Get in on the John

Are we there yet?

2007-06-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

New post? You like?

2006-08-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

please work now

2006-08-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

what? Is this working yet?

2006-08-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

Working now?

CRAZY!

2006-08-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

Holy cow! are these things only posting after the next one is put up?

What?

2006-08-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

Why not this worky the is?

2006-08-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

does this still work?

Prancing nougat through the meadows.

2006-08-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

This video takes a while to pay off, but stick through it to the end and you will have seen the worst Price is Right contestant do her stuff. Bob barker can't believe it. (That's his name, right?)
Straight from the headlines of Digg.

In other news...

In other news, I am excited. Yes, I am excited because my blog hosting site of choice (Blogger) is updating the whole shebang. This blog post explains the new changes better if you are interested.

What does this mean for you, the faithful reader of this fantastic internet publication of worldwide renown?

(The world. Thats right.)

Well, now I can make the blog look pretty for you, easier, and I can also finally do some tagging of mein posts, meaning that you can look through the entries by categories that I assign them in the sidebar, categories such as "Review", "Daily life", or my favorite tag, "How much I hate Stan Lee's 'Who wants to be a superhero?'".
Which I do hate. A lot. But you knew that. And you might be sick of hearing me say it. But I have truth written on my very bones, and I would rather say nothing at all than lie, and if I said nothing then I wouldn't be writing this, would I?

AHA! My logic is infallible.

Also, if you knows the RSS, then you might profit from being able to suscribe to a feed of all the comments made on my blog, meaning that you could sit there in your chair and have a doohicky pop up and tell you when I, or someone else, has responded to the comment you made on my blog. Or somesuch.

But mostly, the update just rocks for me, the blogger user. Now you can edit templates with click and drag elements, and instead of republishing your blog after every change, you don't. You just don't. Not necessary. Which is awesome. Fantastic. Yay!

Huzzah.

Well, that is QUITE ENOUGH for me today, me is going to sleep now. Night!

So I had an itchy chrono Trigger finger.

2006-08-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Whatchya think about my sprucer of the blog? Nice? Terrible?

I haven't tested it on any other browsers or screen sizes other than my own, so it would help me a bunch if I could hear what you think.

The last header that I had looked awful on my sister's computer, but okay on mine, so I would be interested to know how this new "theme" looks on your computer.

I like to repeat myself, so I will end by thanking you for your input.

Huzzah!

Bean's in church.

2006-08-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

Happy church day folks!

My grandpa had the misfortune of being seated next to a most peculiar gentleman in his pew this morning. Luckily the whole thing was caught on tape, which I will now show you, much to your shock and outrage, I am sure.

I can relate to the singing thing. Many a time I have been caught without a hymnal and have had to wing it, much like that unfortunate man. And the candy thing, too. Those wrappers make too much darn noise.

Wow, I am pretty much as bad as Mr. Bean. T_T

The most frightening experience EVER.

2006-08-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing the movie The Descent at the theater, and I've got to say it was pretty fantastically scary.

I liked it a lot, but then I am pretty immune to gore, which I can take or leave most of the time, and gore seemed to be the main selling point of the movie if the trailers and reviews can be believed, however, there is much more going for this movie than mere internal organs and thick pools of blood.

First of all, it is genuinely frightening; the scares never feel cheap or predictable, and you can really feel the walls closing in on you as you watch them get trapped in the cave with danger lurking in the darkness. And I enjoyed the all female cast, mostly because I am tired of the stereotypical horror movie chick who would rather scream shrilly and run away. The chicks in this movie are not some females you would want to mess with. Even Arnold looks kind of wimpy, compared. Awesome. There was only one Y chromosome representative in the entire film and he was only on there for like a minute.

The surprise ending

The Descent (aka Six Chicks versus Gollum) was so immersive that when I left the theater I felt that, like the girls in the movie, I had to get out of the darkness and back to familiarity, and fast.

So I jumped into the truck that my grandparents let me borrow, popped it into reverse, looked over my shoulder for a space in the stream of cars leaving the parking lot, saw one, turned my wheel, and stepped on the gas. And hit an adjacent car with my front fender.

All I felt was a little bump, so I just sat there staring at the front of the truck. The notion that I could just keep on backing up, burn some rubber, and get out of there stole across my mind. I didn't really hit that car, did I? But I had to check, so I put it in drive, pulled back into the parking space, and got out.

There were some people hanging out, leaning against the hood of their cars and I asked them if I had really just hit him. They said "Yeah," there was some scratching and some denting, and I walked to the other side of the truck and saw that it was true. Holy crap.

And I thought the movie was scary.

I asked the lounging bystanders what I was supposed to do, I had never been in this situation before, and they told me to leave a note with my name and number on the car. I asked them if they had a pen I could borrow. While the overweight yet stylishly garbed woman searched her boyfriend's car for a pen, I ruffled my pockets for something to write on, eventually finding a receipt and tearing it in two.

My hands shook pretty badly as I slapped the receipt onto the car's windshield and began to write "I am sorry I scratched your car". I was barely able to get the note under the wiper, my hands were shaking so bad.

I gave the pen back to the couple and thanked them for it, and the guy told me to "Have a good one", followed by a nervous chuckle. I chuckled nervously with him and agreed that I would.

The need to get out of there, away from it, was still pretty strong, and I got home as fast as I could, leaping out of the truck, rushing to the phone, and calling my grandma's cell about a thousand times. No answer.

What if the guy called before my grandparents came home? What would I say to him? Just: "Um, I am terribly sorry I hit your car, sir"? Would I have to pay for it? Would insurance cover that sort of thing? Do I have insurance? Doesn't this kind of thing cost a ton to repair? Would he demand payment in blood? My first born child, maybe?

All these things rushed around inside my head (and were seriously considered, for a moment at least), and I couldn't handle the thought of dealing with his call, so I took the phone off the hook and paced around the house waiting for my grandparents to come home and tell me what I was supposed to do.

So they just came home, and they said "Hi we're home!", and I said "I hit someone with the truck!", and they were remarkably calm about the whole thing. When you are in a panic, seeing people be placidly calm seems very wrong to you.

But apparently we do have insurance, and the guy will probably have to have the damage assessed before he will be able to call us, so the earliest he can call will be in two days, on Monday, and since grandpa is the one who is on the insurance, he might just handle the whole thing himself, and I won't have to talk to the guy whose car I ruined. Whew.

So I am in less of a panic now. Grandpa told me that he wasn't going to lose any sleep over the whole thing, and I told him that I probably would.

Well, that is the story of my first automotive mishap, it has been fun (not), and hopefully it will be my last.

Oh, and The Descent will probably be remembered as the scariest movie I have ever seen, once the memory of my "brush with death" begins to blur with my memory of the film. Which earns The Descent a rating of (where are my stars) four out of five!

(there are my stars.)

Use Pandora without browser - minimize to tray.

2006-08-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

So you like to listen to music on Pandora. But maybe you don't want to open a browser window just to listen to the radio, maybe you want to keep your desktop free of cluttering windows, or maybe you just don't want to break your fingers typing it's address, or even harder, clicking on a bookmark.

Fear no more, Daniel Mackey has your answer. He has created a wrapper for the pandora player, so all you have to do is click on the link, download the App, install it, and then BOOM you have an icon on your desktop that opens up the Pandora radio player in it's own little box all by itself, which you can then minimize to the tray and out of the way. Awesome.

I am using it right now, and it is fantastic, especially for me who has a lot of extensions installed into firefox, which makes it take a while to load. Now I just click on the icon and my music pops up. Nice.

I am not too tired to make a real blog post today.... maybe.

2006-08-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

Greetings true believers!

I am now going to wash my mouth out with soap, because it has dared to utter Stan Lee's once respectable catch phrase, which, thanks to his horrendous new reality show, is now synonymous with awkward and humiliating psychological torture.

I just got finished watching the third episode of Stan Lee's "Who wants to be a Superhero?", and this time I couldn't even make it all the way through. I hate this show!

Why do I keep on watching it then, you ask?

Well, when you have a deep-set and ferocious hatred of something, an emotion like the one Stan Lee's murder of my respect for him (and by extension my favorite superheros) has caused me to feel, you begin to want to hold on to that hate; nothing could make you feel more vindicated in your hatred than seeing the object of your disdain continue doing the things that made you hate it in the first place. Therefore you actually end up loving to hate something.

I just blew your mind, didn't I.

Treat your mother right.

I talked to my Mom on the phone a couple of days ago, and she let slip that all my "I am too tired to write a real blog post today" entries were actually pretty cheap posts. And, of course, she was right. Which is why I didn't post for two days in a row; I was really a bit too fatigued to make a good post.

You must remember that Momma always knows best, and especially don't forget that Mr. T pities the fool that don't treat his Momma right!

A change in management.

2006-08-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

Melanie here. John will no longer be posting on this blog, for I have bound and gagged him and thrown him in the broom closet under the stairs where he will be fed only what gets caught in the many mousetraps contained within.

It is with great pride that I now proclaim this site, the one, the only, the... (drum roll please)

GETINONTHEMELANIE.HUZZAH.REALLY.COOL.BLOGSPOT.TM.COM!

Oh and by the way, this is actually really for surely MELANIE WILKOS writing this. Uh-hum. So don't go saying no cracks about me, yo. I's gonna cap y'all for that, fo' sho'.

Word.

John's Most Amazing Blog Post EVER!!!!!!

2006-08-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! I am definitely the best poster on the entire PLANET!!!!! And , just so that you know: this is not me....uh, I mean, my most wonderful sister Melanie writing it for me!

...Rats, I know when my cover is blown.^_^

Well, you've guessed right: this is Melanie posting on my brother's blog. John just couldn't do it tonight since he didn't remember until really late, and, well, he has a job and I don't. And since he was loath to break his record of posting "every day", he actually asked me to do it. I kinda figured, that if he was so desperate that he was willing to commit blogacide, hey, I'd oblige him.

So now it's up to you, my great blog readers, to suffer through my inferior writing and vainly attempt to stay awake through this entire post(do not worry, the great John soon bestow upon you his great and wondrously wonderful writing again.^_^).

Sooo....yeah....blog post and all that. I guess since John isn't here I pretty much have free reign, so let's talk about....hhmm....SUMMIT. Yes, the great camp that I just recently returned from, and that's ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!!!!! I highly recommend it to everybody. You learn about all sorts of things there, world views, controversial issues, about the bible, evolution...Everything! Do you know that we even got to talk to some guys who think that they've found the remains of Noah's ark as petrified wood?!? It was really cool! They even brought us some samples! There's also some really cool activities like paintball, white water rafting, hiking, and horseback riding that you can do.
I have to warn you, though, that there are some "weird" side effects. John took me to a movie the day I got back, and I declared that the movie was a socialist plot to brainwash little kids to rally to their cause (Did I mention the camp is just a tad bit "rightist"?). John, being the wonderful, understanding brother that he was, laughed right in my face during the end of the movie (What?!? It WAS^_^). He got some puzzled looks from the other spectators; It was actually pretty funny. =^_^=

Seriously though, it WAS a really cool camp, and I really learned a lot about a lot of things; I also made some great friends while I was there. So, if you ever don't have anything to do during the summer and have a few hundred dollars going around, spend it on this camp!

Well, I guess that's all I have to say (I have to sleep too, even if I DON'T have a job), so, thank you for bearing with my ramblings :)

I bid you Adieu,
Melanie

Ladies and Gentlemen, fasten your beltseats. You are about to be infected.

2006-08-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

Apparently this isn't terribly new, but it's the first I have heard of it:

How can you not love that crazy accent? Awesome. A little bit of background on the artist here.

Totally different title.

Speaking of aged viral videos (I do my best to spread the infection), remember that time I told you about that crazy catchy tune set to a girl spinning a leek?

Of course you do! Well, I just discovered the name of the artists who made the hypnotising song, and they are called Loituma. I had thought it was a Japanese song, what with the anime background and all, but they are actually speaking Finnish. Go figure.

Or should I say: Go Finnish! Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk... that wasn't funny.

Here is the full song, in a video showing the actual artists:

So. Catchy. Must watch again for the. fifth. time.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Help me! I am enslaved!

Oh, and while we're at it, why not add the TECHNO REMIX OF THE SONG? Be patient, it doesn't get interesting until about 50 seconds in.

Almost forgot.

OKGO is awesome. And these dude's creative uses of eight treadmills only makes the music better.

I am not kidding, that is a lethal dose of incredible.

Parting shot

I believe my job is done here; at least one of those songs should be stuck in your head for the rest of the day now. *Laughs maniacally*

Made a chicken out of me.

2006-08-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

Holy cow! Mary Beth is amazing! The day before yesterday, or the day before that, whatever, it was the Magic Eye post, I was the first to comment on my own post and because my head is made of random I ended my comment thusly:

NEW RULE!
The first person who comments on a post gets to tell the slower people what to do!

NOW DANCE LIKE CHICKENS!

DANCE DANCE!

And then in response to Mary Beth saying "you first" I cleverly said:

Hmm, I'll call your bluff Mary Beth. So if I put up pictures of me shaking my tail feathers, then you'll follow suit? Okay, you're on.

I must have my chicken dance! MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

To which she replied:

you're on John.

And then I concluded with a concise summary of what I aimed to gain from our pact:

AND I SHALL HAVE MY CHICKEN DANCE! I SWEAR IT!

And Then She Went And Did It!

Check out the full post about it on her blog. It is pretty incredible, complete with side-by-side comparisons of actual chicken dance moves and Mary Beth's imitation of them. Spectacular! Good job Mary Beth!

My plan had actually been to wait, and wait, until the whole thing was just a distant memory; and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling chickens and the crack detective skills of Mary Beth!

(Rooby, rooby roo!)

So, here is the best I can do for a dancing chicken on such short notice and without a camera:

Not only is there dancing here, but also pretty much any other verb you can think of. I know, I know, it's not actually me in that chicken suit, but let's use our imaginations here! Just type "Dance" into the box and click Submit, and the chicken will break it down in my proxy.

Besides, let's be honest, nothing I could have done would have been as good as Mary Beth's effort. Which was amazing; did I mention?

OH NOES!

2006-08-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

I believe that my recent lack of posts is a symptom of the greater malaise that has befallen me: depression! NoooOOooOOoo! I once thought that I could easily identify when I was getting overly blou, and then apply fast acting happy thoughts to nip the problem in the bud, but my first semester of college proved that I could actually do neither.

However, being semi-non-retarded, I can learn from past experiences and identify similar patterns, ergo withdrawing from human contact (like not posting on my blog, or not doing email, or avoiding eating at places where I would meet people I know) means that I am getting depressed again. Darn it.

The treatment? Um, I am guessing that I should just not avoid people anymore. Hopefully that works. But I am wary that I am just treating the symptom and not the disease.

Another thing that I learned about depression last year is that if you let it go on long enough, you will become ashamed to even admit that it exists, which makes it harder to get over; talking about it here should do me a pile of good. In fact, I already feel better as I write this. Huzzah!

Weih knot?

2006-08-03T21:07:00.000-07:00

Nothing is working. I hate the internet and especially my blog. I spent all this time on it and it's still not the way I want it to be. I'll get it in the end. IT SHALL PAY!

Example of not workingness:

. `:
: : .
__.'_ .' :
_.--' `-._.'
.-'.. .. `.
: .-. .--.`. :
: : : : : :
: :`;; :`; ; :
`.`O;' `O;.' :
.' .---. .--. ;
. : '._ :' ;
:: : .-`-.; . .'
.': `. ``` `. :-'
: : `-.__ ._ _.'
: ; : ;```
: `. _.-.' . ``-._
: `.-' : : `-.
: _.: ` `-._ `,
`._.-' ; `.`-. ;_, _.,
: `.: ;' ;-' ;
: ``.___.' :
: ;_..--'
`. ;
`-.__ ...'
: : :
jgs :-:__;
: : :
.-~~~--..__: : :___..---..
.'.' : `,
:,' : `; ;
`: _.'`._ :,'
`~~~'----'' `'-.____....'

That was supposed to be tweety bird in ASCII art.

I taut I saw a blog post! I did, I did!

Oh wait, it t'aint so; it was jus' random ASCII art.

Magically delicious.

2006-08-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

That was close. Our cable went out right in the middle of the Daily Show. Thought I would have to break out my samurai sword again. Life wasn't worth living anymore. And right before I plunged the butter knife into my tender tummy, the television sprung back to life and I was even able to catch the end of the joke that he was interrupted in the middle of. Whew. It's at times like these that you realise how precious life truly is, when cable television cutting off for 5 seconds could lead to instant and painful death.

[/spasticness]

I spy with my magic eye... something that starts with AWESOME

Yes, that is indeed a magic eye 3D thingamabob, more specifically known as a Stereogram. If you have the hang of these things, you can see my name and a fantastically well drawn smiley face lurking amidst the chaos.
Can't ever seem to see the hidden picture in these things? This might help.

I made this myself with the help of this site. All you have to do is draw a gray scale image with the tools provided, blacker means farther, whiter means nearer, and then click on "done" and a little while later it will have generated your 3D picture, which you can then embed in your site (too big for this blog) with the provided code, or you can link to it with the provided link.

Myself, I decided to go the classy way, and made a screen capture, converted to JPEG, and uploaded to blogger.
Smooth operator, smooth operator.

I have dishonored my blog for the last time!

2006-07-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

What does John say when he is stabbed in the stomach?

2006-07-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

I feel like I am spamming my own blog page, but I am honor bound to make a post everyday; no matter how crappy it is.

It's like I have to do that Japenese thing where I stab myself in the stomach with a samurai sword, if I miss a day of posting. Fortunately, I do not feel as if making quality posts is within the boundaries of my obligation, or I would have so many stab wounds in my belly right now it wouldn't be funny; it'd be hilarious.

So now I come to the main point of today's post:

Nnnng.

Whew, I am glad we had this talk, but now it's time for sleep, and sleep I shall.

Ceci n'est pas une poste.

2006-07-29T18:09:00.001-07:00

Activate super procrastination not posting for real today mode, GO!

You shall fall prey to my lazy-fu evildoers! FEAR ME! Cower in terror!

I WILL DESTROY YOU --- later. Right now I'm watching TV.

How I got rid of my self respect using social bookmarking.

2006-07-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so yesterday during a break at work I was surfing the internet with the help of one of the many social bookmarking sites that I use, and I see this cool link on one of them, and since I'm at work, I post the link to Del.icio.us so that I can get a better look at it when I get home.

Later, I check the front page of del.icio.us, which is where the hourly top three bookmarks are continuously updated, and I am unsurprised to find that the top link for that hour was the site I had bookmarked before. Social bookmarking sites seem to share most of the same top links most of the time, so this was nothing to write home about.

But then I saw that my name was listed as the first person to post this link on del.icio.us, and I freaked out, looked left and right for someone to show this to, remembered that I was alone in the office, and silently did the "Yesss!" arm-pump. I am kinda new to this whole "social bookmarking" thing, so the idea that my name (or at least my internet handle) was on the homepage of a popular website seemed like a tremendous accomplishment to me.

Rain drops keep fallin' on my head... (happy music)

The whole rest of the day I had a spring in my step, a certain confidence in my demeanor, that said that I was an important man; after all I was on the front page of a web site viewed by millions; perhaps you've heard of me? In my case a complement can sometimes be just as hurtful as an insult, if not more. My ego swells easily and extensively, much to my ire.

And thanks to this ill-deserved supreme self-confidence, yesterday's post about "Who wants to be a Superhero?" was particularly scathing (for me, at least). Okay, so the show wasn't that great, but I don't think I needed to say that Stan Lee was a senile and bigoted old man, because even though this might possibly be true, it wasn't very nice of me to say so. Besides, what am I, a television expert? Who am I to tell people where the line between so-bad-it's-good, and so-bad-it's-worse lies?

"Digging" my own hole.

And then I figured, hey, what the heck, I am king of the internet and all, so why don't I submit my post to every social bookmarking site that I can think of.

Two people actually voted for it on Digg, both within a minute or so of my posting it on the site, which led to much giggling-schoolgirl-like excitement, as well as my staying up until 2AM watching to see how my article fared.

When I finally went to bed I was sure I would be really late for work the next morning, but strangely enough, I actually woke up early this morning, and wasn't late to work, for once.

The penny drops.

Around mid-day it finally hit me about what an arrogant jerk I had been (look at what I named the links: both mention Stan Lee's senility); I still can't believe what a jackass I was to put that stuff up all over the internet.

My stupidity had a sorta neat side effect, though, that in one day I got as many visits as I normally do in a week. Check out the graphic:

Perhaps I should be an idiot more often.

Coming Soon.

I hope to mess around with my blog this weekend and make it look really cool, and ironically, some of the things I plan on adding are social bookmarking submission buttons. Some people just never learn I guess.

Who wants to be a super idiot?

2006-07-27T16:59:00.001-07:00

Okay, so they've been advertising the show for ages now on what seemed like every channel on television, and although it looked really, really terrible, I thought I would pop over to the SciFi channel and check out the premier of the reality show Who Wants to be a Super Hero?.

Big mistake.

It turns out that my superhuman tolerance of stupidity in the name of humor has a limit, and this show found that limit, death-punched it, and ruthlessly pushed past it until I was clutching my head and screaming for mercy. This is my kryptonite.

Granted, I laughed until tears came out of my eyes during the first ten minutes of the show. I mean, the guy in red spandex soberly telling us that as a busy exotic dancer he regretted missing out on his daughter's life, and he hoped that appearing on this show would make tight spandex clad Dad her hero; this also after presenting himself with cheesy one-liners and wince-inducing super hero poses. Comedy gold. It was funny how these grown men and women really, seriously, believed that they were comicbook-style super heroes.

But you know how when you were a kid you would play make-believe, and it would start out as fun and games, but gradually you got more and more serious about it until someone got really pissed because you can't actually have a force field, that's stupid, you're a cowboy, I'm an Indian, and my arrow hit you in the heart you jerk, and suddenly the game isn't so much fun anymore?

The first time Stan Lee, legendary (and apparently senile) comic book creator, developer, and/or writer of Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Daredevil, the X-Men, and others appeared on screen, his first words were to gruffly berate the show's contestants for having an impromptu party, telling them that "Superheroes don't act like that. You've got to take this seriously!".

And Stan Lee certainly does, and they do, and it is really, really too serious. Come on. The first guy Mr. Lee ousted was because of a remark the contestant made in passing when a double agent/mole asked him if, as an action figure maker, he would make an action figure of himself if he won. The contestant said something along the lines of: "Yeah, I guess.", and Stan Lee told him he was a greedy jerk and told him to put his costume in the trash can. The guy who was evicted was also the only gay superhero of the bunch, and as such, Stan Lee can't help but look a little bigoted. I'm just saying.

And then the contests were a joke, loosely organized, with everyone wandering around waiting to get a call from S.L. telling them to find a secluded place to change into their costumes, and then race to a random archway in the park, no markers or rules or anything, the key to the challenge was that unbeknownst to the contestants, on the way to the archway there was a little actor girl making terrible fake sobs and crying for help, and if the superhero didn't help the little girl, they failed the challenge.

This is a stupid test of people's inner "hero", as Stan Lee liked to think of it. First of all, it relies not on the contestant's moral integrity, but on their attention to detail. People get focused in a race, and don't notice things. Stupid.

And then in the elimination ceremony on the top of a roof, Stan Lee was still gruff and angry seeming, and even the Vin Diesel lookalike bouncer was shaking and near to tears when he came close to being eliminated. That was kinda funny.

And for all these eliminations Stan Lee is the sole judge and executor, something which lends a sort of unfairness to the whole thing. The old boy doesn't like your face? (Vin Diesel lookalike, you're toast.) Too bad for you, you are outta here. Stan Lee should just get it over with and announce the winner, seeing as how he seemingly has his mind made up already.

It would spare everyone involved a lot of pain.

Huh, whew!

2006-07-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

What. a. DAY.

You have no idea.

Just none.

I'm outta here.

(This totally counts as a post.)

