Natha daged dhaer!

Anyone who can give me the source of the title without searching it is awesome.
So, Calculus again. We had a test that, for one reason or another, was easy and thus cmpleted quickly. Having nothing to do, I sat there while Jaclyn fooishly got out paper and penccils and tried to think about drawing something. Being the nice person I am, I showed her that the odds of her drawing more than one thing were very slim. I did this by stealing her pink eraser. Laughing to myself, I sat and gloated. A few minutes later, I turned to find a second eraser on her desk with her laughing at me.

Somehow or another, I found a way to steal the second eraser. She then reached into her backpack andpulled out two more. I don't quite remember how it changed, but soon we were wielding an eraser in each hand and slashing each other's arms and hands with them. You may think it sounds stupid, but you are definitely missing out. So for the last 30 to 45 minutes of class, we fought an epic duel..... while sitting down.... quietly..... however, we were able to whisper Princess Bride, LOTR, and a few Monty Python references as we fought, increasing the epicness. All the while, one person would turn o make sure the teacher wasn't glaring at us.... unfortunately, to do so, you had to turn your back on the other person, thus getting slashd on the hand.

All in all, I think that was the best use of the last 45 minutes of any class I have ever had..... I love school.... ish

This is a short post

I'm not feeling long winded right now but felt I should add something else before I get kicked from admin privileges or posting privileges or whatever kinda power I hold over the layman. I don't like driving anymore. 5 hours of driving does that to me. It probably does that to a lot of people. I hate savannah. Having to spend 5 hours reaching a place makes that place terrible. I bet it does that to a lot of places. EXCEPTION: if sleep is heavily involved in the transmigration process, the diminishment of the location is in itself diminished to a sickly log graph. IDEAL SOLUTION: TELEPORTATION. MORE IDEAL SOLUTION: TELEPORTATION BY THOUGHT.
there's this remote: Harmony 700 remote control. Look it up. IE is sucking right now to the point where copy paste SUCKS. it's pretty useful for stuff. all kinds of stuff. including this laptop my aunt has. Who needs a remote for a portable device? that is, like, double lazy.
I'm going to invent a laptop that has a built in, retractable, completely hidden-when-not-being-used mouse so that I may never have to use a mousepad where I click in random places as I type, creating

sttyporange errors. hehe. orange. oh look. my aunt was planning to plan a party at 12AM on 3/4/2010. She is asleep. I don't think this party is gonna be ready in time. Hey you know what I found out? about 20% of internet use is still being direted by IE6. Not completely terrifying, until you learn that, when IE6 came out, microsoft was the sole browser competitor, and so it set up ridiculous, nonsensical, uncontested standards that made all web pages need special programming just for IE6. Now, programmers say that must still spend about 20% of their time on websites just making the darn things still compatible with this ancient behemoth of clumsy design. neat, huh. Makes me wanna make new standards for something that will cause countless hours of pain years after my decision was ruled foolish on every regard.
Wait, this isn't that short. Dang. Bye
I-Forgot_My-Name-On-This_Blog == myNewName

Nerdology 101: Impeccable Lexicon

Okay, so I've been wanted to do this Nerdology post for a while now, but Nerdology posts require a lot more work on my part, so it was delayed (multiple times). Anyway, let's continue with the post.

If you didn't figure it out from the title, this post is about using aureate language to buffalo or galvanize the people around you. True nerds will envisage the preponderance of this business. So, without further impediment, let's instigate this post!

The paramount thing that one must necessitate is to utilize the most wordage in a eloquent fashion. This is cardinal if one fancies having a sumptuous embrace of language. Here are a few paradigms to elucidate this:

Case 1: "I'm doing well."

This sentence is incalculably hackneyed and monotonous. In lieu of this, say: "I am in very emphatic mood currently!"

Case 2: "Have a nice day."

This sentence is marred with cliche and trite word usage. Say "Have a stupendous diurnal course! Adieu!"

