tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65571133336362846252024-03-14T02:06:09.039-07:00The Window on the SouthJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-20493207124585331872015-08-03T10:26:00.003-07:002015-08-03T10:26:12.504-07:00Too Much Fun!So yeah, last Saturday afternoon was nonstop-action, more or less, and it was an incredibly fun day. Unfortunately, the few photos I have don't properly detail what I went through that day, so I have to try to explain.<br />
First, I hiked a tough mountain trail with a good friend, and it was one of the most fun and memorable things I've ever done. For perspective, my hometown is 4000 feet above sea level. The end of the trail that I climbed is at 8000 feet. In addition to that, the trail is less than three miles long. And I covered the distance in what seems to be considered a blazing speed of 105 minutes. In fact, at several points, I was literally running up the hill, and my friend who completed the trip with me said even when I was barely trudging that he hadn't counted on going nearly that fast. All told, the round trip took four hours, and it was possibly the best I've ever felt about doing one thing for so long as that.<br />
When we finally made it all the way back down, we went straight to his house, where our return was celebrated and our adventure told to admiration at our speed. But that was not the best part. The best part was when my friend put me behind the wheel of his family's go-cart, which they drive on a makeshift dirt track in their backyard. It was actually the first time I'd ever tried to steer anything bigger and more dangerous than a bumper car on a track, and it was awesome. My friend was thrilled at my drifting and my hairpin turns, and I eventually became so confident in my driving that I tried to drive an infinity loop (ka a figure 8) and I almost managed it, but on the last turn I turned too soon and wound up driving head on into some straw bales sitting in the track as a marker, which was actually the best result because I didn't have the presence of mind to take my foot off the gas and probably would have been stuck in drive mode until I crashed anyway pr used all the gas in the tank, which would have been embarrassing.<br />
And after that, my friends took me along to a hangout hosted by another of their friends, which for personal reasons was less fun than what had come before. But I still had fun, because it became a singing party and they gave me a turn. After an awkward pause while I tried to remember a song, I gave them a rousing rendition of a tongue-twister of an Irish folk song which had everyone dancing. And then I raised the bar by following through on a claim that I could increase my speed. At the end of the night, at the urging of most of those present, I took the mic again and delivered a somewhat dramatic performance of a sad song that they specifically requested. That concluded, I told them enthusiastically that I would jump at the next chance to sing at a party. Then I had to leave.<br />
It was literally midnight when I finally got home, and it was undoubtedly the wildest and most fun day I have experienced in far too long...JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-13796663756874035802015-07-27T09:50:00.001-07:002015-07-27T09:50:23.717-07:00Bloggable StuffMy life is a bit more bloggable now than it used to be, and by that I mean I did fun stuff and fun stuff is happening. I might even post a video here next week if all works out. I won't explain the video because it will explain itself when and if I am able to post it. Regarding things I've actually done: I wrote a screenplay for a friend which I was only just able to deliver into his hands at 29 pages long. That is something of an accomplishment because he only asked me for 25 and I could not have made it any longer than it is if I wanted to.<br />
I have seen Ant-Man and I found it hilarious when it was trying to be and cool otherwise. Thinking about it, I consider the first Marvel film I've seen that was actually a good movie, despite the patented Disney cop-out ending and a gaping plot hole in a fight scene that involves flying. Yes I enjoyed it more than Winter Soldier. I guess this is the kind of thing we can expect to see in theaters for far into the future; depending on the studio, you'll get dinos and ripped street racers, Tom Cruise doing thing that are literally basically impossible in reality,( see what I did there-sorry, couldn't resist...) and all your favorite brands that you grew up with alternately cracking wise, exploding things, and/or saving the world/universe. I mean really, why is it that it seems the universe is saved by every "because plot" resolution in alien invasion movies. Are they not smart enough to realize that there are probably 42 other ways they could build a superhighway through space? (bonus points if you understand that reference...)JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-40660263492102505932015-06-06T07:20:00.001-07:002015-06-06T07:20:13.771-07:00Alfrid Can Jump Off A Cliff...Well hey, what happened here? I just remembered that my post from December concerning "Thorin, Kili, and Tauriel: The Moneygrab" wound up so long that I cut it off. I'm going to take the liberty now of finishing it off six months after it stopped being relevant. I doubt that I remember much of anything about it anymore, but we'll see...<br />
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<li>See the title of this post...Not only is he an invented character, but he wasn't anything as a running gag either. By the second or third appearance I was thinking "Go die now. Disappear."</li>
<li>Somebody tell me why they spent so much time on the dwarves putting on fancy armor, but then when they do their heroic charge out of the gate, not one is wearing a thing stronger than chain mail? </li>
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Some things I liked <br />
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<li>Unlike a lot of people, I actually liked seeing the White Council attack Dol Goldur. Though there were some cons to that too-for instance, the wringwraiths being there at all to fight against was simply Jackson revising the history. Though you might as well admit, cliche as it sounds, "You should have stayed dead." is a pretty great line for going into a fight.</li>
