Archive for September, 2004

Ah, every year Starz has a free preview weekend on DirecTV, and these are the times that I love not getting cable. So, I’ve got my TV set up to record a bunch of movies this weekend (in previous posts I mentioned how few movies I get to see, so this is awesome for me), and I started off by watching Lost In Translation. Excellent movie. It’s very different from most movies I see - a lot slower paced, but the story was amazing. It’s rated R, but it’s not that bad. No one else in my family liked it though (they stopped watching half way through).

Of course, having satellite TV also means that I don’t get any of the networks (yes, basically everyone I know, that means I don’t get The Simpsons), which I must say really stinks. I’ll get over it though.

This is the first year that I will need to do a science fair project, and as you can imagine, I’m not that happy about it. At least my sister has already taken Chemistry, so she was able to come up with the idea for an awesome project. I will be studying Collegative properties. In other words, how different ions and stuff, when dissolved in water, affect the freezing and boiling points of the substance. At least it should be more interesting than which type of light helps plants grow the most. Later,

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Mail order Sushi

September 16th, 2004 No Comments

I love movies. Not on the extreme scale of some, but I can’t seem to criticize any movie I see. In fact, whenever someone criticizes an actor or actress, I get tense and want to shout out, “oh what do you know, you couldn’t do any better!” as loud as I can. I’m the same way with music - it’s hard to show me a song that I can’t appreciate. I do have favorites, of course they normally consist of whatever movies I’ve seen in the past three months plus Spirited Away. Unfortunately, no one else in my family likes movies as much as I do, so it’s a rare occasion for me to see a movie in the theater. This brings me to my topic.

Has anyone seen the preview for the movie The Forgotten? If not, go here. It’s a movie about a woman, who’s sun disappears one day without a trace, no one (not even her husband) remembers him. And I’m assuming the movie is about her struggle to uncover the truth and get back her son. Anyway, during the preview, there is a part where there is an interesting shape on the wall. I will now show you two frames from the preview - one showing the studio that made the movie, and another showing the aforementioned frame:


Julianne Moore tries to cover up an embarrassing plug for Revolution Studios. Posted by Hello

Does anyone else think the symbol on the wall looks remarkably like another symbol? I’m interested to see this shot in the movie in context.

Isn’t Amazon.com wonderful? You can get all of your books, music, apparel and Segways in one place! But the newest thing to catch on is not reading material or even a new, innovative form of transportation.

You can now buy Sushi on Amazon

That’s right, Sushi. Of course, most of the food listed there are Kraft dinners and Betty Crocker cake mixes, but there are literally hundreds of pages on Japanese food. I no longer have to drive (or rather, be driven) to Foods of All Nations (a store in Charlottesville that sells food from all over the world) to buy Japanese candy. I mean, who can resist Japanese processed sugar?

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So, who here has a pet? And before you start ranting about the cute thing your hamster did yesterday, I’m only talking about cats and dogs (not that hamsters are any less wonderful, but it’s not my topic today). Now, for all of you with dogs, does your dog drink out of the toilet, even if they only tried it once? This is one of the comedic stereotypes for dogs. I must say that I’ve never heard about a cat that exhibits this somewhat strange behavior, until my cat started to do it about 2 years ago. That’s right, my cat drinks out of our toilet. He sits there with his front two paws inside the bowl, his back legs on the seat, and tongue happily licking up the apparently spring-like water… Why would a cat want to drink that water, when there is perfectly clean, filtered water sitting next to his dry food(true, the dry cat food smells terrible, but the toilet can’t smell any better)?

Now I shall mourn the loss of a wonderful network, brought to it’s destruction by evil media companies. I am speaking of TechTV, the network which united the technology lovers. Little did we know that Comcast would soon “combine” (keep about three shows) which G4TV. The channel is now spewing out crap about “the hottest new games” and 30-minute long top-ten lists. With the one good show they kept, G4 systematically (yet very subtle) replaced the hosts, drastically altered the content, and made the show very stiff and un-natural. I’m sorry, that was probably complete nonsense to you.

