of my family and I believed her and we paid no attention to the terrarium until now, while cleaning. My little brother found a grasshopper and i suppose we're going to keep it like we did with the mantis last year. However, when he picked up the terrarium, it was littered with tiny little mantis exoskeletons.

I find it extremely depressing that we basically killed off all the mantis' offspring because of my mother's conviction that it was a lost cause. I vow not to let that happen with the grasshopper.

[C]

The 11th

2006-09-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Today is September 11th.

In this country, the US, we mourn September 11th, because of the lasting tragedy it has imposed upon us. However, in Chile, September 11th is celebrated. Does that make Chilenos evil?

Of course not. September 11th is Chilean Independence day.

I think that we dwell on it too much. As callous as that sounds, I truly believe that even though this is an event that has shaped history for the last 5 years, and a tragic event to be sure, America has placed far too much significance on what happened 5 years ago. Mourning is fine, but going on witch hunts for Muslims and making things harder for travelers is not. And although I recognize the importance of keeping history from repeating itself, we as a country are overreacting.
For example, during my travels, I passed through the Chicago O'Hare Airport. Whilst shuffling through security, there was a slight disturbance behind me. An 80-year-old woman was being stopped because she had a set of nail files. These weren't Rite-Aid nail files either, they were definitely heirlooms, and they looked extremely valuable. But they were confiscated.
Why?, I ask? Is it feasible that an 80-year-old woman could hijack a plane with a set of ancient nail files? Our system of determining what is dangerous and what isn't has become deeply and dangerously flawed.
Yet in the midst of all this, some feel determined to cause more conflict. Today, as I left school, There was a Christian group standing right outside the school with a big poster with a picture of an aborted fetus and the words "Choice is Abortion". This kind of thing is not necessary, especially not on a day of mourning such as today. Again, why is this OK? Why do the majority of people just accept this kind of thing?
To put it simply, I don't know. As for me, it makes me FURIOUS that it is socially acceptable for extremists to stand outside a SCHOOL and spew this stuff. Why do they consider abortion to be so horrible? Not everyone can support a baby. I don't think abortion should be used indiscriminately, but there are situations where it is perfectly acceptable. Just because you don't want a child isn't a good reason.
Now I'm done ranting. Tune in for my next broadcast.
/CH_out

School is quite a bit of fun this year

2006-09-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

My schedule:
Period/ Class

0/ AP US History
1/ Honors Chemistry
2/ Honors World Literature
3/ Pre-Calculus
4/ AP Studio Art
5/ Spanish 2
6/ Swim

Things are difficult, this early in the school year. I'm finding it a lot of fun to finally have a challenge.

In other news, the Stater Brothers near my house sells Pocky! I love it!

More to come later.

Migraines, Homework; But school hasn't started yet.

2006-08-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

Hi.
Ouch.
I have a migraine. It's not the good kind of migraine, the kind that you can sleep and it goes away. No, this migrane is persistent. On top of that, I have three essays I have to wrap up("wrap up" is way too optimistic).

In other news, I'm gonna dress up as Frank the rabbit for Halloween...I'm post the ears when I finish them.

Also, I found the coolest anime. It's called Mushishi, and it's about these supernatural creatures(the Mushi) that cause all sorts of problems for people, problems that can only be solved my Mushishi, somewhat of a doctor who investigates Mushi-related incidents.

Last little thing:

There's a certain science teacher I'm trying to get in touch with:
Mr. O: I send you an e-mail a while ago with no response. Did it get caught in a spam filter? I'm pretty sure you read my blog, to maybe I can get in touch with you this way.

Movie Review: Little miss Sunshine

2006-08-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

Goddamn, that movie was funny.

It was brilliantly constructed so that every little thing had it's place. Everytihng fits
###SPOILER###
Early in the movie, one character buys a bunch of porn. Later, they have a dead body in the trunk of the car and get pulled over. The father acts nervous and doesnt want the cop to open the trunk, giving him probable cause to do so. When the cop opens the trunk, the porn falls out and the cop becomes preoccupied with that.
###SPOILER ENDS###

Another great thing is that the family travels in a bright yellow Westfalia. My family and I traveled around Scotland in a Westfalia about a year ago, and I can actually identify with a lot of the problems that they have. For example, in one scene the car's horn starts going off for no reason. Also, the van's door comes off...We had both those problems as well.

