You call this a title?!

Yes, I do. Got a problem with that?
No?
That's what I thought.



Yesterday I "overheard" that my sister's blog was more interesting than mine.
That's when I remembered that I place little value in other people's opinions, particularly opinions involving me.

I proceeded to have a hearty laugh at my own expense, after which I went off to do something insufferably geeky, such as reading comic books, Googling the Roswell incident, complaining about the common misconception that schizophrenia is the same thing as dissociative identity disorder, wondering when my package from Metanet will arrive, or designing computer games.

Speaking of which, what part of the script

if facing=0
facing=1
else
facing=0

is dysfunctional?!

Clearly there's something completely different that is the source of all of my problems, such as global warming.
...Just kidding.
The real source of all of my problems is actually the Large Hadron Collider. Or at least it is today. Tomorrow, according to my calendar, it will be Al Gore, and obnoxious FPS fanboys are scheduled for every Monday in the month of November. Frankly, they deserve it.


...Meanwhile, I seem to have fixed the problems I was having with the script mentioned previously, so if you were worried about that, you don't have to be anymore. I actually am not sure what I did. Well, I know what I did, but I'm not sure why it fixed the problem. This has happened before, and I just move on.
I'm just glad to have solved the problem. It drives me nuts when I can't figure out a problem, and this is why I don't plan on ever having to program. There are many things I am able to do. Programing is not one of them, and I don't really want to take the time to change that because it would involve a lot of frustration.


You know, I really feel the need to make puppets. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you would know that I have said this before, and obviously nothing has come of it, otherwise I would not be feeling the need to make them (unless I simply wanted more).
Besides, I would have told you.

At any rate, I want to make puppets so that people everywhere can explore the dark regions of my bizarre sense of humor in a way that does not lend itself well to writing.
I often write down funny things I want characters to do or say, and they really wouldn't work in a written story as well as they would in something like a puppet presentation.
So... I need to make some puppets.

...Of course, I also need to work on my current computer game project, prepare for the ACT, and get a job. And that's not even counting multiple writing projects to which I have various levels of commitment.
Then of course there are all of the things I am doing for fun (not that the things mentioned above are necessarily boring).
One of the things I do for fun is, of course, playing computer games. I have been playing many things on YoYo Games lately, and --as one would suspect-- much of it is mediocre or worse, but there are some games that really stand out (and, yes, most of these were made by Jesse Venbrux). It makes me happy to see good games and I hope these people continue to make them.
The other is reading. I keep picking up new things to read and within days most of my siblings are reading the same thing. It upsets me and I don't know why.
Now, you may think that when I say "I keep picking up new things" that I mean I read indiscriminately, but this is not the case. I am extremely picky. I become ill walking through the fantasy section at the library because I can tell how unimaginative every single book is just by looking at the cover. And I hate reading unimaginative things.
I usually rely on the recommendation of friends, but if they recommend something and it seems like everyone is reading it I often will not read it for that very reason.
I couldn't give you a straight answer for this but I suspect it's related to what I mentioned earlier with my siblings "stealing" "my" books.
To me, things just seem more boring when they are popular, and I almost feel like I am relying on the public opinion to make my decisions for me (a practice I normally detest).
And... it's just... everywhere. So it's dull. Like dirt, really. It's all over the place. Maybe if it wasn't people would find it more interesting.
Please do not tell me what sort of imbalances such a situation would create, because it's likely that I know about many of them and I really don't want to hear about the rest.


So, umm... THIS IS A CONCLUDING SENTENCE!

:::Source=
:::Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
:::25.09.08
:::STOP

Cartoons (comics in newspapers and "graphic novels")

My headphones are dead. They've been a bit funny for a while now, but today they are officially dead.
I have to turn my head almost sideways to hear out of both ears equally, and even that doesn't always work right.
So I'm going to have to get some new ones. But I don't have any cash.
So I need a job. I finally broke down and have decided food service wouldn't be so bad after all (well, compared to doing nothing at all, anyway). I got an application at Dairy Queen because:
1. It's ice cream, so I think I'd like it better than, say, McDonald's.
2. I was feeling kind of sympathetic because there were only two people working and they had a lot of customers.