Five minutes and go.

2006-07-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

Seriously I have to go to bed so I am trying this thing where I type for exactly five minutes and then I'll publish the post, so five mins for editing and everything and whoopie won't this be fun; NOT.

That would have been in italics, or if you want to be a good web coder, in "em" or emphasis.

Now we know.

Wow. Two minutes are up already, I really type much faster than what you got up here, however I have to think up what I'm going to say before I type it and that takes time, time that I don't have, there's a BOMB IN MY MOUSE AND IT'S GOING OFF IN A MINUTE. Save me Tom Cruise, like that Nascar movie from the anchor man/elf/whatever guy that is comming out. Yeah, I am a plagerisinatin fule. Haha bad spelling. Wheee!

fiv mins are upppppp....

Two incredible comment-conversation trackers.

2006-07-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

You know what, I want to write something meaningful today. Something useful, for a change, not just pointless and long-winded insanity.

I want to write pointless and long-winded insanity that will change your LIFE.

The road to empowerment.

I have lost track of the number of desperate people who come up to me everyday and ask me:

"Mr. Wilkos, how can I escape the day after day, hour after hour mind melting tedium of checking blog posts I have commented on, forums I have asked a question on, checking these sites every five minutes (does this sound like you? I see you smiling in the back ma'm, you know what I'm talking about), checking every five minutes for days on end, just to see if anyone has responded to my comment or query?
Surely there is some way to avoid spending the rest of my life online reloading pages just so I can see the response to my comment."

Well folks, the day of your deliverance has come. For I have found two simple online tools that will end your commenting doldrums.

Commentful

I'll begin with the less complex of the two, Commentful.

The concept is simple. Sign up on the site with your email address and a password that will be used on your account, and you can instantly login to the site and install the Commentful firefox extension.

This extension causes a tiny bulb to show up in your firefox window. Now every time you post a comment on a blog, Digg, Flickr, Zooomr, or vBulleting forum thread, all you have to do is right click on the page and select "Add to commentful". A box will pop up where you can modify the comment URL, post title, and the amount of days you want Commentful to keep checking the post for new comments. When someone replies to your comment the extension's bulb will begin to blink, allowing you to drop whatever you're doing and hurry over to see the new development in your online life. You can also keep track of your comments using the site's Watchlist.

This seems like a very handy tool, however it isn't quite as full featured or as easy to use as the second commenting tool I will show you.

coComment

Like Commentful, coComment will take you straight to your account after you register, but this time you have a choice between installing the very easy to use firefox extension, which will automatically track your conversations without the need of popups, or, if you are unfortunate enough not to be using firefox, you can click and drag a link to your bookmarks, which you click on a comments page (before you press "submit").

The coComment extension also displays a tiny icon in firefox, and it's color will indicate to you if the page you are on contains a trackable conversation or not, and when a new reply is made an indicator will appear next to it.

The coComment system of conversation tracking has many bonuses, such as a feature that will show you the people that are commenting at the same places as you (your neighbors), the ability to show your recent comments from around the internet in the sidebar on your blog (so everyone can appreciate your brilliance), and the ability to track conversations on sites that don't even have a comment form (meta conversation).

CoComment should work fine on most blogs, as well as flickr, digg, etc... with one exception. You poor souls with a Xanga blog will unfortunately not be able to integrate coComment properly in your site, as Xanga has introduced some new security features that prevent most javascript code from running properly on their pages. I think that you will still be able to use coComment to track Xanga conversations, this just means that you wont be able to put a cool button on your comment forms that allows anyone to track the conversation, without the use of an extension or bookmarklet.

Conclusion

I signed up for both of these so that I could test them for this article, and of the two I most enjoyed coComment for ease of use, active community, and large goodie bag, however, since most of the bloggers I know are all on Xanga, and Xanga doesn't let you comment without having your own Xanga, I really don't get to make that many comments, although all the comments I did make worked like a charm.

I hope you blogophiles will enjoy using these handy tools to make your life easier, I, however, will have to use them a bit longer before I decide if I really make enough comments to merit such a convenience.

Well, off to beddy-bye for me, see ya'll tomorrow.

Amazing David Copperfield Portal illusion.

2006-07-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

Just saw this video of David Copperfield's amazing Portal illusion, and it is quite impressive indeed.

Check it out!

Although I can't help but be reminded of Gob from Arrested Development when I see Copperfield, especially the pose at the end. Hilarious.

House.

2006-07-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

Hello, it's post making time. Although I might have some problems being cohesive, what with House being on TV right now, and I can only post during the commercials... oops it's on again, I'll be back...

...yeah, it's all because of the presidential decree that mandates compulsory House watching.
Ok. Maybe there isn't a law that says I have to watch grumpy genius doctor House, but there should be. It's more like, um, a moral obligation. Think of the children.
Aaand it's back on...

...oookay, that was a good one. Heheheh. Grumpy pill-popping hilarious old man. Hugh Laurie is awesome.

Today has been a most interesting day. My sis woke me up to say goodbye before she and my grandparents left for Colorado at 8 o'clock this morning. I went straight back to sleep and managed to sleep through church yet again. I really hate it when I do that.

After that, I woke up to find that I had the house all to myself. Wow! What to do with this opportunity? Well, so far I have used this newfound freedom to talk to myself extra loud without worrying that people will think I'm crazy, as well as ignoring my personal hygiene to a certain degree. Not that I really had any better ideas, but still, you know, I'm sure it could be good for something. Uh... hmm... I could transform the house into a temporary food kitchen slash homeless shelt... ?... nah, stupid idea... hum... uh... nope. No ideas. Oh well.

So, other than that, most of today's 12 hours have been spent in thrall of the magical fun box. I love/hate cable television. It's so easy to waste so much time, but in an otherwise entertaining and enjoyable manner. Darn you television! Darn you and your strawberry flavored lies!

I also just realized that I spent the whole day inside this house, and only really in one part of the house, the basement, and I haven't made human contact in any shape or form all day; I haven't even seen another human being all day long. Kinda sad, but I can handle solitude; I have introverted super powers that way.

Although there was this one time that I might have come close to human contact today, however eerie it might have been; I was in the bathroom, minding my own business, and then I heard the door open upstairs, and footsteps on the floor above my head. My grandparents were supposed to be halfway to Colorado by now, and we weren't expecting company, so it kinda freaked me out. My grandparents don't usually lock their doors or anything (don't get any ideas) so it was possible that the paper boy had just wandered in from the street and was collecting his payment for this week in pilfered stereos and television equipment. Steps, steps, steps, and then some muffled talking, so there must have been more than one, and by the time I had finished in the bathroom I heard the front door open and close, and then two car doors slammed as I climbed the stairs, and I made it to the window just in time to hear a car speeding off down the street.

So... that was interesting.

Right, work tomorrow, so I'm out. Let me know if you can think of anything to do with a house all to myself. And not just throwing a party or something, that's too obvious, I'm thinking maybe something more creative, like, uh, Cirque Du Soliel.
--No, no, where would I find enough face paint...

Anyway, g'night!

This is a mess.

2006-07-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to post about. I know! I'll just do as I usually do and make it up as I go along!

HUZZAH!

Ok, just so you know, I am break dancing as I write this. I am actually spinning around on my back, my keyboard in hand, timing my key presses to the beat of the loud techno music booming through my speakers. Eh--ah---hoo. There. Now I am doing a one-armed handstand, holding the keyboard against my outstretched leg with the other hand, and typing this sentence furiously. This really strains--- oof! --- the muscles. Just fell down.

My sis is leaving at 8AM tomorrow to go to her Christian leadership camp, and even though she has only been here three weeks, I will very much miss her when she leaves. It is great to be able to spend time with someone who knows where you are coming from, and who actually thinks my jokes are funny. My sense of humor usually doesn't amuse my grandparents very much, and rightly so. Most of the time I am not entirely sure myself whether I am just kidding or being serious; it takes someone who knows me well to "get" my humor-osity.

Or stuff.

Must sleep now.

One last thing. Of all the pre-movie commercials we are forced to watch, this Coke ad is the only one that hasn't gotten old yet, even after six or seven viewings. Every time you watch it you notice something different going on, although I am not sure that you can see much detail at all with this low resolution youtube version.
As the Coke advertisements like to say: Enjoy!

Lady in the Water is a splash!

2006-07-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

Haha, forgive me, I am new to this "descriptive-yet-amusing" headline creating buisiness. This title is more like "descriptive-yet-cliche".

My sis and I just caught the 10PM showing of M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Lady in the Water, and I am in awe. I have loved every movie M. Night has come out with, Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village (less so),even though I didn't know his name until Signs came out.

His movies have always been characterized by their twist-endings, so let me break this to you easy: Lady in the Water has no surprise at the end, and I am not sorry to see it go. Don't get me wrong, I loved the mind blowing endings of the other movies, but by the time I saw The Village, everyone in the theater was spending their time guessing what the surprise was going to be, and unfortuneately, I got it right.

I hate knowing the ending. I love to be surprised by a movie.

And Lady in the Water is nothing if not surprising.

It was more amusing than it was eerie, more blunt than it was mysterious, and more fun than it was thought provoking. It was something completely new that I don't think I've ever seen in a movie before.

Ok, I am writing this 24 hours after I wrote the above; unfortunately I was interrupted by inebriation (not me) last night (and I thought college didn't start for another month), and I lost my train of thought, so I'll just briefly conclude here.

I thought Lady in the Water was a fantastic and original movie, perhaps too fantastic and original for some people, but not for me, I loved it. I live for original. Which is why I give it the most shiny stars that I am capable of dishing out:

Oh, and just for the record: the newspaper critic character has the best movie moment EVER.

Comedy Central -- timesuck?

2006-07-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

Here I am, yet again clickity-clack typing up another completely fantastalicious blog post.

I am slightly tempted to end it there, like I did yesterday, but I think I have already written too much for an accurate duplication of it's effect. Sad.

I blame my recent absences on my sister, and the hilarious distractions that are comedy central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (genius) and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert (the "t"s are silent) which both air in the hour before my bedtime, and that is when the blogging fairies usually plant sugarplum blog posts on my site. But mostly it's my sister's fault.

If you are hip with the interwebs you've probably already seen this (Peter), but this is a prime example of Daily Show hilarity. Me and my sis were rolling on the ground. (I trust you can handle the dash and sprinkle of naughtiness.)

And for a sample of Colberts deadpan humor, look no further than the clip below. Or actually, try this 30 minute one as well.

They are amazing, and so are you. Good night America.

Blog post.

2006-07-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

This is a blog post.

No, seriously, it is.

I mean, I know blog posts, and if there ever was one, this is it.

For real.

The falling sand game. Will no one catch it?

2006-07-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

Blah, blah, blog sheep have you any links? Yes sir, yes sir, something that rymes with "links". Click on the picture and you will have fun.

And after you are finished being amazed with the original, check out the new and improved version!

Naplam, anyone?

And just because it's you, I will explain a little before I go. Oil burns, water makes the blob grow, salt makes it explode, water plus green equals no more water, and those three question marks make happy fun time care bears come out and give you a hug.

The fun is in discovering what you can do with it on your own, so have fun!

A pop culture of one.

2006-07-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems that I have survived the weekend with my insanity intact, despite my dire predictions. Odd what sort of defenses you develop after spending a week or two with two pre-pre-teen girls and another who might as well be one. (Haha, Melanie.)

And now I'm back, posting on my blog again. You see, it is really easy to get out of the habit of daily writing; you only have to miss one day, and after missing two I had figured this would be a code-red level-5 blog-wide emergency. My daily readers would be mind-starved of my precious prose. The safety of one or even two whole persons was at stake. I had to act fast.

So, I sprang into action and waited until 5 minutes after I was supposed to be in bed to post this just in the nick of time!

Whew. Close call. Good save. *Gives self high five.* Score one for the good guys.

Random

Insert random yet somehow meaningful blog content here.

One thing we like to do here at Get in on the John Inc. is to include very clever pop culture references here and there, and we think that people really appreciate that. Yeah. Except my pop culture isn't very popular anymore, nor is it very cultured.

Therefore I will now take the time to explain two of the incredibly clever pop references in my last post.

The title of that post: "Who you tryin' to get crazy with ese? Don't you know I'm loco?" comes from the Cypress Hill song Insane in the Membrane. I have included a music video that someone made for it using clips from the hilarious cartoon Invader Zim. The real music video was just them at a concert and those music videos are always really boring. So, enjoy, and like the video says, there is a mountain of cussing the size of Mont Blanc, so maybe just listen to the first part, or whatever, I don't know.

The other reference was my parting words: "And that is why I'm a nut; I'm crazy in the coconut.", and that came from the trippy music video that I will display below.

Seriously, how awesome is this music video. *brr* Creepy turtle-head old man.

I had heard this song before but never the video, which I found amongst many, many other pretty awesome ones in pitchfork media's 100 Awesome Music Videos feature. Some really incredible videos in there, but I still haven't had a chance to see them all. Check it out!

Speaking of music videos, you might have all ready seen this, it's sorta like the spinning leek thing, but who can say no to an acapella chorus composed of horses whose voices you can turn on and off at your mere whim?

Who indeed.

Who you tryin' to get crazy with ese? Don't you know I'm loco?

2006-07-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

GAH!

I've gone nuts!

*Runs wildly in circles with his arms waving above his head and his eyes rolling in his sockets as foam drips from his mouth until he runs into a wall and falls on his back, then gets up and runs full force into the same wall again, shakes himself and then slowly turns his head and fixes his bulging eyes on you with a penetrating and disconcerting glare*

"Whatchu lookin' at? Huh? Want to do something about it?"

*He takes the predictable silence of the computer monitor as yellow-hearted cowardice and sneers.*

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

*He then runs screaming over to the stairs and throws himself down them, bounces into the basement, recovers, runs back up the stairs, turns, and chucks himself over the edge again. He does this until he can no longer walk and is covered with purple bruises, then he pulls himself back to the computer by his finger tips which scuttle nimbly in front of him like spider legs pulling a limp rag doll*

"I was going to write up one of the ten or so post ideas that I have stored up and waiting for me to type life into, but then I said: "Screw it.", and decided that this would be a good time to have my long overdue mental breakdown."

*Starts blowing raspberries at the monitor, waves to the Sherlock Holmes banana riding past him on the two seater bicycle, Watson is a bespeckled shark on the seat behind the pipe smoking banana*

"Gotta get up at 6AM tomorrow for the family reunion. 23 people will be living in this house at that time, and I figured I would just go crazy now and save myself the trouble of doing it later."

*Has trouble getting the mouse to click where he wants it to, as the mouse seems to be more interested in the cheese puffs lying open on the desk, and keeps on wandering in that direction*

"And then after the family reunion we get to run straight over to my cousins' wedding reception, and that will take up the last six hours of the day (or so)."

And that is why I'm a nut; I'm crazy in the coconut.

Viva la revolucion! Matar el sueño!

2006-07-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

It's 11:57 PM. Do you know where your children are?

Because if they are being held captive by the chains of slumber, me and my snare drum are here to save them from that terrible fate.

I am currently losing the battle versus my ignoble adversary Sleep, so I must now resort to a smear campaign to rally the common people to my cause. Check the propaganda, yo!

Sleep sucks.
Think about it, if you sleep 8 hours a night by the time you are 90 years old you will have slept the equivalent of 45 years of awake-time, just like that, down the drain.

And what the heck is sleep for?
I am listening to a guy tell me on my headphones that sleep is the period when we reduce certain chemicals that build up in our bodies during the daytime. Couldn't we invent some sort of pill to do that?

Or is sleep just the time that our brains use to make random connections and organize itself? I once got the idea of making a dream journal out of a teen people magazine and I tried it a couple of times. A dream journal is where the moment you wake up in the morning you reach for your notebook and jot down what you were dreaming about before it fades away. Sometimes the results can be surprising, such as the day when I apparently was dreaming of "Opra Winfrey searching for me in a biplane".
What could these dreams possibly signify, if anything at all?

Personally I think that the chemicals that build up in our bodies are really just poisons that Sleep diabolically uses to blackmail us, and dreams are when Sleep does it's brainwashing VOODOO!

Stupid sleep.

OK EVERYONE! LETS BOYCOTT SLEEP! STARTING RIGHT NOW!

...

I'm not asleep yet, are you?

Book Review: Holes.

2006-07-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

If you were to take the time to scroll down the sidebar a little, thanks to the Library Thing widget you would notice that I recently finished the the newberry prize winning book Holes by Louis Sachar. (The Newberry prize is the award that they give to exceptional childrens books).

I actually first discovered this book on the Holes DVD, a live action Disney Movie film which proved to be of unusually good quality. I enjoyed the story and filed away the name of the book in my memory for future reference.

And then my sister came back from Guinea, and this had been her in-flight reading for the trip, so I swiped it from her and dove in.

I read it in a couple of hours, it being a children's novel and all, but I have learned that the label of "Kids book" does not exclude the presence of an excellent and meaningful story, when a couple of years ago I broke down and read a book that had been molding on my shelf ever since I got it at the tender age of ten years old, and I already considered myself too old for "Kids books" (After all, I was reading the 900 page long and slightly violent Sword of Truth books). That book was called The Giver, check it out if you get a chance.

Much like The Giver the writing is simple to read and understand, yet between the lines there can be found a deep and rich tapestry of ideas and emotions.

Camp Green Lake is neither a camp, nor is it anywhere near a lake or greenery of any kind. Stanley Yelnats was given a choice between going to Camp Green Lake or going to prison, and he had never been to camp. Unfourtunately for him, he should have choosen jail, but then again the Yelnats had been unlucky ever since Stanley's "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather" was cursed by a gypsy woman. The inmates of Camp Green Lake are forced to spend everyday in under the beating sun, digging holes in the cracked desert earth; the warden says it's to "make bad boys turn into good boys", but some think that they are actually searching for something more.

Intersperced with this story line are several others; exploring the source of the Yelnats curse, the tragic story of the legendary bandit Kissin' Kate, and in the end they all tie together in a satisfying and coheasive hole. Oops, I fake-accidently said "hole" when I meant "whole". Teehee, aren't I funny?

In the end it was a quick and amusing read, and I would recommend it to you if you aren't looking for anything very complex.

I give it an above-average rating of 3/5 stars!

This isn't the post that was meant to be.

2006-07-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

Holy garbonzo beans!
You were really interested in a link to beans?

You know, I sat down to write today's post an hour early, in the hopes of finally subduing and subjugating my arch-foe: Sleep. This great technological advance of "earlier posting" was supposed to be the weapon that would give me the edge in the war with slumberland; it came to me earlier today in a flash of insight, much like Einstein when he realized that E=mc2 = Atomic Bomb.

However, somehow I spent all that time fixing and adding tiny things on my blog, whittling away all of my precious blog posting time, until now, when it is once again too late. Curse you Sleep. You are far too clever for my tastes.

Ch-ch-changes.

Actually, that would be change, singular. I added some pretty Pandora box thingies down there below the Library Thing widget. When I was pondering them in the template preview window, I thought to myself: "This borders on too much information."

The list of radio stations directly tailored to my musical tastes? Ok, not so bad, but the list of my bookmarked songs?

Yeah, that could lead to some embarrassing moments when I add the newest Gwen Stephani, or that profane death metal song to my favorites. (Sadly I don't notice profanities in music anymore, after a year with a roommate who blasted me with some kinda vulgar hip-hop music.)

But then I thought: "Well, I was never really known for my self preservation", and then clicked the "Save template changes" button, because I have nothing to hide, and I will stand tall and bookmark Aqua's "Barbie Girl" with resolute pride, knowing that whatever happens: "I can touch. I can play. I can say she's always yours. Oo-ooo-ou. She's a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie world."

Life in plastic, it's fantastic my friends.

So I hope you enjoy the time that I spent not posting again, and make use of those invasive Pandora's boxes over there. And if you click those song links, you can actually hear a sample of the song in question, so they can be pretty neat.

Just remember what happened when the first Pandora's box was opened.

Oompa Loompa Doodle dee doo I've got another post for you.

2006-07-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

Ho ho ho. Sleep eludes my questing grasp once again. Well played Sleep, you are a most formidable opponent. However...

Hah!
I counter attack your evasions with another tiny post!
Soon you shall be within my reach! You can not escape me forever SLEEEP!

The Oompa Loompa Poll results

It seems as if there was a very clear winner of the "Old Oompa vs. New Oompa" poll, and let me give you a hint: it wasn't Johnny Depp's diminutive drudges.

Hooray for midget actors and orange face paint everywhere! HUZZAH!

As you can see, the old school oompas won by quite a margin. And since I do not believe that a total of 12 actual, individual, people have ever cared enough about my blog to notice a poll half way down the page, I naturally assume that Joel Span has voted around 8 or so times on it, including the one vote that was received for the new Oompa Loompas.

Good for you Joel, keep that spirit of Guinean politics alive!

Which also means that the Old Oompas won pretty much unanimously, unless I am mistaken in my musings.

Personally, when I think Oompa, I think little orange and green guys, so I voted for old oompa myself. HOORAY FOR YET ANOTHER OOMPA VICTORY!

^_^

2006-07-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

Okay now, here's the thing: it's not that I am running out of ideas to blog about; I currently have a surplus of those, and I have the photoshopped pictures to prove it; it's that I'm running out of time.

I don't like to write on my blog with other people in the room with me; I have this thing about people reading over my shoulder as I write, they don't have to actually be spying over my shoulder, it's just that they could. So now that my Sis and my two younger female cousins have formed their girl-pack (which makes all boys their enemies by default), I am forced by my own pet peeve to start writing on my blog after everyone else goes to sleep, which means less time for writing, because unfourtunately, I have a job to rise and shine for.

Aaand, it's already too late for moi, so I must stoppy ze bloggings. Sad.

:'(

And the Japanese cry-y face style: T_T

Hope you noticed the things that I did get done here, such as the thumbnails that pop up when you hover your mouse over the blog links; plus the very nicely done Library Thing widget which I had to style by hand myself so that it would fit in nicely with the rest of the site.
Incidently, for some reason the LT box doesn't work that great in internet explorer. It sorta flees to the bottom of the page. Odd. But then again, if you are still using internet explorer you deserve to be subjected to hideous web pages! Shame on you! Think of the children! Use firefox!

Two words.

2006-07-08T21:52:00.000-07:00

Too tired.

5 minutes to make the most incredible post ever made in the entire history of the known universe.

2006-07-07T21:55:00.000-07:00

5 minutes? Ha ha. I have completed entire English papers in less time!

And the grade I received on those papers is irrelevant to my point, which is, uh... I can make stuff up really fast.

So prepare to be amazed!

My apologies

Some of you have already noticed that I missed yesterday's post, and frankly I am surprised no one broke the glass panel, pulled the alarm, and deployed a SlapMe! link in the comments.

I realize that this is probably because no one wanted to go through the tedium of browsing the archives for the link to the SlapMe! picture, what with the only compensation being the hollow delight of slapping me on the wrists (or rather, on the face) for denying you a post that, lets be blunt here, probably wouldn't have been that great anyways.

Be that as it may, the truth is that I must rely on your help to keep me posting regularly, in the absence of a willpower to call my own.

And so to humbly aid you in your most gracious task I have put the slapMe! code in the sidebar where it can easily be cut-and-pasted into your comment, and cleverly disguised as something I would never suspect!

So, next time I miss a day, slap away, and keep me regular.

Be my blogging Metamusil.

Good excuse.

About the actual missed post itself, I have an excellent reason for not making it, and that reason is that me and my sister spent that entire evening with Steve and Julia Dirks!

It isn't often that I get to hang out with someone I know from Guinea, so when I found out that the Dirks were going to stop by here on their way from one end of the USA to the other, I was ecstatic. The evening was great, we ate dinner together, rented a movie, stayed up late watching it, and generally spent most of our time talking and laughing, which was a nice change from how I usually spend my evenings; laughing and talking to my computer. I was quite saddened when the evening came to an end, and not only because it was late and I had to get up for work in the morning. Being MKs from the same country gives you so much in common to talk about, and it gets lonely not being able to speak to people who understand the things that you invariably learn by being an MK.

