The oatmael creme pie is just sitting there, begging to be eaten. I can't resist it,
but I know if I eat it, I'll have to get a drink, and I'm comfy. Life is full of tough
choices.
I need a video camera if I'm going to make a movie.
I'm not terribly sad that Alec Guinness is dead.
King Missile is funny. I should get a CD.
What should I do Friday?
Well, I'm almost finished with a big update on this page. Look around.
Anyway, the car's broken down (but at least it's ours!), and I've been driving
around in my brother's. I recently saw Masters of the Universe. The box
said it was supposed to be the Star Wars of the '80s. Yeah, sure. This movie
was bloody awful. I've lost whatever respect I once had for Courteney Cox
(Arquette).
In other news, I'm effing tired. I didn't sleep at all last night, and it's starting to
take its toll. Oh well, c'est la vie.
I don't know if you've seen my guestbook lately, but some guy called James
left an interesting message:
James
Tuesday, 8/1/00, 7:25 PM
I really like this webpage but it is not that great. But I do think that a lot of
work was put into it and that the webmaster must be a true Star Wars fan. I
do think though that this person was just gonna throw the webpage
together real quick becuase he does not care that much. Although I am
sorry if this has offended anyone but what the heck. I do not care what
anyone else thinks. My webpage is a ton Better!
http://fan.starwars.com/jwhit311
Web Site: Rise of An Empire
E-mail: j_whit311@yahoo.com
What do you think of my site? its ok
First he says my page isn't tat great. Well, duh. I let everyone know that
when they got here. Now, could someone please clarify this? First he says
that a lot of work was put into it, and that I'm a true Star Wars fan. I know
that both of those statements are true, but then he turns around and says that
that I was going to just throw it all together because I don't care. What? That
makes no sense. If I didn't care, I wouldn't work on it so damn frequently.
Then he promotes his page. I don't have a problem with that at all, but he
claimes that his is a ton better.
Ok, I'll bite. I click on the link, and I come to a banner against a starfield. It
seemed like a pretty average page at that point. The starfield was a typical
starfield, but instead of black and white, it also had shades of grey. It was
quite distracting. The banner tried to squeeze as much information and as
many images as it could into it, but I figured that was forgivable, since this is
going to be a great page. I click on the banner and wait a minute for it to load.
At the top is the same banner. There's a short introductory paragraph giving
instructions on how to put the Episode 2 Select banner on the page. The
paragraph is surrounded by the official news, snapshot, Episode 2 Select links
and links to images from the movies. The TPM link was broken. The other
three are collections of images that can be found anywhere else. Most, if not
all, of them are just the free clipart you can use with the page. He also has the
cute lightsabre animations and crawling text on the picture pages, and
everything is crammed in really tight.
He also has an updates section which says he updated the main page, has a
poll about his site.
His links page has two links: one to the official site, and one to the official
shopping site. It also has a little thing to ask for a link to your site.
Other than the guestbook and the magic 8-Ball that comes with every
Homestead account, there is nothing.
I've seen more than my share of Star Wars fan sites,and the majority of them
have a few common images, a starfield background, and something about the
person's favorite Star Wars character (or whatever). This page had no
original content whatsoever, and he claims it's better than mine. Did he look at
my page? Sure it's no TFN, but for a one-man fan site, it's not that bad. It
has all kinds of original content. I've spent hours upon hours working on it,
and I'm quite proud of it. It ranked 7th in the 100 most visited StarWars.Com
fan sites and came in third in the humor site contest, and this guy has the nerve
to tell me that unoriginal cliche site is better than mine?
So I'm a little bitter.
Last week the depression peaked and I came pretty close to killing myself. I
carved into my arm with an X-Acto knife. Let me tell you, it's not a good
thing. I wouldn't say I'm all better now, but I'm not nearly as bad. I saw my
therapist yesterday for the first time since March.
On a brighter note, my birthday's next week which means celebration at my
parents' house. Woohoo!!