In other news, Neil Cicierega is still hilarious...
He's the guy who is responsible for the The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny song, as well as the Potter Puppet Pals Flash cartoons. I've just discovered he has a new series of live-action video things wherein he and two other guys... do stupid stuff. It's pretty funny.


So now I'm going to talk about cartoons!
I'm not going to make any effort to explain these, so I suggest you look them up on Wikipedia. I'm just going to tell why I enjoy them.
Cartoons I like:

Dilbert
"Wait a minute. You're not allowed to like that cartoon. It's sophisticated humor. It's funny because it's true, and you wouldn't know because you've never been in a large office environment."
Well, pfffssht. Don't you be telling me what kind of cartoon I can enjoy. I think it's hilarious.
I've been getting a Dilbert cartoon in my email inbox (it's something you can sign up to get for free) for nearly two years... I still love it. It's just a really weird sense of humor; I don't think I've seen it anywhere else. I think it's only gotten better over the years, too. Occasionally he (Scott Adams, I mean) will kind of get a bit boring/unfunny for a while but it never lasts long.
I think the characters are really interesting, because they're ridiculously over-the-top, yet they seem so real at the same time.

Calvin and Hobbes
This is probably the greatest cartoon ever written. I've read every single one of them, and I wish Bill Watterson would still write them, but... that's his business, I suppose.
It's an interesting cartoon, because while a lot of times people will try to put their own views and opinions into their characters, Mr. Watterson doesn't do that at all. Calvin has a worldview that's twisted and bizarre; I doubt there's anyone on earth who agrees with him at all. So why read it? Because cartoons aren't supposed to be philisophical, they're supposed to be funny! And Calvin and Hobbes certainly does that right.
The funny thing, though, is that it does get philisophical at times; you'll think, "Haaang on, he has a point there!" even though it's a really strange and ridiculous idea.
The whole setting and all the characters are really different, too. It's completely unlike any other cartoon; it really stands out.
Bill Watterson himself is a very interesting person as well. I like reading his comments and notes in the tenth anniversary book. I thought what he had to say about licensing was really cool.

FoxTrot
Out of the cartoons I've mentioned here, this is probably my least favorite, but that isn't to say that I don't like it, of course (it still made the top three). Bill Amend recently discontinued his daily cartoons, which is sad, because I had always thought his dailies were consistently more funny than his Sunday cartoons, mostly because he had interesting ongoing storylines (which only ever run in the daily cartoons since a lot of papers only get either the dailies or the Sundays, not both). But oh well. It's still fairly good, although I do think it used to be better.
It's a bit inconsistent, too. I think it's funniest when Jason and Marcus are the featured characters, as they're so ludicrously nerdy. I find those cartoons much more interesting than the ones involving any of the other characters (which tend to be a slightly different kind of humor and involve less interesting subjects, such as golf, which I think should be forbidden from syndicated cartoons forevermore). They're what make the cartoon really stand out, although I suppose if compared to cartoons on the Internet (which are usually very geeky/nerdy) it's nothing special. Still, it's older than webcomics as far as I know, so....


Now, comic books!
I don't think comic books / "graphic novels" get nearly enough credit these days. They're kidn of viewed as being nerdy and for people who never grew up (or are still kids). I think they're a fine form of media, though, that should be grouped together with everything else. There are comic books for kids, and for adults, and ones that are serious, and ones that are more lighthearted. They're just as diverse as anything else.
Now then. Here are my favorites:

Fullmetal Alchemist
This is one that's clearly meant to be taken seriously (although there are some goofy, humorous things that pop up every now and then, but it's just like most other serious things, really). It brings up some strong points, particularly regarding the value of human life. Even though it takes place in a fictional (and very fantastic) world, and I don't think it's meant to be allegory or satire, there are lots of interesting parallels you could draw to real life. It's never anything specific, though.
For example, there's this big war, and while a lot of times war in books/movies/comic books/whatever is cheapened or even glorified, this one seems real. It's awful, and nobody wants to be fighting in it. It causes a lot of pain, trouble, and hardship. It's... a war. That really stood out to me because it's so different from how things are often portrayed in fiction ("These are clearly the good guys, and they're fighting people who are clearly the bad guys, so it's a good cause.").
I really like the unusual setting, too, as well as the story itself. It's pretty suspenseful.

