So a friend of mine makes movies. He's super talented. For Halloween, he decided to make a short film about zombies. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, but still fun as a gore-heavy zombie thriller.
I was a zombie in this; look for the brown shirt. They actually had to recycle me a few times as different zombies on account of this being a basically no-budget short film.
We had fun making it! Hope you have fun watching it.
I don't know how many of you read my offsite blog or follow me on twitter, but if you recall a few weeks ago I did something called Twi Hard, where I subjected myself to the Twilight movies, mostly while inebriated. Well, once again I feel the itch of cinematic masochism, and decided that the only logical thing to do this time of year is to repeat the process, except this time with the most horrible Christmas movies I can find. I was able to located a copy of that horrible Nutcracker movie that came out last year, and I will also be watching the Star Wars Holiday Special, which is allegedly so awful that George Lucas has completely disowned it. After having the trailer and plot explained to me, I realized that I'm going to need enough alcohol to kill a Wookie in order for this to work. Of course, "Christmas Beeracle" is the stupidest name I was able to come up with. If anyone has a better name, and more importantly, some really awful Christmas movies for me to watch, please let me know.
THE LIST:
The Nutcracker in 3D
Star Wars Christmas Special
My internet was down for most of Sunday, which delayed Pocketblog by a day.
The talented Mr. Weatherman brought this site to my attention on Google+. As I do with things that are new and shiny, I signed up for it and was instantly greeted with a blank template instructing me to begin writing. I passed out before I finished the words but it was actually pretty cool. At first glance it seems like just a little diary-style shindig, but delving into it reveals that the developer of the site has actually put together a really neat project wrapped in a very basic shell. It grades word count, awards points, and even puts together an extremely impressive breakdown of stats. Here's mine for today. I can't say that it is extremely accurate on some of it (for example, being in the warm arms of Jack Daniel's during the writing, I can confirm that I was most definitely NOT "Upset", at least not until the very end. On the other hand, I'm not sure what I was), but other parts of it are frighteningly on point, and I would love to see what algorithm this guy uses to calculate the stats. For private journaling, it's pretty cool. There is a one month challenge I can take on for October, and if I miss one day in October and/or write less than 750 words in a day, my name goes onto the Wall of Shame until I can get a perfect run for the next month. Do I dare accept? I don't know yet how busy I will be so...I don't know. What I do know is that this site is really awesome and you should give it a shot.
I'm ready to accept my fate as a single man for the rest of my life. As soon as we are both available to do so, my roommate and I are going to add neon green racing stripes to my car. It's a little known fact that this car is already a metallic pinkish-purple ("raspberry", as the desperate car salesman described it). It also has bullet hole stickers on the back, and I really want to throw on a magnetic mustache, which we totally sell at Hastings. This is a '96 Cavalier, and if I ever have sex inside this car after these new changes, I fully expect the universe to just straight-up fucking kill itself.
I hope everyone is ready for this. I'm going to update the original post for the Beard-Off when the time comes. Remember, everything must be shaved on October 1, and then grown out for as long as you can. Shave whenever you want, but remember that it means you're dropping out of the Beard-Off. I can't remember if alcohol was involved when we thought of this, but it certainly will be in the future. Either way, there's going to be serious beardage in this place.
Had some serious writer's block this week, but I took a hot shower and it kind of helped.
For a long time, I have been planning a podcast on movies with my roommate. This has been our intention since the beginning of the summer, but it never really materialized. Then other things got in the way, such as a potential job that would eat up all of my time and only afford me 3-4 hours of sleep a day, during the day. The news came through yesterday that I did not get the job, so I took it as a karmic suggestion that sleep is good and I should take a second crack at the podcast. We are even more excited now to do it. It'll be a few weeks out still while we plan how the segments will be laid out, figure out recording, consider adding a third person, and purchase the necessary equipment, but it's a thing, and it's going to happen. Also, if anyone has any tips on podcasting, please let me know. I was part of a podcast a few years ago but I was not involved in the editing process so I don't know much about that. Any suggestions or advice are much appreciated.