Now that you have annexed a intrinsic acumen of diction, try to assimilate some of the vocabulary below to further embellish your knowledge(NOTE: The definitions below may not be shown in their entireties [i.e. multiple definitions may not be shown] ):

Abditive: (adj) Having the quality of hiding

Abraid: (v) To awaken or arouse

Alible: (adj) Nourishing

Aristarch: (n) A severe critic

Ataraxia: (adj) Tranquility

Axilla: (n) Armpit

Balderdash (n): Nonsense

Bete Noire: (n) A person or thing strongly detested or avoided

B**** Godness: (n) material or worldly success [Censored to prevent internet filters from blocking the site]

Bon viviant: (n) A person having cultivated, refined, and sociable tastes

Brickle: (adj) Brittle

Burg: (n) Town/City

Buxom: (adj) Obedient, Tractable

Caitiff: (adj) Cowardly, or despicable

Calcify: (v) To make inflexible or unchangeable

Chuff: (n) Boor, Churl

Cognitive Dissonance: (n) Physiological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously

Crwth: (n) Crowd

Datum: (n) Something given or admitted especially as a basis for reasoning or inference

Demur: (n) Hesitation

Dirdum: (n) blame

Dotage: (n) State or period of senile decay marked by mental poise and alertness

Dotard: (n) A person in his dotage

Dynamo: (n) Generator; A forceful energetic individual

Eclat: (n) Dazzling effect, Brilliance

Eft: (n) Newt

Epaulet: (n) Something that ornaments or protects the shoulder

Fag: (n) Cigarette

Feirie: (adj) Nimble, Strong

Foment: (v) To promote the growth or development of

Frijol: (n) Bean

Gaiety: (n) Merrymaking

Germane: (adj) Being at once relevant or appropriate

Gey: (adv) Very, Quite

Grisette: (n) A young women combining part-time prostitution with some other occupation; A working class French women

Gyve: (n) Fetter, Shackle

Haberdasher: (n) A dealer in small wares

Hebdomad: (n) A group of seven

Hidrosis: (n) Excretion of sweat

Homoscedastic: (adj) Having equal statistical variances

Ice: (n) An undercover premium payed to a theater employee for choice tickets

Imprimis: (adv) In the first place [used to introduce a list of items or considerations]

Inviscid: (adj) Having zero viscosity

Iwis: (adv) Certainly

Jabiru: (n) Any of several large tropical storks

Jobbery: (n) The act or practice of jobbing [especially corruption in public office]

Juxta: (adj) Situated near

Kay: (n) The letter 'k'

Kink: (n) A clever or unusual way of doing something

Koine: (n) Dialect or language of a region that has become the common or standard language of a larger area.

Kyte: (n) Stomach, Belly

Lakh: (n) A great number

Lily: (adj) Resembling a lily in fairness, purity, or fragility

Loquacious: (adj) Garrulous

Lusty: (adj) Robust

Okay, screw this. I was going to do A-Z, but this is taking way too long.

Now, remember these 2 things about using higher vocabulary:

1. Use more obscure nouns in lieu of common nouns

2. Use more obscure definitions of common words

That's all for now,
ACRONYM of the Blog

Thlenthaktu the Thakfully Thelmenerous.

Irrelevant titles FTW!

So I was rudely awakened this morning by my brother shouting up the stairs, "AARON! Come down immediately - it's really important!"
"Mehhh, what is it."
"There's a BAT in the house!"
"A what?"
Turned out there was a bat in the house. He points over into the room we don't really have a name for other than "green room" because it's green, and there's this little tarantula-looking thing running along the floor. I approached closer and it really was a live bat. Of course, when my dad saw it he had to ask how I was sure it was a bat and not a tarantula.
"How are you sure that' sa bat and not a tarantula or something?"
"'Cuz it has ridiculously long front limbs... actually, because it's shaped like a bat."
After all, bats do have a distinctive bat shape, as this one demonstrated when it unfolded its wings a bit and showed how very bat-shaped it was. So I stood there puzzling what I was going to do about it. I was handed a bucket and a piece of cardboard, apparently because since I've made a reputation for myself as the family bug-catching expert, by extension I must also be the bat-catching expert. So I catchified it with the bucket. It wasn't quite like a bug though, because bugs don't start squeaking when you corner them.
Why it didn't fly away, I'm not so sure. Either it was injured, or I think I might have learned somewhere that bats can't take off from the ground and need to climb up something first. At least I think it was bats... Either bats or ladybugs, one of those two.
Anyway, I left the bat on the porch and hoped it found a nice cozy shelter before the snow started falling. Yeah, that was the other weird thing about today, was that it was snowing for some reason IN MARCH. My literature class had a snowball fight, in the classroom. Someone had run outside and grabgbed a hunk of snow and people were throwing snow across the room at each other.
What a weird day.

