I am (sometimes)

Apparently there is actually non-shitty fan-fic out there. I know! It's a real shock. I didn't know it was possible for these people who just read/watch/sell their soul to the media in a franchise could be creative enough to bull-shit their "original" ideas across someone else's masterpiece and not come out with the stench of a gas-station men's room. Some Star Wars fans have apparently created Star Wars - Revelations. It's about some Seers who betray the Jedi to the Empire and get them all fucked up the ass by Palpentine himself. You can download the 40-minute movie here. As is to be expected, the acting sucks (and if I notice bad acting, it must really reek), The CG is actually really good though, as is the music and soundtrack. They actually had a boom mic, so the audio is good quality. There is one long scene in a cave, where the lighting is really poor so it's hard to see, but other than that the visuals were pretty good. Scene changes were done nicely, very similar to the offical ones, and were appropriate - no fading out on someone's boots here. I am quite impressed, check it out if you get a chance. (You can find the bit-torrent download here it should be much faster.)


On an unrelated note, I saw the coolest press-release ever on Monday. It's from Hitaci, and about there new prependicular recording technology. The basic idea is on a hard drive, bits are stored via the magnetic alignment of a horizontal magnetic region on the platter. With perpendicular recording, the magnetic regions are arranged vertically, allowing them to be much closer without interfering with eachother. Anyway, the press release is cool - it has a little anthropomorphised bit (in the style of School-House Rock) who is so excited about standing up after laying down all these years, that he and his bit-friends dance to disco. It's really funny, you guys should check it out.

Egods! - Chad

Nope. It would appear not. Good; hard enough to live up to the original - it could only result in disappointment.
So, there was this cute girl on one of the facebook objectivist groups here at UW. I invited her to join my objectivist group, and we started talking. We'd been chatting for the past month or so, and things seemed to be going pretty well, so I asked her out to see Sin City last Saturday. Well, she was busy Saturday, so we grabbed lunch and the movie. Well, that's not quite true. Apparently she didn't really have plans that evening, just a party she didn't even know if she were going to. That was kinda weird. Anyway, she walks up, looking nothing like her picture, and she's on the phone, I wait for her to finish her call, and then she shakes my hand. Not a good way to begin a date. To top it off, she apparently had already eaten lunch with her parents or something, then she insisted that I eat anyway. So, she sat around and watched me eat for half-an-hour, then said she wasn't fully intersted in the movie. Now, this half-hour of conversation didn't seem to me to be going very well - it was awkward, and I was getting kinda a bad vibe about the whole thing, so I didn't know what else to do. It would have been really lame to cut if off after half an hour, and I couldn't imagine her being that bad, but I didn't know what else to do, so we went to the movie anyway, which she enjoyed, as she should have - it was a good movie. Then we grabbed bubble tea, and chatted a bit. She seemed cool - not as quick as I would have prefered, but still interesting. However, it's a moot point - there was no chemistry between us. Sad though, I mean, there didn't even seem to be basic friend-level chemistry, let alone romantic chemistry. Quite lame. Oh well, I guess some make it and others don't. It's for the best - at least now I don't have to rename my Lisa.

UPDATE: apparently this caused some confusion (Julia). This girl actually is named Lisa. I wasn't just naming her Lisa because we went out once. Icky. That would be creepy.

"I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I, I do deny them my essence." - General Jack Ripper Dr. Strangelove

I had another weird dream Monday night. This time, Thayer made an appearence. I'm not quite sure how/why, since I hardly ever get to talk to the tall one anymore. Anyway, it seems Chad, Jon and I (no Pat or Ben?) went to visit Chris. He gave us a little tour of his place, and showed us his little meth lab. Yeah, apparently Chris was making crystal meth and other amphetamines. He was touting how wonderful they were, and how much better they were than LSD. I'm not sure how much truth there is to this, but Chad sure seemed willing to believe it. Anyhoo, his "lab" was really just a gardening shed with a bunch of chemicals. Heh, Thayer said making drugs was just like cooking - all you need is the list of ingredients - which apparently they put on all packaging nowadays. Then, a few house-hold chemicals and weeks later, fresh drugs! There were a few other people with whom he shared the gardening shed, most of them did gardening stuff, but a few others made drugs too. I think someone was growing pot in one of the jugs. It was a very strange dream, and has me worried about Thayer. Thayer, if you're reading this, tell us you're not a druged up loser.

"I drink a lot of water, you know. I'm what you might call a 'water man,' Jack, thats what I am. And I can swear to you my boy, swear to you that there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids. Not a thing, Jacky." - Major Mandrake Dr. Strangelove

New pope! To the Pope-Mobile!

Nananananananananana Ben-edict!



Gee willikers Benedict, we sure saved that hooker!

God saved her, my son. Praise the Lord.

// posted by Alden @ 4/20/2005 12:04:00 AM 0 Comments

I'm sure most of you have seen Sin City by this time. If you have not, I recommend it. It was a very enjoyable movie. Quite dark, mind you; quite disguesting at times, but still, quite enjoyable as well. I think I liked it mostly for the cinematography (story was pretty cool too), which was incredible. It's one of those unique styles that just makes it so pretty to look at. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow did it too. To a lesser extend, Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within did it, but they were mostly about eye-candy to begin with - just showing off how much they could do with CG. The whole thing is black-and-white, save a few carefully selected parts which are a bright vibrant color. It was really, really, cool. And it made Alexis Bledel (Rory - Gilmore Girls) look so much hotter than I thought she was before - those bright blue eyes.... just wonderful. The three plots, with the innter two bracketed by the first (and the intro/exit character), were cool. I liked the overlap of characters (especially deceased ones). I know the whole thing with Hartigan and Nancy was kinda weird, but I totally bought the 19 year old and the 77 year old guy being in love. I thought they did it well. I didn't like all the "bad" buys in the movie being named Roark though, puts poor Howard to shame. All in all, it was a very enjoyable movie, and I find it quite odd that I am able to articulate quite why. I usually just like or dislike movies, but can't elaborate further. Perhaps I'm becoming more articulate, or perhaps it's just that different a movie.

"There's evil on the rise! Yeast devil, back to the oven that baked you!" - The Tick, (1, 05) The Tick vs. the Breadmaster