Because of hurricane Ivan, rain is projected for next Wednesday until the following Monday. Once again, arg!

#m

Frances. Grr.

September 8th, 2004 1 Comment

I love rain - in moderation, that is. I also like wind - though I don’t mind how fast it’s blowing. What stinks is when they get together to have a party. Yup, Hurricane Frances is taking out it’s anger out on poor little Charlottesville, so it’s been raining heavily for the past few days. Arg, the grass is going to be too long to cut by the time it’s finally dry.

As you may know, I love chocolate (well, pretty much everyone does). But I want to draw your attention to a highly overlooked bit of Swiss masterpiece - Toblerone. CVS was selling this wonderful chocolate for $.99 yesterday, so I was pleasently reminded of it. It is difficult to describe this, so just go to Toblerone.com, or buy some for yourself, and try to ignore some of the more creative photography on the website.

This one I’ve been sitting on for about a year. Do you love free stuff? Well try to contain your enthusiasm, then. Many companies are listed on the stock market, you see, so they want investors to bid up the price of their stock so the foriengly owned money making machine can make even more money. Some of these companies will send “potential investors” (basically people like me with nothing better to do) annual reports and other paper wasting (but very colorful) materials. The only companies I’ve found that do this for free so far is Microsoft (make sure to click on the “add previous years materials” link), The Home Depot and HP. Yes, I know it’s killing trees, but I figure that HP does that for a living anyway, so it’s ok. You don’t even have to give your phone number! If anyone can find any other companies that do this wonderful survice to us, please tell me.

Ooh, and I read the scrip to “Wheres Ubu” (the play I’m in) today. I’ve got three lines! (probably close to the smallest part, but I’m really just glad to be in it). Plus, my first line is “I hacked into the Pentagon!”. Great, now my blog is going to be put on some sort of most wanted terrorists list because of that sentence. ‘Til we meet again,

#m

Nosebleeds and Ubuists

September 7th, 2004 No Comments

Sorry to bring up such a horrible topic, but I hate nosebleeds. From an early age, it was clear I was one of the lucky few who were prone to constantly get them, but about 2 years ago I thought I was finally free. Last night however, I was sitting in my office at about 10 PM, getting ready for bed, when the sudden feeling of a running faucet began somewhere in my upper nasal area. I rushed to the bathroom, and I must say that this was the worst one I ever had, it was just pouring out of there for like 45 minutes.

ugh, I apologize for the rather disgusting paragraph, but I really do hate nosebleeds. In other happenings, my school’s one-act play (just a short play they do during the first semester posted the cast list today. I must say that I did horrible on my audition, but I got the part of one of the Computer Pirates. The play is called “Where’s Ubu”, and I still don’t know what’s it about really, but we should be getting scripts tomorrow. This was both the first big audition that I had gone through, as well as the first cold reading I’ve ever done, so hopefully by the time for the audition for the real school play, I’ll be a bit better. Not everyone made it though, which sucks. It’s a lot different than our old school plays where everyone got a part (I seriously don’t think I would have gotten the part if I hadn’t been in another theater class with the teacher).

Today is Google’s 6th Birthday! Yay! Of course this is going to be the link of the day. So, if you read this today, I want you to go to Google.com and search for something, just because you can. Come on, celebrate the power of searching though billions of pages, and knowing exactly how long it took Google to process you request!

It is now my solemn duty to offer you this fair warning. You see, when a bee stings you, it releases one microgram (or nanogram, I’m not sure which, but lets just say a very small amount) of the chemical that give bananas it’s scent. The real kicker here is that this chemical is a sign, so if another bee smells it, it means come join in the attack! Now, is it me, or does this say something about eating bananas outside?

One more thing, check this page out: Beethoven for Babies. Later,

#m