Corrections.

I believe Mary Beth said that I made it 13 posts in row before I missed that one fateful day, and the unlucky implications made by this number are unacceptable. Therefore I am currently devising a plan to rectify my lapse in routine posting. I will let you know tomorrow if my plan has succeeded or failed, in the meantime I must figure out a way of producing 1.21 jigawatts (Great Scott!) of electricity.

Wrap up.

And there you have it. An entire post pulled out of thin air and based entirely on the premise of not making a post. Impressive? Maybe. I am too tired to judge. Night!

World Jump Day

2006-07-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

NO no no nononononononono NoOOoooOooOOOooo!

Why is it that I always start these things 10 minutes after I should have gone to bed! Why?
I'll tell you why.

It's because of my unerring sense of environmental duty, that's why. How do you think I could sleep knowing that eskimos everywhere will soon be driven homeless by a ruthless sun that thwarts all their attempts for shelter in rapidly melting igloos? What man could rest when in the near future the closest thing to ice skating we will be able to get will be slushy sludging? How would you even rate such an event? Ten point oh for the triple lutz to belly flop? One shivers to consider it; a soon to be rare event in a world where no cold weather will exist to cause said shivers.

I am speaking of course of global warming. But there is a solution!

Here's the plan: the earth is getting too much sun and making the baby penguins sad, right? Okay, so what we do is move the planet farther away from the sun, therefore making it cool back down a little, and the little children can eat their ice cream cones without fear of instant meltage.

But how could we possibly accomplish such a feat, short of using the help of Superman himself?

By the power of teamwork! (Didn't you ever listen to captain planet?) We combine our special powers of mass and adherence to the laws of gravity, and we jump.

At the same time.

...shifting the earth's orbit only by fractions, however, the positive effects can easily be seen in the graph.

The earth will be saved.

Of course you would need the coordinated efforts of at least 600.000.000 people to pull it off, but hey, they already have 585.345.294 participants signed up and registered to go.

The scheduled date is exactly two weeks from now, so go to the site and enter your time zone to get the exact hour and minute you should heroically pound your sneakers on the ground; not just for the sake of the planet but for your children, and your children's children.

I'm going to do my part to save the ozone layer; will you?

Remember planeteers: THE POWER IS YOURS!

Happy birthday America.

2006-07-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

Late. Work tomorrow. Gotta type quick. Probably means I'll end up writing a novel here.

My Fourth of July was awesome, I slept in past noon and then crammed ourselves into my
grandparent's rickety old truck and drove an hour up to my cousin's house. We ate delicious BBQ food, and then me and Melanie vetoed a push to go out on the fridged lake and swim. Hooray for power in numbers!

After we ate our time was in turn taken by playing with little Keylee, playing playstation, and setting off our own fireworks. Greatness.

Later that evening we went out to the river in town and watched the huge fireworks show. Incredible.

Then I returned by myself here to manhattan, threw down my stuff, and started writing this. So what you are reading IS BREAKING NEWS!

Now I will fling myself into bed and hope I get some shuteye before I am obligated to arise for work tomorrow.

Hope your day was good too!

My day.

2006-07-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

It is so much more difficult to concentrate on writing my blog post when two crazy female relatives of mine are squealing at the top of their lungs over a game of Super Monkey Ball just two feet away from where my ears are protectively encased in Pandora-blaring head phones, which instead of blocking out their noise, enhances it like a megaphone, causing my thoughts to churn like an infant chimpanzee inside a madly speeding plastic sphere.

The screen shot should help the uninformed decipher the last part of that sentence. Speaking of which, that was quite a doozy , wasn't it? Aww-yeah.

Play-by-play

Me and my cousins picked up my Sis from the airport yesterday, and despite almost being killed on the way over by an SUV driving the wrong way down a divided off ramp, the trip went off without a hitch. My older cousin, Sandra, also convinced me to let her sister, my younger cousin Katie, stay with us until tomorrow. Tricksy, she isss.

This morning we slept in late and then watched Disney/nick (need I tell you: not my choice. Fairy Odd Parents roolz, though.) all the way up till jumping into the truck and zooming over to the movie theater to watch Cars, both of them for the first time, me for the second.

The theater was even more packed than when I saw it with my Mom on opening weekend, something I would have thought was impossible, but most of the children were sitting on parents' laps and in strollers, and yet still every seat was filled. Cars was just as good if not better the second time, with all the clever references and easter eggs being easier to catch the second time around, also we missed the beginning of the animated short that Pixar always puts before the feature last time, so this time I got to see all of it. Nice.
My Sis put Cars right below The Incredibles on her list of favorite Pixar movies ever (she said it came close), and my cousin said it was 'awesome'.

When we emerged from the multiplex we were surprised to find that it was pouring cats and dogs outside, and we skillfully dodged the plummeting pets, managing to reach the truck only half drowned.

From there it was off to Dillons to procure some vittles for my Sis, who, for some reason, needs more variety in her diet than popcorn and hotpockets. Bizarre creature.

70 bucks later (50 bucks more than I usually spend) the truck was loaded and floor space was slim. No foot room for them, hehehe, lucky I was driving.

We then ate two Little Ceasars Pizzas, which were most tasty indeed, especially for my sister who is not accustomed to the phenomenal haute cuisine of the civilized world.

By this time it was getting late and me and Katie drove off to buy a bag full of recreational pyrotechnic devices, it being the third of July and all. When we got back home and spread out our purchases on the living room carpet, we had two boxes of those little white bags that you throw on the ground and they pop, two top-like spinners, some sparklers, a pack of black cats firecrackers, a novelty globe spark throwing thing, and a little rocket.

We forced Katie to wait until it got darker, and then went out into the driveway and lit it all up.

I had forgotten how awesome fireworks are, the last time I had set any off being many, many years ago, but they are soooo incredible! The smoke, the lights, the sound, awsome! My favorite was watching the rocket zip into the sky and then explode into a sparkly death. Even the sparkle-shooting globe was cool. The dormant pyromaniac inside me has awakened and he demands sacrifice to quell his hunger!

Seriously. I gotta buy more fireworks. Soon.

So it has been a good day, and happy fourth tomorrow everyone! Hope you have a chance to witness many fiery explosions!

Spin that leek.

2006-07-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

Today my sister comes in from the Kansas City airport! Huzzah! So great.

In light of this special occasion, all that is going up today is this link to an incredible online video!

Click on the picture and find yourself transported to Leek Spinning heaven! This joyful woman spins her leek and sings a merry happy fun time song that makes your heart big with ravishment!

The first time I found this I spent 10 minutes hypnotized by the upbeat song and madly gyrating leek. So simple. But addictive, somehow. Check it out!

A polite recap.

2006-07-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hoo-ha! I have just now created new posts on my blog every day for a whole week!

And how does it feel to have been and gone and done it?

Uh, tired. Tired is how it feels.

I think I started out pretty good with Stop trying to hit me, and hit me! which felt creative and new with the "Slap me" idea, and started the whole post-a-day thing.

Monday's Oompa Loompa thing was less awesome, but that was to be expected, it being, you know, Monday and all.

I am particularly proud of my Cars Review which came next, but then I did start on it almost the moment I got home from work, and then didn't stop until it was time to go to bed.

Seriously. Time = Quality.

That being a hard act to follow, and with me spending only an hour typing it up, I was sure that the "page out of my life" post would suck pretty bad. Surprisingly, I went back and read it, and it wasn't all that terrible.

I would like to take this time to honor all the heroes who actually read my big stinking huge posts like that. You know who you are, both of you. Give yourselves a big mountain of gold on the back. Because that would be so much cooler than just a pat on the back.

The Superman post came next, and was my first "throw the pretty pictures at 'em" entry. I had actually planed a Kitty Cat themed picture throwin' post for that day (and I'm not kidding) but I discovered the shocking news and had to post about it.

Yesterday's post I just felt terrible about, it being another "throw away" entry and all, with just a few links I found at random in my collection, however, I read back through it, and, eh, not so bad.

Regrettable personality defects.

Has anyone else noticed that I use a lot of commas? I have. And it annoys the heck out of me. But it just doesn't feel right without the commas!

And then just recently, in the Cars post, I discovered the magically delicious semi colon. So awesome. I am in love. The way it connects two slimly related sentences together: Genius!

You know another of my habits that gets on my nerves? Saying "sorry" too often. I tell people "sorry" all the time. Like just yesterday an older man was walking past the entrance to my work place, and he misinterpreted the swinging, lanky, yet inherently graceful way I jumped down the stairs as if it was a disaster narrowly averted.

"Woah, looks like you almost fell." he said.

"Sorry." I replied.

Like I had almost killed him or something. And then there are those times where I am extraordinarily going out of my way to help someone, and they thank me for it, and my knee jerk reaction is to mumble something about being sorry I didn't do it sooner, or sorry that I didn't do it well enough.

You might think that being too polite is a laughable annoyance to have, but it can sometimes make other people uncomfortable. Like I am killing myself to move all the furniture on an entire dorm floor into the right places so the house keepers don't have to move them afterwards (it's not my job), and then I tell them I am sorry for some reason, and it makes them think to themselves "What kind of jerk does this guy think I am?" and then go into all sorts of trouble to reassure me that I did good.

And being too polite also makes it hard to joke around with people.

It's like politeness is just some sort of a padding we use to make our interactions with strangers more comfortable, before we get to know them. Different people have different tolerations for different things, so by using the rules of politeness we are able to avoid any misunderstandings or inadvertent insults we might have otherwise made by just being ourselves, until we get the chance to know the person, and therefore how to interact with them comfortably.

So when you are constantly too polite, like me, people see you as still using the "stranger protocol" around them, as being distant and aloof. It sucks. I listen to other people playfully tease each other with insults and repartee, and I see the closeness that arises from such familiarity, and I am saddened that I really can't join in.

But I shall make efforts in that direction, insulting everyone I meet as if I was afflicted with a particularly bad case of tourettes syndrome.

That'll fix it! You idiot. Oops I'm sorry, I didn't mean... darn it. Got to work on the apologizing.

Spiderman 3 Trailer

2006-06-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Woah, before going to bed I checked the comments again and Corinthians informed me that the teaser for Spiderman 3 had been released. Yay! Check it out.

Oh, and if this shot doesn't become the movie poster eventually then I will be slightly surprised.

And that would be a tragedy.

Good links.

2006-06-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

Ah-aaah-aaaaargh.

15 minutes left in this friday as well as the month of June...

Must... post... arrrgh.

No ideas that I can do in... 10 minutes now. I am dieing of tiredness.

Why? Why the no-sleepy? Wh-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y...

Ok, how about I go through my bookmarks... Aha! Here's some awesomeness for ya:

An online Javascript-run NES emulator!

Play youself some classic nintendo games like original donkey kong, doctor mario, bubble bobble, castlevania, and lots more. All without downloading anything! Huzzah! The post is saved with this extreme awesomenessity! However it takes a good internet connection to work good, so guinea people don't even think about it.

Wait, scratch that. Keep the dream alive. Never lose hope guinea people! BELIEVVVVEEEE!

This picture of the classic beat-em up BattleToads should tide you over during the long centuries you will be forced to wait for it to load. God speed.

Jump off a cliff

Next out of my bookmarked goodness is another classic game brought to you this time by the more speedy and browser compatible DHTML. May I introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen, the everlastingly charming:

DHTML Lemmings!

Go crazy. This one should work for everybody no problem, so there is no excuse for you to pass up the chance to set fifty pixelated green midgets to self destruct in spouts of flying pixels.

Hooha. Nothing like the smell of burning lemmings in the morning. Or you could win the game and not kill the lemmings. You're no fun.

Dirtflake Squares

Speaking of Lemmings, if you liked the one panel comic Farside then you'll probably love:

Dirtflake Squares.

Joel Esler, the artist, is a genius. And I really don't have permission to link this image, so please don't sue me. Pleeeaaaasssse?

Check it out, it will make you a better person.

My appologies

Please pardon my lack of original content lately, me is soooo tired... that is an excuse, so... yeah. Bedtime for Bonzo. Ronald Reagan. Random mind-associations. I want another actor-president. They perform the true function of the president, which is to distract from the real power, admirably. Night.

Splendid Man

2006-06-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Omigosh omigosh omigosh!
*Bunches hands up into fists in front of his face and stomps up and down in place while screaming like a little school girl*

Superman Returns came out, like, yesterday!
*More hysterical high-pitched squealing, hands fluttering in front of mouth*

*Gets somber all of a sudden*
And where the heck was I?
I thought it was coming out on Friday, like most movies do, and then boom Superman does his "Spinning-the-earth-backwards" thing and jumps the premier on me three days days early. Thanks Supes. Thanks a lot.

Now what am I going to do with these tight blue spandexes and crimson red underwear that I especially dyed just for the honor of wearing them on the outside with a little yellow "S" scribbled in highlighter on the front? Huh? Because people are going to look weird at me when I bike over to the theater in the afternoon tomorrow (matinee prices are only $5.50! Yay!) in full Superman costume, the red towel around my neck billowing behind me as I make wooshing noises and try to steer with both fists held out straight in front of me without crashing.

People are going to think I am crazy in the head, Superman, when I do that three days after your movie came out. My social life might never recover. Way to go, SuperJERK! Where is the Truth, Justice, and, and the American Way, in that, huh? Huh? That's what I thought. Yeah.

This is all your fault, but I am still a fan, Supes, so let the pictures and video flow forth!

Many, many more Superman comics from the official site.

Oh, and sorry guys that I haven't been responding to your comments much, but I have been staying up late already doing the posts, so I really haven't had the time, but be assured that they shall be responded to soon! And you guys are awesome to be able to comment so much already and keeping up with my speedy posting and all! Thanks guys!

Hare reports race with tortoise.

2006-06-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

Woah! Almost didn't make it today! So I guess this will have to be a little quick and dirty; no pretty videos and pictures today! Sorry. *Poutty face*

I came home today to find the sassy little strawberry blonde tornado of activity that is my 10 year old cousin Katie waiting for me in my grandmothers computer room. I was mildly surprised that she was here because Katie lives pretty far away, in the neighboring state of Missouri; but then she sometimes visits her sister who lives here in state, and her other grandma who lives up the road, so naturally she pops up every once in a long while. She immediatly told me that she had something waiting for me in a bag in the basement, and that I was to go there and wait for her. In no mood to argue, I went downstairs, and she plopped into my hand one of those little joystick boxes which connects directly to the TV and lets you play old coin op games like pacman and dig dug on it, and then she sat me down and told me I could play it while she went out with grandma and grandpa to dinner.

Saying it dry like that doesn't do justice to my cousin. She bristles with energy and is constantly chattering and exclaming and giggling and reminding you what you should do; it somewhat tires my inner introvert. But as I slumped onto the couch and let the game fall from my fingers, my fatigue had nothing to do with my rambunctious cousin.

Oh no, the cause of this effect was an aged cyclist I encountered during my bike ride home from work. We crossed paths at the first 4-way street light on my daily journey, and after the "Walk" sign told us it was safe to cross, screaming its high-pitched whine so that the blind drivers will know when the light is green, I continued riding on the sidewalk, which rose up on a hill over the street level, while he chose to ride on the side of the actual street.

This "riding bikes on the street" thing has never really flown with me, growing up in Guinea as I have; over there the only traffic laws we had were developed by Sir Issac Newton, and concerned mainly inertia, mass, and relative velocities of the bodies in movement. To put it otherwise, if it's bigger and faster than you, then get the heck out of the way.

So it was with annoyance that I watched him pull out in front of me, a shock of white hair visible through the holes of his helmet, as I strained to climb this little hill. I am used to being the fastest man-powered vehicle in sight on my daily commute to work and back, and now I was getting passed by some old guy who was shamefully cheating by biking where I dared not. I pedaled harder, crested the hill, and sped down the other side, and when my built up speed took me past him I thought: "Haha old man, youthful vigor triumphs once again over ripened wisdom!", and thought no more of it, making my way up the grueling big hill and across a couple more intersections.

There is a part on my daily commute where the sidewalk switches in the middle of the street from one side of the road to the other, and then back again to the first side of the road a couple hundred feet later. It is kind of annoying to wait for a break in the cars so that you can cross the street, walk a little ways, then wait again to cross back, so I usually just walk my bike through the grass and stick to the one side of the street. So there I was, walking my bike along when ZOOM the old dude whips past me on the road to my left.

"Oh heck no." I muttered under my breath, getting back on my bike and starting to pedal painfully over the thick and hilly grass. The guy was nowhere around the last couple streets I stopped at, and I had figured I was miles ahead, so where did he come from? My breath was a little ragged by the time I reached the sidewalk, and my thighs were beginning to burn, but this time it was personal. I switched it into high gear and pedaled hard even though the ground was sloping downward, and I managed to pass him again as he coasted leasurely down the hill.

All was right with the world once again, and I vowed that "Niel Armstrong" over there had outdone me for the last time. I pedaled hard up the next hill and down it, building up breakneck speed yet still pedaling harder, harder. I swear I left the ground when I hit the bump in the sidewalk at the bottom, and then flew suicidally through the next intersection, only to be forced to screech to a stop at the four lane highway a ways beyond. I pushed the crosswalk button and panted while I fanned myself with my hand and wiped the sweat from my eyes. I laughed at myself for being such an idiot and going through such lengths for some pitiful part of my ego. That guy was probably all the way back there wondering why that kid who passed him was trying so hard, if he had noticed me at all.

The white "Walk" light lit up and buzzed it's merry tune, and I wearily put my feet back on my pedals and pushed...
and that darn old guy flies past me and zips through the intersection.

"What the... Get the heck back here!" I thought, and immediatly forgetting my revelation of moments before I began to pedal like my bike was hooked up and powering my own Mother's life support machine. Harder, harder, faster, faster, sweat dripping in my eyes and obscuring my vision, still he was in front of me, so far in front of me, must... catch... up...

And then he turned onto a side street and just like that our race was over. Or rather, my race was over. I don't think during that whole time he even suspected that someone was killing himself to beat him; I don't think he even broke a sweat.

I mentally tipped my cap in his direction as I rode past his street, recognizing his clear victory. At least I wasn't a total loser in this affair.

I mean, he gave me something to write about in my blog, right?

Cars Review

2006-06-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

All-right-TEE-then! K-ka-KABAAM!

That's four.

FOUR DAYS IN A ROW MEHZ AH-MEEZE! And I'm still goin' on strong.

*Trades punches with the air in front of him, dodging and weaving to avoid his imaginary opponent's counter attack, the dreaded UPPERCUT OF APATHY!*

Let us review.

Today's review is of the latest movie I have seen (even though it was a week and a half ago) which happens to be Disney Pixar's Cars.

I have to admit that I didn't expect much from this movie, despite my habitual fanatic love for all things Pixar. I mean, I saw The Incredibles three times within twenty four hours the first time I had access to it. You see, the trailer for Cars seemed pretty formula (Haha, racing joke!... Yeah, I suck.), and besides, using anthropomorphic cars as the main characters is just Krazy with a capital "K". I could understand bugs, toys, monsters, and actual humans as your subject, I mean a person could dress up in a costume looking more or less like those (and they do), but how are you going to get the viewer to believe in the emotions of a car?
Besides, can anyone imagine a sport more boring to watch? Shuffle board is a more exciting spectator sport than watching cars drive in circles all day. Oh look! Sometimes they stop going in circles to fix up their vehicles, postponing the only interesting part of Nascar Racing, which is when the cars explode into fiery doom!

But, my Mom was in town (Makes it sound so banal, more like "My Mom happened to be on the continent..."), so we went to see it on opening weekend.

And I was blown away.

It is one of those movies (all the Pixar movies are this kind) that sucks you into the story and into the world that it creates, and then it doesn't let you go even after the closing credits are done. Pixar had breathed real life into these Cars, with every look and movement nuanced with human expressions done so well that you didn't even notice them until you found yourself caring more than you thought you could for a car. (I am not really a car guy, sorry.)

The story sounds cliche-ed: The old "I'm - so - rich - I've - lost - touch - with - simple - values" routine, but in practice it feels natural and not at all stereotypical, with the movie beginning in the middle of the "Riches - and - Fame - has - gone - to - his - head" part, therefore skipping the normally ubiquitous "My - old - friends - hate - me - because - I - am - a - rich - and - famous - Jerk" part. Which is refreshing; I hate that part.

So the story feels new and involving, but what about the racing sections?
They are awesome. First of all, it provides ample crashes without the boring parts in between, and second of all the movie actually makes the strategy of car racing exciting, with pit stops being critical, sponsorship spellbinding, and turning out of the slide seems a lost kung-fu racing technique.

All in all, I would highly recommend seeing this movie, and I give it a rating of four out of five stars.

I love Pixar.

The next Pixar movie is scheduled for a year from now in Summer 2007, it is called "Ratatouille", and it involves a picky eater; something I could totally get into, being a so called "picky eater" myself.

Is it wrong if I don't like eating nasty food?

Mmmm... Democracy.

2006-06-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Hokay. Here we go, Pandora is tuned in and set to a low crooning coming from the overhead intercom speakers, the seat back of my uncomfortable folding chair is set to it's full upright position, my cell phone has safely been turned off, and you might want to follow my example and oblige the "Seat Belt On" light.

Because it's time for me to land yet another awesome blog post on the tender runway of your heart. Let me know if it gets too... intense for you.

So you thought I wouldn't be able to make it posting just THREE DAYS in a row? Well I'll have you know that when John Wilkos makes a promise, he keeps it no matter what the cost to his sanity and/or personal hygiene. John Wilkos is a great (yet insane and foul smelling) guy that way.
And furthermore, when John Wilkos speaks about himself in the third person he means business darn it!

Who's up for hanging chad?

So the results are in on my "New Template" poll, and it looks like...

wait for it...

four more years of Oompa Loompa!
*Everyone reading the blog goes crazy, confetti, balloons, and streamers fall from the sky, patriotic band music starts playing.*

As you can see from the graphic we had a "2000 presidential elections"-like tie because of some last minute votes in favor of returning to the old template, however, further inspection of these last minute votes revealed several suspicious factors as to their legitimacy. For one thing they were all received within minutes of each other, when all the other votes were separated by days. For another thing, I happen to like this template so too bad for you. Not that your opinion doesn't mean anything to me. Au contraire mon frere, I value it lots, however I have not finished my renovation on my blog and you haven't yet seen it in it's full glory.

Conclusion

With many posts comes less time to perfect them, and it is officially past my bedtime everyone, so thank you for reading this humble post, and please comment below. Even if it is only to say: "Lolz. Joo bl0g sux st00p1d."

I can understand and accept such constructive criticism.

Stop trying to hit me, and hit me!

2006-06-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! I have decided to knuckle down and start writing on my blog daily. Impossible you say? You are quite possibly right.

B-bu-but I have a plan!

If ever I miss a day, just include this html link in your comments (Copy/Paste):

<a href ="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1883/1045/400/Untitled3.jpg"> Decoy text.</a>

and then disguise it by changing the "Decoy text." part to something I would never suspect! So then I see the link, click on it knowing not what fate has in store, and BAM!

I get a face-full of the palm of your hand!

(Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

So is that brilliant or what? I'll say it is. Teehee. I have no idea what we're planning for me...

waaiiit...
oh well.

Go before you go.

In other news, never ever use a porta-potty in Japan. If I ever visit that country I am going to hold it the whole time, two weeks, a month, whatever, as long as I can avoid this kind of stuff.
It's not in English, but no language skills are required to understand the universal language of horror.

Oh. My. Goodness.

You know what, "Goodness" just doesn't have the impact of "God" but I was taught not to take the lord's name in vain, you know, to save it for the important times and all, but using "goodness" in replacement makes me sound like a 9 year old school girl. And saying "Oh. My. Gosh." sounds like I'm a 9 year old school girl in a black and white TV show from the fifties. *Sigh* Et tu Beaver?