All in all, very funny. I loved it. Worth seeing many times.

Movie Review: Donnie Darko

2006-07-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

I am awe-struck. I absolutely love this movie. Unfortunately there's very little I can say without it being a spoiler. I can say that it's really hard to think of a proper genre for this movie. It fits so many categories that you can't really assign it to any one in particular. If you like any of the following, then do yourself a favor and rent or even buy this movie. It's just that good. It'll make you think. I have created a little schematic with my interpretation for those of you who have already seen it. But its quite a spoiler, so don't pay any attention if you haven't seen it.

San Diego Comic Con

2006-07-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

Well, I barely survived. But back to that later. For now, let's focus on the good things, shall we? My dad had something really cool happen to him: he ran into Joss Whedon! (if you don't know who that is, then stop reading this blog. You're not welcome here.) He managed to get Joss to sign a copy of "Done the Impossible", a documentary about browncoats. It is now one of my most treasured possessions. Actually, on the subject of Firefly, I have one of the bad things I told you about earlier: I GOT SICK DURING THE COMIC-CON! ARGH! We were all sitting in a little room where there was a SoCal browncoats thing going on, and I felt that feeling when you're about to barf where you feel like someone's pulling your stomach down to your pelvis? Well, I was feeling that, and I decided that I could handle it because I really wanted to stay for the firefly thing. That was an idea so horribly flawed that the word 'bad' doesn't really carry enough meaning. Well, at the last second I realized how abysmally stupid I was being and rushed out of the auditorium, looking frantically for a bathroom, when I encountered a problem; there were two bathrooms, yes, but they were equal distances from me. I took too long hesitating and trying to decide which one to go for, when I puked my guts out ALL OVER THE FLOOR OF THE CONVENTION CENTER (it was carpet XD). Immediately there came this cry, in chorus, of "UUUUUUGGGHGHH" from the other patrons of the Con. But in my opinion that was the best place to have done something like that, because no one ridiculed me or anything, and a few people were nice enough to give me water and stuff. If you five (you know who you are) happen to be reading this, thanks a lot. Of course, there wasn't as much people could do when I puked up about a quart of -stuff- in the front of my dad's car. Oh well, I'm fine now.

sorry dad...

but anyways, aside from the puking and the splitting headache that accompanied and preceded it, comic-con was a blast. I got a ton of swag, including one of those V for Vendetta masks and a Naruto headband(hidden sound).

w00t!

but the line was terrible: longer than the convention center, it was, and about 100 people. I would say it was about 100% humidity and as hot as it can get with that amount of moisture in the air, and in the face of all this trouble there were people who dared to cut in line! Well, my dad certainly set them straight! "Did you guys take cuts?" he asked, and they ignored him. So he yells the same thing, just a little bit louder. At this point, it's obvious they're ashamed and trying not to show it. So my dad turns around and screams to high heaven to all the people behind us "Hey! These three people, this one, this one, and this one, just cut in line! In this weather! How do you all feel about that?" and there are cries of "nuke 'em" and "back of the line" coming from the crowd, and now these people are so embarrassed they can't bear it, and one of them turns around and says "oh, shut up. Can you be a little bit more mature?" and my dad replies "you guys are the ones who cut in line..". This woman retorts "well, we didn't know that we cut!". They could have fixed that real easily, couldn't they? And then another of the people in this cutting group turns around and says to my dad, who is a good foot taller than this
guy, "hey, I might have to come back there and slap you around if you don't shut up." Not something to say when there are 50 people within immediate hearing who are more than happy to call a security guard and get you hauled out of line.

sucks to him.

Kan wuh-mun tzun muh suh bah!

Check this out..