Badware is internet slang for anything that can harm your computer, and now, for the second time, mine. If you recall several months ago, my computer was afflicted with a vicious malware virus that ended with me effectively placing a digital shotgun to the proverbial throat of my laptop and pulling the trigger. I wiped that bitch clean, and now I have Linux. I later found out that I could have asked my friend to go into the computer code and delete the malware manually, thus saving my computer. This is what happens when we make rash decisions. Anyway, now I have this awesome dual-monitor computer that I build manually and still don't play any games on. Eventually I'll start using what $1300 got me.
Anyway, I started getting complaints that my emails would always go to spam folders. Mostly this was internal university emails, and the complaints were coming from professors. So I called IT and they got back later that day and said that my computer is embedding an HTML malware into the emails before sending them out, and the spam filters were finding it. Here is where it gets weird, however. This gentleman on the phone said that he looked through the code and found that the source apparently was something called "my dirty hobby". I pulled out the Linux laptop and did a search for it to see if it was a regular adult site or a known worm. It pulled up some German stuff on the first page. I don't speak German, but I know a teensy bit, and since some words are roughly the same in both English and German, I was able to infer some things. I could not imagine how this could have gotten on here, since there is no way in HELL I'm going on anything remotely adult-oriented on a $1300 machine.
Before nuking my hard drive again, I called my computer-savvy friend over, and he immediately brought hell down on my computer with a plethora of antivirus and scanning programs, including a formidable-looking Spybot 2.0 (WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, MALWARE??). Unfortunately, it did not find anything. At the very least, if worst comes to worst, I have a backup hard drive for my music and documents and I know now to call my friend before going crazy and killing my computer. It might be best if I never had a child, either, mainly because I wouldn't want to have the same reaction if he or she got a virus.
Holy fucking shit did I love this movie. Drive is now the absolute best movie I've seen theatrically this year, and stands tall alongside I Saw the Devil as the overall best film I've seen this year on any format. It will be interesting taking them both into account at year's end to name my favorite. I was expecting a great movie, and yet it shattered all of those expectations because it was just so much more. I think the biggest factor in surprising me was that the script was so sparse. There is not a lot of dialogue, and a lot of the most important bits occur through a gesture, action, or facial expression. It speaks a lot for the acting and directing chops of everyone involved in the film. I used to do a lot of acting, and this is the stuff that has always been really important to me. I've never felt that dialogue is as important as physicality, so the script for Drive (and the book it was based on by James Sallis) catered very well to my mentality when it comes to acting and characterization. Perhaps that's also why I loved I Saw The Devil so much; the best bits in that film were also devoid of any spoken dialogue. I gushed pretty hard about the film in a review I wrote about it, too. Maybe a bit too much, but considering that Ryan Gosling is on my list of "Top 5 Men I Would Let Have Their Way With Me" (don't lie to yourself, every male has one), it was worth it. And that list? You'll see it eventually (maybe). If you'd like to (you do).
More thought went into this installment of PocketBlog. More thought than what is going into my homework, anyway.
I suffer from abysmally bad sleep problems. It usually takes me upward of 45 minutes to fall asleep, and even then I toss and turn a lot and do not get rest. My roommate said he watches Futurama on Netflix and just falls asleep during that. On a whim, I decided to try it. I set my PS3 to shut off automatically after an hour, and my TV to shut off after the PS3 turns off. When I woke up the next morning, I realized I had fallen asleep during the first episode I had started playing. That means it took probably about 15 minutes for me to fall asleep. Awesome.
I have a theory on this. I think that what causes me to have trouble falling asleep is the fact that my brain cannot turn off no matter what, and it is always racing and keeping me awake from stress. In addition, any time my fan rustles a paper it startles me and makes me more alert, basically resetting the "process" of relaxing and falling asleep. Having something playing from Netflix helps because I can listen to it as I fall asleep. Not only does it allow my brain to calm down and center on one thing until it relaxes enough to catch up to my motionless body and send my to dreamland, it also causes me to ignore other noises from papers and whatnot, and prevents me from becoming startled or nervous. Finally, the auto shut-off means that my mind can enter REM deep sleep and won't be kept from doing so by the sound from the TV. It's awesome. I still don't get a lot of rest (need to get medical tests to figure out why I am always still tired), but now that I have sort of solved the problem with having trouble actually getting to sleep, I can take another baby step.