I can not win.

But at least I don't have to go to the bathroom in Japan.

Before I go...

2006-06-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

I started out today thinking I was going to make a post on my blog, but the mere sight of my site made me cringe in fright, so to my delight I finally got around to tiding things up.

About a million hours later my eyes hurt from staring at the computer, I have blisters on my fingers, I haven't eaten anything since breakfast, and I still haven't made my new post. The shame.

On the brightside I was able to compose as complete a list of Guinea persons blogs as I believe has ever before been compiled. If you want your blog taken off the list, or your name changed or something, please leave me a comment and I'll get right to it.

Speaking of comments, it's actually "sparing yourself from my wrath" now, a turn of phrase I hope conveys the message that readers who comment get put last on my list of people to kill, and should enjoy long and fruitful lives, secure in the knowledge that they have encouraged a struggling writer in the pursuit of his craft. And that if you don't comment I will beat you to death with your own keyboard. *Giggle*

My new header made me beat my own self over the head with my keyboard, with its many html and css complications, but in the end I think it is pretty sweet. The font is actually from "Shaun of the dead". Respekt.

There is a link on the right to my own Pandora radio station: "Crazinesses Radio" which I hope you enjoy. I have spent many man hours pruning and weeding and planting cool music on it. Love it!

Finally, instead of that orange "B" logo appearing in the address bar and on the tab, there is now a little miniature picture of myself. The joy! The rapture!

You know what, when I started this post I only meant to pose to you one question:

"Why don't the other bugs keep on bumping into the lightning bugs? Cause' you'd think what with bugs habitual attraction to lez lumieres and all that the lightning bug would get swarmed."

Hmmm... ponder it well.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore toto.

2006-06-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

OMG what happened here?

Not to worry little ones, I just kinda got tired of the old green tints and overloaded page code. Oh, and I am still in Kansas, despite what the title might say. There is a bunch of stuff I gotta do to get my blog back up to speed, but for now I would like to hear what you guys think of it! Pencils ready everyone? Put them down and use your mouse to vote on the poll to your right!

Thanks guys! Your input is appreciated!

[edit]Sorry, it's actually a little down and to the right. In the sidebar, anyways.[/edit]

Music. Sleep. S'all good.

2006-06-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

Pandora - Find New Music, Listen to Custom Internet Radio Stations

Hello once again peoples! I am vury vury tired today, because as you know, I am quite a busy man, what with my important job, and, all.
...
MORE COMMAS!!!! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, !!!!
HEEHEEHAHAHAHA! MOOORE!! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, HIHIHIHIHIHAHA!
...
Heh-heh. ... Whew. ...
...

Needless to say, if we consider my level of fatigue as being inversely proportional to the state of my sanity, I must be on the verge of collapsing into an extremely deep slumber.
A slumber so deep I will spend millenia before awakening from it, the exeption of course being if I am kissed by a beautiful princess, in which case I will probably sit straight up, sputter, wipe my mouth, begin saying something like "Whatheheckwhy'dyoukissmeehhh...", I'd trail off after noticing that I'd been kissed by a beautiful princess, at which point I'd lay back down and pretend to be asleep again, and mutter "You almost got it that time, try agaaaiin..." while pretending to snore.

Start lining up now, princesses.

At one time there was actually a point to this post, what was it?
...
....
OH YEAH! See that picture and that link all the way up there? They will take you to the awesome Pandora site! Why is it awesome you ask? Well how about you just chill a little bit, huh? I was about to tell you anyways!

Everyone likes music, but my tastes differ from your's and everyone else's. So how do I go about finding new music that I will love, without trudging through the garbage that lies between the rare gems on the radio stations?

This is where pandora comes in.

A crack team of experts have spent at least five years analysing over ten thousand songs, tearing them apart to find what makes them tick, their DNA, if you will. And then they made a radio station (Pandora) which not only is head and shoulders above alot of other radio stations with it's ability to pause and skip tracks, but you can also tell it that you like a certain song it played, in which case it will find and play others just like it, or you can tell pandora you hate a song, which will immediatly skip that song and then make sure you never listen to it again and that similar songs will be avoided.
In brief, after awhile you will have a radio station that plays only music that you like, and none of the music you don't. This way you will discover new favorite artists and songs, causing you to shake your bootay like never before.
It's great.

( Did I mention that I am tired? )

Click on the links, check it out, it is Macromedia Flash based, so you won't have to download anything, just click and start listening! Yay!

Also in the same vein of musical discovery is the Incredible Last.fm whose products you can see in the sidebar, it is the gray thing that keeps track of what I listen to over there on the right. And unlike pandora, Last.fm uses the list of tracks you actually listen to, so that it can match you with others who listen to the same songs and then find other tracks that you will enjoy. If you share 80% of your songs with another guy, the chances are you will enjoy the 20% you haven't heard. Also, Last.fm is actually software that you have to download to use it, so... yeah. I am tired.

Okay people, I held on as long as I could. I am using a special firefox plugin to post this, so I am not sure it will work, but if you're reading this, then joy springs freely forever amen.
What the heck?? It's too late, my brain already left before me. Adios!

Anyone have a towel?

2006-05-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

Hey, short post here as I must keep an eye on the stick of Old Spice deodorant which keeps on moving in the corner of my vision. It's planning something, and after a life-time of it's head being used to scent my underarms, that can't be good news.

That's right! Next Thursday we celebrate the annual TOWEL DAY! HUZZAH!

But what in the name of Almighty Bob is a TOWEL day, you ask? Well, Towel Day is the date that has been set aside every May 25th to remember the late literary luminary Douglas Adams, mainly by carrying a towel with you everywhere you go all day long.

But why, for the love of Bob, why a towel? Because they're awesome. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself puts it better:

" A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

As you can see there is ample reason for you to show up wearing a towel next Thursday. Just remember, real HitchHiker's fans wear nothing but the towel.

Ho ho ho. I'm ridicul... ARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

If only I'd had my towel.

Cleaning up all this blood would have been way easier.

`

Yowza.

2006-05-05T00:02:00.000-07:00

You remember how I had that other superman trailer here? This preview is way much betterest. -er. And Superman Returns looks so awesome that I am pretty sure it breaks some international amazingness laws. A crime with which I am no stranger, having committed it several times myself.

I cruise on this street all day long, baby.

2006-04-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

See I'm trying to make my posts more bite-sized, right? Easier to read. Hehehe. There just might be more of them... :)

Aaaanyway, check out this flash about yours and my favorite adventure game series, The Legend of Zelda.

I have heard this song done to a different animation, but this one is way sweeter. Check it out. CLICK ON TEH PICTURRRR!!! EET WIL SEND JOO TO THE ANIMATION!! DOOO EEETT!

No more caffeine for me.

Now you see me...

2006-04-01T16:26:00.000-08:00

Behold this video puny mortals and tremble in fear and awe at this display of my almighty video embedding skills!

Sorry, I was just hoping some of this clip's awesomness had rubbed off on me. Check it out! Somehow these japenese scientists found time between designing giant robots and fleeing enormous reptiles to create an optical camoflage technique which allows the wearer to blend in to his surroundings almost invisibly! This is no april fools joke! ( But google has a good one. ) Finally we can be like James Bond with his invisible car, or the Predator with his sweet jungle hunting skills. Ever get so embarrased that you just want to disapear? Go for it. Wanted to go sneaking around Hogwarts after hours, but lacked an invisibility cloak like that snob Harry Potter? Here's your chance! The possibilities are endless.

Or are they? The technique actually involves a two-way mirror, a projector, and some very shiny clothing, so banish any thoughts you had about that invisibilty-aided blackmailing racket. I don't even think you'd be invisible from the back, that is if you even lugged all the equipment around with you and asked people to wait while you set it all up. *Sigh* Oh well. Yet another dream of mine crushed like a fuzzy squirel under the wheels of a mac truck.

On deaths in the family.

2006-03-15T23:12:00.000-08:00

Yo people! Evenin'. This post started out it's life as a comment on my good friend Alex Rhen's blog ( link to the right ) about why I haven't been keeping in contact with most of ya'll. After I was finished writing it I figured it was more of a comment on me, and had no place as a comment on someone else's blog (Plus it would have been a pretty freaking long comment!).

This post is dedicated to you Alex, if it wasn't for the memory of your friendship I probably never would have got it all out.

Oh, and seriously dude, I haven't been trying to avoid you or anything and I am ashamed that I made you feel that way. No, you are in good company with everyone else I ever knew before Christmas 2005, and you are definitely not the only one who has wondered just what the heck was going on with me. My parents even went so far as to actually call from guinea ($$Cha-Ching$$) when I never answered or sent them any emails.

And really, even I'm not actually sure what's going on with me. At first I thought I wasn't doing email or chats anymore because talking to my family again would force me to admit they were actually gone. Ignoring everyone else was just collateral damage.
But then my parents called.
And we talked.
And although it was probably the happiest day I've had this semester, I still couldn't send any emails or sign into that chat program. And I'm not sure why. I would try to start emails, but the words would never come, the send button was never pressed, AIM was never logged into.

So as far as I can tell ( and obviously I can't tell very far ), I am just going through a readjustment period.
Going to college changed me. And I'm not yet certain how I should feel about those changes.
Perhaps I need to reaffirm my identity on my own, by myself, without the confusion of interacting with people who know me and have their own ideas about who I am. Talking with my old crew would be like looking at myself in a funhouse mirror: what I really look like is distorted and bent by the weight of our long association, when first impressions were made and memories accumulated.

Wow. You are the first person I've tried explaining it to, and it really felt great to get that all off my chest. Ha ha. I don't know what I'm doing writing it all as a comment on your blog though, it's kinda huge...
You know what, forget the comment! I think I WILL post this on my blog! Lol. Sorry! Hope you read it there!

So there it is folks, the whole sordid affair. Explaining it there I felt a weight I didn't know existed lifting off me. Oh, I still feel guilty for practically shunning everyone I've known or loved. Indeed, I feel hella guilty. But at least I have tried to explain my reasons why, and now that I've heard them myself, and I know that they actually exist, I can understand it. Almost.

My, my, what a messed-up puzzle I am.

Me is hilarified.

2006-03-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

How I learned to start worrying and be "da bomb".

2006-03-11T03:13:00.000-08:00

Here we go... wait for it... wait for it... aaannnddd... a brand spanking new post is begun! Hehehe, wow, what a day, let me tell you! But more on that later, for a more pressing matter is at hand! M-m-mold! ALL over my blog! Egads!

Indeed friends and impressionable children, it seems as if, like a piece of cheddar cheese left unattended in the back of the fridge for too long, my inattention towords my blog has caused it to grow pulsating, desease-spreading bacteria all over it! Lucky for us all then that my sensei taught me the sacred martial art of cyberfungus-fu, and although the malevolent mold fought hard, sapping my very bandwidth and computational resources with useless digital frivolity, in the end I prevailed, finding the source of the epidemic in my html and ending our battle with one deft press of my dynamic delete key.
POW!

That would have been another cool graphical onomatopoeia, but you have no idea how long it took me to do the "Boom" one. Longer than it should have, that's how long! Gimp kept on crashing on me like a Terminator-driven mac truck through the front wall of police station headquarters. And each time it crashed I could hear the critical error promising me "I'll be back." in a macho austrian accent, but like an insect to a bright light I kept on opening up Gimp again and trying to get the blasted program to work. And like an insect finding out that the light happend to be a bug-zapper, I kept on acting shocked that it still wouldn't cooperate.

You'd think I'd have learned by now. Technology hates me ever so much lately. Hates me with a passion. Like I insulted it's mother or something. No, no, technology would have to be a pretty crazy hombre to do the horrors it has done to me today for just an insult. Usually we are the best of friends! More like I killed it's mother. That would do it. Technology loves his mum. But where are my manners! Allow me to explain.

You see, when Technology, or Tech as I like to call him was a wee lad his mum and him always used to take long walks through the country side, sharing everything, and have wonderful picnics together in the woods, and she always made him his favorite kind of chocolate chip cookies... wait, wait, you know what, no one really cares about how much Tech loves his mum, and besides I didn't do anything to her anyway! No, a much more interesting story is what he's done to wrong me.

You might remember that yesterday or the day before, or whenever (lack of sleep causes the days to blur into one another), I said that I had nine, count 'em nine papers to write within 12 hours, right? (That was the reason I wrote that other post about how stupid I was, because I put them all off for so long. And I am stupid.) Well after writing that last post I put my pillow on my chair to cushion my tush, readied M&Ms and Mountain Dew to keep me going during my marathon, and braced myself for the long haul. First I slammed out the revisions of my first two papers, and the stakes were high because unless I revisealized them correctly, they would be stuck with their previous non-passing grade. KA-POW!

My english teacher's head will spin when she reads those two, and hopefully the ammount of corrections I made will satisfy. I steal a glance at the clock. Too much time has passed! I still have seven papers to go! I return my focus to pounding out words on my keyboard. But wait! Wasn't this supposed to be a research paper? By grapthar's hammer!

It was! I vaguely remembered my english teacher telling us to start researching our papers a few weeks ago... and then I saw a smirking John pishwah at the instructor's counsel and then return to sunning himself on tropical beaches and drinking cold drinks from cocconuts with those little umbrellas stuck in them, the smug jerk. Goofing off and leaving me to suffer for it. Well see if I ever do anything in advance for him! Ha ha. Show him who's boss. (Allow me to reiterate: I am an idiot.)

KABANG! I do my research so fast it's scary and thenWHACK! out comes the detailed outline (without the detail), followed by, with more or less difficulty and failed attempts at suicide, my actual research paper which reports on how videogames are actually good for you. At this time I sure could use a relaxing gaming session, however it is now 4am and I still have to print the papers and highlight them, a task I reserve for the next day. WHAMMY!

I awake with little time to spare and after extensive highlighting and printing I manage to turn in the english papers with five whole minutes to spare! No time to celebrate, I still have 5 french papers to do and I have not yet started them. I return to the pallid glow of my computer and am moved to real tears when I discover that the biggest french paper isn't actually due until monday. REJOICE!

Let us take this moment to pause and reflect upon the fact that I have not yet told you why technology hates me.

Hmmm... yeah... interesting...

The reason I told you all that is just because I wanted you to get an idea of how tired and worn out and frantic I was. Let us continue.

So all I had to do was to write 4 one page journal entries in a couple hours, an act I could normally do with both hands and my brain ripped out of my skull and tied behind my back. However, having not slept the night before and my mind having been dulled by the repetitive drudgery of writing those stupid english papers, I only just barely put the last sentance in when it was due time I hightailed it over to the library and printed these things off if I wanted to turn them in on time. It was at this precise moment that my foot accidently hit the toggle switch of the power strip under my desk and my screen went dark.

I stared at blankly at my computer. Did I...? No. I didn't save. I didn't freaking save! My scream of anguish simultaneously startled a group of penguins in alaska causing them to jump off their ice berg into the water and be eaten by a whale, as well as making a kangeroo in austrailia wonder if someone was writing an english paper somewhere. I stared in disbelief at my still dormant computer. Maybe for some reason Word saved it for me? No such luck. Nothing to do but write the most I could and then go to the library and print it off.

Defeated but still determined I managed to redo the first paper and put it on my USB key, and then I hopped on my bike and rode as fast as I could to the library. I managed to find an empty computer and put my USB key in it and told it to print my paper. Now, every semester you get one hundred free copies of paper on your account, and at this point I still had 60 copies worth, so I knew printing my one-page paper would be no problem.

And so it was with shock and disbelief that I noticed after I pressed the print button I was told I had only 2 more copies left. I reached over and grabbed one of the pieces of paper the printer was madly spewing out and to my terror it had three lines of random characters on it and that was all. Apparently the library computers don't understand french. I frantically pushed the cancel printing button, but it was already too late, the 58 copies were already charged to my account, and I was already late for french class.

And that my friends, is how technology has screwed me over today. Sigh. And look what it's done to me now! I was already bone tired, and now I have stayed up till 5AM writing this! ARGH!! I STILL HAVE A PAPER AND TWO TESTS ON MONDAY I HAVE NOT STUDIED FOR!!!

CURSE YOU TECHNOLOGY! CUUUUURRRSSSEEE YOOOUUUUUU!!!!!!

Nos Morituri Te Salutamus

2006-03-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

...because I needed just one more reason to put it off. (Click on it, it's wallpaper sized. Legend of Zelda is awesome.)

HOKAY! SEVEN PAPERS AND TWO REVISIONS IN ONE SITTING... LET'S ROCK N' ROLLL!
*Does air guitar with fingers*

...And less than 12 hours to do them in...

BRING.
IT.
ON.

(Oh, and if you didn't get the title, it's in the "A" section, third from the bottom.)

zzZZZzzzzZZZzzzZZZZzzzzZZZZzzz.

2006-03-07T22:27:00.000-08:00

MMmmmmm. Sleep. Yuuuuuummmmmyyyy.

And no, posting this photo does not make me a girly man. I am just liberated from the male cultural stereotype, thats all.
Oh, and stupid. A vewy vewy stupid wascally wabbit am I.

Sorry I have been dead on the internet for a long time. Not my fault! Am busy.

So busy. Busy, busy, busy. Busy being stupid. Me = MORON.
Too late. Can't talk. Must sleep. Don't know why I'm posting this. Been longtime. Miss you guys.
Some other posts are in the oven. Real posts. Been too busy and too stupid and too tired and too lazy to light the burner in the oven and finish them.
Blasted classes. Blame them. Make me busy. Make me tired. And give me a chance for my stupidity and laziness to come to light.
Stupid STOOPID STOOPOD ME!!!!!

Blast from the past.

2006-01-15T22:41:00.000-08:00

[EDIT/]
Hey, I actually wrote this before christmas vacation and never really finished it, so here it is, a painful (to me) reminder of the year that came and went (thankfully). Anyway, hope to have a real update soon, and thanks ever ever so much to all the people who keep on commenting! It always makes me smile when someone lets me know they read what I wrote.
Anyway, hope ya'll enjoy this technologically enhanced post.
[/EDIT]

Ello! I'm back! Writing on my blog! Yes I am! Seriously! Without a doubt! No, really, it is kinda strange that I have to repeat this to you! I really, really, am writing on my blog! I assure you! Trust me.
Maybe it's the fact that it has been so long since I've made a new post that causes you to doubt your eyes.

For some reason the event that has jerked me out of my blogless stupor is that I just finished, no more than a couple of minutes ago, watching the movie Se7en. Impressions: Um, wow. Just wow. That was a crazy messed up movie. But it was done so very well. The plot is your basic "serial killer mastermind leads the policemen (Played by Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) on a cleverly planed race to figure out the clues he leaves behind before it is too late", cat-and-mouse type thing, and as you can probably guess from the title, his murders are all centered on the 7 deadly sins. The movie could have been predictable, but it turned out to be so much more than average. First of all, this movie is deeply disturbing in the manner the people are killed. Think of the most disturbing CSI killing you've seen times ten. At least they were in my opinion; contrary to CSI, here they leave a little bit more to the imagination, without those CSI 3D zooms into the wounds and all. Of course, this movie was made way back in 1995 before they could do those zoom things, but I am getting off track here. The parts that really shined in this movie and made it awesome were the acting ( despite the gloomy setting, you found yourself actually caring about the characters ), and most importantly, the story. Very well put together and very intriguing, it holds your attention till the very end. All in all, I thought this movie was great. But should you see it? Well, I guess that depends. You see, it is a bit of a downer, and as I mentioned before, it is pretty disturbing. Oh, and there is cussing. Lots of it I believe. I know my family probably wouldn't like this movie very much as they are not big on downer movies. Me, it doesn't bother. I blame growing up in french school. Somehow the french penchant for melancoly movies insinuated itself into my subconscious or something. I mean, I've always secretly hoped that Tom would finally catch Jerry or that Wile E. Coyote's ACME product would work for once and he'd catch that blasted Roadrunner. So I guess the choice is up to you. I think it's a good movie, but if you'd rather watch a halmark channel original movie than CSI, then it's probably not for you.

Ouch. Me hurts big big.

2005-12-30T19:44:00.000-08:00

I am sick. Have pitty on me. :'(

Ha ha. December does not go by without a post, albeit a meager one. Um, I actually have some other stuff already finished, but it is only half done, so I'll post it lay-tar. Also, if you have been looking for me on chat, my thing is kinda broken, it tells people that I am there when I am not, and just recently it stopped letting me do anything at all with it, it just sits there, taunting me, denying my freedom of speech to the masses! Curse it.
Also, I am too lazy to fix it.
But I have an excuse, my molars have just been surgically removed and it hurts like a crazy hippopotamus tearing you apart while wearing a tutu and dancing with crocodiles.

That picture is art. Not scary.
Also, now I feel like I have a cold and am all achy and dying-y and stuff. Headache. Throat dry. Can't... breathe.
End...
is...
nearrrrrr....
ARRGGGHHHH!!!!

Ok, I am dead now, so I am sure you will understand if I cut it short here, alrighty? Ok, see ya'll, and happy my-birthday tomorrow! Have a good celebration, and may your new year best all those that came before!

In mortal kombat.
You heard me. Fight new year! FIGHT!

Oh yeah.

Super dude!

2005-11-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

Hey, check this out! This movie comes out on June 30th, and it will be the first "real" superman movie since 1987! That's like the year I was born! :) Hopefully this time he doesn't have to fly around the world really fast to make time turn backwards. Last time he did that I got really dizzy.

Hey, my summer photoshopping Sudoku.

2005-11-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

Video Code Proudly Provided by MVSpot.com

Alright people, blog posting time. See that space above these words? If you have windows media player installed and an activeX plugin in your browser ( apparently firefox does not come with an activeX plugin. Lotta fun spend discovering that.) you should see a black box with some play buttons and that kinda stuff. If you don't see anything and have firefox, click here. That'll learn you how to get firefox to hop onto this multimedia bandwagon. Now, that being taken care of, those of you with fast internet connections will have your senses promptly caressed by the music video of "Girl" by Beck. And such an awesome video ( and song, of course. ) it is. Those of you with worse internet connections will have the doo-doo scared out of you when your computer suddenly starts blaring music for no apparent reason half an hour from now after you forget to close my blog's window and continue surfing the internets oblivious. ( Yeah, that happened to me a couple times when on my adventure to find out how to get the darn music videos to work. I thought my computer was possessed and only remembered that the tab I had left open in my forth firefox window contained a music video after I had attempted to exorcise my computer with a handy baseball bat. Wow, this was all in parenthesis? My writing skills are amazing. I am now going to be a rebel and choose never to close that paren. Hahaha. Take THAT laws of the written language! Take that indeed!

Oh, and check this out! As if we needed another reason to be in awe and wonder of he who is so humbly called The John ( a.k.a. Me ), I have made the jaw-dropping picture that follows while in a photoshopping war trance. Or more like a Gimping war trance. But that just sounds wierd, so I won't say it even though I just did. Seen men in black?
*FLASH!*
What you think you just read was actually the light of the planet Jupiter reflected off of swamp gas.
Anyway, what got me started was my good buddy Alex Rehn ( Blog link to the right. ) sent me some Prince of Persia Pics to resize and send them back so they could resume living their meaningful lives with him as AIM avatars. The resizing didn't work out, but while I was messing around with The Gimp ( Sorta like a free version of Photoshop. Kinda. ), I discovered the wonders of masks, which basically just lets you add/remove/transparencify bits of a picture really easily. Which led to me discovering the magics of paths ( save selections for reuse without selecting again.) And then the greatness of layer effects.
Do not worry if you just sorta dozed off though all that.
Just WAKE UP now because it is time for you to make "OooOOOo!!" and/or "Aahhhh!!" sounds ( other forms of amazement, awe, or astoundment are also acceptable.) as you witness the incredible wonder that is my opus.

