Takin' a Trip Back

So I make it a point not to share personal details about my life in this blog. This post, however, is going to be devoted to something that I don't feel too personal, but I think it'll give some of you an idea about who I really am and why I am the way I am.

I came home tonight from spending some time with my friends and discovered that my mom have found an old notebook from my Elementary School days. When I was in elementary school, we had these vending machine type things that you'd put two quarters into and it would give you these little notebooks. This is the one that my mom found for me tonight:

As you can see, I was very particular in how I wanted my notebooks to look. I also wanted it to be extremely easy for those around me to understand my notebooks, so, considering that, you can clearly see how many individual tire treads there are. Isn't that nice?

So, I'm going to come clean right now. This post is going to walk you through some of the drawings I found in this notebook. So, why don't we just jump right in?

As a small sidenote, I understand that some of the text may be difficult to read, so I'll do the honor of transcribing those for you. This one is a triceratops. I guess I drew these while I was going through a dinosaur phase (which, I'm pretty sure was 85% of my childhood.) He's clearly "a run away from t. rex". He's saying, "you. ha. rire." Yes. I think the meaning is evident. You can also see two disco balls and a...bomb. Or two grenades. Or two pineapples? You be the judge.

This time we have another dinosaur of sorts. It could be of the same family as a triceratops, but this one is hairy and has weird spines. It is also "run away from t. rex". There's nothing else dissimilar from the others, so we'll move on.

Woot. Change of pace. Now we have a very geometric helicopter...which also has a jet engine in the back. Best. Helicopter. Ever. I'm just going to say this now: it seems that keeping secrets wasn't really my forte when I was young. Clearly, the box this helicopter is carrying is labeled "top secret," but someone did the good pleasure of labeling what is "in side box." How rude.

Now we have a somewhat similar helicopter carrying another box labeled "top seceret." This one was more secret because it had an extra 'e'. Once again we have that same jerk telling everyone what was inside the box. We have an allosause, which is probably related to applesauce. This time the divulger of secrets was also careful to tell you which box the allosause is in just to clear any confusion which may have come from 

previous drawings.

This time we have a trick in the box. I have to warn you not to open it because it may be a trick, but it also might be a trap.

This is my personal favorite. We have a man-like being, possible something out of one of the Mario Brothers games, but with a rake for an arm. He's saying "Rooooooooorrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmbbbbbbbbbddddddddddddddduuule" followed closely by "I don't now wat I am saing" (translated, I don't know what I am saying.) This reminds me most of myself these days. A series of unintelligible noises quickly followed by a disclaimer. Good work, 10-year-old me.

More helicopters. But this time, the artist got wise to the stuff the other jerk was doing. The artist wasn't about to let the other person divulge what was in the box, so he beat him to the punch. Top seceret (Gun's) possessive. Figure that one out. It's like "hey, this box is very top secret (by the way, it has guns in it ." For you grammar nuts, I intentionally included the wink inside the quotes because he was quoting someone else's action of winking. Don't think that makes sense? Well, grow up.

We'll conclude with this. Guns. Every man child's goal: be good at drawing guns. But, I decided to take it a step further: why only draw awesome guns? Why not get down the grenades, bombs, and explosions at the same time? Plus, a lot of people can draw guns, but I can draw a Nerf gun (top right. It says Nerf, if you can't see it.) What's more intimidating to evil-doers than a Nerf gun? That's what I thought.

So, these are the types of things I imaged as a child. If you're a little bit scared, then you're probably on the right track. Hope it's been an enjoyable look in the psyche of my youth.

Skyline isn't just a High School

I determined to spend this post writing about a topic that I haven't spent much time discussing as of late. If you've noticed, posts on my blog tend to take on three different topic: interpersonal behaviors, video games, and movies. If you took the time to go through my past several posts (I would advise against doing this), you would notice that I haven't recently posted my thoughts about a movie, and so that is what I intend to do here. Rarely do I come across a movie I absolutely loathe (notice, I use the word loathe fairly liberally. When I don't like something, I laugh at it, so bear that in mind). I mean, sure, I see movies available on Netflix regularly that seriously make me wonder if there's any hope from mankind (Killer Klowns from Outer Space anyone?), but it is rare that I indulge myself in watching it. Last week, however, was different. A little over a week ago I saw a preview for a movie right on my Xbox dashboard which both caught and released my attention (unfortunately, the releasing part was halfway through the movie, and by that time I was committed). For those of you who don't know what it is, which is all of you, the movie is called.......Skyline.