I'm thinking about starting a band. Nothing special, really. I already compose electronic music under the title of The Lovely Sins, so recently the though has struck me that I should recruit a female vocalist and shift a focus from completely electronic music and incorporate duet vocals, piano, and strings. I have since decided that one of the first things I will do if this happens is cover this excellent song from The Joy Formidable. Imagine the song with a bit more of an electronic hook, strings & piano, and a male/female harmony. It's part of a focus recently on covers I would want to do. Other covers I would love to end up doing would be Bloc Party's "Like Eating Glass", Placebo's "Meds", and A Perfect Circle's "A Stranger".
Obviously, it wouldn't be all covers. I've been playing for a while with a concept of a slow, instrumental album chronicling the death and eventual journey to the afterlife of a young girl, with perhaps a final reawakening in the real world with her family. It's something I've been trying to put together for a long time, and it's a story that means a great deal to me so I want to get it right.
Admittedly I have developed a minor obsession for this film. Upon my first viewing, I was transfixed by the visceral visual style of the film, a harsh and colorful aesthetic that would make Tom Tykwer proud. I also fell in love with the brilliant, adrenaline-pumping soundtrack from the Chemical Brothers, already a group that had found their way into my heart several months ago for reasons I can't remember. Actually, I might have ever become a fan after hearing some samples from the Hanna soundtrack, and then worked my way backward through their discography. I think that's it. Regardless, it's awesome and it'll be totally worth it if I end up actually blowing out the speakers on my car. But I digress. Prior to my second viewing of Hanna, I did some research on the film and realized that director Joe Wright intended the film as a sort of subversive fairy tale. It fits, with a sort of "evil witch" villain that works alongside a character who is, in retrospect, the absolute best human embodiment of a Big Bad Wolf that I have seen in film in many years, with his creepy whistling rendition of the Chemical Brothers' "The Devil is in the Details" (See below). That's not to mention the mushroom-themed house Hanna visits and the other strange and wondrous locales she sees. This, of course, will make for an excellent blog entry about how films can create a subversive version of a fairy tale. I'm thinking of incorporating Inglourious Basterds but I need more suggestions if you have them, please.
We all have our disagreements with the people we work with. I have my fair share, and have even become infamous for my aggressive managerial style and tendency to get very cold when someone messes something up. That's fine. I also like to joke around, and I have a dry sense of humor that isn't always easy to read. Unfortunately, some of my humor (I cannot imagine what I said) has been misconstrued as a personal attack on my immediate supervisor and now someone has been spreading rumors that I am preparing to stab her in the back and take her job. We had a heart-to-heart today, and it honestly hurt to hear that someone thinks I want my supervisor's job. Granted, I do not always agree with her, but she's still great at what she does. I need to get everyone I work with to realize that this is the case, before the rumors get out of control. It's frustrating and upsetting that this happened, but as long as my supervisor knows the truth, I guess that is what is most important. I should also probably keep an eye on the things I say, even if they seem inconsequential.
I want to start doing it again. PocketBlog, I mean.
I'm back in classes. It occurred to me that I am in my final year of undergraduate study. This saddens me greatly. College has been the best time of my life, some choice unpleasant events notwithstanding, and leaving them behind will certainly also leave a void in me. Good thing there's grad school, which I fully intend to go to. This semester is largely minor-focused (criminal justice), so it's not really that much fun. I like one of my courses (Victim Studies), and I'll be doing a presentation on human trafficking. Maybe I could just screen the movie "Taken" and make that my presentation. That's what happens in the human trafficking business, right guys? Right? The other two classes are not as interesting; they're about general criminology (kind of interesting, but I am having trouble getting out of bed so early for it) and justice system ethics (fuck me). Then, there is a course on the psychology of human sexuality (fuck yeah!). I'm also taking a Japanese language class, and it is hugely interesting. I have also had two girls ask me for my phone number within three days of the class. Which is kind of awesome considering that never happens. Three new friends in that class are getting me involved again in stuff on campus. I feel younger.
