Bullshit Manifesto

*Warning, this post will have information from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, both the book and film. I will try to stay within the bounds of the book so as not to ruin any of the film’s quirks*

Disclaimer done, ranting begins.

I went to a midnight showing last night. I was eager, hell, obsessive, about the release of this movie. New director, new main characters, old favorites, one of my favorite in the series of books, etc. This is the only movie I’ve been looking forward to, with the exception of Spiderman.

The pace of the movie was great. It kept moving, it kept you interested, and they didn’t waste time explaining anything. Columbus was limited, in that he had to make the movie for kids, who, even if they had read the books, might not understand any of what was actually going on. What do you want, they’re kids. This movie, however, didn’t cater to them. It was child appropriate and understandable, but this was clearly not the work of someone who had made Adventures in Babysitting, if you get my meaning.

Yes, the cast looks older. Get over it, it’s what humans do. In all honesty, the character that I had noticed the biggest changes from was Neville. He seemed to have grown into some of that baby fat. Overall the cast rocked my socks. You could tell that Daniel, Emma, and Rupert had learned volumes since the last film. Oldman was Oldman, which is to say that he played the role to perfection, he met and exceeded all my hopes, and managed to scare the crap out of me even in posters where he was silent. Thewlis as Lupin was awesome. The Only work of his that I knew his short role in The Big Lebowski, so I had no idea what to expect from him. I was not disappointed. Gambon as Dumbledore was awesome. He’s not Richard Harris, blah, blah. The man is dead, someone had to take the role, and Gambon did so without trying to copy Harris, and he put his own flare into the role. There’s no doubt in my mind that Alfonso helped him a bit with his own ideas as to how Dumbledore would act.

Major plot points were covered. Small details were sometimes chronologically wrong, or inferred. Example, The Marauder’s Map wa present, but they never go into detail as to who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs really were, and why they had the names, but if you knew your ass from your elbow, even if you hadn’t read the book, you might piece it together.

The music was awesome, and wasn’t a John Williams jerk off session. Alfonso took the liberty of using various styles of music that were appropriate for the scene. The overall style was completely different. The previous films made you wonder, “What if this fantasy world exists?” This film will make you wonder whether this kind of world can’t exist.

Biased opinion says this is going to be the favorite from this year. Unbiased opinion says that it was a solid stand alone film, and is sure to please most.

I’ve got your Sirius Black right here.

Long weekend has passed, and I have much to report, oh my brothers. First, let’s get some of the less interesting, more gripe like events covered.

Moving process was completed with the exception of unpacking. The heat, the amount of work, and the number of times I walked from the apartment to the car made the entire day exhausting, if not crippling. I’m tired, but I’m happy the hard part is over.

Work is going to drive me nuts. I am actively looking for a job now, both here and in Eugene. I’m willing to take anything, as long as it pays more than I make now. In the off chance that you or someone you know is looking for a bright, personable, and extremely well rounded anything, lemme know and I will get my resumé over.

Now, for the good stuff.

I saw the Matrix Revolutions. I went in expecting the worst movie ever made. While it wasn’t that bad, it wasn’t good, either. The destination that they took was something I could understand, and it seemed rational, but the path they took to get there was a bit excessive. Especially the part where Keanu was Jesus. I’ve already got George Luc-ass trying to tell me that Anakin’s mom is the Virgin Mary, I don’t need it from another source that used to give me quality sci-fi.

Watching season 4 of the Sopranos. I’m rather pleased that Joey Pants survived last season, and graces us with another. I am not, pleased, however, that I had to watch a scene with him getting a vibrator in the ass while being asked how much money he made, and how he should have his ass pimped. The funny part of this scene was that this wasn’t punishment. He wanted it. Why didn’t anybody warn me?

Lastly, I would like to tell everybody that there is a kick ass diner in Alhambra, called Diner on Main (never guess what street it’s on…) in downtown Alhambra. I have gotten a different sandwich every time I’ve gone there, and each one has been the crazy bomb. They beat the living piss out of Denny’s. Granted, that’s not too hard a task, but they are better than most. Get a Monte Cristo. That’s turkey, ham, thousand island, and cheese on french toast. That’s right, french fucking toast. It even had powdered sugar on it. Crazy bomb.