Exploding Penguin on the Blog Post

As you are about to witness, the title of this post has, simultaneously, everything and nothing to do with the actual subject of the post. The subject of my post is.....[dramatic pause]....[dramatic background music]....CALCULUS! Now, before you run away either to get away from the horrid subject of calculus or to go get your TI-89 for any math problems I might include, I should tell you that this is a rather unconventional view on the subject. Many people, including a few of my fellow bloggers, either love or hate calculus for the basic reason that it is math and, therefore, requires some sort of brain function that does not come easily to all. I enjoy calculus because it is an absolutely wonderful class for doodling.

Math is a very example-/problem-intensive class. Often times, the majority of the class is spent doing practice problems or watching the teacher go through examples. Initially, everyone who is not already aware of the concept in question must pay strict attention as it is presented and justified. It may take anywhere from 1 to 100 examples for the idea to really sink in. However, there will come a point when you understand the concept so well that you could not possibly understand it any better unless the brain of the man who invented it was transplanted into your skull. When you reach this point, there is little left to do. The examples are helpful, but tedious once the concept is properly grasped. It takes a supreme effort to pay attention and force the repetition. That is the point when the mind begins to wander. That is the point that Dominic and I found yesterday (again).

As you might guess, the answer to the almost certain boredom of calculus and a variety of other classes is doodling. This can be either productive or decidedly unproductive. Productive doodling is most often seen in history classes or similar literature-/story-intensive classes where it is possible to illustrate concepts. Calculus is not one of those classes, but it does have one advantage: worksheets. Worksheets always mean time in class to work on said worksheets and, most times, collaboration is encouraged so that students can check each other. In the common tongue of students, this translates to "type A free time." This is where the doodling comes in.

*Type A free time is essentially the kind in which you appear to be working diligently while getting no significant amount of work done. Note in the above picture that only about 1/3 of the worksheet is finished - the amount of possible work that can be done in the average time that the teacher spends at your desk watching you do it.

The latest calc masterpiece began with the rather pointless labels at the top. All those who are amused by it should thank Dominic for starting that. Surprisingly, most of the drawings do have some connection to our class. Gandalf's staff came from the dark mark made by the staple on the worksheet this was copied from, in case you were wondering. Two Gandalfs and one marshmallow Balrog were drawn on the powerpoint notes as well (thank you to verydemotivational.com for the ideas on asymptotes). The rest of the drawings should be fairly self explanatory - in this case meaning that you will understand it or understand that we were bored and we don't need reasons for it looking like that. The Sparta jokes are there courtesies of inspiration by epicwinftw.com and the deliriously bored state we were in.

By far, the best picture on there is Davy Jones Crocket. I can't honestly say why Davy Jones was relevant to writing the proof for the chain rule, but a classmate of ours was attempting to reference Davy Jones and couldn't remember his name. He, apparently, confuses Davy Jones and Davy Crockett. However, due to our sudden genius (or insanity), there is now Davy Jones Crocket, King of the Wild West of the Carribean, and no one need ever reference either one separately. Before you mention it, I do realize that "Carribean" is supposed to be "Caribbean," but someone who shall remain nameless told me to spell it wrong. I am now in the process of creating the mystical land of the Carribean. Feel free to add your ideas to the comments. The laws of physics need not apply.

And now an earlier masterpiece: All Your Donut (so named by Dom).

I was attempting to do lit homework in calc, but obviously that didn't happen. Dr. Who references and donut impersonations are much more fun.