Come, you may rise from your prostrate awe my children. For, while it might not seem believeable right now, I am but a mere mortal who has simply been blessed with god-like photoshopping skills. I have this picture set as my background right now. I am so proud. ( As you may have noticed by now. ) If you can't already tell, what I did was the following:

First, I noticed the ressemblance of The Prince of Persia to what I imagined a Freeman from the dune series by Frank Herbert would look like and decided to make his eyes blue.
Then I figured that a freeman should be in the desert, so I got a desert picture and stuck that in the background.
While his eyes where blue, and he was in the desert, I still felt like he could just be some random guy in a desert with wierd eyes, and so I set out to find a useable sandworm ( or shai-hulud to us dune fans ) picture, and used the awesome powers of layer masks to insert it into the background and even managed to make it's sand cloud look pretty ok. I am awesome.
And finally, just so no one mistook it for a Tremors picture, I added those moons in the sky, actually the "real" moons of arakis from a pic I found on GIS.

Feel free to tell all your friends about the awesome picture I made. Also feel free to gush to them about how great my photoshopping skills are. Go ahead. Be my guest. Everyone who doesn't think it is the greatest picture ever made is just jealous. Which is totally understandable, considering.

Well, enough of that. Consider ego trip over. One more thing before I let ya'll get back to not throwing up in your mouths from a conceited overdose of John-worship. I have recently discovered the joys of SUDOKU!! I love it. In fact, I love it so much that I am in fact married to it. All of my fortune will inherited by it upon my death. We have three lovely children named Sue, Doe, and Koo. And I have not yet explained it to you. It is easy to get side tracked when you are blinded by love.
Sudoku is a puzzle game akin to a crossword puzzle or a word jumble in that it is something you fill out with a pencil and it is included in newspapers and etc... , the main difference being that I do not hate Sudoku like I do those others. I would be less inclined to hate the other puzzles if they did not require absurd amounts of pop culture or english language knowledge, but that is another story. No, Sudoku, whose name means single number in Japan where it gained popularity, has more of a universal appeal in that it requires only logic to solve, a fact which certainly augmented it's spread to world wide popularity earlier this year. ( March I believe. Excuse me if this is old news to you, I happened to be in Africa at the time. )

Sudoku is fairly simple at it's foundation. The concept is this: Fill in the grid so that every row, every column, and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9 with no repeats. That's it. But as with any good game, while it is easy to pick up, it is suprisingly hard to master. Clicking on the Sudoku link will take you to a wikipedia page filled with different techniques used to fill in the boxes. This is another place to learn how to solve them. These games can get crazy hard, I think I spent 5 hours ( straight!) trying to solve one of them, and strangely enough, the level of difficulty does not depend on how many numbers they give you to start with. No, the difficulty depends almost entirely on the placement of the numbers and the logical leaps needed to fill in the empty squares. Sudoku has been my only faithful companion during boring lectures, saving me from the dull droning of the professor and transporting me to a happy world full of bright green grass and singing birds and trickleing rivers where I feel like a genius after finally filling every one of those little boxes with precisely placed numbers. It is great. I think it's popularity hit great brittain the hardest, and it's always been pretty popular in Japan ( even though it started in New York, I think, where it was largely ignored. ), but even here at heart-of-america USA it is difficult to find a school newspaper where it has not been already torn out ( difficult to finish in one sitting with the hard ones.), or where some or all of the boxes have been already filled out. Anyway, I highly recomend it if you don't have something better to do ( Like listen in class. ).

Alrighty then, let us review what we have learned today. First, Beck is awesome. Second, the Dune books are awesome inspiration. And lastly, Sudoku is awesome. *Contented Sigh* What a fruitful post this has been, I am indeed content.
:]
Anyway, sleep beacons and I hasten to it's soothing embrace. Thank you for reading! Night!

[EDIT] Please comment and tell me if that video worked for you. That would help me out alot when deciding if I should put more up. Also, if it didn't work, try pushing play or reloading the page. Hope it works! Good song! Um, also, you can get the solution to that Sudoku puzzle by clicking on it. Just so you know. :)
[EDIT]

Me write story. You read now. And you like. OR ELSE ME SMASH YOU!!!

2005-11-09T21:15:00.000-08:00

Hey! I finally made my first post to the random story blog! Check it out! If you aren't caught up on the story yet, the basics are that two twin brothers separated at birth Liam and Nat are destined to greatness by an ancient prophecy in the kingdom of Marovia who is at war with the kingdom of Siltinia. Nat is Jonathan's character and is currently employed in the cruel marovian king's army. Varelle is a mysterious ex-slave girl who met up with Nat and saved his life with some sort of power. Varelle's parts are written by GuineaGal. My character was written a little about by both GuineaGal and Jonathan before I finally picked him up just now, so I had a begging setting to work with. Anyway, click on this link to go read it.

New Horizons.

Here is an exerpt:

"Thinking of tryin' to escape again?", asked the captain. The deck hands stopped their work to stare at the inevitable conflict with the newcomer and their leader. "Because if you are, you should know that I have other skills besides fist fightin' to keep you from doin' it. And you'd like my other skills even less."
"Save your skills you filthy monster! I wouldn't think of leaving this ship until I had spilt some of the Siltinian blood here.", Liam retorted, unable to keep his rage from breaking forth. He heatedly sprung to his feet. "Take me back to shore and maybe I'll spare you and your crew!"
"Bloody..." The captain cursed and brought back his arm as if he would strike Liam. Liam gazed unflinchingly into his eyes. Apparently dissapointed at Liam's reaction, the captain lowered his arm and chuckled.
"Aye, you have some fire in you, that much is clear. But you know as well as I that even if you were able to kill the whole lot of us, you'd never be able to bring this boat to shore. Look where you are!", he opened his arms indicating their surroundings, "This is the sea! Old disagrements have no place here if you want to survive. The sea makes no differences between taking a Marovian man or Siltinian one to a watery grave! Both kinds hold places here on my ship and they either work peacefully together or I make them get along." His tone of voice made it clear that being made to cooperate was the least favorable choice.
"So, young man" the captain's face neared Liam's ",why don't you get into the nautical spirt" they were a finger nail's width apart now but Liam refused to back down defiantly ", try to forget your differences with our siltinian crew mates" a pause ", and GET BACK TO SCRUBBING THIS DECK BEFORE I BEAT YOU UNTIL YOU'RE BLOODY UNCONCIOUS AGAIN!!! RIGHT! BLOODY! NOW!"
Liam managed to remain defiantly still despite the spittle which now covered his face, but something in the captains' gaze caused him to slowly sink back to the deck, dip the rag in the nearby bucket and to start scrubbing.
Still scrubbing with his right, Liam's left hand fingered the place on his jaw where the captain had knocked him out yesterday, his first day on the ship. A painfull reminder that he had some things to learn before he could kill Siltinians, much less hold his own with a hardened ship crew.

Life is not fair. No, indeed it is not.

2005-11-07T06:24:00.000-08:00

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Change of plans everyone. Instead of waiting until January to do another post, I will instead do yet another on the same day. Why, you ask? Well if you look at the time stamp on my last post you will see that I was up late-ish last night. And I have a 7:30 lab on Monday mornings. So, after desperately wrenching myself out of the grasp of the sandman this morning just in time to make it to lab only 15 minutes late, I find that there is no lab today. AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate the universe and all that reside in it!! Excepting of course those who are reading these words. You are the only light in an dismally unfair and corrupt world where any day a poor college student might be brutally ripped out of bed and thrown to the jackals!!! THE JACKALS!!! Me want sleepy!
Aight, my bit is done. Peace out!

P.S.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
- Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
- Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is the man.

Losing my mind.

2005-11-06T22:20:00.000-08:00

Hmm... How did this go again?... Oh yeah, you type in this little white box and the words show up on the screen and then you press the publish post button and the world can read about your brilliant life and then souless computers deposit spam disguised as comments! I remember now! Hehehe.

Yes, it has been a while since I've done this. Apparently the whole month of October passed by without any post at all here on my blog! I will not lie to you about why I didn't post, sadly I was actually infected with a strange and rare disease whose symptoms include being unable to gaze upon a computer screen without very severe ocular trauma. Yes, many times after a frantic search of the hospital the orderlies would find me in front of a computer screen trying to type through the agonizing pain, blood gushing from my eyes, and as they pried the keyboard from my hands and began to drag me away I would protest at the top of my lungs: "No! I must post on my blog!!" my arm outstretched and reaching desperately for the computer. Sadly my search for the cure took me even further from technology as it could only be found in the form of a rare species of tree frog which exclusively inhabits a skyscraper-sized mango tree which grows on top of a mountain on a remote tropical island, and is fiercely guarded by the local native tribe of head hunters, for whom it is the source of their strange and mystical powers which allow them to keep severed heads and their bodies alive long after they have been separated. Indeed it was a daunting task to retrieve that cure, but the lamentable thought of the faithful readers of my blog languishing without a fresh post drove me onwards, long after the natives made the area under my chin a little airier by getting rid of my body from the neck down. Eventually I was able to direct my body to rescue my head from it's honored place on the chief's throne ( for it was judged by all to be by far the prettiest they had ever seen ) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that searching the massive mountain-top mango tree for the medically meaningful frog was magically made much more easier by my newfound ability to place my head upon a stick and use it as a sort of periscope to look around. Thinking my adventures about over as I walked back down the mountain with one arm holding the cure to my maddening affliction and the other cradling my equally precious noggin, I was quite horrified to find that the natives were out in mass and that strangely enough they seemed to hunt their prey by bludgeoning them with activated computer monitors. Incredibly I managed to escape by stuffing my head under my shirt, therefore shielding my eyes from the harmful sight of the monitors, and blindly running down the mountain side, which seemed quite disastrous at first because I kept on running into trees and angry natives ( receiving a fair number of monitor blows ), but I was saved by accidentally running off the nearest cliff and plunging several hundred feet to the water below. I awoke a lifetime later on the shores of the mainland, glad to be alive, and happy that my head was still in the company of my body ( thank goodness it was stuffed inside my shirt ), but never the less devastated that I had lost the tree frog to the swirling dark sea while I was unconscious. I took consolation in the fact that the local doctors were able to reattach my head to my body, just like new, but could not wipe from my mind the grievous image of a blog reader weeping in deep sorrow because there was no new post on my blog. I swore to myself that I would somehow wipe those tears from that sad face no matter how hard I had to try. And so it was that safe and sound back at my dorm room, while attempting to amuse myself by watching paint dry, ( what else was I supposed to do without my computer? ) I was immensely pleased to hear the knock of the UPS man at my door, and I signed for the package containing one immensely rare tree frog that I had bought for a hefty sum off of eBay ( apparently the head hunters used those monitors for more than bludgeoning things ). And so, to make a long story just a little longer, one month later now, my sight is finally cured. And now I can post on my blog. Rejoice! Oh, and before you ask me how I bought something off of eBay with my aversion to monitors, I think you should be informed that eBay also comes in eBrayill© version for the visionless. Yep. Just thought you should know. Anyway, so that is why I haven't posted for such a long time.

Or maybe I've just been too lazy.
You choose. Personally, I like the first excuse better. Whatever the cause, I am back now, and I have made this massively sized animated gif ( it might take a while to load and start moving, if ever ) to atone for my lack of blogging. Watch in awe and wonder!

[EDIT] Alrighty, the picture never did start to move, I guess blogger just don't do that sort of thing. And so instead of the crappy animation that took me 3 hours to make, I will show you some frames of what it would have looked like.

I leave it up to you to imagine how that would have looked repeating over and over and over again.

[END EDIT]

If that ever started moving, you have seen that I will be tortured for all eternity in the fires of my blog by being constantly badly animated. A horrible, yet sorely deserved fate indeed.

Let's see, other than unbelievable misadventures, what has happened to me in the last month... have you ever noticed that unbelievable and incredible are basically just the same word spelled differently? I mean, literally they both mean "Something You Can't Believe". Not that my story wasn't true. No way. Would I make up something so crazy? Heh. Yeah. That's right. There is no way I would make all that up. Yeah.

Well, um, I just experienced Halloween for the first time since forever. You see, oddly enough, Halloween isn't a very popular holiday amongst the god-fearing missionary community, and besides, there wasn't much good candy to be found anyways. You see, unlike my mother who believes thatHalloweenn is an evil holiday based on ashamefullfascinationn with the occult and macabre which should be banished to the hell fires from whence it sprung, Halloween was always ( back when we lived in the states and still celebrated it ) the candy holiday for me. Buckets full of candy and trying to either scare the pants off of people, or trying to find a way to get your own pants scared off. In other words, an all around good time. As a plus you got to dress up in something that on other days would have earned you a one way ticket to a padded cell. Fake blood, fangs, hair gel, baby powder and a faux-velvet lined cape would normally have people crossing to the other side of the street to avoid you, but onHalloweenn it is the norm. What an interesting day. I decided that this year I was going to do something forHalloweenn. And somehow that meant going to my grandparents house to hang out with my family. Just now Irealizedd that hanging out with my family wasn't the smartest plan if I wanted to celebrate Halloween, I mean, they don't even like it at all. Hmm. Well, it was fun anyways. During the chilly bike ride over to my grandparents house, I was all excited that I would be able to see kids running from house to house exchanging threats of mischief for candy dressed as popular cartoon characters, expecting the streets to be swarming with them. However, as I rode through the neighborhoods I saw nary a tricker treater, and feared that perchance my memories of the holiday were distorted, or rather that the holiday had died when my own family stopped celebrating it. And so it was with great relief that when I sped down my grandparents' street I narrowly avoided running over a little darth vader and his bag full of sugar-coated dark sided treasure with my bike. Yes, they were everywhere, just like I remembered. My enthusiasm renewed, I hurried up onto my grandparents' porch, rang the doorbell, pulled my sweater over my face, crouched down and waited for my grandpa to answer the door. Upon reflection, it was probably pretty inconsiderate of me to make grandpa laboriously get up from his chair and go all the
way to the door, but you know what they say about hindsight. Or at least I hope you do. Because I have no idea. Anyway, he opens the door and I go "Twiker Tweat!" and grandpa laughs and tells me that apparently it's "Trick" this time and secretly thinks of ways to kill me for my blatant disregard of his difficulty with getting in and out of chairs. Again, this is all in hindsight. I am overly giddy at the prospect of candy at the time, and I manage to remain oblivious to his agonized groans as he sits back down. I ask if I might hand out candy to the costumed door-to-door extorters ( maybe not actually a word, I checked ) and grandpa stoped making plans to kill me and happily accepted my offer. And so, when the doorbell rings I am already eagerly waiting in front of the door, bowl full of candy at the ready. I perhaps too eagerly swing the door open and greet the miniature pirate and football player in front of me, excitedly bouncing on my feet as I awaited those magic words.
"Twicker Tweat!"
Aww. I reach into the bowl full of candy and two thoughts come to mind simultaneously. The first is that the candy in the bowl includes chocolate eyeballs, and the second is to wonder what the candy giving protocol is. I mean, do I let them pick their own candy, or do I grabhandfuls out of the bowl and put it in their bags? And how much? I didn't want to be cheap, so I decided to let them pick their own and bent down and offered them the bowl. I was surprized and slightly disappointed that they each chose only one single candy eyeball from the bowl. This moderation hardly went along with how I remembered the spirit of the holiday went. However, as I closed the door my faith in the Halloween spirit was renewed as one of the little kids shouted out to the other Trick-or-Treaters "Hey guys! This house has eyeballs!!" I shared a chuckle with my grandparents, and soon the doorbell rang again. This time the child was dressed up as a cow ( or a dalmation or something ) in what were probably on less costume-demanding days his pajamas. This child was too young say the magic words, but his mother understood that if you wanted to be given candy, you had to say them. And so she did, and I did, this time preserving the holiday spirit by grabbing a double handfull of candy and dropping it into his bag. By this time the novelty of costumes and candy had worn off and I decided it was time for me to visit my family where they usually resided in mygrandparents's basement. As I was going down the stairs the doorbell rang again, and I was able to hear my grandma shout to her husband that he had better get the door because his grandson was going downstairs. Grandpa's plans for my painful death began once more. Down stairs I was unsurprized to find my family doing what they normally do, apparently unaware that tonight was candy day. I hung out as late as I could ( I did have class the next day ) trying in vain to get my family to let me watch the horror movies onTV. Horror movies are another thing my family isn't too big on. That and videogames where your main pastime is running over pedestrians to get to a drug deal on time while driving a car you just stole from an old lady because it was the one nearest you when you were given the job. Go figure. Sometimes I just don't understand them. So at around 11pm I said my goodbyes and went upstairs past my grandpa who looked me straight in the eye and told me that he had had to run back and forth handing out candy for hours after I bailed on him. It was at this moment that my previously mentioned hindsight kicked in and I realized my offense. In an effort to make this well between us I responded: "Ok, well I guess I'll see you, then. Bye!" Indeed I am a skilled communicator. And so I got on my bike and discovered that in the Fall here, there is a difference from 7 pm night temperature and 11pm night temperature. I ended up slowing my bike to almost a walking paced crawl in an effort to reduce the bite of the wind on my face, and by the time I made it back to my dorm was never the less unable to feel my fingers, or rather my fingers couldn't feel anything, because I mean, can you ever really feel your fingers? Unless you touch them of course. Nevermind. It is too late for thinking, now is the time for important decisions!

Speaking of terrible segues, I have just discovered a special stop light on a busy street next to the campus. I found it when I was forced to bike over to burger king because they don't do dinner here on Sundays. You see, this stop light isn't at an intersection, but in the middle of this street. There is no place for the cars to turn, so it seems that the stop light was created for the sole purpose of letting pedestrians cross the street. What makes it special is that the moment you press the cross walk button, the lights turn from green to yellow to red in about as much time as it takes to read those words. Ah yes, there is something pleasing about watching tidal waves of traffic screech to a halt with the press of a button and forced to wait as you saunter across the road. Something very appealing indeed. In fact, I decided I had dropped something in burger king and had to go back just to experience halting barrages of cars with a flick of my hand, just like neo does to bullets in the matrix reloaded. I wonder if you can entrap the sea of cars permanently by pushing the button over and over again. hehe. haha. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Drivers beware! For your days of freedom are numbered! And it's not a big number! No, I'd say it is definitely less than ten, even! Although perhaps more than two! Be afraid! Be marginally afraid!

Well, my wellspring of ideas has been drained for now, hopefully that animation works, and hopefully I see you all back here in less than a month! Until then, thanks for checking back here when I kept on not being here, and thanks to everyone who kept pestering me to post, without you guys you wouldn't be reading this. Take that as you will. Adios! And... goodnight!

Real ninjas smell like pine.

2005-09-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

Greetings! It is that time again! I have just run out of adventures in Kingdom of Loathing, it is late, and my roommate has gone home for the weekend.
And so here I am, once again boxed up in the little world of my computer, wasting my precious time in the most wasteful fashion possible: by downloading things which I will probably only look at twice: once to find them, and then again to delete them, so as to make room for more downloads.
Find. Download. Delete. Repeat as needed.
Man, do I have fun or what?

Today has been the perfect depressing ending to a depressing week. Yez yez, Ah sit and Ah savoure ze sweet bitterneess of ze situation.
You see, this morning my clock radio attempted to wake me up as usual, starting by softening me up at 6:45 with the local radio station's morning show, and then attempting to blow my brains out my ears at 7:00 with an obnoxiously high-pitched pulsing buzz. But this morning, instead of steadfastly fighting awakeness all the way up to the buzzing part, at which point I would normally try my best to knock everything in arms reach off my desk in a frantic attempt to pound the snooze button into submission, I instead woke up with the first word out of the morning show guy's mouth, skipped the easily-reached snooze button, and flipped the two tiny switches on the side of the clock, turning both alarms off completely.
I then entered that strange state where one is still mostly asleep, but at the same time possesses a tiny sliver of consciousness. So there I was, laying in my bed like a heavy bronze statue ( do not question the similies! ;-) ), straddling the barrier between consciousness and unconsciousness, and while one part of me was happily making friends with the ninja penguins on their gigantic flying apple pie fortress, a smaller part was demanding I tell him why the heck I turned off the alarms. I just kept on going on and on about it. In fact, I became quite a nuisance, going so far as to interrupt my penguin sensei's lesson on the sacred art of the deadly air freshener-nun-chucks, myself whining something about how I was going to miss my programming lab, and if I remembered that I got graded on that lab, and yelling something about how here in the states if you missed a test you failed it, unlike my previous French school. I paused in my training long enough to tell the part of me who was conscious that it was Ok, I would go to class today, but just not this one, and silenced the annoyingly correct part of myself with a deadly airfreshener-nun-chuck hit to the groin. And so I slept blissfully, although some part of me was aware that at this very moment a pretty red "F" was being written somewhere close to my name, slept all the way up to towards 9:00. When I finally became fully awake and realized what I had done, I felt pretty embarrassed by the whole deal, and disappointed that I would receive yet another bad grade this week. ( More on that later ) But I figured, what the hey, at least this turn of events is not a total loss, now I had extra time to do the EECE 210 homework that I had been saving for such a special occasion as this. ( the occasion being that it was due at 3PM that day ) And so I sprung nimbly out of bed and streched luxiouriously, determined to keep this bad start from ruining the day, and decided that I should get started immediately on that EECE homework. Strangely enough it seemed as if I had a bizarre definition of "doing homework", because I began working on it by getting out and putting on my desk: my homework paper, my EECE notebook, my calculator, a pen, a pencil, and finally a ruler; and then immediately resting my elbows on my notebook, turning on my computer, opening up my programs and beginning to download more useless files.
Find. Download. Delete. Repeat.
Again, a more intelligent part of me began screaming about how my homework would not do itself, and time was running out, et cetera, et cetera, blablabla, but thankfully I remained immune to it's logic and managed to ignore it's buzzing in my head, buzzing just like my alarm would have if I had not turned it off. Too bad I couldn't turn the voice off as well.
Some part of me stayed hopeful that I would still go to my 12:30 Calc recitation, but deep, deep down I think I already knew that I wasn't going to get up out of this chair and away from this computer anytime soon. It only took the completion of the Family Guy Movie download to convince myself to skip recitation, and I spent the next hour and a half not doing my homework and not going to class, but rather subjecting myself to the tastelessness that was that movie. Cutting class is not without cost for me, and guilt was piling upon guilt. To make a long story short, the smart part kicking me repeatedly eventually had it's effect, but too late. I had enough time to scribble the answer ( I hope ) to the first question of my homework on a piece of paper, throw on my sandals and a jacket, and hurry off to my EECE class. Did I mention that we have quizzes in this class every Friday? And of course I studied just about nothing before I burst into class a couple of minutes late and quickly shuffled into a chair. Thankfully enough for me, we managed to convince the professor to skip the test in favor of doing an electrical circuit demo, but my class-skipping and not-homework-doing had already done it's damage, reducing me to the self-loathing, quivering, anti-social lump you see before you.
And that's not all! There's more! For the low-low price of my self-respect, I did the same things ( half-done, late, poor quality ) on Wednesday for my Calc Homework, and then on Thursday for my EECE lab write up. Not to mention the evil SATANIC Calc I test we took on Tuesday! I mean, I pretty much have already learned everything in that class, but this test had me crying for my mommy! ( Or maybe someone with a Ph.D in Math. Whoever was closest. )
Anyway, that is the sad, sad, self destructive story of my week. And no, it wasn't really the computer's fault, just like murder isn't really the gun's fault. It was merely a tool I used for my self destruction.
I must lack Seritonin or something. :)

Aanyway... less sad, more happy! On a much lighter note, I have just rediscovered Tibia, a pretty cool game my cousins introduced me to awhile back. ( Click on the link to find out all you need to know about it. From Wikipedia ) Much like Kingdom of loathing, it is a free game which you play online. But as you can see from the picture to the left, Tibia is graphics based, unlike KoL. The graphics sorta remind me of a gameboy game, but the gameplay however is much more advanced. Basically it is the usual action RPG, you fight monsters, you get more buff, you find better items, but there are quite a few differences, and they are good. For Tibia is peopled by REAL persons! For those of you who have never tried a MMORPG, or Massivley Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, they can be massive fun just because of the sheer unpredictability of real people. Think of it like a chat program with ALOT of extra features. And then it has the classes ( Knight Wizard etc... ) and just crazy things that you can do like work in a bakery and etc... that other RPGs offer for you to do. You can buy a shovel and go exploring in the dark depths of the earth, just make sure you bring a rope, or you could just buy a sickle and harvest wheat to make loaves of bread which you would then sell in the market square. The possibilities are practically endless. It is a greatly fun game and I highly recommend it to anyone. Plus, it's free! So go here to download this awesome program ( the only info you have to give is your email, and I know from experience that they don't send junk mail ) , and those of you with slow connections, rejoice! For the file is only 8Mb, and it doesn't need a very fast internet connection to run with out lag! Yay! The only problem that I have encountered in the set up thing was the name choosing part. For some reason they are really really picky about what name you choose. My sis ended up just clicking on the "Random name" generator button and choosing one of those. Didn't do that with me, but hey... :)
Alright, so if you decide to join us in the world of tibia, remember when you are creating your character ( only can do that on the webpage. Not in the game. ) to choose for your world as Astera.
I repeat: so that we can meet up in the game, choose as your world ASTERA. Just so that we are clear. =)
My character's name is Ess Mann, so if you see him, BE NICE! =) I can't remember what my sis's name is. If you do eventually sign up, post your character's name in the comments on this post or email it to me, and I will try to arrange times to meet up online and do stuff. It's a fun game! Try it!