<li>The one callback scene I liked was the moment when Dain's army arrives, as it is set up expressly to remind people of the incredible shot from the originals depicting Rohan's sunrise arrival at Minas Tirith, which is probably my favorite movie moment ever.</li>
<li>The one shot of the elf army jumping over the dwarf army was pretty impressive, and it made me think "Oh yeah!" Despite the fact it didn't make tactical sense b/c now the dwarves have to break formation in order to do anything.</li>
<li>Smaug's burning of Esgaroth was really fun to watch, but I would rather have had Bard's impossible kill shot from the book than the monologue-induced death we got.</li>
<li>Bard.</li>
<li>Martin Freeman</li>
<li>That little scene at the end where Bilbo and Gandalf smoke together and the acting tells you how they feel about everything w/o a word being said.</li>
</ul>
There you have it. I finally wrote that post. Now go ahead and enjoy this again...<br />
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I mean, it is ridiculously spot-on- pretty much exactly what I thought...JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-29905337399397316582015-05-22T21:18:00.001-07:002015-05-22T21:18:40.598-07:00Hey! Anybody Out There?There comes a time in a person's life when they know what they are going to blog about. I am not that person. Nor is this that time. But I've been having a lot of fun recently, so I thought I'd come back and say something about it. Specifically, this guy: https://www.youtube.com/user/CalebsCovers<br />
Seriously, check him out. I've never actually heard any of the songs he's covered besides the Disney ones, but he makes everything from Rock to Disney sound awesome. He's also really fun to just watch.<br />
And then there's this girl:https://www.youtube.com/user/malineka146 She's basically trademarked "destroy the song! all the songs!" and she does it hilariously by taking the time to have every line of the song put through google translate ten times in a row. What comes out can be hysterical.<br />
Honestly, I have been listening to these people obsessively since last September. I especially enjoy their collaboration in mangling "Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan. Check them both out. You might find something you can get behind...JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-20249291720957904192014-12-21T07:35:00.002-08:002015-06-06T06:33:02.807-07:00Thoughts on the last Tolkien--inspired movie, (For our generation anyway)Fair warning: Since I prefer to discuss specific elements rather than general overviews, my movie thought posts are always spoiler-heavy. Still here? Cool.<br />
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I have to admit that I was actually impressed with the way the story played out, despite the fact that a combination of intuitive deduction along with knowing the original plot allowed me to make very accurate guesses at the way most of the major parts would go, so that there were really no surprises in store for me. What was delivered in the end was almost comparable to the LOTR, and serves as an adequate prequel, especially considering the way it ended. The overall impact of this film, however, is reduced slightly by the fact that the two films made to cover the rest of the story (+ a ton of added materiel to increase runtime) are, or should be, much more controversial among fans, not least because there are two of them in the first place. But that point has been beaten to death and this post is about the third one.<br />
Things that bothered or were simply unintentionally comical:<br />
<ul>
<li>#1 on this list by a mile is the Romeo/Juliet storyline of Kili and Tauriel, and the quick admission that Legolas himself also has feelings and would rather run off with her than obey dad or go home. Although it didn't stand out quite as much as I worried it would, it could still be seen coming from Mirkwood to Erebor (which is about 100 miles by map) and was clearly the real reason Tauriel was inserted, despite Jackson's politically correct nonsense of how Tolkien would have included her if he had thought of it and everything that came with that. Also, my brother and I saw the Tauriel/Kili tag team fight with Bolg coming as soon as DOS was complete, though we differed on whether Tauriel was going to survive, which is another point altogether.</li>
<li>For the most part the drama was strong and the action came thick and fast like it was supposed to. However, several moments happened which give the impression that Jackson and co. were bored and needed a laugh. The one that trumped all the others for me was the cheesehead troll ramming the wall. Seriously? You had to break in by adding a troll wearing a giant stone block as headgear, which then fell over unconscious? Dain Ironfoot laying out helmeted orcs by headbutting them was actually funny and felt less forced than the other silliness. At the critical moment, Legolas actually does run out of arrows! However, this doesn't change from mini-cliffhanger to comical until he reaches back the second time, as if he's thinking "What, really? You gotta be kidding." Forget gravity! Let's run in midair on falling debris like it's a stairway! :)</li>
<li>Beorn on screen in the theater is literally a blink and you miss it moment. The writers might as well have figured out how to write him out of the story entirely if they're going to do that. In the book it is Beorn who actually turns the tide of the battle, killing Bolg and most of the orc army single-pawed.</li>
<li>Legolas and Tauriel ride out to Gundabad with ideas of making a a tag-team ninja assassin raid on the garrison, and then they watch bats fly out and ride back where they came from. btw, Legolas hitching a ride on a bat and then killing it in a ridiculous way? Totally knew that was coming.</li>
<li>All the gratuitous callback dialogue! It's the same setting, and half the cast were in the other movies. There's really no need to remind people so hard that they are connected by recycling dialogue.</li>
<li>Last but not least; the previous five movies actually made coherent stories, although the points where sequences were cut to sell the EE and avoid intermissions were sometimes made strange by the omission. Not so for this one. Even to me, a casual moviegoer who does not give a lot of attention to this sort of thing, the jump cuts where scenes were removed to make more money later were blindingly obvious several times. Case in point, the war rams. The Iron Hill dwarves Rohirrim-lite charge we see in the trailer is cut, but the writers put Azog on an unassailable tower. Therefore Thorin and co. need goats. Voila, five goats appear mid-battle, center-action, literally from nowhere. This to me is reminiscent of the oddity of Theoden asking Aragorn to ride out of Helm's Deep with him in one room while on foot and alone, then literally the next minute he's in a different room on horseback with 20 riders behind him. Continuity fail.</li>