I hope you enjoyed the fruits of our delirium.

~Minister of Silly Posts

Silence of the Readers

oI've noticed that there are around 30 people in the Blog of Crazy Random Happenstances Facebook grouop, and several others who read this, but the only comments seem to come from us bloggers (excluding that one from my sister, and the one from The Sleeping Blogger before he had been deemed a blogger). You guys should know that we need your input. It also tells us where to go with this blog. We seem to have hit a standstill ith what to post. I would be very glad to hear your thoughts about what we should talk about more and what we should never talk about again. So! Please, tell us stuff, accouns(if you need them), are free and spam-free. Well.... mostly spam-free. Well.... kinda spam-free. Well.... I'm gonna go check, see if it's spam-free.... (someone tell me where this adaptation of a quote is from and I will love you forever.... but not in that way, in the other way, dude(also a good quote)) But yeah, it's fun and we need your comments! please!

C&C 4: The Beta

Change...it can be good, it can be bad. Command and Conquer as a whole has always stayed to the tried and true classic RTS style, well as a conclusion to the tiberium universe C&C4 decided to change things up.

Lets start with some backstory, command and conquer(excluding Renegade) has been the mold for RTS games sense RTS games were created, being the first big hit following up Westwood's introduction of the RTS genre with Dune II C&C 1 was a basic model for all RTS games to come. Three major ideas: manage your base, manage your economy, and manage your troops; whoever did this best would win.

Command and Conquer takes those three ideas and simplifies them in an attempt to widen the market for RTS games which have traditionally had rather steep learning curves. Your whole base is condensed into Mobile Construction Vehicle(MCV) or a Crawler. From this you can build units, defenses, structures, and call for support depending on your class. The game lets you choose if you want to play offence, with powerful land based vehicles; defense, with turrets backed by swarms of infantry and artillery; or support, with aircraft back by support powers.

Your crawler can move across the map and deploy to let out any units it's built and create a repair field.

In order to improve past the beginning or tier I units and defenses you must gather Tiberium at centralized nodes and return it to your deploy zone. Unlike previous iterations of C&C any unit can pick up the tiberium and all players on the team benefit from it. Rather than defending harvesters it becomes a capture the flag game. Speaking of ctf to win now rather than destroy the enemy you gain victory points and the first team to 2500 wins. There are two ways to do this, kill enemy units or control more VP nodes than the enemy netting you a steady stream of points.

The game is very different from standard C&C and that's kind of disappointing however it has it's own fair share of enjoyment.

RANT ABOUT LEVELS(pure opinion)

EA, in their stupidity said "hey, look at that really popular game CoD:MW, lets steal their ideas and put it into our game! Oh wait it's an RTS not an FPS, w/e" They added a system where you level up and unlock more units and tech the more you play. This means that at lvl 1 when you forst get the game you only have 4 units and one research available on each crawler until you play enough games. So if you pit a lvl 1 vs a lvl 20 there is about an 80% chance the lvl 20 will win! Great job EA!

Pros: fun, easy to play, more lenient with mistakes than other RTSs, some really fun unit mechanics.

Cons: level system, bad matchmaking, unbalanced(i know, what should I expect from a beta), terrible community, lack of game diversity(1 game is just like the next)

Blah, should have written more but I'm too lazy

Got a little present for ya

If any of you got that reference in the title, you have suddenly become awesome. Congratulations. xD

The 'Real-Time Strategy' game has only been in existence for 15 years, but it has become one of the most popular genres of all time, second only to First Person Shooters, if my sources are accurate (MMOs get a lot of publicity, but there are simply more good RTS games than MMO. It also helps that several MMOs began as RTS games. :P). You've probably heard a lot about them, you've probably even played some of them. But what do you really know about them?


Age of Empires A-
Commonly reputed to be one of the oldest RTS game series' in history. You battle your way through history by taking control of various armies and beating your oppenents to a pixelated pulp. It's a good game: fairly imaginative, yet reasonably historically accurate (assuming you don't activate any of the cheatcodes this game is full of). However, it has a fairly shallow learning curve, I didn't really have much difficulty beating it at all when I first played it. AoE is a great game to start with, if you're testing the waters to see if you like RTS games.