Ok, I think this post has just about reached the maximum word count possible without me developing carpaltunnel's syndrome, so I will hopefully see you all sooner rather than later! Adios muchachos!

I am a genius in france!

2005-09-16T21:59:00.001-07:00

Wow. I've been wanting to write for awhile, but it is only now that I am getting around to it. You see, several things have to converge at exactly the same time to create the right blog post creating atmosphere:

First, I must run out of things to do on my computer ( No chatting, Playing videogames, etc..)
Secondly, I must have absolutely NO ONE hanging around behind me as I play my keyboard like a percussion instrument, my keystrokes beating in time to my current music and crafting beautiful melodies of sweet words. ( Oh yeah. Check teh skillz. )
And lastly, it must be absurdly late.

And so, tonight these conditions have converged like powerful winds, into a tornado of awesome blog posting! Oh, yes, and my friends metaphor and simile have come along for the ride. And look! they brought their buddy personification! We're just a full house now, aren't we!

Can you tell that I've had english classes? Luckly enough I dropped them before I became even more arrogant about writing. =) Now I am liberated from the evil feeling of wondering if I put enough show words and description into my writting, if it is worthy. In my opinion, if I talk to someone and he understands what I am trying to say, then whatever means I used to get my point across are valid! Behold! I usher in the new era of writing! No longer shall people go on about how ain't isn't a word! Who in the entire world who speaks english does not understand what ain't means? If that many people know what it means, I'd say ain't is a really good word, then! Ain't that the truth!

Ok, I am shutting up now. =) Hmm... In other news, Katie Albright's blog seems to be really well done now! Before when I would click on it, it would just go to this blank page, but now it is a really neat looking tropical paradise! Yay!

Oh, and I have been talking on AIM alot lately to my good friend Jessica Brislen who I met at the MK camp I went to this summer! Yay! =) I was overjoyed to find another MK at the camp who had gone to a french school and had just passed her Bac, and we spent our last day at camp blowing things up ( highlight =) ) and picking on each other as only those who have been to french school are capable: by making fun of the sections we were in in highschool. I am ( or was, rather) a brilliant S, the section which upholds the science and technology road of learning, the very foundation upon which society relies, and she was an L, they like read poetry or something. ;-) She did get a way better score than I did on the BAC, though! Anyway, when we were talking I think I told her that if you googled my name my TPE site would show up. So I guess she did, and when she got to the site she clicked on the "Blog" link that I had put on there ( heard that it helped search engines find your page...), and then she got here, posted comments and I am really glad she found me! =) Just in case, you know, you didn't know who she was... Hehehe. Sorry. Oh. And she is perfect. ( Or so she tells me. ) =)

Let's see, what else has been going on? Hmm. Oh yeah, for the last week or so I have been deliriously sick with like a cold or something. Ouch. That was quite very painfull. Yesterday I couldn't even see where I was walking because of the tears that kept clouding my vision, and I kept on running into trash cans and things: Excuse me sir! Oh, wait, I mean, trash can. Wait, why am I apologizing to you, you stupid trash can! Curse you for mearly existing! I swat you for your annoyance! *John hits man walking by, man kills john, John cries, it begins to rain on his bloody and still blind corpse*

Oh, and when I got up this morning the weather was like pea soup! What is up with that? I mean, it's still pretty warm here, it's kansas, and I wake up being able to actually see for the first time in awhile, and when I get out side thick fog obscures my vision up to 2 feet! People in front of me are just dark blurry outlines, and a chilly wind pricks my arms. I mean, Hello waiter? I don't think I ordered this london weather! Could you take it back?
I kept on imagining ways to exact my revenge on the torturously cold weather, perhaps I could create a weather controling device! Then I could make it turn around and rain on itself!! Oh yeah, wouldn't be so tough then, would it? Hahahaha!! Hear that weather? Your time will come! YOUR TIME WILL COME!! MWHAHAHAHAHA!!

Well, me get sleepy, you get link to new random story blog me Jonathan and Alex are making. Check it out! Bye! Random Story Blog

Soon I will have a program to write posts on my blog for me.

2005-09-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Hehehe. Check this site out! Rubix cube solver! You paint the configuration of your rubix cube on the site's cube, and then it gives you illustrated step-by-step instructions on how to solve it! Brilliant! "But John!" you say, "doesn't that take away from the fun of solving it yourself?" Well, I respond, I would never be able to solve it anyway, and now I can! Yay!! =) Now I just have to buy myself a Rubix Cube, and let the computer play with it for me!! Viva la technologie!!!!

You've got the Whole World, in your Harddrive....

2005-09-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, want to see something really cool? Well, if you have a windows 2000 or Xp computer, go on over to Google Earth and download that sucker! It is really a great program, and I am very impressed with it's ease of use. Basically, Google earth is a 3D globe with satellite images wrapped around it. So what you end up with is a realistic picture of earth from the sky, one on which you can zoom in all the way on one spot almost enough that you can read the writing on the billboard downtown from where you are sitting right now. ( Unless you are in Africa, of course. But even then you can still see some blurry houses. )

You know those thrillers where the government zooms in on the car's license plate from satellites and sends the CIA to kill the guy? Well, now you can be the government. It is really cool. It even has the ground accurately mapped so that you can tilt the camera and actually see how high mount saint helens really is.

You can visit the forbidden city of china and see all the little tourists visiting the place! You can see the Vatican! You can count the number of spy planes in area 51! You can find the house you are sitting in right now! And any other place that you can see from the sky on planet earth!

Creepy? Perhaps. The thing is, the photos go from recent to 3 years old, so don't be expecting to be able to boot up google earth and see what your neighbor is doing in their back yard or anything. I just think it is awesome to get an idea of how truly massive earth is.

You can even download satellite picture overlays that they sometimes have on the site, like when hurricane Katrina was still going full force they had real-time satellite updates of the flood and the destruction so you could see what was going on, and then turn it off and compare it to how new Orleans was before. I even downloaded a virtual tour of Paris where it takes you to the more interesting parts and tell you what they are. Almost as good as one of those bus tours.

Anyway, here is a picture of where I am sitting right now, my dorm in Manhattan, Ks. It may be kinda strange looking at things from a top down perspective, but the place is instantly reconisable if you have been there before. That brown box thing down at the bottom is Kramer, where I eat all of my meals. My dorm is the one with the round yellow thing in the middle of it.

I was also able to find Conakry, Guinea on this big globe of ours. Here is it's picture:
Pretty cool, hunh? I didn't know that the islands were that big. Look at them! They are almost bigger than Conakry!

So, if you have an Ok computer and an ok internet connection, I thought that google earth was really an awesome download, and you should try it. And if you do have it, click here to be flown directly to where I am in Kansas. Look around, although there is not much to see!
And just because I think it's cool, I will end this post with a picture of mount St.Helens taken by me, using google earth. ( Really good definition on this one! )

The late bird gets to write on his blog longer.

2005-09-04T23:26:00.000-07:00

Hey. It's one o'clock in the morning, which makes this prime blog-posting time for me, so I guess I'll start writing and see where it takes me.
First of all, those of you who have commented should know that I answer comments ( usually ) before I make the next post, so go back and check if you don't want to miss my doubtlessly dali lama-like wisdom-filled response to your comments.

Speaking of comments, uncle Dwayne noticed that my posts have been shrinking ever smaller since I started college. This, I discovered, is true. The reason is that I now share a room with an almost complete stranger, and as my sister can attest, I have a problem with people being behind me while I use the computer. It doesn't matter if they are reading what I am doing or not, it's just the fact that they could be. What can I say? I am insane.
See, right now I am ok, because either my roommate has decide to visit the parents for labor day weekend, or, more likely, he is attending some sort of party.

Heh. "Labor day". That's right, I bet it's creation went something like this:
"Hey dude, we need some sort of holiday to celebrate the joy and benefit that work brings to us, but what should we do to make it special?"
"I don't know Tim, how about we don't work on that day?"
"Brilliant!"

It just strikes me as ironic that we celebrate work on this day by not working.
Is it just me, or do you think that it should really be called: "no-labor day"? Or maybe "I-need-an-excuse-to-not-work-today day"? I mean, calling it "labor day" is like calling Halloween "lets-eat-health-food" day. So weird.

Oh yeah, I saw "Transporter 2" this weekend. Sweet. I heard it described as "out-bonding bond" by one critic, and I must admit, it did have the over-the-top stunts and I-don't-give-a-shaken-martini-about-storyline type plot that makes bond movies, well, so bondish. I am going to break the plot down for you real simple: Transporter likes boy. Transporter likes boy's mother. Bad guys kidnap boy, give boy deadly virus, who gives mom deadly virus. Transporter kills bad guys, gets antidote, and does some really awesome stunts on the way. And the stunts and fight scenes are what make me love transporter 2. In a bond movie you expect lots of let-us-suspend-logic-for-awhile stunts, but usually you can guess what they'll be. Well, in transporter 2 the stunts are so crazy and the pacing so fast that you don't get time to expect them, and that is what makes the "Woah. That was cool" So much better in Transporter 2. Watch Transporter 2 if you feel like seeing someone beating legions of bad guys up pretty good, and don't want to bother wondering how the transporter calculates exactly how fast to drive off of buildings and land in adjacent parking garages. I judge it to be one of the better movies of it's genre that I've seen lately.

In other news, we have finally received the paper mario game we ordered off of eBay, and it is... Good. The fact that the last game that we bought was "Resident Evil 4" which is my vote for best game of all time, meant that maybe my standards for Paper Mario were too high. That being said, Paper mario 2 is a great game. Although it's got those cutesy graphics, inside it is a relatively deep combat system ( you can do super timed button presses for bonuses everywhere like in "Mario Luigi Superstar" for GBA ) and some cleverly written dialogue. The princess is of course captured again, although this time not by bowser ( who you can play as in parts of the game. Awesome. ), but by strange x-creatures. Badges are back just like last time and give you cool powers, and you gain party members with special powers just like last time as well. Overall, it's way better than the original, but yet not as good as ResEvil4. Which is the best game ever made. Did I mention? =)

Well, I'm off to my sweet, sweet, bed of awesome sleep, now. So good night, sleep well, and don't let the evil homework bite.

I am cursed.

2005-08-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

Alright everyone, if you were wondering perhaps why I haven't been emailing you or why I haven't been posting very often, here is the reason: MY EVIL SCHEDULE!!!
Clicking on that link will bring you to a page of horrors where you will be able to see what I'm taking and if you click on the name of one of the courses you will even be able to see the building that I have it in. Oh the horrors! And before you ask, I did not scream like a little girl when I found out how much work I would have to do.
Not at all.
My voice was too hoarse. So I just fainted.

Sigh. College is going to kick my derriere. Already I have around five really important things I have to finish today, not to mention going to class. CURSE YOU COLLEGE AND YOUR SLAVERY THINLY DISGUISED AS KNOWLEDGE!! CUURRRSSSSEEEE YYYOOOUUUU!!!!!!
Hmm. Well, I'm off to be slaughtered by Calculus I homework that I don't think will be done in time. Tell my parents that I died a proud death, rapidly completing problems all the way up to the deathline. Goodbye.

Parlez-vous Francais? Apparament, non.

2005-08-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

Hey, you want to see something really funny? All you french speakers will crack up when you read the google translation of my blog into French! It's just wrong. Let me quote a line from my last post:

"I had to go through like an hour of installing "big brother's" software on my computer and had to pay 50 bucks before they would even let me think of connecting."

Apparently, translated by the ever knowlegeable google website into french, that becomes:

"J'ai dû intervenir comme une heure d'installer le logiciel "du frère" sur mon ordinateur et ai dû payer 50 mâles avant qu'ils me laissent penser à se relier."

=D Hmm. What is going on here!? Looks like I had to pay 50 males to let me "hook up"! That is really, really wrong. ;)
Check out the link for more terrible translation hilarity.

Booting up a new life.

2005-08-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

Wow. I am at this very moment typing on one of the K-state 24 hour study hall's few open computers. It seems as if the independent college life has started for me today. My dad just dropped me off at the dorm, told me adios, and off he went, the sound of his retreating footsteps seeming to echo into the distance like the last page softly closing on the chapter of my life where I am under parental rule. Yeah, right. I sure am not paying for my college tuition. But it is kinda weird being able to go out and do the first thing that springs into my head without having to ask permission or notifying anyone. Yay independence!
Now if only I knew what I wanted to do...
Fortunately, my roommate seems like a really nice guy. And my room is not so bad. But this school's computer network was inspired by Hitler. Yes, there is a Nazi-like prohibition of file sharing programs on the school's network. I had to go through like an hour of installing "big brother's" software on my computer and had to pay 50 bucks before they would let me think of connecting. Now my every move on the Internet is watched and recorded by "The Man". But not to worry! I will resist! Fight the power!

Well, this will go down in history as the shortest post on my blog EVAR, because it is really weird typing with people looking over your shoulder. I mean literally. They are looking over my shoulder. Right now. No matter how many times I elbow them in the face they just won't go away. Of course, instead of spying on me, they could just be waiting for the computer... Nah. FIGHT THE POWER! FIGHT THE MAN!

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

2005-08-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

Hello my sweet, sweet, and totally neglected blogitty blog blog blog. Wow. It's been a really long time. So much has happened.
And there is so much yet to happen!
Lets pick up where my last post left off. Let's see. I was yet again being a complete moron and staying up till 4 Am writing on my blog, ignoring the fact that the next day contained an important event that I might want to be rested and prepared for, and I didn't want to say cucumber to people when I met them, and so on and so forth, et cetera et cetera... a situation that is strangely repeating itself at this very moment. But more on that later. I was worrying about going to reentry camp back then. Anyways, so: Boom. I finished, I turned off my computer, I looked at the time, I tore my clothes in anguish, I rubbed ashes all over myself, and I passed out. My old testament style mourning must have done something for me, because by some miracle I managed to wake up in time ( or rather I was woken up in time ) to collapse in the back seat of our new 1997 Volvo wagon and pass out again while we embarked on the car's maiden ( for us ) voyage. That car smells as weird as it looks. Anyway, we drove and drove and drove some more until we were so far from civilization that all we could see for miles around was hay fields and woods and the dirt road in front of us and I knew for certain that the camp I was to attend was going to be held in a rundown barn where I would relearn the complexities of American culture by milking cows for a week, finished with brutal dismemberment by a guy wearing a hockey mask and carrying a chainsaw. You know. Like in those movies. To my surprise the place that we pulled into as I brutally fought my father for control of the acceleration pedal wasn't all that abandoned or secluded at all. Maybe a teeny weeny bit rundown, though, but nothing that I wasn't used to. I mean, they had mini golf! Proof enough for me that civilization was alive and thriving at this camp. In addition to that, they had a pool, a zip line, lots of cabins, a volleyball court, tether ball (!), and a strange little miniaturized town complete with post office with tiny little letter boxes and a train station with a tiny little train in it. Hmm. Maybe the staff was all midgets? Anyway, I'm always terrified of meeting new people, especially if they are my age, so I was almost shaking as I got out of the car, walked up to the squat sprawling building that looked the most official and opened the glass doors. Inside were about 6 or persons I assumed were staff and one or two kids who I assumed were attending the camp. Against one of the wood paneled walls three staff persons sat in metal folding chairs behind a brown plastic table which had a paper sign with the word "admission" written on it in magic marker. I walked up to the table, and with a nervous cracking voice told them that I was here, and immediately kicked myself mentally: I mean, it's not as if they can see for themselves that I'm here, oh no. I should have told them that I like to breath air regularly, while I was at it. Something else they don't know. Stupid. Ah, ze nerves. Zay make me awfully critical of my zelf zometimes. Ah oui. Name? Uh... John Wilkos. They checked my name off a list and gave me something to sign. I did so, and they gave me some sort of test to fill out. Wow. Must be an exclusive camp if you have to take a test to get in. Oh, it's just a personality test. Um... ok. Kinda strange. I fill it out anyway, still feeling light headed, and the questions where I have no idea what they are talking about I just answer randomly. I return the test and that's it. I'm checked in. Yay. I look around. All the brown fuzzy couches are filled. Hmm. That window sill needs painting. A cricket chirps. So what do I do now? Seems as if they have a recreation room through those glass doors. Pool looks nice. I think I'll ask that big mustached dude if he wants someone to play against.
And so began the most excellent camping experience of my summer! It was actually really great fun, and I think I learned... something... along the way as well. Too many things happened during that week, so writing them all here is pretty much impossible, but a couple things stand out. My roommates Mark and Brad. Finding that old airconditioner in the hallway closet and rigging it up in our window with blankets and duct tape to escape the sweltering heat. The day trip to the amusement park. The talent show where I helped recreate a scene from Lord of the Rings. The girl who had just passed her French BAC like me, even though she is an L. ;-) Making bombs. And my favorite: Captain Fetus. ( Explanations on request ) I also discovered that TCK's, or Third Culture Kid's, are my favorite type of people on the planet. I am normally scared to death of kids my own age because of how they might judge me and stuff, ( and this is normal for TCK's apparently. ) but this time I could be my own crazy self, and no one cared. Mmm. Cue warm fuzzy feeling. Feel the love. Oh, and on the personality test I was almost a tie between S and I ( It was the DISC test. Take it here. Right now! And tell me what you got! ) Which means I am a submissive peace loving extroverted introvert who focuses on fun. Or something like that. The funny thing is that S and I personalities are supposed to conflict and I got em both! I am a complicated person. =) And the test was so very true as well. I can almost tell what someone is just by looking at them now.
Ok. So camp accounts for one of the weeks that I have been presumed dead by all you people who read my blog. ( I love being able to use the plural on that! ) Do not call CSI yet! I live!
I have to hurry a little bit here, it's already 3 Am. Next, we twisted and turned and loop-the-looped ourselves in a path from Buffalo to Kansas which looked like it had been drawn on a map by a fly with ink dripping from it's feet. ... You know, how they sorta fly in circles? ... Anyway, we visited all 7 billion people on earth on the way down here, and their respective churches, which accounts for the twistiness of our path. The highlight of the trip was the very cool Mall of America which had rollercoasters and a theme park right in the middle of it, it was so big. It was there that I had the privilege of experiencing my favorite movie of the summer: Batman Begins. The. Best. Batman. Evar. This time it actually felt like it was real and meaningful. The first bat helmets he ordered were so fragile you could break them with a hammer. And he had ask for ten thousand so the order didn't look suspicious. Little things like that and good character development made the comic book style action feel less cotton candy and more turkey dinner. It. Was. awesome! The great quality of this movie has me and everyone else who loved it hoping that they'll redo the old movies ( Batman Begins is a prequel that ends where the first batman picks up.) with the new and much cooler version. Also saw War of the Worlds. I liked it. Bummer they didn't change the ending, though. Always was a cheap way to end a story, ever since H.G. Wells wrote it, it's been kinda cheap. Cheap cheap cheap. Like, "oops gotta end my book soon, need a convenient ending fast", cheap.
Anyway, eventually, after about a week of grueling travel, we made it to my Grandma's house in Manhattan Kansas, and all hell really broke loose. FAMILY REUNION TIME! My GP's 50th wedding anniversary, to be exact. I stayed in the basement, upstairs, at my cousin's house, all over. Left and right I run. My younger cousins hijacked my GameCube and played Mario Cart non-stop for a week. I bought school books for shameful amounts of cash. I got my student ID. I opened a bank account. I bought windows XP at student discount price because I have to have it for school. Stupid XP. I pumped up the tires on the bike I'll use for transportation from now on. I watched the second season episodes of Battle Star Galactica. I tried my hardest to screw up my biological clock by sleeping crazy hours. Like now. I mistook my social security number by one digit for the past six months and had to go back to every single place I've used it since then ( driver's license, admissions, bank, etc... ) to get it corrected. Good times. Good times.
And now, tomorrow, I move into my dorm room. Yes, tomorrow it's time to get acquainted with the places and people I'll be spending the next year with. Terrifying? Oh yeah. John is feeling a little worried about tomorrow. Or rather, today. Not to worry though, John will survive as long as he isolates himself from cold hard reality by referring to himself in the third person. John is brilliant that way.
Well, John would like to stay and chat some more, but John has to sleep sometime. So John bids you adieu, and thanks you for all your comments, but remember: blogs need comments to stay alive like plants need sunshine, so like the song says: please don't take my sunshine away. ;-) Good night, god bless, and please pardon John's spelling!

Fancy a cuppa John?

2005-07-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

Hello. For the first time in the short history of this blog, this will not be a long winded post.
Yeah. Right.
But it must be short!, for tomorrow I must awaken at 6AM for the trip to buffalo. The bad news is that it is now 1AM. The good news is that there is no good news. That would just be unbearably cliche. Now is the time for me to panic. AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Why am I writing on my stupid blog!!!! I will get less than five hours of sleep and tomorrow is the first day of camp and first impressions are the most important ones and I'll be falling asleep while everyone is getting to know each other and they'll say hello and I will say cucumber because that will be the first word that will come into my sleep addled brain and they'll go away thinking that I am drooling because I am retarded!!! I HATE YOU BLOG!! I blame you for making me post upon thy hallowed green tinted pages!

In other news, I am a blog addict. Not to reading blogs, mind you, ( most blogs don't interest me unless I know the person, for some reason. ) but rather to writing upon my blog. Why, I ask you? It's not because I love to hear the sound of my own typing, that's for sure. I think that I just like writing. Which is shocking, mind you. I really, really hate having to write papers whenever I get them as homework, and I usually just end up not doing them and either zeros or extensions on the deadlines. But now that I think about it, after I was finally forced to sit down and write the darned things in the lunchroom 15 minutes before they were due, I actually enjoyed coming up with crazy things to write down that would fool my teacher into believing that I knew what I was talking about, mind you. Mind you, I also don't mind admitting to you that I like to use the words "mind you" every chance that I can squeeze them into a sentence. It makes me feel British for some reason. And I've always wanted to be British. With their fancy accents and tea and James bond and those guards with the afros that won't blink even if you moon them. Sigh. If only. Speaking of great Britain, did you know that it is already 6AM over there and people are just now getting up from their long restful nights of sleep? Just yet another reason to be British. So in interest of being as British as I can be I am going to bed now. Night! I'll see this blog in a week at least, because I will be away at camp for a week. Bye!

Where my wolf?