Now I just need to do the main page, and I'm done for the day.
I can't decide if I'm in another mood again or not. I'm kind of numb, I guess, just
groovin' out to Automatic for the People. I saw a few movies last night:
Alice's Restaurant:
This is pretty much an expanded visual version of the song. Not bad, but nothing
terribly special, although the Arlo Guthrie / Pete Seeger duet was a treat.
Wing Commander:
I've never been so bored with an action-based sci-fi movie, but damn, this was
dull. I didn't make it to the end, and I don't really care. Blah.
Girl, Interrupted:
This was pretty good, and I could actually relate to a few things that were going
on. I must admit it was pretty wierd listening to Angelina Jolie talk about dragging
a knife over your wrists and praying for the courage to just press down harder.
I've found myself in that kind of situation more than once, and I find it terribly
unpleasant. The movie, as a whole, really struck a chord with me, and while I
really liked it, I don't know if I could actually sit through it again.
I guess I am in a mood. Oh well. I'll just listen to The Downward Spiral and
hope for the best. It's not that I want to die. I just want to stop living. Stop
being. Non-existence.
It's kinda funny. When I cut myself (not to say I do it personally, but I'm not
terribly careful), and the blood comes out, I feel a rush of freedom - a release.
It's nice, but like every silver lining, there's a huge effing cloud attached to it.
Now, it's my guess that, at this point, you're thinking, "this guy needs help."
Well, duh. guess why I'm on all the meds. Maybe this is the hangover talking,
but I just don't care. "Well, for someone who doesn't care, you're writing a lot
about it." Shut up and let me feel. I never claimed to be rational.
I hate heartburn. It happens, though.
The car needs fixed again. The steering's broken (again), and we're going to take
it to the shop (again). It sucks when the car breaks. (Duh) It's really annoying
driving without the ability to steer properly.
The peanuts want me to eat them, but I"m full. I haven't even been here for 45
minutes. (I'm here 'til 1:00.)
I wanna go home.
I wanna sleep.
Forever...
I saw a couple bad movies over the weekend.
Red Dawn:
There's not much funnier than obvious conservative right wing propaganda.
(That's not to say I have somethig against right wing conservatives. I'm just
saying the obvious propaganda is funny.) The movie starts out with Soviets
(or Cubans, or both. I couldn't tell) invading the United States. Instead of
hitting someplace important, like the Pentagon or a major Air Force base,
they attack America's most important facility: a high school. Yes, folks, that's
right. When the commies invade, they're going to come to the high schools
first and kill the teachers and students. No need to worry about American
military resistence. Anyway, the main character, Patrick Swayze, along with
his supporting cast, including a very young Charlie Sheen and Lea Thompson,
form an underground resistence named after (I am not making this up) their
school's nickname: The Wolverines. They go through most of the movie alive,
but toward the end, things look up, and one of the kids dies. Eventually, after
several months of guerrilla warfare (which relied on military tactics they
learned from their conservative right-wing parents, I assume), they lost a few
more members (none of whom are famous), and were down to 4 kids.
Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen make it their duty to hit the local commie
military base (which really didn't accomplish anything) while Lea Thompson
and some other guy find their way to Free America. The best part of the
movie was when it ended and I could stop watching it. It was awful.
I learned one thing from this movie: When the commies attack (and they will),
the worst place to be is at school.