2006-07-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Bullshit levels reached an all-time high yesterday

2006-07-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
I F*$^#@! HATE AIRPLANE TRAVEL...
I had to fly back home from Illinois yesterday, and quite a bit of stuff happened. First, there was a huge jam of people in the line to get through security, and so they started routing people through the special first class security booth.
WHY DO THEY EVEN HAVE A FIRST-CLASS SECURITY BOOTH?
I realize they paid the airline more, but it's not like they paid the airport any more money, so why does the airport treat them to special privileges? I'm sure they can stand to be in line for just as long as the rest of us. But not one certain unscrupulous character. oh no. this guy told everyone in the line that he was gonna miss his flight, and squeezed through to the front of the line. I, for one, knew he was lying. not only was he muttering and talking fast, but he was also blinking a whole lot, which might be things someone in as hurry might do, but I don't know what else it could have been that made me think he was lying. Anyways, an hour and as half later, we were in the food court. I could hardly restrain myself. I wanted so badly to just go over and say, loudly "Gosh, I guess you missed your flight, and after all the people you pushed ahead of in line too! Hey everyone! this poor guy had to pushed in front of the whole security line, and he STILL missed his flight! why else would he be standing here?" and then calmly walk away. OH, how i wish i had done that... One cool thing about security, though, i got asked if i had ID because the woman thought i was old enough to have one...I was soo happy!
We still made the plane, and I got a book from the bookstore entitled "Sun Tzu was a Sissy: How to wage the real Art of War". It's pretty good so far, i recommend you check it out. But, while we were on the plane, it became known that the airport we were due to land at had a power failure, and we were going to land in Denver, Colorado. That was quite a surprise. Thankfully, the Santa Ana airport got thier power back on, and we landed sucessfully. In other news, it sucks to be labled as an "Unaccompanied Minor", because you just get handled to many different people in a very short period of time, none of whom have any real interest in you, and you end up feeling like nothing more than a spoiled bit of shredded organ(chopped liver).
They did show Failure to Launch on the plane, though(irony, anyone?), and I watched that. It was OK, i think. too much of a chick flick for my tastes, but that IS how it's supoosed to be, Unlike superman. I define it as a chick flick because it's all about the woman having all the power in the relationship and being able to leave men very quickly and quietly. I think it qualifies as spousal abuse when either member of a relationship as all the control, no matter the gender. I don't have anything to say in particular about the movie, though. just that it was a chick flick.

Remember the Teutoberg!

SORRYSORRYSORRY

2006-07-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

I've been a-travelin', and I had little chance to update my blog. I'm not gonna say much here because I have very little time to do so, but suffice to say I'm not dead or something, and regular updates will begin soon.
I got a new phone to replace my old broken one today, and ya know what? IT WAS BROKEN TOO! they sent me a friggin broken phone! that makes me mad! but I managed to brave customer support and got them to send me a third phone, so we'll see how that works out.

I'm looking forward to the san diego comic-con, more on that later.

See you somewhere in the world.

Another Movie Review...Souperman Returns

2006-06-29T22:06:00.000-07:00

Short Story: It was good...

Long Story: It was really F*cking good. All the actors were great, special effects were awesome, storyline was well written, GO SEE THIS MOVIE! The only thing I didn't like about it was that they did the same thing they did to King Kong: they made it into a love story. Not that chick flicks are bad, but when I go to the theater to see Superman, I don't want to see a love triangle. *SPOILER* Superman leaves for 5 years and Lois Lane gets married in his absence. *SPOILER ENDS*. That sounds more like Days of our Lives to me.

Now to the part where I may get a little controversial. Has anyone else who has seen this movie noticed it blatantly portrays Superman as Christ? Here are my reasons: 1) Every time he falls, his body drifts into a position not unlike that of Christ on the cross. 2) He gets stabbed right where the Spear of Destiny stabbed Christ. 3) He's a Son sent to mankind by his Father to save mankind from itself. Sound familiar? And finally, 4) He "dies" to save mankind but is resurrected. But, not only is Superman Jesus, people are going around saying that he's gay in this movie. SO-FRIGGIN-WHAT? Should it matter? Why can't we have a Gay idol? I don't think there's any good reason.

I wonder what the Catholic church will do now that we have a movie portraying a gay Jesus? Maybe they'll try to prove that Jesus did have a kid to prove it untrue...