2005-07-21T00:27:00.000-07:00

Oh. My. Goodness. Google has just done me great wrong. It was of course my fault for not reading the fine print, but I installed the new google toolbar for firefox without knowing that it would only work on XP systems. So my computer exploded every time I tried to open firefox up after the installation and I ended up having to uninstall firefox twice and deleting every extension when that didn't work, and finally, at 2 in the morning, it's back to normal. Why, you ask, did I not just use Internet Explorer to do email and fix the firefox later, at a more humane hour? Because I hate IE. My life could be in mortal danger from a virus that was downloaded into my mind which would cause my brain to explode in an hour and the only way to save myself was to get an antivirus from the internet and if the only browser available on the computer was internet explorer I would quickly write my will then rush off and try to get my head as close to Bill Gates as possible before it exploded in hopes that he might get injured in the explosion. Because I hate IE. So many better browsers out there, and everyone uses IE because Microsoft puts it in all their OS's. Evil. Evil evil. Mucho evil.

So sad. I actually had some interesting things to say before it became 2 AM. At midnight I become a big pile of uninteresting. About as interesting as... as... as the ceiling above you. I mean, look at it. Unless you're sitting in the sistine chapel, it's probably really, really boring. I stare at the wood tile ceiling above my bed every night for hours until I think I see faces looking at me out of the white painted plywood, and their expressions indicate that they're wondering why I've been staring so rudely ever since I got under the covers at 3 AM and why don't I just go to sleep? Stupid faces. Think they know everything. Now, if you were really surfing the net in the sistine chapel, the faces on your ceiling are probably less boring and more angelic. And not telling you to go to sleep. Stupid faces.

Oh, I just watched Underworld, and on a scale from one to ten I give it a rating of negative six taco supremes because of it's complete lack of Yoshi eggs. And I will not even attempt to explain what I have just said because I don't understand it myself. I don't mean to excite you, but it might be a prophecy of things that were, things that are, and things that have yet to come to pass. Anyway, Underworld is a movie about the war between vampires and werewolves which has apparently been going on for a millennium, and in the present day almost all the Werewolves have been exterminated by the vampires, a fact which disappoints the main character Selene, a vampiress Lycan hunter. ( Lycan = Werewolf ) There were several things that annoyed me in this movie, mostly the liberties they took with the lore of vampires and werewolves. I mean, I can deal with the idea that werewolves can now change their form whenever they wish back and forth, how else could they have cool fights if the Lycans only had their powers once a month? And it seems that silver bullets barely scratch them. In addition, apparently vampires can see their reflection in mirrors, and while they say that sunlight hurts them, there were lots of scenes in which they run around in day light and everything is cool. It is also always overcast in that city. Convenient. I can deal with such things in a monster crossover flic. They fight, it's cool. That's what they're there for. But the vampires in this movie could die from blood loss. They're vampires. If they don't have blood that just means that they're going to be a little hungry, not that they'll die! The vampires in the movie used their guns to shoot their silver bullets at the werewolves who then jumped on the blood suckers and bit them and the vampires died. I mean, the vampires had nothing very different from humans during this movie except that they had pointy teeth. Their special power seemed to be that they were able to stand in place and shoot at werewolves. That's pretty cheap. Stupid vampires. The plot had to do with intrigue and betrayal within the vampires and a plot to create a werewolf/vampire cross breed. Which actually turned out kinda neat. Summary of movie: not worth it, even if you like monster movies.

This Saturday I shall be at reentry camp. This camp serves to as a kinda refresher course on the American culture Which I used to know, but treats me as a stranger now. Should be... interesting... I hope.

Well, that will be all, Jeeves... I will now pass out and wake myself sometime tomorrow afternoon. Night!

Another amazing comeback post.

2005-07-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

In a shocking break from tradition, I have decided to post before a week has passed since my last one. I will now tell you about my day. And follow the previous sentence by not telling you about my day. You know, so far Jonathan Hoover has been the only guy who has read my last post and survived. You see, he has been the only one who had the survival skills that it took to know that when I say that heads will explode unless comments are made, I mean that by not commenting you put yourself in mortal danger of making your brain homeless, is what I meant. Just listen the testimony of just one of my many (dis)satisfied readers who neglected to comment:
"The.. pain.. the mortal... pain... So... loud... I-I went to read John's latest post and when I just closed the page after reading it and left, this ear-piercing voice started screaming "Noooo" from my speakers. Now I have no head. It exploded. Why-oh-why didn't I listen to what he told me? Why didn't I comment? Whhyyyy!"
This could be you. Comment. It's the safe thing to do. Oh and if you don't actually believe that heads can spontaneously explode, check out this article from MIT about this very real and very possible phenomenon. Mwhahahahahaha!!!!

On a less life threatening note, I just not more than a couple hours ago had the privilege of being able to watch "The house of Flying Daggers". If you've ever seen "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" or "Hero", then you know what to expect. Lots of amazing surreal fights and more than enough pretty colors for everyone. This one, however, was less about the fighting and destiny and honor and more about the relationships between the three main characters: a blind woman ( played by the chick who stole the sword in crouching tiger ) and the two men who love her. Good plot. Not at all stereotypical. Basically, it's set in the feudal era of china or something, and the emperor is weak and the government corrupt. To combat this government an organization is formed in secret called, of course, the house of flying daggers. And dude, can their daggers fly! I mean, they throw them straight at guys protecting themselves with shields, and they bounce off, try to curve around the shields, bounce off again, try to come at the soldiers from above, and then finally deflect off the bronze shields to clatter to the ground. It's like they're alive or something. Pretty cool. Anyway, there are these two soldiers fighting for the government who capture the blind girl, and because she is the blind daughter of the ex-leader of the resistance, one of them pretends to be a freedom fighter, stages her escape, and tries to get her to fall in love with him in order to persuade her to lead them to the hiding place of the hidden daggers. That was the plan, anyway. Of course he ends up really falling in love with her, but twists and turns abound in the plot line, enough so that I dare you to figure out what will happen at the end before you get halfway through the film. No way to know. And I like that in a movie. It's hard to be surprised when most movie plots are Disney-like cesspools of unoriginality.

Well, that will be all for now, I'm going to spend the weekend at my aunt's with my cousins Matthew and Carolyn. Yay! That will be fun, and hopefully it will help me escape the evil influence of the TV, which I am powerless against. Until next time, dear readers, I bid you adieu.

TV is my sensei.

2005-07-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Hello hello he-lo! Guess who this is? If you guessed John, you are correct and get to stay on the show for at least one more episode! But if you guessed that I was an incredibly handsome and brilliant philanthropic millionaire who fights crime by night disguised as a sith lord, sadly you would be in this case totally wrong. I am an incredibly handsome, brilliant, philanthropic POOR man who fights crime by night disguised as a sith lord. I am called "Sithman". I shoot lightning out of my fingertips to "shock" the crime organizations with my powers of crime stopping, all while plotting to conquer the galaxy and destroy all jedi. You could join me, dear reader. We could fight crime and rule the galaxy together! Never underestimate the power of the John side!

On that note, I just saw StarWars III yesterday. Sweet movie. Too bad
most of the good parts were ruined for me already, sorta like what
happened with the Two Towers. "Yeah, Legolas kills an entire Oliphant
all by himself!" Would have been more impressive if I hadn't been
waiting the whole movie for him to do it. So I knew Anakin fought a
General Grievous who wielded four lightsabers, I knew Yoda visited
Chewie on his home planet, and I knew Darth Vader ended the movie by
going "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" ( Which was actually the comedy highlight of
the movie for me. It was just so unexpected to hear DARTH VADER
screaming like that. Hilarious. ) Other than all that, it's true what
everyone has been saying, it really is for sure the best of all the new
ones. The part that I liked the most was Palpatine's seduction of Anakin
to the dark side. I was expecting some sort of cheap "Anakin you like
power and are sometimes afraid, right!? The dark side is all about that!
So why don't you join in?". But ( stop reading here if you don't want to
know how it happens ) Anakin actually almost killed Palpatine when he
found out that he was the sith lord, and then Anakin went to turn him
in, and it wasn't like Palpatine was all nice one moment and then evil
the next, the whole movie you can sorta see him weaving the web of the
dark side for Anakin to fall into. Pretty well done. I have also heard
that "Revenge of the Sith" was the best StarWars movie EVAR, and while
it was very good, that's just blasphemy. I mean, Hayden ( Or whatever
the guy who played Anakin's name was ) alone earned the movie negative
fifteen gazillion coolness points. I just really did not at all care
about what happened to him in the movie. He just came across as a whiny
and gullible moron to me, but then again, maybe I'm being a bit harsh.
He did have cool evil sith-eyes at the end. =)

And while we're talking about movies, I really want to see Batman
Begins. From what I've heard, it's supposed to be the best Batman ever.
And I love Batman. I also want to see War of the Worlds which is also
supposed to be good. I wonder if it's the cold that gets them at the end
like in the book, or if they've changed it a little. I hope they have. I
hate knowing the ending before I see the movie.

Now would be a good time to inform you that my days have been spent
getting to know the TV so much better and deepening our relationship. My
mind and the telly have merged to become one cohesive unit. If you turn
the TV off, my mind goes with it. The real world is so overrated. I
mean, if the show "The Real World" is any indication, real life must
suck! Ah, reality TV. You know they're coming out with a reality series
based on the Williams sisters, and another based on the "Hulk" Hogan
family. Everyone's going to be entertained knowing every detail about
their lives, right? And a massive shock was felt through the force as an
entire galaxy shouted out in unison "I don't caaaare!" Reality
Television is reaching all-time lows right now. I mean, there is a show
about famous people losing weight. The prize is not being fat, I guess.
It's neat that it's a show where you play along at home with, though.
While the people on the TV work off their extra pounds, you gain them
sitting on your couch eating your delivery pizza and sipping your
mountain dew, and if your famous enough, preparing yourself to be a
contestant on the next season of the show. Boo-yah! On the flip side of
telly, though, I had the privilege of watching most of the first season
of Battle Star Galatica on scifi. That is an awesome show. You care
about what happens to the characters once you get to know them, and you
agonize over if they will survive the attack on the human race by the
Psylons. The story is basically this: Mankind has space travel and is
concentrated on a planet in the galaxy ( I'm not too sure as I missed
the first episodes ). They create robots, the robots decide to kill
humanity. Sounds familiar, I know. They pretty much succeed in their
goal, but around 500,000 people survive and escape on a ship called the
"Battle Star Galatica", which is wandering around the galaxy trying to
find earth and a way to defeat the robots. Meanwhile the humans are
infiltrated by agents of the Psylons who look just like the humans (
normally the psylons look like your classic metal robot with flashy red
eyes and laser gun arms ) and which are cloned so that a lot of
different versions can be slipped in with the humans at a time. Some of
the clones don't even know that they are Psylons, but just blank out
every once in a while and sabotage stuff and get really freaked out
about it. One of the characters has a psylon in his mind for some reason
that I missed, who is actually this evil blonde chick who gives the guy
advice and talks to him and no one else can see her, her advice making
him seem like a genius to the other survivors, quite despite himself.
None of this stuff is the reason that the show is good, however. It is
the great writing, and interactions between characters feel realistic
and really interesting. It's filmed with a sort of "shaky camera" kinda
thing going on, to give it a "real" feeling, as well, although some
times I got tired of the jumpy zooming. Find a lens focus you like and
stay there, for the sake of all that is John! Battle Star Galactica
comes with a big "John's Stamp of approval" redeemable where ever fine
goods are sold.
"One" with the TV.

Oh, and you can now post comments on my posts no matter who you are now!
Just click on that comment button and tell me what you think! I demand
it of you! Be forewarned, I have powers not accessible by the normal
Jedi methods! And they include being very sad if you do not comment on
my posts from now on! Just do it! Quench your thirst for feedback! Can
you hear you hear me now? Good. Because there is good news. I saved a
bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to anonymous commenting
methods.
I "am" the TV.

You might possibly have wished to know my first impressions upon
arriving in the USA. It's too late for those. I wrote them all down
directly online, but before I could post them, my computer froze, so all
that extreme writing time was lost instantly and forever, and besides,
I can't remember anything before the last commercial break now. I break
up all my conversations into ten minute periods punctuated by three
minutes of screaming meaningless drivel into your face before I resume
normal conversation. Of course I stop talking right when I get to the
interesting parts so that you won't run away during my commercial breaks.
I hate TV.
No! Wait! I'm sorry TV, I didn't mean it really! No, I'll watch you all
day tomorrow, don't worry. Poor, sweet teevee-weevy. Yes, more of the
mind-bendingly unoriginal programs, please! I just can't get enough.

Well it's getting to be about that time again, the pause in TV watching
where I close my eyes and /dream/ about watching TV for a couple of
hours before starting right up again tomorrow. I miss all my friends who
aren't here with me now, which makes all of you guys. COMMENT ON THIS
POST OR I SHALL SCREAM NOOO SO LOUD YOUR HEAD WILL EXPLODE! Speaking of
Darth Vador and his Noooooo!, check out the inside scoop on his
screaming habits here. Salut!

[EDIT:To my great embarassment, I think psylon is actually spelled Cylon. Ops.

My computer won't let me change my post so this is the last thing I will say: Go to sleep!

2005-07-07T23:21:00.000-07:00

I. Hate. My Computer. I had this big long really cool post that took me hours to write and then my computer froze and it all died. So no post for you. I'm too tired. Too much good food to eat here. I was this: And all this tastiness has transformed me into this:

Leaving on a jet-plane, don't know when I'll be back again.

2005-07-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

This will be my very last post made from Guinea West Africa. Just yet another milestone in the process of leaving here. Yesterday I said goodbye to my longtime friend Alex Rehn who I have only ever seen in Guinea. A little less than a couple of days ago I finished packing up everything that I wanted to keep from my room, and left it an empty shell that looked like there was never someone named John Wilkos who had lived in it once. And a couple of days before that, I went to school to give back my books. It felt anticlimatic, this last time that I would ever see again the inside of the place that I had spent 8 hours a day 5 days a week for the last 8 years. A whole lot of memories were tied up with that school. Some good. Most bad. It was school, after all. =) But no matter the quality of the place, if you have spent a long period of time there you're going to miss it. The librarian got misty-eyed as she checked off the last of my school books. I guess she remembered me being there since 6th grade and was sad to see me go after such a long time. I said goodbye to her and shut the library door and stood with my back to it looking around at the familiar features of the now almost empty school. I decided to go get my last drink from the reportedly toxic water fountain as had been my custom every day for the last 7 years. I was bitterly suprised to find a growing sadness in my chest like a dark misty weight as I looked at buildings and teachers for the last time. I sipped my drink of water from the fountain. And I staightened and turned around, my back towards the school for the last time and made the long walk toward the exit. Darn I would hate missing that place. That feeling is kinda similar to how I feel about leaving Guinea. It's not that awesome of a place. But that just means that the friends that you make here are that much closer because you have endured the hardship together. I will miss Guinea. Pretty much despite myself.

I would just leave it there, but I insist you check out these cool quotes that I have collected from quote-a-day.

P. B. Medawar

"The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."

Professor Irwin Corey

"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going."

Stan Dunn

"And that's the world in a nutshell, an appropriate receptacle."

Jef Raskin

"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."

William S. Burroughs

"After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager.""

Tom Lehrer

"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!"

Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Eric Hoffer

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."

Jay Leno

"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?"

Tom Stoppard

"The days of the digital watch are numbered."

Henry David Thoreau

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

John Kenneth Galbraith

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought."

Dick Cavett

"If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either."

Douglas Adams

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

Hmm. The results are here.

2005-07-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

Greetings my highly neglected blog! Today is Friday the 1st of July 3:45
PM ( just got up an hour ago ) and it has already been a week since I
discovered the harrowing results of my BAC on Monday. And I'm using
words like "harrowing" for a completely unrelated reason which I will go
into later. Ah yes, the night before the results of the BAC where
supposed to be released I packed my bags for MK camp ( "Mortal Kombat"
Kamp! No, not really. "Missionary Kid" camp. ;-) ) and/or Dakar, not
knowing which place I would be going to, depending on if I passed my BAC
or not. Really easy. Just trade off flashlight and mosquito repellent
for school books and calculator, and I was ready to go either way. Was I
nervous? No, not really. If I had to go to Dakar and do the BAC all
over, I had to go to Dakar. If I didn't have to, great. And so it was
with an uncertain future that I laid down to go to bed that evening. The
next day started late for me, because for some reason I didn't sleep all
that well, ( I wasn't nervous, was I? ), so I woke up and ate my
Lunch/Breakfast and sat down to wait for 3 o'clock when we would leave
to see the score at the French school. That was a fun wait. And then
when the time came, off we zoomed! The whole family came ( except
Melanie who was already at camp ) We got there just on time and were
disappointed to find out from the guard that the results would be posted
when they were ready to post them, and unfortunately they where going to
be ready any time between 3 and 5 o'clock and we couldn't even come
inside the school until 4:30. This was not only unfortunate because it
meant I would have to wait even more, but because it meant that if I
/did/ pass, the 6 hour trip to the camp in Dalaba would be out of the
question because we would be driving in the dark a lot, and that's a
no-no here. When it got to 4 o'clock and the results still weren't
posted, we pretty much decided that the camp trip was pretty much
screwed. So we went inside and stuff happened ( excuse my lack of
enthusiasm in telling this story, I've already gone through it like ten
times with other people, and now I'm getting sick of it. ;-) ) I went up
to the technology room ( /our "living room" as my good buddy nicolas
would say, because we spend so much time there. In fact, Nico went there
every day for the entire week after school was over. He's nuts. )
/hooked up with my favorite teachers Mr. Garcia and Mr. LaMola as well
as Nico and we all played a LAN game of Commandos while all the rest of
the people waiting for their grades where sweating it out down stairs
anxiously waiting for the secretary to /hurry up and post those
scores!!/ Nico's Mom was the president of the school board so we asked
her if she could come up stairs and tell us what we got when she found
out. So there we were, sneaking behind guards and hiding the bodies in
barrels when Nico's Mom comes up and says "Congratulations" we both
glanced up from our computers and said "We passed?" She was brimming
over with excitement and pride filled her eyes when she looked at her
son. "Yes!" she said, "You both passed!" Me and Nico looked at each
other and I extended my hand for a handshake. "Good job, you passed." I
told him. "Thanks." He replied blandly. And we both turned back to our
computers to finish our mission, trying to sneak past a pesky gun boat.
Stupid boat. We failed that mission. Darn it. I guess I wasn't that
worried about my BAC that much after all. =) Or maybe I was just tired
of being worried. Whatever. Nico's Mom had found out that we passed way
before they had posted the scores so we finished our mission and went
down stairs to see the official version of our success. Man, when they
put those scores up, the crowd around the board was ten people thick!
And I don't mean that there were ten people around the board. I mean
that a sphere with a radius of ten people surrounded the tiny plywood
even before they pushed their way through to put the results up. And
everyone went nuts! I mean, people were almost getting trampled with all
the pushing and pulling around that thing. Immediately there were
students shouting and whooping and pushing their way out of the mob with
looks of absolutely insane joy on their faces. They ran out on to the
soccer field ripping their shirts off, throwing their shoes up in the
air, hugging each other and shouting their freaking heads off! It was
insane! And then on the flip side, intermingled with all the laughing
and happiness there was also tears and cries of agony. Agony? No, I'm
not exaggerating. One girl started crying and screaming at the top of
her lungs "No! I won't go! I can't go! Nooo!" For the most part though,
the ones who didn't pass walked quietly away from the crowd, found a
corner and sobbed. Sometimes they had a family member crying with them,
but most of the time they just wanted to be alone, preferring to be as
far from the crowd of celebration as possible. There was such a display
of emotions there that I have never before seen in my life. There were
people elevated on the joyous cloud nine of victory whose tears of
happiness mingled with the sorrowful tears of people who probably felt
like their world had just ended. There was the ecstatic girl who was
hugging our math teacher and jumping up and down and laughing because it
really was a miracle that she passed, and then there was the guy with
his face buried in his mother's chest crying like someone had just died.
And me and Nicolas just mildly sauntered over and looked at the board
and confirmed that we did, indeed, pass. I sorta felt guilty not being
excited or anything with everyone going crazy around me, and so I worked
my way over to my parents to tell them the good news. On the way over I
think I got my hand shook and hugged by around five people
congratulating me on passing the BAC. People I had never even /seen/
before were hugging me. I'm serious, it was madness. When I told my
parents they went slightly nuts as well, and both got out their
cellphones to call people and tell them the good news. While I severely
discourage ever experiencing the actual BAC, if you ever get the chance
to witness the unveiling of the BAC results I would highly recommend it.
While the French don't have any celebration of the end of high school, (
they're just like "You passed, now get out of here" ) the grade-getting
was more than sufficient a celebration for me.

So that was my Monday. What a day. As I mentioned, it is now Friday. How
come it took me so long to post about it, you ask indignantly. Yes, oh
demanding public, I have an excuse. ( Here comes the "harrowing" part )
My excuse's name is Ethan. From the moment I get up in the morning to
his bedtime hour, Ethan is /there/. I eat breakfast and Ethan is
/there/. I play video games and Ethan is /watching/. Apparently, Ethan
asks about me a couple dozen times before I get up in the morning. I go
to eat dinner and Ethan tells me that I should eat with him. I tell him,
no, that's OK, I'll eat at my house, and he says, no, it's OK, I should
really come and eat with him. Your saying to yourself "Oh, that's cute,
John is that little guy's role model." If only that was the case. The
guy doesn't do what I do, he /tells/ me what /I/ should do. If I

randomly bump into a police car in GTA2 he tells me that I am a loser
and I suck at that game. Don't get me wrong, he's really not a bad guy (
probably just kidding around with the loser stuff ), and he can't be
going through a really easy time right now, this being his first time
out of the states. ( and Guinea is a doozy of a first foreign country to
go to ) But he has not only worn on my nerves, he has taken a chainsaw
to them and after he has finished tearing my nerves into little pieces,
he has stomped on them repeatedly and then backed a steamroller over the
pieces and crushed them. I hate saying bad things about people, and it
probably has a lot to do with how stressed I've been lately, ( We are
finally moved out of our house, and the Riley's are moved in. And now
Ethan asks if I want to come over to "his" room ( my old one ) and play
"his" Nintendo 64 ( the one that I'm leaving here while I go to the
states ). ) but the fact is, that I haven't written (anything) because
I've been spending most of my time with Ethan. Maybe I just need a lot
of alone time, and that is why I'm so annoyed that I can count on Ethan
being the very first person I see in the morning, and he probably is
feeling kinda lost and very bored ( very, very, very bored ), being here
for the first time, and he talks about his friend in the states who also
was his youth group leader, so was older, and maybe I'm like his
replacement or something, I don't know, but I see an awful lot of Ethan
all day. An awful, awful lot. I'm probably just being a jerk and Ethan
is just a super sociable guy, but sometimes I just feel like screaming.
Grr. Sorry. Unfortunately, because I've been trying to avoid the big
"E", I haven't really gotten to know the other Rileys, but as far as I
could tell, the other Riley that is around my age, Spencer, is a really
nice guy who seems to be a lot like Jonathan Hoover, except Spence seems
to like to stay indoors a lot more and read and play with legos and
stuff. I love the Rileys. Really. Even Ethan. I just wish he would give
me some space. Sorry.
Well, there you go. Other stuff has happened this week, and I would go
into it, but this post already looks like it could be split into
volumes, and so it is with a tired hand that I must type you "/Adieu, ma
cherie, et a bientot."/ Which sounds cool, but means something a bit
inappropriate for this context. Good night my dear, see you soon! And so
I shall, hopefully before I'm back in the states, this comming Monday.
If not, then it's dial-up for me at my grandma Wilkos's house! What ever
happens, see you back here, same place, same John.( Different time zone
) ;-)

Ok, Tomorrow I die!