Ultimate Spider-Man
Spider-Man may have been interesting when it was new, but it's pretty clear some things needed to be redone. Reading the older comics, I can see how they would have been cool at the time, but by today's standards they're really bland (for starters, the art is really simplistic compared to what people pull off nowadays).
Also, there's the whole issue of culture and technology, since it takes place in the real world... things just aren't the same as they were forty years ago. So while Amazing Spider-Man is still ongoing (it's on issue who-knows-how-many-hundred now), there are weird inconsistencies. It seems to have been only a few years since the first comics, and it's just unreasonable to think that so much happened over such a small period of time (you could probably add up any time there is reference to how long something lasted, and it'd not make much sense), and looking at the technology and culture differences (as I mentioned before), it's clear that it's been way more than "a few" years.
That's probably why they came up with Ultimate Spider-Man. It's the same basic story (which was always very solid), but modernized. I don't mean they threw a bunch of trash in there, I mean it's... Spider-Man, if he were real... today. It just works. And any time there was something that was dumb the first time around, they fixed it. So I think it's really nifty.
The one thing I'm disappointed about is how at one point they got a new penciler, and the art style is different. I think I liked it more before, but I guess I'll get used to it.

Case Closed
This is something I recently started reading. A friend recommended it a long time ago, but I couldn't read it because I'm cheap and only get stuff from the library, and the library where we lived at the time didn't have it (well, I think they had a few random volumes later in the series).
These books started in 1994 and are still being written (which, yes, may end up causing the problems I mentioned when talking about Spider-Man if Mr. Aoyama doesn't hurry up and finish it soon).
I like them, because they're mysteries, which you don't usually see in a comic book. I also like it because while it has a somewhat similar tone to stories such as The Hardy Boys, it makes no effort to be believable. There are things in there (particularly the inventions Dr. Agasa makes for Jimmy Kudo, the main character) that are pretty unreasonable, but it's... fiction. It's not like other mysteries that try to take place in a really real world but fail miserably.
Anyway. I haven't read so much of this, but I like what I've read so far!


Another thing I started recently, based on another friend's recommendation, was Bleach. I've only read the first volume but I thought it was pretty nifty. I'll probably read more but the next ones are checked out at the library.

I think that's it for today, then.
I got one the things on my list done!

:::Source=
:::Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
:::20.09.08
:::STOP.

Personality Test

I woke up this morning with many troubling questions plaguing my mind. Among these were such questions as:


-Why does it feel as if I have an extraordinary number of things to do today, despite the fact that I actually have a very small number of things to do, a number that is, indeed, smaller than yesterday's?

-Why is the song Still Alive stuck in my head, despite the fact that, last time I checked, I had still never even played Portal?

-Why does everyone insist on "spreading the virtues of Democracy" (or whatever the cool kids are saying these days), despite the fact that the United States itself is not a Democracy?

-Why did I wake up with a mind plagued with such troubling questions, despite the fact that I want to add a phrase beginning with the words "despite the fact" so that it will be consistent with the other questions?


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go Google the Roswell incident.
Why?
Because I can.


...Alright, well, I could have continued reading for several hours, but I have a blog post to finish. So yesterday I took a personality test that used the Myers-Briggs type indicator. I like taking personality tests, IQ tests, typing tests, etc. and I don't really know why.
Anyway, I think the Myers-Briggs is a really nice scale, since it grades in four different categories (so there's a total of sixteen possible personalities); it's not really fair to say "there are optimists and pessimists" or "there are loud, crazy people and quiet, reserved people." Also I like how it ignores lots of age and gender stereotypes (i.e., women focus on emotions and men focus on thoughts, older people are analytical and younger people act impulsively, etc.). Sure, if you were to look at statistics, certain personalities may be found more in women than men, or in older people more than in younger people. But not all the time.
Anyway, the test said I was INTJ (introverted intuitive thinking judging). I read about it and it seems to describe me well.
Apparently, famous INTJs include:

-Hannibal
-C.S. Lewis
-Susan B. Anthony
-Donald Rumsfeld
-Arnold Schwarzenegger
-Rudy Giuliani
-Lance Armstrong
-John F. Kennedy
-Thomas Jefferson
-Gandalf the Grey
-Professor Moriarty
-Ro Laren

(The latter three of which are, of course, fictional).