Ejaculatory.

Coming back to work after long weekends is not one of my favorite things. One thing I do look forward to is this blog, though. I can vent, rant, inform, disgust, or otherwise distract my audience from the general mucky muck of life all with the simple punching of keys. On the other hand, my audience has been able to entertain me, even though they may not know they’re doing it. Example?

Mardi Gras Boobies

Someone typed this into MSN’s search engine and found my site. Not only that, but it was 12th on the list. After this post, and the possibility that you all might try it out, I could move up on that list. Here’s hoping.

Boobies…

boobiesboobiesboobiesboobiesboobiesboobiesboobies

Fun times of late. The blender that is the life of The Loop has been an interesting one. That is, at the very least, busy and somewhat less boring than watching grass grow. Let’s be real here, you’re reading this, so there’s some level of interest involved.

Milca’s friend Marissa recommended that we watch The Wicker Man. She said that I’d get a kick out of it because of my Burning Man experiences. The name kinda made me curious, but the fact that Christopher Lee is in it sealed the deal.

The basic story line (which is on the back of the case) is that a detective goes to a private island to investigate a missing girl. What he finds is an island overrun with sex hungry pagans, whose governing leader is Christopher Lee with the coolest haircut ever.

Christopher Lee has been in hundreds of B Movies, and he always gives an outstanding performance. In most cases he salvages the worst of films. This wasn’t altogether horrible, but it was still pretty cheesy. Case and point, and what will likely be the reason that you will now rent/buy/borrow/netflix this film… Christopher Lee in a dress and wig. I couldn’t make this shit up. Brilliance. I can’t and won’t say more.

then my final project for my Spanish class came and went. In the days leading up to it I was cutting, gluing, coloring, and pinning my puppets in to shape. I also had to type up the script which was really just copying the dialogue from the book while typing out stage instructions from the narration. Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal went over with a big smash. My professor said that the script was a bit long, so she only had me do the first 3 pages. That got me kinda bummed, but then I got a lot of compliments from the rest of the class, and then after the class I was asked by another group to help them out as an understudy, and my professor asked if I could do the same performance for her Spanish 2 class. She aslo said the my diction and pronunciation was excellent. Kudos given, and accepted.

Last night Milca, her mom, her brother and I went to visit her aunt, Christina, who has been having some health issues. She was in good spirits, but won’t be able to talk for another fortnight. The four of us left her and had Thai food in Long Beach.

Now all that is left for this weekend is the rest of my day at work, and moving the last of our stuff into Milca’s mom’s. I’m not all too excited, except that we will be able to relax when we’re done. Problem is that I don’t see that being a possibility until we’re in Oregon.

Vaginize.

In the process of moving I made a very bad mistake. Somewhere in my brain I thought it might be a good idea to pack up the electronic stuff and take it to Milca’s mom’s. I figured that I’d only be without for about 3 weeks. Well, the timeframe is correct, but my sanity is heading straight out the window.

No DVD’s
No VCR
No GameCube
No Dreamcast
No N64
No Nintendo

The only DVD at the house is Minority Report, which is okay, but I can’t watch it again. I just can’t. I watched all the extra stuff already at least once.

And for those of you that are saying to your monitor, as though I could hear you, “Why don’t you read a book?” Well, those were packed too, Mr/Mrs Smarty Pants.

I’m losing it. Milca and I play cards and whatnot, but when she gets into her jewelry I have nothing there to entertain me. At least tonight I’ll have my math homework and Spanish project to keep me company.

Bonerific.

I am going to run a game of Vampire this summer, one session a week. I don’t know anything about the gameas of yet, except that I’m going to run it, and I’d like to have no more than 6 people in the game. 1 of those will likely be Milca, but I don’t know. She may be more likely to watch then join mid game. She may just watch and play a couple NPC’s. We’ll see. That leaves 5/6 seats, and I know of at least 2 other people that will jump on this. What with work and school these past couple years, I haven’t been able to get a game off the ground. Since I’m planning on this being a quick shot, this shouldn’t be too diffcult. Hell, If it works out, I could run another session once a month after the fact. But let’s not start sucking eachothers dicks just yet. Who wants in?