<li>This post is too long now. The good stuff will have to wait.</li>
</ul>
JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-56493591549244736322014-03-11T15:13:00.001-07:002014-03-11T15:13:47.239-07:00CountdownI'm going to meet my apathy halfway. On Friday I'm going to delete Window on the South and resume posting normally on JT's Tales, provided I have anything to post at the time. I'll keep it like that for a couple of months, and if my life hasn't become more interesting by then I will stop posting entirely, and that would mark the end of my time as a member of the blogosphere...JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-15836597102122116112014-03-10T19:11:00.001-07:002014-03-10T19:11:33.228-07:00Why Not?I just decided to stop by and say that I am really no longer interested in maintaining a blog. I tried and it didn't work. I have nothing to say. The only thing stopping me from deleting it is that I( don't know if I will lose the screen name I can use to comment on your sites...JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-34743582459052882932014-01-30T10:56:00.001-08:002014-01-30T10:56:35.362-08:00LOTR Marathon!<div style="text-align: center;">
Last night I succeeded in completing a one-day extended edition marathon of LOTR. It comes as a surprise to me that I liked it even better this time than the last, although I still believe Jackson made a pile of dumb decisions in the third movie. Since you all know everything I've seen there's no more to say, just that I really disappointed because subtitles are not enabled on the commentary, so I will never be able to enjoy that part...</div>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-38406163247778399392014-01-19T22:06:00.002-08:002014-01-19T22:06:21.876-08:00Best Bits Of Toy Story<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/blwzc3zisRg" width="480"></iframe><br />
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I just felt like putting this up because I recently found myself comparing my life to some of the funniest bits from Toy Story. Also because it's hilarious.<br />
1. "It's a little light bulb that blinks" is how I react to any grand idea someone else dreams up. I can't seem to help myself...<br />
2.Buzz's immediate reaction to having the helmet opened is exactly how I react when anyone else changes my pattern...<br />
3. "you are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity" is how I feel when I'm upset with my homebound life, although in my defense on my good days I would be ready to reply to this with Woody's exact response 'oh yeah well good riddance ya loser..."<br />
I don't why. I'm not the same person inside and out...<br />
Yeah I know I said I would try to post every day and i've already skipped a week. So what? I've already made more posts this month than I had in two months last year.<br />
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-10307510528044471292014-01-14T22:29:00.003-08:002014-01-14T22:29:54.312-08:00What I've Been Watching...I recently watched <i>Men In Black</i>, which I had never seen before but rather curious about. It was a good idea. Although some parts were kind of gross, overall, I found it hilarious and i want to see the sequels now. The only knock I have against it is that it is hard to like all the way through if one finds recurring gags annoying, because they decided to use multiple sight gags three times each, and by the third time I knew it was coming before it happened so the edge was gone...<br />
I have also started going through Netflix's backlog of <i>Arrow</i>, the Green Arrow show that is apparently still popular. I'm not crazy about it because I think they put too much emphasis on inappropriate relationships going on behind the scenes, also because the premise of the show is a "Vigilante execution of the week" kill list which makes the show's protagonist similar to a cross between Robin Hood and Bruce Wayne, with killing. However, the show does have twists and mysteries in it which I am enjoying, so I keep sitting through the episodes to find out exactly how the season's secret is going to play out. But as is seen above, that's not to say that I actually like the show in it's own right...<br />
I saw most of tonight's episode of Agents of Shield. (I missed the first ten minutes) thoughts below.<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">This was actually one of my favorite episodes, because instead of inching things along, they gave us a bunch of stuff at one go. Ok, so May's not connected to Skye at all, which is nice because if that had been the case it would have been the worst case of broadcasting a "twist" ever. However, the story they decided on was that Skye is ---an extraterrestrial? What? But still that seems to close up that line. I was intrigued by the shot at the end of the show where the guy named Donnie who was being transported to the Sandbox cracked the window of the window of the plane by touching it. And if it wasn't a crack it was frost. Either way, he seems to have gotten Mr. Freeze type powers from radiation, probably from when the device exploded. I was disappointed at the end by the reveal that Quinn the nefarious tech buyer guy is also under the control of the clairvoyant (btw, if the clairvoyant turned out to be either an Ultron prototype or one of the lesser Marvel villains, e.g. Dr.Doom, I would not be surprised at all.) This thing of having everyone shield is dealing with be controlled by a hidden supervillian is getting old. Give them an individual to take down once in a while...</span><br />
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-5442446222605203052014-01-12T22:40:00.001-08:002014-01-12T22:40:24.398-08:00Phineas And Ferb <br />