I read more stuff online, and was amused at some comments on one page under "dealing with INTJs", such as:

-"Try not to be repetitive. It annoys them."
-"Do not be surprised at sarcasm."
-"Do not expect INTJs to actually care how you view them."

It went on to describe people who are INTJ as "arrogant" and having "a morbid sense of humor."
The funny part is how true all of this is.


You should take one of these tests (just Google "Myers-Briggs personality test") too; tell me what it says you are.

Then you should take an IQ test. Some of them are stupid and lame, just to warn you. Try to find one that has some sort of "stamp of approval" from some sort of official-sounding university or organization; those tend to be the best ones (meaning, obviously, that the "official" "stamps of approval" are not lying). My IQ is (not to brag or anything) 134.

After that, find out how fast you type (go to http://www.typingtest.com). I can type (again, not to brag or anything) at 85 WPM with 97% accuracy.

If you find any other interesting tests, let me know so I can take them.


...Sorry if I bored you to death by talking, basically, about myself.
But whatever. Maybe, for whatever reason, that's what you come here for anyway.
If you did find this boring, though, scroll down to the poem I posted earlier, which I think is pretty funny.
Well, regardless you should read the poem. But I'm just saying that if you did think this was a boring post, today might not be a total loss for you.

A Message from Cap'n Mangemizzen, the scourge of whatever that thar' lake is, or the kitchen sink, if it be closer:

It's pla'n to see that yeh've offend'd me.
In all my long yeers I've descend'd, see,
To levels of treach'ry
That spark such tale-strech'ry
No man alive would b'lieve 'em.

And I have been chall'ng'd by many
But there isn't one, isn't any
Who've so far descend'd
My dignity spend'd
As much as yeh have just t'day.

Yer a bilge-spittin' monkey
A gibbon so funky
He can't even tie his own shoe.
Yeh eat naught but coal
Yer skull's got a hole
That's big 'nuff fer two ships to sail thru.
Yer uglier n'ugly
Muglier n'mugly
Even the barnacles hate yeh.
There's no man alive
Who seems to so strive
To be worse n'a bucket of whale spit.

So afore the day's been fully spent
A new kind'a fate I'll invent
Somethin' so deadly
That you will read'ly
Accept any tor'chr but it.

Yeh'd gladly walk the plank
Yeh'd happily watch yerself sank
Yeh'd let 'cherself get shot
Yeh'd be quick to grab any Black Spot.
Yeh'd let them all scuttle ye
The holes in yer nut'll be
Mor n'th' ones in me socks!

But do yeh think that I'd allow that?
I'd be a great horrible sea rat.
Yeh'll just have to wait
'Till my plan's a first rate
Way to make you go "Ouch" and then "Splat!"

(Avast! Have a good Talk Like a Pirate Day... Or else! Yaaahhrr!)

The Cure for Hurricane

Shut up about cancer.
Yes, it's a horrible disease. It kills people.

But what we really need is something to stop hurricanes. That's what I call a spiffy discovery!
There must be something we can do to stop them from forming.

Of course, you will probably respond with one or more of the following arguments:
1. No, there is not.
2. Even if there was, it would upset meteorological balance and [blah blah blah blah blah blah], ultimately destroying the world!
3. You're an idiot.
4. I hate you.


I'm not going to argue with the first two, because I'm not doing a lot of (or any, for that matter) research on this, which is odd, because it's the sort of thing you'd expect me to know about.
So basically I'll take your word for it, provided you actually know what you're talking about.