*edit- I will be using the original 7 clans only, so, no, Nikki, you can not play Ravnos, even if you think you can.

The shenanigans of this weekend were so abundant that the word has had 2 civil wars, creating these four new words that act in the same way that the Planeteers do, forming the greater word once “Their Powers Combine.”

Friday had some events that acted as bookends for the day as a whole, and for reasons that I’ll cover in the coming months, I can’t explain them here. Oddly enough, I can’t talk about the beginning for a different reason than the end, but they are related. Now that I’ve thoroughly confused you…

Friday I ran some errands. My brother Corey had prom that evening. For several weeks leading up to this day, I’ve told Corey to get on the car/limo situation. Someone else was going to organize this instead of my brother. My interests in this were substantial, as I had volunteered to pay for his share as a big brother gift. I reminded him and his friend michael frequently. The car situation was not resolved, so the Pookie flew in and saved the day by offering to drive them there, but not home. Reasonable, considering they were going to be near the Gold Line and there would be tons of people there that could help out. The day thus far made me extremely uneasy and anxious, as we were primarily waiting for laggers.

I left those shenanigans so that I could finish my errands, go home to rest a bit and do dishes (the only thing I had to do before Milca got home), and then left for a work meeting. Meeting went well, ate some pizza, and also played what will likely be my new favorite video game.

Karaoke Revolution

I got some high scores on my boy Matt’s game, which means, of course, that I’ll have to get this game. This means that I’ll have to get a PS2. This means I have something to save up for. The game is crazy fun. Good selection of songs, lots of fun.

Saturday I watched some Sopranos, took Milca and Matt some Burrito Express, and got supplies for my Spanish project. I’m going to recreate one of the scenes from “Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal.” The specific scene is when Hagrid tells Harry that he is a wizard. I’ve made puppets, props, and scenery. This should be extra funny. I’ll let everyone know how that goes on Thursday.

Sunday was a typical go hiking with the dogs, come home and hang with the homies day. Good times were had by all, and that’s that.

Now I’m at work, which is starting off as a good week. Let’s not jinx anything…

My boy Donavan just posted something that involved being clever, and the comment that one particularly cute sweet cheeks made got me thinking… We broke the English language.

Every word used to have a meaning. Sentences had structure. Grammar wasn’t a list of laws, but rather a blue print. My personal beef is with vocabulary. The word clever, for example. Here is the muse for my following rant. Read the comments. Go on, I’ll wait.

Vocabulary is either in need of a revolution, or a dictatorship. Everyone making old words have new meanings negates the previous meaning of the word. Example, I am gay and queer. No, I’m not homosexual. I just happen to be unusual and happy. See what I mean? Those were two perfectly good words to describe myself thrown out the window because they now have something to do with where I’d like to stick my penis… although in hindsight, you could use queer for describing where I’d… anyhow…

The word clever mentioned in his post is what got me thinking, what’s wrong with being clever? Nothing, it’s just the current meaning that’s been tacked on to this innocent bystander. I have been described as clever, too. That’s another one down the drain. Pretty soon I’m going to have to start making up words to describe myself. Until then, I’m a cold whale penis cool dork.

This post was brought to you by the letter J and the number 3.

at Burning Man I was walking across the playa with 2 girls and another guy. For those of you, oh my brothers, that don’t know how Burning Man is laid out;

Imagine a donut shape with a clock on it.

Now, imagine that the diameter of the larger circle is 5 miles, and the smaller is 1.5 miles.

Now, take the areas between 10 and 2 o’clock away.

The area between the remainder of the two circles is where everything is. The empty areas have little to nothing, save a few art installations and the Man himself, who is smack dab in the middle. If you still can’t visualize it, go to the website and check it out.

Anyhow, the four of us were crossing that area in the middle one night. The other three were in standard playa gear, which was just really dusty clothes and goggles. I, of course, was in a toga. We were about 1/2 mile north of the man, so we could see the lights of Burning Man spanning the horizon.

“Look at this…” said one of the girls.

I looked where she was pointing, which was the southernmost area of the camp. All of the lights had gone out, and the lights to the left and right were going out in sequence.

“Why are those lights going out?” the other girl asked.

“They’re not going out, that’s a dust storm!!” the guy said.