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This show...the only show I really like...and it takes two years for them to finish a season and then another year before it shows up on Netflix...so annoying. It's not my video (I wouldn't copy shows like this) but the quality is good. JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-22876996934224286862014-01-10T22:49:00.000-08:002014-01-10T22:50:06.675-08:00Books And Time TravelAs I said I would, I recently started to count all the items on bookshelves in our house. Since this is still a particularly mind-numbing task, I haven't gotten very far at all. That being said, I am very surprised to find that only three bookcases can contain a total of 632 items. That's including magazines and songbooks. What surprised me even more is that we have 150 individual music collections, including sheet music for practice. Too much! I am guessing that the final total will be in the area of 5000+ when I have reached the last item.<br />
Now for something interesting. I read a lot of news off the BBC website, primarily because, having dedicated sections for all regions of the world, they put out a wider variety of actual news that is interesting than the U.S. media. Well, anyway, tonight I came across a little story about a serious attempt to find time travelers. Apparently some college people are dedicating their time to searching the internet for positive factual references to events that had yet to occur when the reference was posted. Are they getting paid for this? I goes on to say that they put a request on twitter that time travelers post to twitter using a hashtag saying Icanchangethepast2...You think they might be watching too much Doctor Who? Cue the pranksters using the "time travel" hashtag to send out tweets referring to random world events that have not happened..."Emperor Obama announced a new edict" "China annexed Japan. Quality of Japanese goods fell precipitously"<br />
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-62808000935419951512014-01-09T22:10:00.002-08:002014-01-09T22:10:39.943-08:00Strange Grammar And Other Notes<div style="text-align: center;">
Now this may seem silly to you, but it strikes me as odd that it is perfectly normal to make statements like "Team A lost to team B" when it is not possible to say "Team A won to team B" Also that it is normal to say "Here it is" when one has found something instead of using "It is here" or simply "I've found it." "here it is" is in defiance of normal sentence patterns and sounds like a last vestige of a more antique way of speaking that seems to equate the object's transient physical location in space with its nontransient physical characteristics like size and color. What I am trying to say is that equate this with saying something like "and very vast it was, too." which is effectively putting the description before the linking verb, which is against the typical manner of speaking in modern English. I just like anamolies.</div>
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I recently watched the baseball movie 42, and I liked it especially because even though I watched it with the sound off, it was as if I could feel the strength of the acting. In most cases I could imagine exactly how someone was talking within my limited ability to deal with non West Coast white accents. I didn't enjoy every bit, but this was mostly because the end seemed to come abruptly and that I have not had much experience with films that weren't engineered to create euphoric happily ever afters or in which the characters did not go out with a glorious bang. In contrast, this movie goes out with what practically amounts to a drawn out satisfied fizzle. It doesn't bother showing the end of the season either, which if I remember is simply because the Dodgers lost the championship that year and showing the season ending in gloom just does not work.</div>
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Below are my thoughts on the most recent Agents of Shield episode, which I have covered over with whiteout so I could speak freely. You know how to reveal the text.</div>
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<span style="color: white;">Well, I don't think that was the episode the hype said it would be. We got nothing except that Coulson was basically necromanced through the intervention of Asgard. But they didn't actually detail how that worked or anything else. What is it that makes Coulson so valuable to Earth's defenses that he can't stay dead? At the end of the show the doctor said "We didn't want you to stay...that-thing" which means that Coulson somehow passed through a transition from death to typical life functions by way of some state in between, which could be anything from a cyborg to a frankenstein monster to a gibbering vegetating manic. We also discover that Coulson's musical girlfriend, whom James has been speculating has superpowers, had nothing to do with it. And then the cliffhanger scene shows that Mike Peterson their superpowered backup was also picked up by centipede and they have implanted one of the "Eyeballs of instant death" in him. In retrospect it is not a great surprise that he somehow survived, since the serum's volitility in him was neutralized but he still had super abilities that would lend credence to the idea of his having survived the remotely detonated car bomb.</span></div>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-44322329592258977132014-01-07T17:49:00.001-08:002014-01-07T17:52:33.166-08:00Reboot Of The JediSo last night I watched Episode six. I thought it was fun, but there were some things about it that put me off, like most films. However, before I go into that, I will point out parts I actually liked.<br />
<ul>
<li>C-3PO is still my favorite character. In fact my favorite scene of all six films is the one which is just 3PO retelling the previous two films in Ewok language as if he were a sort of Homeric bard, complete with sound effects. Also, it is kind of funny to see that it is rather obvious that he's enjoying the moment when he realizes he's been deified by the Ewoks.</li>
<li>R2-D2 is also a highlight, as it makes me laugh to see how opinionated a little repair droid can be. It's made sillier by the fact that he doesn't have a humanly recognizable face, so one has to dream up his "facial expressions" along with the words that translate the statements 3PO keeps replying to.</li>
<li>Clone troopers actually <i>can</i> hit things in this movie, which makes it a sight better than A New Hope, since it is more believable.</li>
<li>The final battle between Luke and Vader is more fun to watch because of the insinuation that Luke is finally a fully-trained Jedi, and so is as qualified as he'll ever be to take on his nemesis in a lightsaber duel.</li>