"COME ON, PEOPLE! We need to De-homo Jesus STAT!"

yah know, you used to go to hell for that kinda stuff...

I always relish the after-movie talk. You know, the one you always have as you're leaving the theatre? Well, this time my dad and I were talking about what it must be like to be married to Lois Lane and live in Superman's shadow...How can you live up to the fucking Man of Steel?

and as we always do, we mocked the characters from the movie...Here's the discussion as well as I can remember it.

-"You know, honey, Superman used to fly me to India."
-"Sweetheart, you know we can't afford plane tickets right now..."
-"Superman never worried about money"
-"Superman this, Superman that. Well, if Superman was so friggin perfect why'd you marry ME?"
-"He always left the toilet seat up."

and then, after the movie, we had to go to Rite Aid for some bathroom stuff, and in the shaving aisle I saw a hair removal product called "Aussie Nad's"...Think about it for a second...

Seriously, though, all the razorblades were in those locked glass boxes...I call them "bullshit boxes" because you shouldn't have to deal with them.

That's all for tonight, signing off.

No excuse this time...

2006-06-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm just lazy. Sorry for the lack of updates...

Not too much going on...Summer is fun! My friends and I keep getting together each week to hang out, and it's a riot most of the time.

I beat Metroid Prime 2! I liked the ending, it was just vauge enough that they can do whatever they want with the story...

*sigh* It's really odd, for quite some time now I've had this weird feeling of being unaccomplished, and I don't know why...So I'm sitting down for a couple hours each day to sit and think, and try to figure out something I can do to make this feeling go away...

bbye...

The Return

2006-06-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

As unfortunate as it is, I'm back, with lots of news.

First off, I got a perfect score on that Lit essay, which is good, because it turned out to be worth 200 points. Then, I managed to pull off my presentation in History, and got a perfect on that too. I also beat Metroid Prime 2 and wrote a Metroid fanfiction...I'll post it later, maybe.

Aikido was pure pwnage on wednesday night. Not many people came, so sensei joined the fun, and we did all kinds of disarmament and stuff, including Rondoori(spelling?), which is constant sparring between two attackers and a defender. REALLY FUN...but also exhausting. We also did throwing someone with their own sword...that was cool too.

I'm now going to celebrate the return of my computer by drowing myself in Guild Wars.

2006-06-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

SCHOOL'S OVER!SCHOOL'S OVER!SCHOOL'S OVER!
SCHOOL'S OVER!
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SCHOOL'S OVER!SCHOOL'S OVER!SCHOOL'S OVER!SCHOOL'S OVER!SCHOOL'S OVER!

In other news, I'm just a little bit excited it being summer and all. More news about STUFF to come soon, but right now my primary computer is down(why I didn't update w/ a post like this one when school ACTUALLY got out) and I'm stuck using the clunker that dates back to 1999. This thing needs to be put out of it's misery. Literally. (sorry, too much mad TV since school is out....)

Jeez...

2006-06-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay in updating. As I've said, lotsa crap going on in school these weeks. Thankfully, I didn't have any finals today, because there isn't a health final and my class took the Spanish final on Thursday of last week. So both my classes were basically just goofing off the whole time.

However, my health class was a little uncomfortable, because we had a guest speaker to talk to us about STD's for TWO WHOLE HOURS. Nothing against her as a person, but Gonorrhea isn't THAT interesting. It got worse, though. When asked how elastic condoms were, she replied: "Well, I've seen one stretch over someone's whole fist before". There was dead silence throughout the whole room. Then she passed around a female condom and it was like this tiny storm cloud of awkwardness traveling through the whole room...

The mind boggles...

Still, if that's the worst thing I have to go through before school is over, I'm fine...

also, be on the lookout for a new addition to the webcomic scene, an adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy(a slight parody), written by me and illustrated by a friend. It's just a brainchild right now, but we plan to start work on it very soon.

thanks!

Argh..

2006-06-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

What an absolutely disgusting week. Lots of homework, teachers rushing, etc.