If you used argument number three, well, that's subjective. If being an idiot means making ridiculously uneducated statements and giving you a hard time about it solely for my own enjoyment, then, well... it'd be pretty silly to deny that I am one.

Now, regarding number four: Words cannot express how little I care.



So now I'm going to talk about things that are happening, in the news and such. I really should do this more often; I want to make it a point to do this more often (if you guessed that this has something to do with all the Dave Barry I've been reading, well, you'd be right), possibly in every post. I have an RSS for BBC... er, sorry. RSS is Really Simple Syndication, it's a constantly updating bookmark sort of thing that's rather handy. BBC is the British Broadcasting Corporation... they... broadcast things.
So let's see here....

First off, there's the election. Astoundingly, it's still going on.
...Oh, wait. That's not astounding at all.
I hate how it eats up the media. Apparently not just in the US, either; see? There's several items on the BBC feed about the election, and this is true at pretty much any given moment.
Anyway, I narrowly missed being able to vote, but even if I could I would write someone in. I don't want McCain to win, and I really, really, really don't want Obama to win.

A handwritten (and apparently unfinished) score by Mozart was discovered in a French library.
Ooh, snazzy. I hope someone comes along and finishes it, although apparently all they have is the melody....

The Large Hadron Collider has still not destroyed the world. It hasn't found any evidence of the Higgs Boson, either.
...Then again, it wasn't supposed to have done either one of those until much later (and in the case of global annihilation, by "much later" I mean "not at all").

Piracy in Somalia is getting pretty bad, and... Oh, tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day, by the way. Yarr!

A sea battle took place between the Sri Lankan navy and Tomali rebels...
41 people died... The navy managed to scuttle their mangy oppresors, as near as I can tell. My, this is all scheduled oddly, isn't it? Obviously, everyone is celebrating. I wonder what would happen if there was a "Talk Like a Terrorist Day" (let's not find out, shall we?).

19 people were killed in a Mexican jail riot. Obviously, the problems could be solved in one of the following ways:
-Get rid of all the jails.
-Get rid of all the riots.
-Get rid of all the prisoners.
-...Move out of Mexico?
That's all I've got.

The economy is still in deep trouble. The banks are trying to sort things out by doing... all that stuff they try to do.
But I'm guessing that either everything will blow over without anyone's help or we're headed for the Great Depression: Part II: The Movie: Unleashed.



...Right, then.
Now, you may be wondering why I rarely post anything about what I've actually been doing. Well, I'll tell you.

Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but personally, I find this kind of thing boring:

Today I went to band. We played music.
Then I came home and studied for the ACT. Then I read some comic books. Then I worked on a computer game. Then I went to bed.

...And that's what most of my posts would look like. If I ever do anything unusual, I'll be sure to let you know.
But since it's something I wouldn't want to read, it's something I'm not going to write, either. I figure you would much rather read about my opinions, and I certainly would if you had a blog (which most of you don't, but if you did I'd probably read it).


At any rate, here are the posts I still owe you, if you'd forgotten (it has been modified a bit, anyway):

-Cartoons
-Everywhere Else
-C.S. Lewis
-J.K. Rowling
-Vigilanteism
-Culture

Right, then.
I'm done for today.

(By the way, I have surpassed 400 hits... w00t! I wish I knew how many different people those came from, though.)

Virtual Plankton Kleptocracy collection #1

I was going to make this an actual post, but I've been at this (putting together the files I mean) for a while and I want to get back to reading Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far), which is an incredibly hilarious book.
(Note: I've actually finished typing the actual content of this post and my file is going to take a while to upload yet, so I've come back up here to leave this note that states that I am in fact going to go read the aforementioned book right now... in case you were wondering.)

I want to make an actual album of some sort, but it will probably consist entirely of chiptunes, unless I can find a good way to convert .midi to an actual sound format (and by "good way" I mean one that does NOT involve recording the output of my speakers, unless I can get the stuff I'd need to feed my speaker directly into my microphone so it records all sound that comes out of the machine directly) so that I can edit the .midis into something that sounds good and is actually not .midi at all.
That said, I don't have nearly enough music to make a good album, so that will have to wait for a while.