<li>The Ewoks</li>
<li>I may as well note here that i like how the tone changed in the last episodes regarding the relationship between Vader and imperial officers. In episode 4, Vader is obeying orders from guys in suits who can do nothing against him, and in the two following episodes he is installed at his rightful place making all the command decisions and being groveled at by the officers.</li>
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Now the obligatory reasons why I didn't think the movie was awesome...<br />
<ul>
<li>It goes by too fast. It doesn't start feeling like it's moving at a normal pace until just before the final battle commences.</li>
<li>The opening sequence of rescuing Han is not really put into context properly, as the film opens with our favorite droids trudging in the middle of the desert with no proper explanation of how they got separated from the others. (Although I realize that this point explains itself afterward, I found it jarring, so I include it.)</li>
<li>Jedi training must not be all it's cracked up to be. In episode 5, Luke spends what looks like two days doing cross-country runs and telekinetically moving rocks while doing headstands. Then he flies off. Early in the next episode, he flies all the way back to Dagobah to complete his training only to be told that he's done but he has to fight Vader before he can consider himself a Jedi. And this is why I'm calling it the Reboot of the Jedi; Yoda claims that Luke is the last of true Jedi. But one man does not a return make. A return would be if more Jedis emerged from hermit seclusion soon after Luke. But since Luke is apparently the only guy in the galaxy who has proper Jedi training anymore, he actually symbolizes a reboot, since he is solely responsible for rounding up a new crop of kids with force powers and training them all.</li>
<li>Darth Vader is not all he's cracked up to be, either. Sure, that suit is a legendary symbol of evil forces these days, but the guy inside is not as fearsome of a villain as people like to think. The most villainous villain ever would have killed his own son once he realized that the kid was a threat to his supremacy over the rest of the galaxy. But he didn't. Instead, he practically went the cliche route of yelling "Save yourself! It's too late for me, but not you!" It can be believed that he's genuinely evil only when he['s in the presence (and under direct Sith mind control,) of the emperor. Beyond the emperor's presence, he has dreams of killing him and implementing twisted dreams of a benevolent dynasty over the galaxy. I will always believe Vader is misunderstood and that makes it impossible for me to dive deeply enough into the Star Wars galaxy to ever think myself a fan.</li>
<li>What exactly told the entire galaxy simultaneously that the empire had fallen? The Death Star explodes, and in no time at all the entire galaxy is a show-stopping block party...</li>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-728544465481847622014-01-06T23:21:00.002-08:002014-01-06T23:21:34.082-08:00Thoughts On Blogging<div style="text-align: center;">
It's a funny thing about blogging, that if one have a few frequent commenters, one can begin to feel as if one has long-distance friends, because a high volume of comments will reveal a lot about the person leaving the comments, to the point that one can make accurate predictions of a blog reader's response to certain posts. This of course depends on what one finds interesting enough to talk about or if one's blog has a dedicated theme. Still the point remains that if two people met and happened to have been reading each other's blogs for the past few years or even months, both would know a lot more about each other and some of their friends than people are generally willing to divulge on any other social site. (Assuming they try to be careful about hiding their details and only "friending" people they know, like I do.) However, this is impossible with a blog, because a certain degree of revealing everything about your life is inevitable if you're determined to write posts that others will actually read, and then reply to. This is not to make the claim that I have anything against my "bloglife", only that I have noticed this and when I notice something of this nature I feel compelled to babble about it until i have babbled myself out.</div>
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Likewise, having regular readers can make some feel obligated to post, because they know that there are people who take the time, however short it is, to check whether they have anything to say. I have a couple of blogs in my news feed in which the writers will invariably introduce a new post after a long absence with some form of "Please forgive my lack of posts, life got in the way" Note: No one is in any way obligated to post to their blog, and "life got in the way" is a poor excuse, because if such a thing happened, you've been doing things with people you actually know, rather than devoting yourself to "What shall I write to others I only think I know and am unlikely ever to meet." (See the first part of this post)</div>
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Despite the fact that the above sections might be considered an attack on blogging, which would be a very odd topic for a blog post, I actually like doing this because my life is very slow right now and otherwise I would be very bored if I didn't have other, interesting, blogs to look at every few days. I also wrote this post so that you will be aware that when the time comes that I miss a post by accident, (which is sure to happen eventually) this is because for once life got in the way and I am not going to put any silly excuses in front of my return post. </div>
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Happy blogging!</div>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-88354297933528822382014-01-05T22:03:00.001-08:002014-01-05T22:03:26.284-08:00Fail...<div style="text-align: center;">
Well, I was going to leave you with a couple of comically bad drawings of Aragorn and Arwen from the Two Towers poster which I did myself to show an example of where I am at. But-the scanner doesn't scan to this computer, the one that I'm using right now because it's available and easy to use. Instead I will just leave you with my new profile pic as a stopgap.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What I'd look like in Middle-Earth</td></tr>
