June 2004 Archives

Wow, what a stressful week. Well, 95% of the stress came from yesterday thanks to some mild food poisoning (thanks Texas Burger), a 24 hour headache, and an unusually stressful and draining day at work. About the only good part about yesterday was finally getting a response from Chi-Wei in Japan after about a year (thanks to Cassie's blog), going bowling with Tim and Kenneth, and watching Shaolin Soccer. With that said, are you ready for some more pointless movie reviews? Good!

House of 1000 Corpses - Well, I ended up watching the movie even though it looked really dumb. It was so weird and messed up I couldn't stop watching. If you're ever in the mood for a totally screwed up movie, see this one. Rob Zombie directed it, so you know it's gotta be jacked up. I heard it had to be heavily edited before it could be shown, so I'm rather curious as to what the director's cut would be like.

Bruce Almighty - It came on again on HBO and I had nothing better to do so I ended up watching most of it. It wasn't as bad as I at first thought it would be. It had it's funny moments. It was pretty good overall, but not a dvd I'd buy.

Shaolin Soccer - I've been wanting to see this for a long long time. Luckily Aaron at work has the chinese dvd, so I borrowed it from him and made a copy. I have to say it is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. It's so incredibly funny, you have to see it. I can hook you up. ;)

And that concludes another round of movie reviews. Expect more in the coming entries, as I still have a stack of movies Minh let me borrow that I need to watch so I can return them to him. I kinda want to watch them all this weekend, but I have an AbPsych midterm Monday I need to study for.

Now prepare for a mini-rant. Normally I don't like to rant because I try to keep things positive, but this has been annoying me with increasing frequency so here goes:

<rant>
Is it just me or are there a lot more homeless people nowdays? It seems like every time I come to a stoplight there is some gimp with a sign. Not only that, but it seems like there are an increasing amount of dragrats around campus too. I've always felt bad for homeless people so I often help out by giving them any spare change I have or whatever but here lately I've been hit up so many times I'm getting a little tired of it. Normally I disagree with the whole Social Darwinism frame of thinking, but the more I think about it, the more I agree. The way I see it now, they really need to get a damn job. Granted I imagine it is pretty difficult for a person off the street to get a job. Also, from my studies of Sociology and Psychology I know many of the homeless suffer from some kind of disorder and/or disease, but the way I see it, panhandling isn't going to get you out of your present situation. So as mean and incredibly insensitive as it sounds, I'm done helping out hobos. From now on they're only getting handouts from me if they get more creative signs, like Will code PHP for food or start doing cool tricks on the street corner, like a backflip or magic trick or something.
</rant>

I don't like ending on such a sour note, but I have nothing more to say. bai bai.

So here I am again for another long-overdue blargging. Let's see, what have I missed in the 3 or so weeks since last post. Hmm, well for starters summer session has started which means back to work for me and summer class, woo fun. Work is work, so not much to say about that. It's a little nicer now that it's summer mostly because of the slightly more relaxed atmosphere and not having to stress about classes. I am taking one class this summer, Abnormal Psychology. I must say it's pretty damn sweet. The professor does private practice in his own clinic, so he tells us about patients he sees and uses them as examples for the stuff we cover in class. All of it is incredibly interesting and pretty much every class I find myself transfixed with utter fascination by everything the professor says. The only thing I'm worried about is that the professor says his class is really hard, and I can't afford to mess up since this is one of 3 classes I have left to take at UT. I almost lost this class thanks to me not paying for it in time and UT dropping it. I realized it was dropped only after the cut off date for regular registration. As a result, I had to do a late add, which involved a whole lot of running around and getting signatures. 4 signatures, $50, and 2 tired legs later I got back into the class. Good thing this is my last summer at UT because summer classes are expensive. All in all this psych class has cost me over $800, paid out of my pocket. :( While waiting for one of my signatures, I read about a psych class I can take next semester called Animal Cognition. From the description it sounds really cool, but since it's a writing component course, you have to write papers every week based on the readings. Papers and reading are two things I have tried hard to avoid throughout all of college. Now the only classes I have left are writing components, so I think I am doomed.

But enough about school, it's summer and I should be livin' it up right? Point me to the nearest drunken party! Haha, yeah right. To keep myself entertained I've mostly been playing pool with Minh, bowling with Tim, bumming around the house, and watching movies. Yesterday I saw 4 movies and here is a quick rundown of what I thought of each:
Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever - omg lame
Hero - seen it before, loved it, glad I have it on dvd now :)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - been wanting to see it for a while, overall it was pretty cool but had a lame ending
Lost in Translation - hmm, what?

And there you have it folks, stay tuned for more pointless movie reviews as I go through the pile of dvds and vcds sitting on my dvd player. Bruce Almighty was just showing on HBO (which we're still getting free for some reason). I just watched some of it but it didn't spark my interest so I turned it off and starting this post instead. House of 1000 Corpses is on now, but so far it looks retarded, so don't expect any review on it next post. :)

Hmm, what else is there. Oh yeah, last weekend I got a nice case of the flu, how awesome is that? It drastically affected my bowling performance too, allowing Tim to beat me and leaving me with sub-100 scores. How pathetic. Never bowl while you're sick. It doesn't feel good and you'll probably end up doing crappy. I did better this week though. I started out with an incredibly lame game ending up with a score in the 80s or something, but after a few warm up games I was playing like normal, picking up a turkey or two in the process. Bowling's fun, try it some time. Tim and I are making it our weekly ritual. Hopefully my scores will improve as a result.

Sadly, the Tower Records on the drag is now closed. I can't imagine it gone, it having been there forever. It's been a small but significant part of my college experience, taking me from my heavy metal years highlighted by mostly deftones and Slipknot, to my dnb years of mostly dieselboy. Now I don't have anywhere nearby to go for my dnb fix. :( I'm kinda sad though that the last cds I bought from there were 3 Dara cds. While the newest one was pretty good, the other two were disappointing. Speaking of dieselboy, I picked up his new album, The Dungeonmaster's Guide. It didn't live up to his previous album, projectHUMAN, but it ranks up there. I was a little sad that it sampled the little girl from the Resident Evil movie, but it has some great tracks anyway. Check it out.

That about wraps up another late edition of blargg! and with that said I shall retire for the night/week/month/whatever. Weeeee.