[The download link used to be here.]

-----
Update 10/2/08: I now have a much smaller version of the folder (they're actually .mp3s now instead of .wavs), and it contains two new chiptunes. I set it up on a better host, too! Here it is:
Virtual Plankton Kleptocracy Collection 01.6
-----


...Oh, and for those of you who did not know, Virtual Plankton Kleptocracy is my imaginary musical group (formerly known as Zombi Spit... haha, "formerly known as"). I will probably draw some goofy-looking robots or something of that sort for when I do an actual album.

Feedback, people!
And tell your friends.

I challenge you! Yes, you! A challenge!

OK, first off: For some reason I didn't mention how cool the acronym IJatKotCS was when I was talking about it in my last post.
So, umm. It's a really cool acronym!

Moving on.


It's likely that I've told you about this before.
You see, I do not laugh very often at things I read. In print, yes (particularly Dave Barry's stuff, he makes me "LOL" more than anything else I read, I think). But on a computer screen? It almost never happens. The closest I get is a quickly-stifled snicker, like the one this website produced. And here we're talking about something that I thought was just hilarious (if you know what it's talking about, you'll think it's quite witty as well... I bookmarked it, and then Adam RSS'd it, which I thought was a pretty good idea, so I did the same).
It's just... I've learned not to. I don't like explaining why things (particularly things like the above link, which, really, would take a long time to explain) are funny. So I try to avoid being asked.
Also, at our previous house, I would often use the computer in the same room as people who were sleeping and I didn't want them to wake up.
Anyway, now I just don't laugh loudly anymore.

So here's the challenge: Make me!
The one rule is that it has to be something I read. I guess it can be a cartoon or something, but no videos or sounds or anything.

So there you are.
I'm not sure what you win if you do manage to do it, but I'm not too worried that that will happen, so....

I'd prefer it if you emailed your "submissions" or whatever.


QotD #1-

Seth: Should we lock up our bikes?
Me: My bike is purple.

QotD #2-

"Well, what are you doing telling me about it? Surely you don't think you'll be able to keep me quiet?"
Now I'd scared them. The younger man quickly pulled out a fifty and handed it over.
"Oh, that's just great," I groaned. "First people were bribing the criminals to bump off their enemies. Then the criminals started bribing the law enforcement to keep themselves out of prison. Now the police officers are rounding it all off by bribing civilians to keep them from tipping off the media! Oh, the state this government is in, why-"
He handed me another Ulysses and I shut up.

-Something from a short story I'm writing called That Wasn't the Worst of It.

Movies

I'm back!
Not that I was ever gone.

But I am back to posting, you see.
At least for today. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into some kind of... routine... or whatever.


Now.
Last you knew (well, not really; only if you haven't been talking to me, and really, isn't that your fault? I'm only on MSNM/WLM almost all day) I was moving.
That took quite a bit of time and effort. But we're mostly moved in now (though I think my bedroom could use a bit of reorganization... and maybe some paint, as its walls are pink), and we have Internet hooked up as well.
The house is really big. Not quite big enough that I got my own room (how would that ever happen under any reasonable circumstances, anyway?), but I at least have somewhere to go where it's occasionally quiet. It's a "office" in what we have dubbed the boiler room in the basement. That is where I am right now.

Right, then.... Oh, an update on what I've been doing, I guess.
I'm working on a game; if I told you about it before (I may have posted about it here), it's the one with the purple jelly that... explodes. Heh.
Possibly even more than that, though, I've been making music. This time I'm doing something pretty different though.
I'm using this program called BoyScout. It emulates the sound chip used in the Gameboy Advance, which results in some pretty nifty "old-school" sounding video game-ish music. It's different than anything I've used before in that there are a lot of weird values you can adjust to get different sounds (one of the channels -- and there are only four, by the way -- lets you draw in the waveform for the sound manually).
I've done three things with it so far, and I'm pretty happy with them. I think if I do one or two more I'll upload them all in a zipped folder.

Alright, well. On to the actual subject here?