Battle for Middle Earth A
One of the most widely-known and widely-played RTS series' ever created. Based off of Tolkien's Middle Earth, and inspired somewhat by the movies (more of the former than the latter, thankfully), BfME walks you through various portions of Lord of the Rings history. The first game, I must say, did not impress me that much. The units were rather unimaginative, the base construction format was quite restrictive, and the storyline was simply a rehash of the movies. The second, though, more than made up for the first's blunders. While the main battle system stayed the same, the units, upgrades, and base construction options were redone much more to my satisfaction. And finally, we have the BfME II expansion pack... Rise of the Witch King. This is personally one of my favorite RTS games of all time. It takes you through the Witch King's rise to power (the Witch King, for those of you who don't know, is the Lord of the Nazgul, aka the guy with the spiky helmet in Return of the King). While I don't really like a lot of the Angmarian units, they are certainly more thought-out and well planed than most of the other races in BfME.

Universe at War B+
Universe at War is basically your generic RTS. It starts off with Earth being invaded (like that's never happened in any other games :P) by an advanced alien race called the Hierarchy. The Hierarchy is actually an alliance of several conquering alien races who decided they needed more elbow room, so they invaded the Solar system. Using a combination of biotechnology and plasma weaponry, as well as ships that resemble Covenant technology even more than the concept of the Hierarchy itself does, they attack and pretty much wipe out every country except, you guessed it, America. As the Hierarchy is closing in on the White House, and about to take it, random blue portals appear in the middle of the air and start spitting out robots. These robots, led by a Gundam named Viktor piloted by a girl named Mirabel (ok, so it's not actually a Gundam, but it looks... nevermind), storm across the White House's front lawn and whup some alien patooie. At this point your control switches from the humans to the Novus civilization. Some unspecified number of millenia ago, the Hierarchy destroyed the homeworld of Novus. While all biological life on Novus died, their robots lived on, vowing to fight the Hierarchy in any way they can. The Founder, which definitely does not look like Optimus Prime with capacitors where tires should be, founded the Novus army and found a piece of Novus DNA, from which they cloned Mirabel, the last surviving biological lifeform. Many battles ensue, and eventually your control switches automatically over to the Hierarchy, where you discover that an aging robotic general is becoming discontent with his eternal lot in life. After he was killed on the battlefield, his consciousness was transferred to a robotic shell so he could keep living, and he's getting rather tired of constant war (as would tend to happen after hundreds of years of it). Your first mission with him is to invade Egypt, where one of your walkers (a la War of the Worlds) accidentally shoots a pyramid, which sends out a distress beacon which awakens the last alien race in the game: the Masari. The Masari are basically a race of... race builders. They created the Hierarchy untold eons ago, and the Hierarchy eventually fought and defeated the Masari. The surviving Masari, in their city-ship Atlatea, came to Earth, where they started humanity and acted as our gods for who-knows-how-long. Somehow after sleeping for hundreds of years on the bottom of the Atlantic they can speak our language perfectly with British accents, but that's another story. Anyway, the game itself is interesting, but it's not exactly original intellectual property. Interesting gameplay, well-developed factions... lousy storyline. :P

Empire at War A
Note: I can't comment on the expansion pack (Forces of Corruption) because I haven't played it :P
Empire at War filled pretty much the only game niche that Star Wars hadn't yet touched: RTS. When you start the game, you pick your side (Rebel or Empire), and fight your way from the events leading up to A New Hope through the end of the movie. As the Rebels, you start by following Captain Raymus Antilles (no relation to Wedge Antilles) around, and end by hunting down and blowing up the Death Star (you can wait for it to come to you at Yavin IV, but it'll blow up every other planet in the galaxy first. Believe me, I tried :P). As the Empire, you start by following Darth Vader around, and end by... blowing up every planet in the galaxy (at least those occupied by Rebels). The gameplay and the units are VERY well thought out, they exemplify the individual quirks and strengths of the two factions extraordinarily well. The learning curve is enough to keep you from winning every time on Easy, but it'll always keep victory close enough that you want to keep trying. This game comes to me very highly recommended, and I return it to you the same way.

