Sleep Sleep

I don't know what my previous record for semi-continuous sleep was, but I'm sure I broke it now. After not having slept for twenty-seven hours, I decided it was time to hit the hay at around 7 o'clock last night. I awoke around 12:00, went to bed again at 1am, slept until 8am, awoke again at 12 to answer Jerome's phone call, then went back to sleep to finally awake at 3:20. By my calculations, that's around 18 hours of sleep in total... oh god.

In other news, Phish is breaking up. They're a great band, with whom I'm not too familiar with, but they're America's premier jam band, and I'm going to see them in June! Ticketmaster charged us a small fortune, but it'll be well worth it to see Phish's last tour.

Today's Music
Phish - Farmhouse

Oh so much LAN

Current surroundings: sitting in a blue plastic camping chair in front of a blue plastic folding table with my monitor in front of me, my old faded Dell keyboard, 2 cans of Mountain Dew and a can of DnL (all empty). There's a screwdriver to my left, two packages of empty Little Debbies, and an empty box of Zebra cakes. By my foot is an unopened package of hot dog buns, a power strip and two woodman's plastic bags from our grocery run for which I contributed ten dollars, though I ate little more than some pizza and little Debbies yet we purchased brats, pez drink, a chocolate orange, 96 cans of soda, brats, buns, and 6 pizzas.

So yeah, we're lanning - in the basement of the house thing that Alex lives in, which I must say is heavily lackluster in terms of room. At least they have a deep fryer... I guess. I've been awake since 4:30pm Tuesday, and I'm lanning. Again. That makes the third time in the past week. Sleep deprivation's finally starting to set in. I really need to lose some weight, exercise more, eat better, and make some money. I'm slowly eating away at my savings like acid rain on the nose of the Statue of Liberty. Oh well. That's the way the cookie crumbles. And I'm crumbling it.

So: I'm listening to the new Lit cd. It's awful.

Today's Music
Lit blows.

Samurai

Let's see: what's new lately? Well: I hung out with Greg yesterday. We biked to Cousins to eat, then went back to his house to look at his e3 pictures (yes he went, the lucky bastard). Then I biked home, and prepped for the Jerome / Rita collective B-day fiesta at the AmericInn. Matt picked me up from the house, and we went to Fazzoli's for some delicious food. Next, we (Greg, Jerome, Kerry) went back to our respective houses to grab swimming trunks, and overnight supplies. From there we went to the hotel, did some swimming, played some Apples to Apples, ate some cake, etc.

Today: I woke up around 12:30, from there proceeded to do little of anything but reorganize my computer's hard drive (mp3's and such), and check deviantArt. I decided to watch School of Rock, which I enjoyed albeit a bit less than I expected to. After that, I played some guitar, and my mom came home with some Culver's for dinner. After dinner, I took my bike to Village Pedaler for a tune-up, which should be done on Thursday (not soon enough to be ready for weight lifting tomorrow). Um... then Greg came over and picked up my semi-faulty video card. We went to Target to buy some LiveWire Mountain Dew (some of the best stuff ever), from there I took Greg home, and rented the Last Samurai to watch with Greg and Jesse at Tam's house. After some shady driving, we finally got to Tam's and finished up late this morning.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Samurai. There wasn't much I didn't like. What's not to like about ritual suicide, body armomr, cannons, swords, swords, and swordity swords? Exactly. Oh, and a tragic ending. Even better!
Today's Music
The Mars Volta - Eriatarka

Home

I'm home at last. I got home late Friday night, and have been working pretty hard to get everything back to normal in terms of cleanliness and such. I can say that I definitely miss all the people (and really hot girls) who lived in Ogg and surrounding dorms, but I can also say that I don't cough all the time because of the horrible air quality. I can't say I miss the cramped quarters, bland food, or uncomfortable chairs, either. At the present, however, my bike is still at the dorms, and I have no car since mine is totalled, leaving me transportationless.

Most of Saturday was spent re-adjusting to household life: putting away massive amounts of clothing, cleaning out my closet, junking old computer parts, and doing away with other unnecessary doodads. Cleaning is always dull and tedious, but it really needed to be done. Saturday night I saw Troy with my godfather and JB, which I enjoyed. We went out to JT Whitney's afterward. My parents on the other hand, elected to see The Triplets of Belleville, which while critically acclaimed, did live expectations. It seems ToB (pun intended for all you wc3'ers) i something of an art piece, having no dialogue, and not being particularly outstanding in terms of animation quality.

Sunday (today) was spent doing more of the same: waking up late, cleaning, taking care of prospective job opportunities, relinquishing others (Famous Footwear being the case in point). I ran over to Danny's house in the evening, and then he came over here, proceeded to play a short bit of guitar while I proceeded to dress myself in ridiculous fashion in preparation for going to see Troy a second time. My wardrope included the following:
A white nike muscle shirt (a sort of mesh)
Black adidas shorts
2x white Fila arm bands
One Black Nike Sock
One White Adidas sock
My Pair of 'ROOS (shoes)
Tommy Hilfiger Boxers
Speedo Sunglasses
Ninja Headband (black) a la Karate kid - composed of the waistband from a bathrobe.