I'm sorry for not updating more often, but I'll do better over the summer.

Whee! We got our yearbooks yesterday! I really like the idea of yearbooks and the whole signature thing. I didn't really make my signature uniform though, I think I signed with at least 7 different signatures... I'm one of those people who writes a really long note instead of a short "Have a nice summer!". I think that's too cliched, but if course, if noone does it b/c they think it's cliched, then it'll eventually stop being cliched, won't it? I probably won't update over the weekend, I'm gonna be real busy.

If you hadn't noticed, I'm kinda regressing into chat speak b/c I'm teaching myself to touch-type b/c right now I usually type with two fingers. The two fingers of DOOM!

-corbel(seems to be my nickname now) out

Looks like we lived through 6/6/06

2006-06-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

I just love tapping into people's religious paranoia.

gosh, I guess it WASN'T REALLY THE APOCALYPSE! WHO'DA THUNK IT?
this is a very small update, because I have a gigantic essay that I'm in the middle of revising. I had two people edit it, and then I took my teacher himself up on his offer of editing it. That was a good idea. He started editing it and was shaking his head and muttering the whole time. I guess I have some work to do...

also, there was a fire near my house today. They're saying it was a car that exploded in a parking garage, but I know the truth. The police just don't want to admit that they have unleashed pyromaniac SARS-infested monkeys with the sole aim of destroying our valuable parking garages

No Aikido tonight

2006-06-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

Sigh...I don't get to go to aikido tonight. My mom is away and we couldn't leave my little brother alone, so I offered to stay home with him.

lotsa homework over the weekend, so I didn't get a chance to post. I had to write up a lab for bio and write a 3 page paper for lit...It seems like many of my teachers are really packing on the work this week.

I also picked up a copy of my school's annual literary magazine, and frankly, I feel inferior. All the artwork and poetry is sooo much better than anything I've done...Although, it's weird, one person(whom I don't know) had a drawing that was really similar to something I drew before the magazine was published...Both pictures had a coiling monster attacking the occupants of a jagged, triangular cliff. I know that sounds really general, but the resemblance is kinda creepy.

The post I couldn't think of a title for

2006-06-02T18:06:00.000-07:00

It was an okay day, I guess. Nothing out of the ordinary happened.

*bleh*

I would almost prefer to have a bad day rather than a day that is so incredibly bland.
actually, now that I think about it, we did start dissecting frogs on Bio...That was fun, but otherwise my day was ordinary and boring.

Has anybody heard of the band "Wolfmother"?
They're really good...But out of my extremely small number of readers, I suspect that probably 0.00004504% have even heard of them, so it's really just me being unrealistic.

MORE WORMS!!

2006-06-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

We finished dissecting the worms today! It was fun, but it didn't last long enough. Oddly enough, I find myself looking forward to when we may dissect fetal pigs next week.

My friend brought a whole box of latex gloves, and so of course, all the slackers who didn't bring their own just mooched off us. But then when we finished, what were we gonna do with all the used gloves? Well, we couldn't just throw them out, so my friend had the idea of making water balloons out of them. He filled one up from a faucet, took it outside, and lobbed it. As he threw it, however, it streched out to like three feet long because of centrifugal force acting on the water inside. Then it hit the ground, and looked like an elongated, gargantuan slug hitting the pavement(if you can imagine that) for a few seconds before it burst and made a huge puddle. It was a RIOT!

So, of course, we had to try it again. However, this time, our choice of gloves was not so great. As my friend was carrying it to the door to throw it outside, I noticed a telltale leak spurting out of the index finger, and another one coming from the glove's wrist. I semi-yelled "Mario! SINK!!" and grabbed the glove. Seriously, i was holding it in the sink when it burst. If I had been a second later, it would have burst all over the floor.

Namaste

Ouch.../YAY!!!

2006-05-31T19:39:00.000-07:00

YAY!!!: We get to dissect worms in my bio teacher from hell's class! I guess his class is only the 5th level of hell.