Command and Conquer A++
Ah, the mother of all RTS'... literally. The first ever RTS was Command and Conquer (the original), made in 1995 by Westwood studios (later absorbed by Electronic Arts). The Brotherhood of Nod wants to take over the world, the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) wants to keep that from happening. Throughout the whole game, the resource they're fighting over is Tiberium, this magic green crystal that's randomly started popping up that can be made into pretty much anything. When Command and Conquer II: Tiberian Sun comes out, things have gotten a bit worse. Tiberium is spreading rapidly, and no one knows how to stop it. Nod wants it to keep going, saying it's the catalyst for the next stage in human evolution, GDI recognizes it as the environmental threat that it is. The leader of Nod, Kane, suddenly comes forth with two aces in the hole: the Tacitus, a magical orb of extraterrestrial origin that tells him how to utilize Tiberium for various military measures, and CABAL, a supercomputer he uses to help run the war. You can probably guess the story; Nod is defeated (again), CABAL turns against Kane (and the rest of humanity, but that's a different story), and the Tacitus is captured by GDI. Fast forward 30 years to Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Tiberium is still spreading, having covered approximately 80% of the Earth's habitable surface in varying densities. Nod rises again, still under Kane, and tries to get the Tacitus (or at least info gleaned from it) back. They succeed and start World War V. While they're fighting, an alien race called the Scrin comes out of nowhere and starts beating on both Nod and GDI. The Scrin initially seeded Earth with Tiberium 50 years ago to terraform (Scrin-form... whatever), and now they're back to finish the job. Whooo. They get beat off, GDI saves the day once again, Nod once again goes into hiding, beaten but not broken. I would say something about the next game, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, but I don't really know much about it. Ask John Hicks, he's in the beta for it.
As for the gameplay in C&C, it's outstanding. Each game has a different innovative battle system, each one better than the one before it. I don't really have the time or energy to write about each one, so I'll just say you should play it. This game series gets my highest possible recommendation.

That's all I got for now.

Regards,
Spam

I was going to title this "I'm not lazy" but that wasn't random enough.

According to the Feedjit map, we have yet to score any hits from Japan. For that reason, I imagine very few of you have heard of Hayao Miyazaki.
Miyazaki is one of the premier anime writer/directors in Japan, whose movies have enjoyed legendary popularity both domestically and overseas, mainly because they're awesome. However, they are going to have trouble taking over the wor- er, reaching viewers... unless people like me come along and do reviews like the one below. I have yet to watch every Miyazaki movie, but I have seen three of the most popular ones, and read a bit about a fourth, so I see no reason not to consider myself decently qualified. Unless of course some other author has seen more Miyazaki animes than I, in which case I declare them lazy for not making this post sooner.
In the order in which I first saw them:

Princess Mononoke
Synopsis: In a fictional version of feudal Japan, there is a huge forest that covers most of the land, in which live a host of nature spirits. The most important spirits are the animal gods, who can apparently speak telepathically take the form of  giant versions of their patron animal, and the Forest Spirit, which appears to be a pimped-out deer with a human face and who turns into Godzilla every night. Or something to that effect. Anyway, one day a boar god goes crazy and attacks a small village, and in his efforts to repel it, Ashitaka becomes infected with some type of computer-generated worm stuff, which will gradually kill him if he can't find some miracle cure. Thus, he goes off in search of a miracle cure, eventually encountering a mining settlement where Lady Ivoshi and her cronies are destroying the forest (because that's what humans do). The settlement is being plagued by a girl from the forest who was allegedly raised by wolves and may or may not be the title character.
Opinions: AWESOME. But other than that, sort of weird, and heavy on the gore at times. For example, in the beginning you get to watch a giant boar rot to nothing in five seconds. It has some kind of weird parts, like the climax scenes involving uh, the climactic parts I refuse to spoil, and suspension of disbelief is necessary, as in all the Miyazaki movies I've seen (in fact, all animes in general), to get through the dramatic parts. All in all, if you have restricted yourself to only watching one of the movies reviewed here, you should watch this one.