Right, well.
I saw Prince Caspian ages ago, and never got around to posting my thoughts.
I really enjoyed it overall. Everyone seems to be complaining about how it wasn't nearly as good as the first one, and how they threw in too much violence and made it too different from the books or something, but... I think those people need to:
A. Go read the book again. It was violent. It's about a war. Get over it.
and
B. Get a life.
Yes, there was a whole extra part they added where they stormed the castle and whatnot, but I actually thought that was brilliant. Possibly better than the way it was written originally; it really drives the main point home a lot better. Somehow having the battle fought on the enemies' front gives it an extra sense of risk and foolhardiness, I guess.
So, yeah. I think it may have even been better than the book in that respect. *gasp*
C.S. Lewis wasn't perfect. I'm saving this for whenever I do that post on him and J.K. Rowling (or maybe they will be two separate posts), though.
Anyway, there was some stuff that I thought was sort of weird, random, and/or overly silly... but I'm not sure I can come up with any good examples at this point.
So anyway. It probably wasn't better than the first film, but I wouldn't say it was significantly worse, either. That's a good sign, I think. It would be annoying if the movies declined into mediocrity as they went on.


I also saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (that was a little more recent). I really, really, really liked that one. True, it wasn't as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but it was definitely better than The Temple of Doom, and just because it's worse than two excellent movies doesn't mean it is not excellent itself.
The plot started out promising... Nazca lines, Conquistadors, El Dorado, crystal skulls... things I could understand. But suddenly, it turns out it has to do with advanced extra-terrestrial beings who passed on their knowledge to ancient mesoamerican cultures, and... Yeah. Weird. It just didn't work.
Also, there were some things that were totally over the top (early in the movie, Indiana survives a nuclear blast by climbing into a lead-lined refrigerator).
Anyway, it was really interesting to see how the world of Indiana Jones had aged (it takes place quite a bit later than the previous films). Also, amazing writing saved the not-so-great plot; there were lots of clever lines in the script.
I want to see it again!

That leaves one movie on my list-of-movies-I-want-to-see; The Dark Knight (yes, I still want to see it, and I still haven't).

Ooh, speaking of which, I recently saw Spider-Man 3. I guess it's a pretty old movie at this point, but I never got to see it until now. I think it was pretty good, though still nowhere near as good as the first, and not even as good as the second. So it was a little disappointing; I hope they shape up for the fourth movie.
I'm blaming most of the problems on their poor choice of villain / story. I think they should have just skipped over the whole Venom thing. Basically it's an alien parasite thing that makes Spider-Man stronger but also makes him more aggressive and eventually turns him into a person who's downright nasty. One of the biggest things about Spider-Man has always been how easy he is to relate to, but suddenly he's this nasty anti-hero sort of guy, and... yeah, it just never worked. It can be done right, though; in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic books (yes, I do read comic books... quite a lot, actually... yep, I'm a humungous nerd) they managed to pull it off pretty well. It's funny because the guy who wrote it has always hated Venom as well, but they figured "Hey, well... you're the perfect person to do it, then; do it so it's actually interesting!"


So, uhh... Oh! While we're on the subject of movies.
I wanted to ramble about two people I think are tremendously good actors and play certain roles exceptionally well (to the point where it almost makes me think the entire movies would be ruined if they weren't in them, even if they are by no means major characters):
J.K Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson in the aformentioned Spider-Man series
and
Richard Griffiths as Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter films

In short, they're both hilarious (Mr. Griffiths is particularly comical in the later movies), and I can't imagine how they could possibly have picked better people to play those parts.


Oh, and also speaking of acting: Some time when you're bored, you should look up the voice actors for some cartoon / video game / animated film you like. It's really interesting, because a lot of the good voice actors have had really varying careers, and you probably don't know their names like you would with "regular" movie actors.
As a random example, the person (I don't even remember her name) Shiki Misaki in The World Ends With You also did the voice of Ducky in the The Land Before Time movies.
Some time I want to look up that stuff more; I might post what I find out.


OK, I think I'm done.
Until next time (tomorrow?),
PM