In studying Psychology, I at one point put a lot of research into neural plasticity. Simply put, neural plasticity is the ability of the brain to essentially rewire itself in the event that a certain avenue of information is damaged, slowed, or cut short. The brain is literally creating a detour for its functions. I also found that learning a new language actually creates these new avenues manually, because the use of a different language--EACH different language--is a different avenue through the neural network. Not only that, but people over 50 who learn a new language can slow down dementia by 200%.
It's strange: the Post-Traumatic Stress from when I got robbed at gunpoint has made me somewhat foggy and forgetful. I don't know why. It's difficult to think clearly, however. Other stressful things add onto it and it becomes difficult to optimally operate mentally and control my temper which flares up considerably more often nowadays. Every day, after my Japanese class, my brain feels clearer. I'm in a great mood. Life feels fine. It's as if my mind has been refreshed. Learning a new language does this. It's an incredible feeling, and it's like a drug for me. This is why, starting with Japanese, I intend to learn one new language every two years (one if it's an easy language). It's a pretty significant undertaking, but I'm excited. After the two years I plan on spending on Japanese, my next options will be either French, German, American Sign Language, or Icelandic. I don't expect Icelandic to be particularly useful, but it's a beautiful language, and I would love to know it. Mostly because it is the mother tongue of my musical hero, Jón “Jónsi” Þór Birgisson. No, you're a fag.
Maybe I'm watching Louis C.K. too much, but seeing him talking about his shitty body is making my notice my piece of shit body. I'm just not operating at very optimal capacity here, people. I eat the worst food and the most exercise I get is the half mile trek to classes. That's nothing. Luckily, one of my buddies in class is a major health nut who works out like a machine and goes to the supplement store like three times a week. I'll trade looking like a bitch for a few weeks next to this guy if it means I can be physically healthier. I'd like to turn this Windows Vista "lol I break down a lot derp" body into a Windows XP "I fuck shit up and everyone likes me" body. Also, I'm tired of looking down at my belly and hating myself. It's really not that bad, but it will be if I'm not careful.
Oh God, have I ever been discovering new music. Firstly, thanks to the glorious organization known as Pitchfork, I went from being mildly interested to full-blown raging fan the lovely and talented St. Vincent. Her new single "Cruel" was even named the best new song at Pitchfork's music festival.
I really dig St. Vincent because, like bands like Arcade Fire, she does very well with juxtaposing music that would generally be considered fairly happy and upbeat, and mixes it up with some dark-ass lyrics. Even the video to the song apparently is about a woman who gets kidnapped by a father and his kids, is forced to be a wife/mother, and is then buried alive. I'm interested in everything this woman does now.
I have been a fan of M83 since their awesome cover of "Fall" on the Tron: Legacy: Reconfigured remix album of Daft Punk's soundtrack, but when their newest single released, I'm chomping at the bit for their newest album. This is an oddly relaxing track, and that sax solo at the end is awesome.
I'm going to try to get back to doing this blog more. I missed it a lot. Keep up the love, guys.
I probably drink too much. But sometimes alcohol gives you good ideas, like The Great Beard-Off (TM). My roommate and I decided that we should do this test of endurance, and beard-growing, and mutherfucking brotherhood.
Here are the rules we will be adhering to.
1. On October 1, ALL facial hair will be shaved. This includes my mustache that I have had for 5 years and not touched.
2. Going forward (from October 1), everyone will grow their beard and hair indefinitely. It is encouraged that pics be shared but it is not necessary.
3. Don't be a dirty bastard. Clean your beard when necessary. Think of the children!
4. *EDIT* Due to requests and the prospect of being literally consumed by one's own beard, trimming of the neckline IS ALLOWED.
5. This is an endurance competition. Technically, anyone can shave at any time, but it is a voluntary resignation from the Beard-Off.
6. The winner is the last person to give in and shave.
We would like to extend the event to anyone who would like to be involved. I thought it would be fun to mention it to GB and see if anyone would like to get involved. Let me know in the comments if you want to be a part of it.
INVOLVED:
[Adrian]
[Maurice]
[Casey]
[Nate]
Last week, there was not an installment of PocketBlog. Regrettably, a lot of other shit got in the way. However, it is back with a vengeance this week.
Bah, stupid image uploading bug :( I will have to be creative today using images on the site since I can't take them from my hard drive.
I apologize for the very cut-and-dried format of this week's installment; I was in a bit of a rush.
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