So, Troy - how was it? The answer: ehm... well.. it's sort of like Braveheart meets Lord of the Rings meets Deep Blue Sea (because of the gorgeous Saffron Burrows) meets Fight Club. The cast is outstanding, for the most part. Helen of Troy and Paris leave much to be desired though. Paris (Orlando Bloom) looks completely out of place - far too young, timid, brash, foolish, . Bloom looks and acts like Legolas. His British accent is awful, and he even fires the required bow and arrow of LOTR fame. Helen's acting on the other hand, is decent. The same cannot be said for her beauty, which is supposed to be of legendary proportions. Her face is pleasant, but definitely not stunning. This fact is evident in scenes with the lovely Saffron Burrows and Helen standing side by side. Burrows, whose facial features are so fine you need a magnifying glass, makes Helen look like a Shopko model - good looking, but nothing special.

Other flaws included Brad Pitt's accent, which mysteriously disappears and reappears like Nightcrawler from X-Men; Agamemnon, who while well casted, has a bizarre war cry; and the horribly choppy cinematography that inexplicably focuses on characters' faces (especially Helen and Burrows) for the sole purpose of seeing them open and close their mouths a fraction of an inch.

Don't get me wrong, I recommend Troy, due to great acting from Pitt (Achilles), Bana (Hector), the epic battle scenes, and some great epic dialogue. It is however not without its problems.

Today's Music
Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

Sega Blows

One more exam to go, that being my calculus exam at 7:05PM.

Many of you may remember that I predicted Sega would release a new console, citing their massive hype for e3. Boy was I wrong. It turns out all Sega had to announce was their exclusive rights as publisher for the Matrix Online MMORPG. Another MMORPG. Fantastic. Being that I hate MMORPG's, maybe Matrix Online Will be worse than Matrix:Revolutions, which was easily one of the biggest movie disappointments ever.

Boredom is definitely creeping in at UW. People are really starting to pour out of the dorms, without so much as a word of goodbye. It's shockign to think that so many great friendships made over the past nine months will simply disappear into the mists of time. Who knows if I'll ever see most of these people again? Sources point to no.

Ben has now discovered the history channel, which I guess is a good thing. You can have too much of a good thing, though.

Slipknot's new album has been leaked on Suprnova, so head on there if you're planning to buy Subliminal Verses.

Finally, I wrote some new poetry last night. Here is the link.

Today's Music
311/Anberlin/The Cure - Love Song
The cure's masterpiece sounds especially good retooled. I prefer the Anberlin version myself, but I'm sure that you'll like them all.

Examinations

Today's my first day of exams. On the board this morning was Physics 201, which, well, sucked. I have a computer science exam at 5:05 tonight in Noland, and that should do it. I've got a hell of a cough, and it's hotter than hell outside. On tap for tomorrow is a calculus exam, and then I'm done, "Oh, sweet Miracle" to quote Rush.

In art related News, Alexisonfire's performing Saturday in Milwaukee. Josh says they're one of the best live bands around and for $8, this is a show that cannot possibly be missed. Also, Danny's using my one of my poems for a piece of artwork. I'm naturally quite excited to see the results, which stand to be nothing less than superb.

I've been cleaning out the dorm room, too. It's really a barren place - no books to speak of, nor much for diversion. All that's left: a TV, a PS2, maybe 4 Games, and my DDR Pads (in case of emergency, of course).

I'm still waiting for Sega's massive announcement regarding whatever it is they're announcing (new console *hope* *hope*), but so far, nothing. Hopefully by exam time tonight we'll know something more. In other e3 news, nintendo announced a bunch of new titles, none available immediately. It seems as though all the release dates for games are fall-christmas time. I want my Z-Buffered Stenciled Anti-Aliased Trilinear filtered Pixel Shadered Trees now god damnit. GTA: San Andreas's website's now up with a whopping total of 3 screenshots. Everything runs at turtle speed during the summer months - especially game development.

Today's Music
Rush - Sweet Miracle

Games... What Video Games

So, it's finals week. But more importantly, it's e3. If you don't know what that is, do a google search. Everyone and his / her sister has a booth / a new game. And you know what? They all suck. Case in point: Halo 2, now scheduled for a release in November. Wow, gee it looks exacxtly like Halo did, with a new weapon, some new AI, and better maps (all sorely needed in my opinion). Whoopdee damn do.

Dungeon Siege 2: Well, we've got a trailer!... that's super skippy and doesn't show any actual gameplay. Oh, and our screenshots on the website demonstrate the new abilities of the engine - we can draw super advanced trees! Forget about characters! YOU WANT HYPER-3D stencil-shadow-z-buffered TREES!

Sega's massive announcement rumored to be hardware: in fact some online baloney. Ooh, we're developing online games. What? Like Phantasy Star Online III? No way.

e3 = teh_blow

Mifflin

It's been a long weekend, beginning on Friday with the Triumphant of Greg 'Fatty McD' Dunkelberger to his native land of Wisconsin. We watched Pi, got some concrete shakes, and that was that. Saturday was the Miffling St. Block Party. It was wild, and there was much libation. Josh, Greg, and I hung out with Tamara. Josh got parked in, so he had to stay the night. I ended up playing Dance Dance Revolution until 4 in the morning. That was that.

Today's Music
Ryan Adams - Wonderwall