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This was not my choice. This was the idea of my best friend who hasn't seen me live in years. I made one of him that looked like Faramir.</div>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-22297259095145900332014-01-04T23:10:00.001-08:002014-01-04T23:10:46.280-08:00Factoids I Didn't Know-From The Lord Of The TriviaSome of these may already be well known to you from the extra material on the LOTR EEs. However, if they are to be found there, I wouldn't know, since the commentaries do not have subtitles enabled. These are notes I found in a brand-new book my parents gave me for Christmas called <i>Middle-Earth Envisioned:The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on Screen, on Stage, And Beyond</i>. It is a complete history of all adaptations of Middle-Earth from the very beginning up to Jackson's <i>Unexpected Journey</i>.<br />
<ul style="text-align: center;">
<li>Orlando Bloom tried out for Faramir. (Legolas was a consolation prize.)</li>
<li>Russel Crowe was on the short list for Aragorn</li>
<li>The reason for three films (for LOTR) was money. A studio exectutive is quoted as saying "Why make people pay $18 when you could make $27?" After having been shown a rough cut from Jackson's footage.</li>
<li>At the height of Beatlemania, John Lennon wanted a film made which would have had the Beatles starring as Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, and Gollum.</li>
<li>Ian Holm was given the part of Bilbo after having portrayed Frodo in an earlier BBC radio version.</li>
<li>Even with the EEs, not all the workable film was used. Jackson does too want to sell a "super-edition" in which the films would be even longer. Perhaps in 2017 fans will be urged to get the super-edition boxed set,which would of course contain two days worth of materiel and retail for about $175... </li>
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The book I got these factoids from is worth checking out just to see the artwork inside. It's riddled with awesome artwork by at least eight different people, including John Howe and Allan Lee, the head artists on Jackson's version.</div>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-81795663073544567322014-01-03T22:54:00.001-08:002014-01-03T22:54:45.131-08:00The Future Will Bore You Stiff...(But I hope not)<div style="text-align: center;">
Well this is my post for today. I didn't actually do anything today because I had no plans, and now I have come face-to-screen with a problem one might have all the time, having decided that one will post every day only to be reminded that one never does anything....</div>
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I intended to go be at the show of my friends who recently started one of those cliche garage rock bands, but jumped the cliche by getting a show two months after they decided they were a band. I'll find out how it all went down tomorrow I think. I couldn't go because someone remembered that when faced with large crowds and loud noise, which would both be had in plenty, I disappear into the wall, unable to think a thought. It is strange that I myself never remember this fact when confronted with the chance to get together with my friends-however if I did I would never go anywhere.</div>
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Something coming up that I am actually going to do is that I am going to do a complete census on all the bookshelves in our house. (excluding cookbooks, of which my mom has at least twenty) The idea of the project is to find out just how many books we've got that are simply deadweight to remove. The thing is that we have more books than we have available shelf space,which leaves random books scattered throughout the house on top of others properly shelved, and several more that aren't really on shelves at all. And to add to the congestion there are several around that my youngest brother outgrew several years ago.</div>
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Someday I am going to make a post of nonsensical Keep Calm memes for no reason. Also I expect that on some days my posts may wind up being mindless rambles. I wish I had a theme...</div>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-12137546341476175892014-01-02T23:13:00.002-08:002015-06-06T07:33:08.751-07:00To Walk, To Read, Perchance To Dream<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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But I did. And that was my afternoon today. My family thinks with good reason that I don't have the strength for it, but today I did, and I am very happy with it. Never mind that doing it once takes all the endurance I normally use in two or three days, or that we live a mile from anywhere, so I don't get far when I use all my energy, but I did it. That's what matters. A whole hour by myself, on my feet. It's really a great achievement by my standards.<br />
In other news I have spent the past week reading the Ender's Game series which I was given for Christmas because I declared myself a fan of the first book, which the film was based on. (The film was actually a very strong synopsis by the way. Too bad they won't do any in the other series. This would be because they opened it just before a behemoth tentpole, namely Thor 2, which sucked away all its money, and since money is the language Hollywood understands, no more Ender movies...)<br />
The first book, Ender's Game, is a character-driven story which was just as good as the first time I read it, even though I knew the plot twists this time.<br />
The second book is Speaker For The Dead, in which hardly anything actually happens and it reads like a thesis on philosophy. It is hard to read, but it is passable because it is really just a prologue to the next thousand pages in the last two novels. This story takes place 3000 years farther into the future, but due to relativistic time-jumping spaceflight, Ender is only middle-aged at this point.<br />
The third one is called Xenocide, and it is the most annoying, because while being longer than either of the first two it is also packaged as a philosophy thesis, to the point that the existential arguments trump the actual story.<br />
The last one is called Children of the Mind and is really to be thought of as the second part of the previous one, divided because the third one would otherwise have been a mere 900 pages long. It works better this way because the last one returns to a character-driven base. I have 100 pages to go in the fourth one and by the end I might find that I enjoyed it more than the first one.<br />