Ouch...: My brother and I were swimming in our pool and these three jerks from the yard cattycorner to us started catcalling us and shooting airsoft at us. The airsoft I don't mind, it's that these guys who looked my age were shooting a little kid and not feeling any remorse. Brother almost got hit a coupla times, so I got my squirtguns and the hose and taught them a lesson.

I gotta go now, I have a big essay to do for Lit.

Again

2006-05-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

I saw the Da Vinci code for a second time yesterday. If wasn't as good, I think, probably because all the suspense is gone. i saw it with 3 friends and we went out to dinner afterwards. I got the hottest salsa they had on my burrito, and then we got a plate of chips with the same kind of salsa. My friend took a chip and exclaimed "HOW THE HELL could you stand a whole burrito full of THAT!?" It was probably funnier in person.

Nothing much going on, just impatiently waiting for the school year to be over with. My math teacher gave us a giant packet of work over memorial day weekend. She's not from this country, so whenever we have a holiday that concerns US history, she gives us homework. For example: Thanksgiving? HOMEWORK.Memorial day? HOMEWORK. Christmas? NO HOMEWORK.

Namaste

I am SO Lazy

2006-05-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I was lazy and didn't update yesterday. Oh well...

I didn't really have anything to report. Just a normal Saturday, although we did get to go to Barnes & Nobles and I bought a bunch of new manga. Let's see, I got:
Samurai Champloo Vol. 1
Cowboy Bebop Vol.1
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds Vol.1

of course, as always with my dad, the condition of being able to go to B&N was that we had to go to the sporting goods store. I HATE GOING SHOPPING!! SHOPPING IS SO BORING AND USELESS!!

but I did get a squirtgun out of the whole deal, so HAPPY TIME!!

TGIF!

2006-05-26T21:27:00.001-07:00

FRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAY
FRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAY
FRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAY
FRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAY

Nothing much to report, so I'm gonna make it quick.

CST's are over now. (/glee) No more testing until finals which aren't until...Oh. 10 Days.
DAMMIT!
oh well, at least we get out at noon every day during finals.

well, I'm gonna log off now.

cya!

Sigh...

2006-05-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

Well hi again. *yawn* I stayed up till eleven watching the season finale of LOST last night.

...

WOW...

I'm impressed. LOST is a great series, and it only got better last night. I'll post some nice juicy spoilers tomorrow, so you have a day to ponder your fate if you didn't see it. However, the juiciest spoiler I must share now. Its in font that matches the background. Highlight this blank spot to read it: THE INSIDE OF THE HATCH CONTAINS AN ELECTROMAGNETIC ANOMALY, AND WHEN THE RED AND BLACK HIEROGLYPHICS APPEAR, IT MEANS THAT THE ELECTRO MAGNETISM IS "BUILDING UP" PAST SAFE STANDARDS. THIS HAPPENED TO DESMOND WHEN HE WAS ALONE IN THE HATCH. THE RESULT: FLIGHT 815 WAS PULLED OFF COURSE.
anyways, that's all for now. Gotta go play Metroid Prime 2...

-Namaste

Mmmmmmmm.....Sushi!

2006-05-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

We had sushi for dinner last night! The best part is that I got to take some with me to school for lunch! There was a slight power outage last night while we were at the sushi place, and the waitress said "at least you don't have to cook sushi!" LOL.

more testing today. For us freshmen, it was an easy, 30 question CAHSEE placement test. I finished too early, and had like an hour of just sitting there. Also, we got out early today, but it was the early early time: NOON!
I don't think there's any other news to report...Maybe I'll post again later tonight.

Ugh

2006-05-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

Well, hi. We had the Math CST(part 2) and although I know that I did alright, I don't think I did really well. If not, then oh well. I stopped in to see my 7th + 8th grade science teacher today, and had a great conversation with him, as always. Other than that, no real knews to report, except for one thing:

MY FRICKIN SCIENCE TEACHER MARKED ME DOWN A LETTER GRADE ON MY BIRD WALK FOR NOT NUMBERING MY BIRD LIST!