If you plan on watching the movie, I would seriously discourage you. If you still plan on watching it, I would stop reading this post as I plan on divulging everything about it. And I mean e..very...thin...g.

So, let's start with the cast. It stars such notable actors as Eric Balfour and Scottie Thompson. I know! Star studded cast. But, to be honest, I felt a little more validated on this by the fact that Donald Faison did grace the screen with his presence. If you don't know who that is, go watch Scrubs. Seriously, go watch it..but at the same time, Turk (I'll now refer to Donald as Turk because it just feels right), felt like a fish-out-of-water in this more serious role. Also, I felt violated when Turk dropped the F-bomb halfway through the movie. But, if there's any consolation, he got what was coming to him and got eaten. More on this later. So, in a nutshell, there was no reason to really be attracted to the movie by the cast, so this wasn't what motivated me to watch it.

Now on to the storyline. Okay, so think Independence Day....and you've basically got the gist of Skyline. A mysterious Alien ship comes and hovers over a major metropolitan skyline (get it? GET IT?!) The begin abducting people. Sounds familiar. But this way is different. In this movie, they do it with light. Yeah. I know. Light. Oh wait, it turns out that the light doesn't actually abduct people. It just puts them in some sort of hypnotic trance where their veins turn black. I don't really know what that has to do with  anything except give the make up artists more work. So they get abducted, and that's it. They're gone. This is the process that the writers chose to whittle the cast down. One of the more enjoyable abductions happened when a guy - I guess one of the main characters, although I'm not exactly sure how - decided not to go quietly, so he turns on the gas burners from the stove, and he lights a cigarette with a lighter. Man. Showed them...except the lighter didn't work. Oops. Should probably check those minor details before hatching an elaborate plan to blow up an alien outside your apartment from inside your apartment. Turk gets eaten. I guess that's a fairly important detail. When the people get abducted, they're actually consumed. See? It's so bad that I don't even care about putting that detail in its proper spot chronologically. I'll get into the ending later.

So, the story wasn't new. It wasn't hip (whatever that is). So what about the special effects? Think Independence Day. Okay, it's slightly different. Instead of sending out small alien fighter ships, they send out....oh wait, small alien fighter ships. But wait! It has a shield that deflects any type of firefight! AND the human fighters end up firing a nuke when nothing else works, but this time it WORKS. As far as effects go, nuclear explosions are awesome...except this one was from a distance, so you could only see the semblance of a mushroom cloud. Wait a second....the light I talked about earlier. Super neat right?! No, it's just a light...that had something behind it, but I couldn't really see what it was because the light obscured any background image. For all I know they could be holding up a tortilla (shout out to all my Latino friends) behind the light. Ugh.

Okay, it wasn't the effects that caught my interest. In fact, I don't even know what made me watch it, but hopefully the ending saved some sort of respect for the movie. Remember Independence Day? WAY different. In fact, our two lead characters get abducted. Yeah. Didn't see that coming, did you? But wait, that's not the end. Oh, I should probably mention now that the two leads are in love. Okay. After the abduction, we pan into the alien ship and see just a heap of human bodies slowly being harvested. But it's not their whole bodies being harvested, it's just their brains. The human brains are taken from their bodies and placed inside those of the aliens. Why? They need to know how to make a really good sandwich? I don't know. That's not the point. THE BRAINS are TRANSPLANTED! CAN YOU HEAR ME!? Surely the couple will find a way to take down the alien ship from inside. But no, the guy's brain is taken. All of the brains, when placed inside a human, turn a glowing blue, but not this guys'. His stays red. Could it be? Yes. His human passions are still in tact. The end. Seriously. I can't make this crap up.

One thing I need to mention: this whole movie is filmed at one apartment complex. Every time they try to escape (a la Turk) something happens (most often someone dies). Low budget anyone?

Okay. I sound bitter. I recognize it. And sure, I had the chance of stopping the movie at any point. But it was an instance of the Train Wreck Effect (TWE), you know, it's so bad you can't look away? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Don't watch this movie, people. That's all I have to say (that and everything I have hitherto said).

New Name, Same Game

So this is more just an FYI than anything else. I think my level of nerdiness reached a new level. When I found this domain name...while at dinner...at a restaurant, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to purchase it immediately. In fact, I was basically laughing to myself for 5 minutes at the prospect. So here we are. New location, same information. Www.GiveMeAVirus.net has never looked so good.

Here's a picture of a random sequence generated just for good measure.

No. this really is meaningless, in case you were wondering, although I'm told that a certain line contains an encoded message that will lead you to the lost Ark in the secret government storage facility, a la Indiana Jones. Prove me wrong.