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<br />JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-59165004228675669412014-01-01T22:12:00.004-08:002014-01-01T22:12:56.848-08:00Day 1, 2014<div style="text-align: center;">
As promised, I'm publishing a post. Today I spent all afternoon failing to add a blog button to my blog. I follow all the steps but for reasons unknown to me I still don't have a working link button. I guess it's a lost cause. Also, note that I've changed my picture to the minimum speed sign which is still my favorite personal joke. This is because the Faramir pic I'd been using for the past year suddenly disappeared while I was trying to get the button. Last night (Dec. 31st) we sat through Empire Strikes Back. Only one more to go. I do not know. Although I can believe why others say it is the best, because it seems to have the tidiest storyline and all that, it just did not engage me. The sequence of encasing Han Solo in carbonite used to scare me to death but this time it was just like "ok, that's over" It annoyed me that Yoda's entrance had him acting like he'd lost his mind compared to the wise old master of the prequels. Having him rummage arbitrarily through things and then get pouty and say he'd only help if he could keep the flashlight object was beneath the jedi master dignity the character had during the rest of his scenes. And instead of building the tension, the repeated failures of the Falcon's hyperdrive devolved into a running joke. Also how the last part of the movie was the obligatory "untrained kid confronts most powerful dangerous enemy, does not die." It looked cool before, but a real comprehension of events just made it feel like a throwaway. How nice for that convient radio tower thingie that wouldn't even bend under Luke's weight...</div>
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<br />JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-59268565553882997752013-12-24T10:35:00.001-08:002013-12-24T10:35:24.515-08:00X-Wing ExplosionsWell, first off, Merry Christmas everyone. Have a happy new year can wait till next week. Second, continuing our journey through the most famous fictional part o0f the universe, we watched A New Hope last night. For future reference you can get a good idea of my opinion of a film by noticing what verb I use to describe experiencing it. "watched or saw" always means it was fun, while if I disliked it I tend to use "sat through" and if I think it really stunk I use "endured". With a trigger word in there one really doesn't have to read the rest of my post to get my thoughts. However, we continue.<br />
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<li>C-3PO, like it or not, is my favorite character, for reasons that are apparent to those of you who like the movies.</li>
<li> Han's banter saved the film</li>
<li>Jango Fett apparently was a worse shot than everyone thinks. Since the clonetroopers are copies of him with advanced weapons training they should be able to hit something once in a while. By rights all the main characters died five times during the making of this movie.</li>
<li>THINGS THAT WERE ANNOYING OR JUST SILLY</li>
<li>Anikin messed up Darth Vader. By extension the prequels actually did dilute the originals. By that I mean after going through the prequels I find myself incapable of believing Vader's really as evil as he's cracked up to be, as crazy as that sounds. Also why in the world is Vader taking orders from guys in suits when he could just kill everyone with the force if they objected?</li>
<li>In the opening, Luke is a bored angry kid. By the end he's a squad leader in the final attack for no apparent reason even though he just got there.</li>
<li>The whole movie covers about two to three days, with riding speeders and flying at lightspeed all over the galaxy, not much more time could have passed.</li>
<li>Granted, this was done in the seventies, but in retrospect, the plot point of Luke and Han Solo both falling on their faces over Leia is so cliche its painful.</li>
<li>That moment when a Whovian Rebel realizes that the clarinet-playing aliens in the Mos Eisly bar look very similar to the ood.</li>
<li>That pointless sequence at the beginning that was just an excuse to chop an alien arm off.</li>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-74295382399797587042013-12-20T22:20:00.001-08:002013-12-20T22:20:12.780-08:00Just So You Konw...One of my friends had been pressing me to go see Desolation of Smaug alone with him, even if both of us had already seen it once. Long story short we went back tonight and it was far more enjoyable, although still just ok. This time I sat directly under the speaker so I was able to hear 90% of the dialogue. And I was able to suppress my frustration at all the contradictions and watch the film as if it was an original story, and view<br />
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ed that way the only really annoying thing about it is the extensive use of whirly-gig pans from straight down and straight up. There is also some use of shaky cam during action sequences. It really made me sick trying to see the movie through the messed up camera. I'd like to rescind my claim that the extended version will make it worse, in part because this time I saw some shots that clearly needed more shots in between. Overall if anything stops me from sitting through this film again it will be the camera angle decisions.<br />
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-92206120776898705252013-12-19T13:22:00.003-08:002015-06-06T07:37:44.359-07:00And Finally...Revenge of the Plot DeviceWe saw Revenge of the Sith last night.I liked it better than I anticipated, mainly because I discovered to my surprise that Anikin/Vader had not in fact turned downright evil right away. even after he was deformed and locked inside the iconic Vader suit, he was still at first just the Anikin who had joined the dark side only because he thought Sidious was going to tell him how to make Padme immortal. I also appreciate that this movie explained why Luke and Leia are known by different last names and come from different home planets.<br />