Today in class, he was grading some of them, and he said that if we didn't number it then we would be marked down 5 points. That isn't so bad, right? EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THE WHOLE THING IS ONLY WORTH 50 POINTS! That means that if I managed to pull everything else off perfectly, which I doubt, then the most I can get is a 90%. That 90% then becomes 25% of my grade. The thing that really makes me mad is that I went up to him and said it wasn't fair to mark me down because I put so much effort into the rest of the project, and his reply was "don't be upset"

/frustrated

Put your mouse on the side of the page!

2006-05-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

Well, another tiring day at school. Nothing huge, I just turned in a project for my science class. We had to find many different species of birds and catalog them. Not so hard, right?

An update on the Da Vinci Code thing-
I found an alternative to the actual flyers. The church has a website, and on the website is a page with mp3 sermons. The topic of a particular series is "the Da Vinci Con", basically the church's response to the Da Vinci code.
Just listen to the first five minutes or so

See, the thing is, it's not religion that I have a problem with, but instead(I said this before) when religion becomes a contest. You can have your faith, and I'll have mine, and the neighbors can have theirs. So what if they worship Satan? As long as they aren't hurting others, then it should be alright. Alot of the time, people make the assumtion that their faith's rules should apply to other people or other people's faith, and then things get ugly.

So far, in the first 5 minutes, they've called Dan Brown a "con man". Has the church resorted to slander to protect it's following? Once again, I hadn't realized that faith is so fragile. Maybe it is nowadays...but even then, there shouldn't be any reason for any religion to have to defend itself against A WORK OF FICTION!

I would like to say however, that some of my friends are chrisitians(since christianity is the faith that seems to be having a problem with the Da Vinci Code), and NONE of them have anything against the book. That could be because I surround myself with rational people, but it is a compelling example of people being able to "go with the flow".

A test of "Audioblogger"

2006-05-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry...

2006-05-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

It seems that the scans are too large, so i'll have to re-scan at a lower resolution.
However, I'm too lazy to do it now, so look for them later

Whoops

2006-05-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post the scan of the flyer that the people outside the theater had.
blogger won't let me upload the pics. I'm short on time now, but I'll try to figure it out later...
/headdesk

I came across another blog a while ago, and only recently uncovered it again. It's not just one blog but instead a collection of blogs and websites that create a story. The whole thing is called "the Dionaea House"
dionaea= genus of the venus flytrap
do a google search for all the stuff, but the start of the trail is here:

First Post, not much else to say.

2006-05-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

I am inviting you to a pants party.

yes, the party in my pants.

I suppose introductions are in order. I am a 14 year old living in Southern California. My interests include computers(bet you didn't guess), anime, literature, and pretty much any humor, as long as it's funny. I happen to have bad typing, so now that I have your attention, I'm going to stop typing neatly.

ahhhh, much better. As I was saying, my interests are pretty normal for a 14yr old. I built my own computer and it has only recently started to feel its age. My passions are music and comedy. I mostly listen to Indie rock and oldies, but I can appreciate the classics.

currently, I am in enrolled in 9th grade, in all honors classes. It can be a strain, but I always manage to pull through. Currently we are doin testing, so because I am exhausted afterwards, I might not be able to update too often. However, I am the kind of person who likes to discuss stuff, so I will update almost every day.

speaking of discussing stuff, that's what I'm going to do now.

the reason I decide to create this blog is that I just went and saw "The Da Vinci Code". I loved the book, and thought the adaptation was faithful. However, something happened to me that disrupted my experience of the movie. After the movie, there was a Christian coalition type thing outside mobbing people to get them to realize how sinful and wrong the da Vinci code is(by the way, I almost never capitalize things).

this is a message to all faiths:

if you have such insecurities in your faith that you have to pull crap like standing outside of a movie theater, then there might be a few problems in your religion. Most rational people won't change their religion based on a movie like Da Vinci. also, faith is meant to enrich the individual and provide fellowship; IT'S NOT A COMPETITION! The thing that irks me more than anything is people fighting over a difference of belief.

on the other hand, the movie was great, so I couldn't care less right now.
it was well acted, very well scripted, great special effects, and it was true to the book. That's pretty hard to do nowadays.

ok, I'm done, that's all for now

p.s: i did not see the spell check! that is nifty!