Spirited Away
Synopsis: Chihiro, a whiney ten-year-old, is upset (big surprise) about her family moving and having to go to a new school. The long, boring car ride isn't helping, but it is conveniently interrupted shortly after the title shot when her dad falls into the stereotypical husband driver trap of getting lost and taking a "shortcut" through some mysterious woods. There is some obvious foreshadowing when Chihiro's mom tells her that the little house-shaped rocks are supposedly the homes of little spirits. Eventually they come to what the dad claims is an abandoned theme park, where the parents are both distracted by the smell of some irresistible food. Of course, they can't control themselves and pig out, leaving Chihiro to her own devices (Irresponsible parents For The Fail!). She wanders off and suddenly runs into this androgynous-looking guy Haku, who tells her she must flee immediately. She fails. Night falls, and it turns out that the theme park is actually some sort of portal to a parallel universe with very few humans and lots of weird stuff. Eventually her adventures with witches, dragons, babies, and killer paper planes reform Chihiro into a uh, less of a wimp.
Opinions: AWESOME. But other than that, sort of weird. I had to watch the first half of this movie like four times before I could get to the end, because my video player decided that it would only sync up the audio and video if I watched the movie from the beginning and watched all the way through in one sitting. (BLAARGH). So I didn't have much brainpower left to reflect much on the movie while watching it. What I did come away with was that Chihiro must have had muscular dystrophy or anorexia, because she was morbidly skinny, and that the witch had a really big head. At times the movie was cute, at others very exciting, and at others overly mysterious, so one may wish to watch this movie twice to straighten all the plot out in their head. If you've already seen Princess Mononoke, this is a must-see, and the amount of references to it you're bound to run into at conventions make it a worthwhile movie with which to be familiar.


Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Synopsis: In the future, mankind will continue to develop industrially until we've poisoned the crap out of the poor planet and our wars with each other have driven us near to extinction. The giant terminators with lazer breath don't help. Over the next thousand years, a "toxic jungle" arises and begins spreading out over the world. Its plants are invariably poisonous and even breathing near the jungle will kill a human in five minutes. (Sounds like Avatar, now that I think about it...) Near this jungle, but conveniently upwind of it, is the Valley of the Wind, in which lives (yes, you guessed it - did you figure it out all by yourself or was it mentioned in the title?) a girl named Nausicaa. They're going to have really weird names in the future. Nausicaa likes to explore the toxic jungle (with a gas mask of course), and at the movie's opening she stumbles across the discarded exoskeleton of a giant arthropod known as an Ohmu (pronounced "Ohm"). The Ohmu itself is engaged in chasing around a friend of hers, lord Yupa, who has a giant mustache that makes you wonder what he needs a gas mask for. She comes to his rescue with a bunch of flashbangs, with which she is able to distract the insect and lead it back to the jungle with nobody getting hurt. She is obviously very good with animals, a skill which will come in handy later in the movie. She then flies home on a very awesome portable plane thing, which is very awesome and something I want to have. However, that night the valley is shocked  by the appearance of an enormous airship (read: ridiculously large plane), which crashes and reveals its cargo to include a giant fly; Princess Lastelle, who has been taken prisoner aboard the craft; and a great big heart-looking thing. Adventures ensue.
Opinions: AWES- anyway... The movie starts off very cold and depressing, but as it progresses either you get used to it or the tone warms up a bit. It is a prime example of Miyazaki's purported fascination with flight, which allows for a few aerial fight scenes. Suspension of disbelief is necessary to get through the claims that the whole jungle and its giant insect inhabitants all evolved within only a thousand years. On the whole, not quite the average person's movie - you have to have some level of attraction to the weird and as little as possible of an aversion to bugs. Liberal on the explosions and on humongous stuff, and somewhat bland in color, though that may be because it was made in 1984 or something. The music is definitely 80s movie music, but that's okay. The movie's overall atmosphere is slightly similar to that of the original "The Never-Ending Story," but fortunately less mucky and boring. Definitely worth the two hours of life it takes to watch, especially for, as with "Spirited Away," the ability to get all the references at conventions. Also an edifying glimpse into the earlier forms of anime in terms of art style and theme choice. The final selling point is that there is a surprise near the end for all you Shoop da Whoop fans.