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that up until the moment when he refused to kill Sidious, Anikin was still doing everytrhing the Jedis told him even as he got more and more frustrated at them. Even when he massacred all the Padawans he was doing it under the power of Sith hypnosis more than because he wanted to. So long story short I can see why some people like him for his tragic storyline. And anyway, episode six proves that he never entirely lost that spark of goodness he had from the beginning, even after living as the Empire's most dangerous enforcer for 20 years.<br />
But enough about Anikin, except that his scenes alone with Padme still involved the most generic responses they could think of and went on for more than longer than we were willing to accept.<br />
I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more, but I feel that "order 66" the executive order to assassinate all the Jedi, just came straight out of, well, antimatter, because there were exactly zero scenes in either of the two movies that showed the Chancellor/ Lord Sidious installing this order into the clones' programming, either directly or by insinuation. In which case it would be logical to assume at first glance that the clones still think Palpatine is only the leader of the Senate and a supporter of the Jedi by association and so why in the galaxy would he suddenly want them all killed. Coming with no foreshadowing or anything similar, order 66 ranks as one of the biggest and most baffling plot devices I've ever seen, although I will concede that the sequence that came out of it is in my opinion probably one of the great tragic sequences in modern movies.<br />
Other weird things that happened were for instance when Anikin caught fire, sure he was stuck next to a lavabed, but I don't remember seeing any lava get on him and then a second later he was covered in perfectly normal fire. What did the air suddenly spontaneously combust? Since I did not see any logical progression, I decided that the explanation was that he got so angry he couldn't hold it anymore and literally set himself on fire through the power of the force misdirected, The other thing was that there was far too much chopping off of hands. It seemed to happen to everyone and it reached the point where it was ridiculous instead of surprising.<br />
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-15832145668206154512013-12-17T22:49:00.002-08:002013-12-17T22:49:41.850-08:00That Day Again<div style="text-align: center;">
Today was my 20th birthday. It was awfully quiet as I had nowhere to go and I did not invite friends over this year. But now I feel old. My parents gave me a set of carbon shaft arrows to use for my target practice and $200 which are to be dedicated to getting out of the house in a cab or a bus if I start feeling a case of cabin fever. Since up to now I have been unable to leave when I wanted to, I have a chronic case of cabin fever, but this will surely help.</div>
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We had apple pie (which inexplicably melted into applesauce pie) and ice cream afterwards. and it was a little awkward because all 20 candles melted onto the pie crust so that there were blue streaks all over it that made it hard to look at. Overall, it was a nice day and now I am officially looking forward to Christmas and beyond...</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I decided a few days ago that I would just add random old photos to the end of my posts for a while. This is my dog. He was awesome but he tried to climb out of his pen once too often. I still miss him.</td></tr>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557113333636284625.post-65720798584263452102013-12-15T00:49:00.001-08:002015-06-06T08:11:46.512-07:00FragmentsIt's a smashing success. In the week since the post detailing my writing playlist, the use of said playlist enabled me to add 12 pages to my WIP this week, a rate about ten times faster than I've ever achieved before.<br />
Note: Just to confirm; I am a pessimist at home so my first reaction to a film is invariably focused on what bugged me and I tend to find a film more fun if I ever watch it again. However this does not detract from the fact that is my genuine belief that most DoS is just bad. <br />
Secondly, I have been to see Desolation of Smaug already. Although I will grant that those who have never read the book will find it a blast, even if the continuity editing is choppy in the beginning, if you have read the book the middle part of the story is almost unrecognizable and you will have to reconcile your enjoyment of Tolkien's timeless classic with the alternate universe version the Peter Jackson has produced that has the same name. My personal opinion is that this film as an adaption of a book is a diseased piece of junk that needs to be remade as soon as anyone gets up the nerve to do it. In contrast to the LOTR, a longer version of this move would actually make it even worse instead of making it more comprehensible. (Minor spoiler hidden by whiteout) In particular because <span style="color: white;">the Tauriel /Kili relationship does not work </span>and the cgi is particularly obvious during major sequences, making it feel like one is watching cutscenes from a modern video game.<br />
Related note: I hope Peter Jackson has given up claiming that he's honoring Tolkien's legacy, since his latest statements in defense of Tauriel were 1) a claim that Tolkien would have added an empowered female character, but this slipped his mind. and 2) that it is somehow commiting gender discrimination not to add said empowered female into a movie that already has plenty of characters nominally based on a story that has its share of hordes of female fans already. For one thing, not being a member of Tolkien's estate, Jackson has no business making even an implicit claim that Tolkien left anything out by accident. Second, in my perspective, he seems to be devaluing all the current female fans if he claims that they need a character inserted just for them. Can you say PC?<br />
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Desolation of Smaug: The atrocity people like.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also adding this picture I took three Christmases ago b/c it reminds me of the line "The trees like torches blazed w/ light" Pretty close don't you think?</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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JThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15791148729590612474noreply@blogger.com1