Starship Troopers:
This was a winner. It's the near future, and the United States has become a
police state. The planet has recently become bombarded by big asteroids
from an alien bug planet. Evidently, the giant alien bugs have a habit of
shooting their "spores" into space, knock anteroids out of orbit and sending
them to earth. First of all, why are aliens bugs shooting their "spores" into
space? Isn't that a bit of a waste? I mean, suppose they were humans. Could
you honestly see humans using, well, reproductive bodily fluids to propell
asteroids (and later destroy ships)? Oh well, I guess this is something aliens
do. Well, to make a long story short, the people of earth get annoyed and
send troops over to the alien bug planet to kill off all the bugs. Yes, thet's
right. In true American fashion, when a small group pisses us off, we send
people to wipe out their entire civilization. Anyway, our hero, whose name is
(I swear I'm not making this up) Johnny Rico, decides to enlist because he's
in love with Denise Richards who wants to be a pilot. So, Johnny Rico, his
girlfriend, Denise Richards, and their mutual geeky friend, Doogie Howser go
into the service to kill bugs. The three of them split up, and Denise Richards
dumps Johnny Rico for some other pilot who looks a lot like Chris Kattan.
Johnny Rico, meanwhile, becomes the greatest infantry person the galaxy has
ever known, although he does accidently kill one of his teammates in basic
training, but that's ok, because the guy was an idiot. Eventually, Johnny Rico
and his team get sent to alien bug world where we see lots of gooey fighting.
The evil bugs tend to overpower the humans, but with Rico at the helm, things
start to change, I guess. Somewhere in there, there's a nude co-ed shower
scene for the artistic and story-enhancing purpose of having a nude co-ed
shower scene, and eventually Rico "kicks it" with a female member of his
team. He's devestated for a few minutes after she dies, but once they shoot
her body into space, he's over it and ready to go after Denise Richards who,
with her new boyfriend, crashes onto the bug planet. Rico and his team out
on the planet are looking for a big brain-sucking bug. Yes, the Bug leader is a
giant blob that live on human brains or something. Where it got the brains
before the humans got there is beyond me. Well, the brain-sucker sucks the
brains out of the pilot boyfriend, but Rico saves Denise Richards at the last
minute with a little psychic help from Doogie Howser.
I learned two things from this movie:
1. If someone's pissing you off, you have a moral right to go to his/her home
and destroy everyone there.
2. Always have a backup girlfriend.
The third movie I won't mention, but I'll go over what I saw of it:
This one was in the new release area of the video store, and I thought it had
some potential as a bad cult-type movie. Trent thought so too, and since it
was rated R, we rented it. Big mistake. It starts off with a guy delivering
something to a woman in a hotel room and, well, the next five minutes was
her head moving around slowly. We fast-forwarded through that to a part of
the film that had dialogue. As it turns out, the dialogue was useless, and it
almost immediately turned into soft porn. Yes, folks, I accidentally rented soft
R-rated porn-type crap. It was at that point we turned it off and watched
Cruel Intentions.
I learned one thing from this movie: The New Releases section is where they
hid the adult videos.
Well, now I'm sitting at work grooving to the Lola Rennt soundtrack,
drinking Evian water, and being tired. I didn't sleep much last night. Hell, we
didn't get home until about 2:00. We were at Noel's. For those who know
us, yes, it was one of those nights. For those that don't know, don't worry
about it.
I need to cut my nails.
Someone signed my Action League guestbook saying he does (or doesn't)
think I should get rid of the Gay Avenger. For the record, all members of the
Action League are lifetime members. No one gets rid of anyone. I don't
make the rules. Well, okay, I do, but that's how it is. (I also put quite a bit of
work into the whole thing and have several more characters to scan in and
name.)
Starwars.Com has posted a list of the top 100 fan sites. I'm number 7. I
rule.
I'm absolutely in love with the song Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. If
you've never heard of it, you should really find a copy and give it a listen. It's
about 18 minutes long, and it's a true story. I found a web page that has the
lyrics. There's a few minor errors, but it's pretty accurate. There was also a
movie about it. I keep forgetting to look for it when I'm out.
I'm tired. I need a shower. No one's on ICQ.
If I were to leave my work number, would anyone call? (219) 237-5090
Yeah, yeah, I know it's been a while since my last update. QB's doing great.