Ponyo
Synopsis: I haven't actually seen Ponyo yet, but it's tentatively on my "to watch" list. The commercials reveal that the subject is a boy who lives near a rocky seashore, a la "Water Horse." Instead of an egg, however, he finds a goldfish who has miraculously managed to survive in saltwater (coughsuspensionofdisbeliefcough), and who is supposedly the princess of goldfish or something. She really wants to be a human, and of course for the sake of having a plot she must have found some way to get her wish. Adventures ensue, which if the commercial says anything will involve boats, big waves, swimming through clouds of jellyfish, and lots of jumping.
Opinions: I haven't watched it yet, you n00b. Okay, I guess I have a couple preliminary judgments. Seems much more "normal" than Miyazaki's other movies, possibly because it was released just over a year ago and better suits our modern cultural tastes, and possibly because Disney is somehow part of the deal. Man, they're involved in a lot of movies. The theme reminds me of "Water Horse," as I have mentioned, substituting a goldfish for the Loch Ness monster. Go ahead and watch it if you like and tell me how it turned out.

WHEW that was a lot of typing.

The Contributors on this Blog are Lazy

Okay, so I don't like to post twice in a row; I try to let at least one other person on the blog post before I create another post. But, the contributors on this blog appear to be very lazy, and haven't posted in a week now. So now, in order to revive the blog, I'm going to perform the first double post in TBCRH history!

So, what is this post about you might ask? Well, it's about...

FACEBOOK!!!

I could be done with this post in a single statement: "Facebook Sucks", but I'm going to elaborate a bit on exactly why Facebook sucks.

Errors: Even if I'm on for only 5 minutes, I seem to get constant errors; "Oops, sorry we're working on this", "Network Connection Error", "Could not connect to FB Chat", etc... plague this website. I also have problems with pages not loading. WHAT IS UP WITH THIS!? The shear number of problems that I have to do something so simple. Instead of designing new layouts for the site, they should spend their time on getting the site freaking working!!

Spam: Tons of it. Applications spam senseless posts that fill your home page, people make fan pages for EVERYTHING, etc... Also, there seem to be a new string of applications that mimic Facebook photo, wall, etc... that somehow can give users a notification even though they've done anything on Facebook relating to that application. I'll give Facebook a bit of slack that its a bit of the user's fault for not realizing the obviously suspicious nature of having to allow an application to access their profile, but these applications shouldn't be able to access our profiles to give us false notifications in the first place!

Privacy: There are issues here. I can only filter certain content from certain friends, but I can't filter some things (being tagged, notes, etc...). That, and add the fact that businesses can somehow access your profile and use it against you is just plain ridiculous. People are losing their jobs over things that they said on Facebook, which may or may not be deserved. Nothing on Facebook is private.

The Company: This company is the biggest bunch of arrogant snobs that I've ever seen. They've rejected investments from big time companies like Google because they think that they're better than them... Why would you do something like that? On top of that, they accept Microsoft's offer to invest in them. Wow, smart move. Facebook thinks that they can do what Google does better than Google can: bulls%$! Go on Facebook any day, and you will find someone complaining on how they don't like Facebook. I bet you that they will jump as soon as a new (and good) Social Network appears on the online scene.

Mark Zuckerburg (aka Satan) envisions a world where people obtain information primarily through their friends and family: that's a terrible idea. Secondhand information is inaccurate, unreliable, and lacks the depth that you can find in the online world. This is coming from the guy who tries to make an enterprise on user's personal data, tries to shove advertisements into our new feed, etc...

Facebook is fail, and I'm going to most likely quit it soon. I disagree with their idea of the future. Although, 1 good thing has come of Facebook: Failbooking.com. Facebook is terrible.

That's all for now,

ACRONYM of the Blog