“Quick, get under the toga!!” I yelled.

This was one of the best ideas I have ever had. My toga was fairly long, and wrapped around the 4 of us quite easily. For those that give a damn, it was made from two navy blue blankets I got at Target. I know, I know, you’re supposed to use cloth that’s cut into a semi circle. You know what though? This worked, it was cheap, and it saved my life, as I will go on to explain.

Everyone huddled in close to me. I grabbed the toga with both hands and swung it around us all, almost as Batman would do with his cape. With everyone in the toga, the dust hit us. The force was pretty strong. After the force of it had subsided, I stuck my head out of the toga/shell. The dust was thick in the air, but we were safe from the worst of it. Everyone stood up, and started looking around.

Nothing.

We couldn’t see anything.

You think you understand, but really you don’t. I’m not talking about being blind, or seeing empty space. Empty space is something. This was a void. I felt like a videogame character in one of those universes where if you go too far north you end up in the south, and vice versa. No direction seemed to be the right one, as each direction looked the same as the other. This is saying a lot, since there were 25,000 people camped in one direction, and nothing in the other. We kept our eyes squinted and saw a small light somewhat close to us.

We walked towards the light (no crazy midget jokes, please) and found a Volkswagen van with Christmas lights and curtains in the windows. We knocked on the door, and was greeted by a scruffy man in his 40’s. He had a beard, short hair, and no shirt. He got us all into the van, which was an accomplishment, as the area near where one of the doors had been was converted into a bar. The doors closed, and the bar opened.

The bartender offered us a chocolate martini. I gladly accepted, as I’d never had one. It was quite awesome, especially considering that the last thing I had in my mouth was playa dust. I then had some “zambooka” (sp?). I can’t remember it all that well, except that it was yummy.

We stayed there for a bit until we could see out the windows again, meaning the dust had cleared. We left, happy, alive, and martini-ed.

As promised, here is an update on this weekend.

Friday night I got to hang out with the Nikki, the Pookie, the cousins from the ashtray, and the brothers. Good times were had by all. The drama of yesterday is no more. The Loop abides.

Saturday the Nikki, the Pookie and I went out for a day on the town. Granted, we went to several towns, but you get the idea. We were specifically out and about for something. I want to say more, but I’m restrained to vague details as the person that I was looking for might read this, so I’ll give you, oh my brothers, the same info I gave them. “I went to get the thing, saw many things, but didn’t find the thing.” More to follow, trust me… 😉

That night I got to meet one of Milca’s old friends names Tara. She’s pretty cool. We had talked on the phone briefly to confirm eachothers’ existence, but nothing in great depth. Milca and I went to Tara’s father’s 60th birthday party. I knew nobody there, but that’s never really a problem for me. One of the women there, in her 60’s or so, looked extremely familiar. She thought the same of me, but neither of us could place the connection. I’m pretty sure that a past life may have something to do with it. Maybe she knew the Olympiad me, or the Elizabethan actor me, or maybe even the native American me. At any rate, it bugged us both all night, and made breaking the ice extremely easy.

I can’t recall if I’d posted about it, but she and I are moving in with her mom. Her mom is kinda lonely, and rightly so, considering that less than a year ago she had 4 other people living there. Also, she was going to rent out a room to students, but would have rather had family in there. The rent will be much cheaper, and I won’t have to sleep on a murphy bed anymore.

Sunday Milca and I boxed up some stuff and took it to her mom’s. In some state of mild retardedness I boxed up all the dvd’s and my video games, thinking that I wouldn’t want either until we move in. That’s two weeks without either. Great move, Chris. After getting some good hiking in with the dogs, we went home and relaxed.

Monday night Milca and I went out for Thai food with Tara and her sister, Kim. Got to know the two of them much better. They’re both really cool. Kim is a teacher, so I picked her brain a bit. Tara is in “The Industry,” so I knew she and I would get along. They both also have a deep love for Donnie Darko. It’s hard not to like these two.

That’s all I’ve got. Work is a tornado, in that it’s destroying my will to live and it sucks, but that’s to be expected, especially given the time of year.

I’m ANXIOUSLY looking forward to going to Oregon in June. More to follow on that. 😉