2005-06-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

Hey. Quick note here, as it's 1 in the morning and I'm running on battery. Yep, check the picture out, I am indeed playing StarCraft right now. I've had it for like a couple years but just never got around to playing it until recently, and I don't aim on stopping playing it this time until I've beat every cursed zergling to it's dying breath. Great game. The very first Real Time Strategy game that I'd ever played was Command and Conquer Red Alert, and it really got me started on those RTS'. Since then I've played and owned every single C&C that they've come out with ( except Tiberian Sun, which I don't own but have beaten ) and a whole bunch of other ones like WarCraft and the StarWars RTS, but so far I think that StarCraft is the one that has put the most "S" into RTS. I mean, it's not like Red Alert where you get the most units and run at the other guy and win, there are all sorts of things that you have to think about, like do I use my SCV to gather money, create buildings, or fix my units, and etc... I suppose that it just might be that how everything works is kinda new to me, and after I get used to it the sweetness might die, but whatever. Heh. "New". The game is about 8 years old. But then again, the classics never get old. Unless you've played them when they first came out. Then they get old. Yikes, I have no idea what I am typing about.

I have been very unhealthy. Today is Sunday the 26th, right? Well, on Wednesday night I went and spent the night at Alex's house. Nice. And then I spent Thursday night there, too. And if you have ever had a sleep over, you know that the last thing that happens at a sleep over is sleep. They should call them "Stay-up-all-night-overs". It would be more accurate. So came back home on Friday ( at 12AM in the evening. Those Brazilians are party animals. = ) ) and found that my sister was having a sleep over herself that night with her friend Rebbecca. And they wanted me to set up TV's so they could watch movies, and so I ended up going to bed that evening at 4AM. Don't pay any attention to the man behind the keyboard, he's dying of sleep deprivation. Right, so, that's 5 hours of sleep 3 nights in a row, ok? Well the next day, I stayed up late again, and don't ask me why, when you're really sleepy, your memory becomes dead, and I can't remember why. Dead dead dead. Other things happened on the weekend but they are indistinguishable through the fog of my memory. And now it is 1 in the morning and the only reason I know the reason I'm staying up late this time is because every once in a while I notice that I can see a screen through my glazed eyes, and I'm typing, and so I reason that I should keep on typing, because that is what you do in such a situation. Reasonably. I will now utter a completely random phrase. The Pineapple Kiwi toilet bowl seat covers once denounced the powers of ten that I won at a midnight raffle party that my purple bunny slippers held in my armpit last Hiver. So true.

Moving right along, tomorrow is Monday, the day I hate. Hay-a-ate. This particular Monday is particularly hated by me though, because it is the day that I shall discover what grade I earned on my BAC. And if I don't pass I have to do the whole BAC experience over again, except this time in another country that I've never been to before, and with teachers that I've never seen before, the same teachers who would be responsible for having given me my failing grade before I went, too. Ah the irony. She is bittersweet, non? I will now leave you with these parting words of wisdom:

Sleep is for Luzers. Just say no. And coherent thoughts are for jerks, as well. So saith the John, may his words forever be respected.

Thank you, and goodnight.

The BAC is gone and took my pride with it.

2005-06-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

    Guess who's bac, bac again, the John is bac, tell a friend. Yipee!! Yes, as you might have guessed, my lack of posts for around the last week was due to my total BAC state of mind. I was in the BAC zone. I ate, drank, dreamed, and breathed nothing but BAC for more than 6 days. And I may have posted something similar to those words in my last post. My lack of originality can be excused, though, because a week of tests every day for 8 hours sucks the originality out of one's veins. In addition to just sucking. But seriously, I spent an entire week creating magical fantasies designed to fool the corrector into thinking that I really knew what I was talking about, but just made a few mistakes when I wrote it down, no, seriously, I really knew all this junk, but you just asked the questions really weird, so please give me points at least for that! Hmm. Will beg for points.

    So, let me break down how it went for y'all:

       BEGIN DAY ONE
       First, came La Philosophie. Four hours of speculative joy. Had to explain some text that some guy wrote about religion, whatever. Went OK maybe. Hopefully.
       Next came L'Anglais. BOOYAH!!!! I love taking English as a second language! All your points are belong to us!! This test should be able to take the guy that corrects it over it's knee and spank him! Unless, maybe, the corrector is a British dude who thinks cigarettes are fags, and erasers are rubbers. There is a joke in there, but I shall not dirty my blog with it.
       END DAY ONE

       I go home and study like mad. Bang head against table. Tomorrow will be the most feared of BAC days, and it's shadow looms over my puny knowledge like a teacher over someone trying to cheat, an infraction which, by the way, is punished by being held back a grade. Good thing I don't cheat, right? Right?

       DAY TWO
       Enter dreaded SVT or, in English, Biology/Geology. OH THE HORROR!! OH THE MAYHEM!!! It was horrendous! All sorts of things I didn't study! Mainly, how the phenomenon of subduction provokes magmatisation. WHAT THE HECK KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT!! Subduction makes hot. Hot makes Magma. There! I'm finished! And we were supposed to write 3 pages on the subject!! Gaa! So much BS I was forced to create! Whoever is lucky enough to correct my paper will be banging their head on the furniture!
       Speaking of head-banging, and not in a "I'm head-banging to this awesome music" kind of way, but the much more unpleasant kind, Histoire/Geographie came next. And it was with cries of disgust throughout the room that we discovered the subject of the test. East Orient. This was a subject that we had written about half a page about in class, and we were about to spend four hours writing an 8 page long paper about the subject. When you have to spread half a page of information over 8 pages, you know a lot of BS had to be made to fill in those holes. So much BS. I alone may be the cause of the hole in the ozone layer, made because of the noxious fumes given off by the high BS content of my tests.
       END DAY TWO

       I slowly limp home and lick my wounds. I'm getting tired of waking up at 6:30 AM. The only time I usually wake up before the sun rises is for the Easter Sun Rise Service at church, and that is to honor our savior Jesus-Christ. Is the BAC Jesus? No. And yet I am forced to get up before that stupid early bird and eat that frikin worm. And that is a stupid proverb, anyway. I mean: "Get up early so that you can eat worms!! Yay! Go earliness!". Grrrrrrrr. Anyway, I study much much that evening, bang head on table some more, table breaks, am forced to go bang head on toilet instead. I go to sleep with the math book open on my chest, and when I notice in the morning, I hope maybe that the page I was opened to got printed on my chest, so that when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the test I could look at the thing in the bathroom mirror. No dice. And no temporary tattoo on my chest, either. So sad. Besides, you actually have to have a teacher come with you to the bathroom.

       BEGIN DAY THREE
       Ah day three, the last day before the weekend. And a day for a measly one test. Sigh. Heaven. WRONG! This is the Math test! This test is weighted the absolute most of all of them, except for Physics! And guess what? This test decided to follow the trend of the two previous ones by being pretty darn hard. I don't even remember what was on it. I have even blocked that day from my memory, it was so traumatic. Everyone did crappy on this one. Lots of ppl only finished two of the four exercises. So very painful. This test became known among even teachers as the hardest Math BAC ever. And dude, they're old. They have seen a lot of BACs. I will be visiting a psychiatrist years from now about the repressed memories.
       END DAY THREE

       Ah, the weekend. The merciful calm within the storm that is the BAC. Do I maybe go on the Internet and do email and post on my blog during these two god-sent days? No. That would interrupt my fevered sleeping, studying, and head-banging sessions. I say fevered because I was also a little sick during the whole thing. My stomach still feels like refuse. Headache, fever, everything. Maybe this malady was stress related? I don't know. Anyway, the weekend was an occasion for great joy for other reasons as well because the Rileys flew in on Saturday! Aw yeeah! It's pretty cool because Mr. and Mrs. Riley have about five kids, two of which are youth group age. If it seems bizzare to go crazy about this to you, you have never been an MK in this country. The Rileys coming just about doubles the number of teenagers I know around here. ( Not including the French school. ) Awesome. And it about quintuples the number of people I know who like video games as well. Anyway, I take a little break from Physics-assisted suicide to celebrate their arrival, and that evening we all stay up late to watch National Treasure, which is a pretty cool movie, and I was surprised that the Rileys could stay awake during the whole thing because they had just spent around two days crossing 7 time zones, and you don't really get good sleep on those planes. I would have stayed up and watched it, but 9 out of 10 leading experts agree that I'm not sane. There is a part in that movie where where the good guy tells his friends that the bad guy can't be far behind in the clues, because the bad guy has unlimited resources and resolve. And in the scene before that the bad guy was seen telling his lackey put the clue into a yahoo search on his high-tech computer in their mobile HQ, and then they clicked on the top results and figured out where to go next. So thats what "unlimited resources" means! Yahoo! Good lord! What if he had used Google? The good guy would never had made it! Gee, it seems as if I too have unlimited resources! Cool! Go internet search engines!
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, the BAC, may it's name forever be cursed. Right. As I mentioned before, Physics was my highest weighted grade. And so I studied. And studied. And banged my head against the toilet. And Sunday evening I skipped church so that I could sweep up the bits and pieces of information that I still didn't know about Chemistry and Physics and cram them into my massive brain. A brain which was perhaps not so massive as I thought, as Physics keeped on leaking from it, as I was calculating the viscosity of milk in my cereal, and wondering if I could use an esterification reaction between an alcool and an acid to make soap when I couldn't find any in the shower. And so I layed my head down to sleep, sure of my knowledge, and confident that tomorrow would go well.

       BEGIN OMINOUS MUSIC. AND DAY FOUR.
       Did you know that on the first day of the BAC, two people were late? Of course you didn't. This is notable because if you are not present in the testing area at the time of the opening of the test ( They're sealed ) you will not be admitted, and you will get a zero on that test. Now, when it was time to start, the teachers knowing that this was the law, looked at the clock, looked at the two empty chairs, and being not quite so evil as you might think, decided to wait another 15 minutes until opening the test packet. The missing persons jogged in and collapsed in their chairs about 20 minutes later, and we began. That was Wednesday. Today is Monday of the next week. The teachers, after two more late starts, said that the next time someone was late, they would not wait. I chose today to wake up quite very late. I quickly jumped out of bed, splashed some cereal on my face and ate a bowl of shampoo, ran out the door and jumped in the car, making sure that I had my drivers license and my convocation ( they have to verify that you're really you, and the drivers license was my official proof of identity. No I wasn't driving. ) , and then Whoosh! off we went. I told our driver Mr. Syla to not only ignore the traffic laws as is usual when driving in Guinea, but to ignore the laws of Physics as well. And so off we drove faster than the speed of light, sometimes driving through cars that were in front of us, and when we hit the speed bump, instead of falling back down we fell up, flying over the morning traffic jam and landing in front of the school. Mr. Syla is a good driver. And I rushed to the test room, and by some miracle I was actually only 15 minutes early. I would like to take this time to thank everyone who prayed for me during this test. It obviously worked.
        And so began trial by Physique/Chemie. Our Physics teacher Mr. Garcia is the one who opens the tests, and before he distributes them to us, he takes the top one off the pack and examines it. His eyes grow wide and he gives us a look that says "Wow. Just wow." That cannot be a good thing. Hmm, first exercise not so bad, Mr. Garcia must have just been amazed at how easy it was, about gravitational attraction between planets, which is cool, something I had actually studied. But long. It was worth 3pts out of 20 and it covered three pages. Ok, took me a little more time to finish that one than I would have hoped, but it went well. What's next? Oh, sweet! Nuclear reactions! I studied that too! Gee, but it takes up around four pages of questions, though. Now I'm finished, and it's starting to look bad time wise. Just an hour and a half left out of 3 hrs 30, and I had only done 6pts out of 20. Not good. Next one was worth 6pts thankfully, and wasn't quite so long. Electrolysation of water. Hmm, I seem to remember something about that... OK, only 30 minutes left on the clock, and I have one last question to answer, and it's my super hard specialite question ( I specialized in phys/chem ) and it's about dosages, where you add stuff to a solution to find out how much junk is inside. Hmm. A dosage is an experiment that you do, not a test question! And then they start out by asking you to write the reaction equation between silver nitrate and sodium chlorate, and that's cool, I'll do that, but what the heck is silver nitrate and sodium chlorate!! Do they expect us to memorize the periodic table of elements!? What the heck!!! And all the questions after that are about the reaction! And so I make like Darth Vader and go NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! ( I haven't actually seen the movie, but I heard about that part. ) And if I were Darth Vader I would have chosen this moment to grab my own throat with my mind and squeeze.
        Alright, at least thats over, but wait! There's more! Last and least of all my tests is Espagnol which isn't really worth much, and I never studied for. I forgot all my Spanish vocabulary and decided to just cut and paste the words of the text into my answers. Teachers never like that. I just realized that its kinda weird that I am taking a foreign language in a foreign language. In one of the questions I had to translate some text from Spanish into french. You won't get that in a Spanish class in the states.=)
        END DAY FOUR. END BAC. BEGIN HAPPY HAPPY MUSIC.

And there you go, that was my BAC. A most unpleasant experience indeed, one to be avoided if you can. When I got home, I stumbled off to bed and slept, and when I awoke, I could barely move because I was so physically tired. Stress can do that to you.
And then today is my sister Melanie's Birthday, the 21st of June! What a joyous occasion! I think that makes her like 13 or 16 or 12 or something. Never can remember. I think even Melanie herself had forgotten that today was to be her birthday, so I don't know how we shall party. I think she wants Chinese food. I will download something cool for her off the net, or get her a card or something.
Well, I will know if I passed June 27, and at that time, if I did not pass, I will jump in a plane and fly to Dakar to do the catching up session after which I am sure I will pass. If I do pass, then I will jump in a car and drive up to Dalaba for the MK camp. Either way I'm jumping in something and going somewhere right after I find out if I passed, so I'll post the news at a later date. And that ends this encyclopedia-sized post. Adios, et a bientot!

Gack! It's the BAC!

2005-06-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

OOOHHHH NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Tomorrow is the BAC! I will DIE! The BAC is going to open me up and eat my insides out! The end is less than 12 Hours away!! Help!

Spray-on mud.

2005-06-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

Wow! Check this out, they actually have spray on mud that you can buy for your SUV if you aren't brave enough to take it off road. That is a speciality product!
What do you sell?
Who me?, well I sell packaged mud!
Crazy.
It's for covering your liscense plate from traffic cameras.

Legolas

2005-06-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

Look! So thats where all the elves went at the end of lord of the rings! They make cookies!

Sometimes you feel like a nut.

2005-06-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yo. My brain is exploding. Too much study. Want play bang-bang shoot game make big explosions whoopie! Seriously. I have a massive headache from trying to understand all this chemistry. For example: there is a coefficient K which is equal to the product of the concentration of the products divided by the product of the concentrations of the reactifs, right? Well this is totally different from Ka ( the acidity coefficient ) which is equal to the product of the concentration of the base times the concentration of oxonium divided by the concentration of the acid. Speaking of acid, it has driven me completely insane!! Not to mention that those two coefficients are completely different from pKa and Ke and Qr and pH, which I will not waste space explaining, but all have very similar definitions and as far as I can tell serve no purpose except as being really annoying test questions!!! Do you understand this!!?? Cause I spent all day trying to figure the danged things out and now I couldn't tell you what the square root of four is, or my brain would go into overload!!! *Insert crazed laughter here* Hehehehehehahahahahaahahahahgigglegigglegigglegiggle!!! Wheee! Let's calculate the coefficient of insanity to studying!! Goodness gracious! It looks like it's 1 billion parts crazy to one part studying!! Wow! That explains why I'm so messed up right now!! *More crazy laughter* Gigglegigglegigglegigglegigglehohohohohohohohohohohohaeheheheh!!! Check me into the asylum, bring on the Bac, or shoot me, any of the above would be merciful right now.

Dilbert inspired by me.

2005-06-09T10:32:00.000-07:00

Yep.That's pretty much what goes on here.

B to the A to the C.

2005-06-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Ha ha! Booyah! I just now ( Wednesday June 08 at 11:33PM ) finally finished studying for my BAC! The Physics part of my BAC. All that's left now is to study Chemistry, Biology, Math, History, Spanish, and Philosophy. And English. And suddenly it's not so cool anymore. Sigh. Well, I spent the whole day today studying. In fact I took a subconscious vow of hermitage, refusing to leave the comforting womb of my room and, later when I finally was overtaken by hunger, the suburbs of my room, which others like to call the rest of our house. Nope, no sunlight was able to carry it's UVs to harm my skin today. Yep. I had SPF-frikin'-roof-over-my-head-2000 all over me. Gotta keep that healthy pale computer screen glow that drives the ladies wild locked inside my skin. ;-) The bad part is that I wanted to go over to the office and do e-mail all day, but all the scary people and evil sunlight made me put it off over and over again until it became now. Midnight. We hates the sunlight, we hates it, precious! Gollum gollum! So here I am, typing in the dark because there is no power, the only thing I can see in the inky blackness that floods my vision is the screen in front of me, which is busily attracting every flying insect within 348 light years of it's sweet, friendly glow.

Type. Type. Type. That's me: the Typing-typer of typedom fame. Oh, hey, I made a picture describing my distress over the loss of my palm. It should be down there now, with the tragic story of my palm. And if you can't figure out what all that blurry junk is, it's a picture of a skeleton holding in his upstreached arms a palm tungsten E shouting his pain to the oncoming storm. The symbolism is clear: the looming storm of the BAC is going to strip the flesh from my bones faster than a fish tank full of pirhanas, and I will randomly grab the thing closest to me and show it to the BAC and tell it to "Take this instead!". Or maybe it's just me mourning the loss of my palm; whichever sounds more plausible to you. B.A.C.-day is the 15 of June, in exactly a week, and I would appreciate any prayers you might be willing to donate to a good cause: the "Help John graduate from high school" cause.

Did you know that I made a banner in flash for this site? It was pretty cool, the only problem was I used a tripod site to host the file, and half of the time tripod was too darn slow for the banner to get loaded on the page. There must be a billion people on Tripod, and I guess that slows things down. So the banner's life span was cut short to about 59 minutes. I mention this because when I wasn't studying today, I was making another banner, this time just a picture and not a gigantic flash, using a 3-D program I have called Blender. Excellent program, once you get used to the weird controls. It was made with 3-D designers in mind, you see, therefore lots of the commands are done by pressing a button on the keyboard, opposed to going through lots of menus. But you've got to know what those keys do, unless "boolean difference" is a phrase that immediately makes you think of a 3-D shape making technique. And if it does, then your just cheating somehow. Great program. And free, I might add. I'm a big fan of free things on the net, love those GNU licenses. Like the GIMP for instance, which I use instead of PhotoShop, it's evil twin brother, which costs like 100 bucks or so. EVIL!

Oh, and Hi Jonathan! You are about the only person who is reading my blog right now, so thanks for reading! I got your letters, I just haven't been able to write back yet because I haven't been online for very long lately. Hmm, it's kinda strange that you have to have a Blogger account to post comments here! Don't know why. But if you want to have a blog ( they're pretty fun, and it seems to be the fad for a lot of people lately ) you could sign up! It's really easy to update them, I just write to a special email address and blogger posts it to the site, and it is completely rated G as long as you don't read some of the other strange people's ( besides me ) blogs. I mean, you really can put whatever you want on your blog, as long as you don't want to host downloads or anything. I just chose Blogger because it's Google! And I love Google! No complaints from me, except that the site doesn't really make it very easy to find other peoples blogs on it ( no search blogspot, or groups or anything as far as I can tell ). The other two popular blogging sites are LiveJournal and Xanga, which as far as I've seen are excellent as well. It would be pretty neat to see you get a Blog! Oh yeah, and sign my guestbook if you haven't already. Your signature would make the number of people who has signed my book do an astronomical leap from nothing to something. ;-) Hehe. Thanks. Well, I'm off to visit the sandman now, wish me luck on my journey to La-la land! C-ya!

He's got the whole world in his palm.

2005-06-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yo yo yo!! Wazza wazza wazza!!? Hehe. That makes so much more sense if you say it out loud. So, wazzup my nizzles? Fo Rizzles. Oh yeah. I be pimpin'. Down in the hood wit' my euboniks, homedog. Word.

Just got back from spending most of the day at Alex's house. Sweet. Watched him play a little bit of Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, which he let me borrow when I left. Looks OK, sorta like a copy of every other RTS ever made. Attack of the Clones, indeed. But it's Star Wars, and that's what counts. Being of the Star Wars brand 'ups' a game around 3 pts on the coolness factor for me. Unfortunately, with a lot of the star wars games that have come out, that only rises their score to about minus nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven on a coolness scale from 1 to 10. No kidding. And so I withhold judgment upon the Battlegrounds of Galacticness until a further date. After I have had a chance to behold it's glory. And stuff.

Man, Alex can talk up a storm. I mean, I'm cool with that, it's not like I usually have anything worth while to say, and it's kinda nice to be able to just sit and listen, but dude!, when I got dropped off back home everything just sounded so quiet and empty of sound, and I found that I was expecting my family to talk to me like Alex, and I was unusually quiet with them, just going around and listening. I guess I'm a good listener, cause thats what I like to do when I have the chance. It just strikes me as awfully strange somehow to be thinking about all this stuff without knowing Alex's opinion about it, now! Darn it. Now I have to figure out what to think about stuff all by myself. Pesky personal opinions. Such a bother. Really. You know, I don't know if I'm lazy or what, but sometimes I think it would be so much easier if you had someone who told you how you should think, what you should wear, what you should do, how you should feel, etc.. It would eliminate so many uncertainties in life. But, now that I think about it, you do, really. I mean, there are all sorts of self-help books telling you how act to have strong relationships, there are critics telling you what to think about movies or games, fashion magazines to tell you how to look good. And all of a sudden, almost before the words stopped spraying asunder from John's fingertips, it sounded really, really, not so much like a good idea anymore. At all.

I'm getting verry sleeepy... but I consider myself honor bound to tell you about my poor innocent Palm's horrifying state, bound by the Blogger's creed, that says yes, Yes, no matter how insignificant, no matter how petty, no matter how much even the author doesn't care, it can, and it shall be blogged! Only the persistent will survive! Onward! As I take these words into my very heart, I shall tell you the tale of an adventurous car ride over rocky brown soil and through overflowing rivers, testing the limits of our four wheel drive, the afternoon sky dark as if night with a wild rainstorm, rain pounding against the car's window like it wants to get in and it means to, no matter how long it must beat away. As I gazed out onto this dreary scene, my Palm Tungsten E, snuggled as usual in the warm confines of my cargo shorts' right front pocket chose this moment to slip out unnoticed and benefit from the scenery provided by the floor, a muddy view as well, thanks to the dirty footprints made by my mud caked shoes. Luckily for my Palm, it landed face-up on all that filth. No, the unlucky part was yet to come, as I unwittingly opened the car door, pushing against the strong wind and shielding my eyes from the rain that rode it, opening the umbrella, trying to keep it from collapsing, and holding it up so the other passengers could get out slightly less soaked than I was at that point. While I waited for everyone to get out, I noticed my Palm down on the floor of the car, illuminated in a bright flash of lightning, getting pelted by buckets of evil, evil rain. I picked it up, wiped it on my shirt, drying my shirt off and getting the Palm more wet as I did so, and thought little of it as I walked to the house struggling to hold the umbrella open against wind that could have easily been responsible making me just like Mary Popins who was able to fly around with her talking one. I finally reached refuge inside the building, the only light being provided by lightning strikes, coming with loud booms of thunder, until someone could find the light switch. I turned my Palm on. Oh good! It still worked! What a relief. I went to dry it on some handy surface that didn't look like it had just been swimming in a pool like I did, and decided to check what time it was, using the Palm because I forgot my watch. I clicked the time button. Nothing happened. I did it again. Ditto. I clicked the main menu button. Nada. I poked the screen madly like a woodpecker jackhammering a tree. Nuthin. Good lord! My screen wouldn't work!
NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lightning struck and people were frightened to see me on my knees screaming to the heavens between sobs: "Why Lord, wwhhyyyy!? Why couldn't it have been me!? Take me instead!! WWHHHHHYYYYYY???" The horendifying truth is that everything on my Palm works, save the screen, which doesn't accept my gentle caresses with the stylus anymore. Oh the inhumanity! Well, that is the sorry story of my life for today, soon to be followed by the much more tear-inducing story of how I failed my BAC because I wasn't studying anymore. THE END.