She'll be back at work in no time. That pesky depression's been getting to
me lately, and I'm incredibly effing stressed. I need a smoke. Speaking of
smokes, I made a new friend. Her name is Veronica, and I told her I'd
mention her on my web page. I won't go into what I told her I'd go into, since
this is a family page. 8^) She did make an interesting observation, though.
Mena Suvari, the girl from American Beauty, looks like an alien fetus. While
I've never actually seen an alien fetus, I think it's pretty accurate.
Can I just say that U2 is the single greatest band to walk the earth?
Steve came over last night (well, okay, I drove him over), and we watched
Pleasantville. I'd never seen it before, and I was surprised. It was actually
good. I'm increasingly impressed with Reese Witherspoon (even though her
chin reeeally bothers me).
Jedi Council is starting to get really boring (starting?). The admins are just
getting out of hand. Sure, there are some good ones there, but as a whole
they seem to be taking themselves way too seriously. It's an Internet message
board, not a small nation. Lighten up. What bothers me most, though, is that
they assume that they're infallible, which is just stupid. On the other hand, at
least it's not like the Slacker Council (although, at times, I wish it could be).
This crisis of faith is really getting to me. I've become increasingly interested
in Judaism, but I could never convert. I find that when it comes to spirituality,
I find a few films very thought-provoking, like the Star Wars movies,
Dogma, Prince of Egypt, and Fiddler on the Roof. U2 tends to reinforce
the ideals I see in them as well, but I'm stuck in limbo. I want to have faith in
something, but I can't find any logical reason to. I guess it all comes down to
Kierkegaard and his leap of faith. I just don't seem to have the courage to
take it. (Whoever said faith is for the weak is an idiot.)
Entertainment Weekly is really starting to annoy me. I like knowing about
upcoming movies and news and stuff, but their critics are just stupid. What
makes them think people who know nothing about movies are qualified to
critique them? Case in point: The review for The X-Men was just awful.
For starters, the person who reviewed it went in with a prejudice against
Bryan Singer's directing style. He was expecting a special effects movie,
which he didn't get, even though it had great effects. It was actually
plot-driven. Furthermore, he didn't like that it actually stayed true to the
comics. Is it just me or should films be judged on the films' merits alone? I
mean, when criticizing a film, personal expectations, biases, and prejudices
shouldn't enter into it. People are stupid. I highly encourage anyone who
likes comics (even remotely) to see The X-Men. It succeeded where the
Batman franchise failed so many times.
I couldn't sleep last night. I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High last
night. It's terribly overrated, and I grew up in the 80's. I'm bored with
everything. I just don't care anymore. I'm effing tired, and I'm picking up QB
from the hospital today. Then I'll sleep. I need it. I'm soooo sick of putting
up with people and their inane BS. Can't they just shut up? It's ridiculous. I
need a smoke. I also watched Evil Dead 2 last night. I quite liked it. I first
saw Army of Darkness several years ago, and it became one of my
favorites. IT was't until last year that I learned that it was the third part of a
series, and after seeing the first two, it makes a lot more sense now. Maybe
I'll put up a page listing all the great movies I've seen, kinda like my four
greatest albums page. My mouth hurts, and I'm hungry. Damn.
So, I'm sitting here at work, eating Planter's honey roasted peanuts and listening
to R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People. I'm tired, bored, and depressed, and I
have to stay here for a little over 4 hours. That's not bad, since I don't actually
do anything. I know it sounds cliched, but I'm just bored with it all. I've lost
interest in my personal well-being, and I just don't care much any more.
I was out last night with some friends. We were doing fireworks. I stuck an
M150 in a Ninja Turtle figure. It was cool. Anyway, I was distracted (as
usual, lately) by the fact that my wife was at home in bed and in pain. I really
hate that she's in pain. It kills me to see her suffer and not be able to do
anything about it. Anyway, at about 1:30, I dropped Steve and George off at
home, and on the way home, I heard The Unforgiven on the radio. It made
me want to break something. Life can be so frustrating. Oh well. Like the
song says, everybody hurts.