5 Free Blu-ray

I finally received my Blu-ray discs from the Blu-ray Promotions Group yesterday. For those who need explaining: This was a program that gave 5 free movies to people who bought Blu-ray players early (including the PS3). The HD DVD camp did a similar promotion. Basically this was a tactic both sides used to help gain popularity of the format. It took months to get them, and some titles were substituted, but hey! Its 5 free blu-ray discs, bitches!!

 Blasphemy

 The Grapple

   I was shopping for food last night, and came across what I thought could possibly be the best food-creation mankind has come up with: The Grapple.
   The Grapple is an apple that tastes like a grape. At first I thought this was the result of genetic alteration, and that I would possibly gain a superpower or grow a tail by eating them. It made the fruit seem cool and mysterious. The grapple does taste like a grape. Its an odd experience at first. They are crunchy (the way I like normal apples) and smell like a flower.

   After trying one, I did some Googling and found out that they are just regular apples soaked in grape flavoring. Its funny how much that changes my opinion.
   I thought apples would go soft if they soaked in some fluid long enough to have it permeate through them, but these are surprisingly crunchy. I suppose I'll start making orange-flavored apples, and get rich that way. The secret is making people think that they are genetically "new" fruit.

 Showerthoughts

Do you ever let your mind wander in the shower, and think up crazy shit for no reason at all?
Here's todays scenario I envisioned while my brain was still in the process of coming fully online this morning:

... And the nominees are...
The Piano
Schindlers List
The English Patient
Short Circuit
And, The Bridges of Madison County

...And the award goes to...
(Oh my gosh, I'm so excited)...
....
SHORT CIRCUIT (crowd cheers and the song "Who's Johnny" starts playing).

 Jericho Is Back!!

  Thanks to all the crazy fans who helped put Jericho back on the air! I just watched the new show, and it was awesome. This is the best series going, and I'm excited to finally see something good come back to television.
CBS, you better watch your ass this time.

 I Am a Fake-Ass, Bitch

  I talk allot of shit about the show "Lost". But the truth is that I watch it. Its entertaining, and frustrating at the same time.
  The trick to watching the show sanely is to not give a damn about ANYTHING. I hate the fact that nothing ever gets explained, and that the storyline is nothing more than perpetual rising action. But damn it, its somehow still entertaining to just watch for the moment, to see what minor interactions (the only there are on Lost) characters have with eachother. Character development is a huge part of the show, so I think that its easy to empathize with certain ones, and that brings me into the situation where I care about what happens.
  This is no excuse for the lazy tactic of not following through with a subplot... ever. Even on Gilligans Island, shows were subplots (sometimes consisting of 2 shows) that had exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, and falling action.
  Theres a season to tell a main plot and episodes to tell subplots. The writers of Lost, need to go back and learn about dramatic structure.
  And no, the show won't blow its load to explain any of the dumb shit thats been left out like: why theres a fucking polar bear, horse, cow, monster, pirate ship, ghost in a cabin, time-phazes, magnetic generator installations... etc etc. What the fuck? Explain something.. Its not going to ruin the show.
Lost would be one of the best shows of all time, if it only had some competency in its storytelling.
  And after all this, I still "like" to watch. Thats the thing that gets me. If it just sucked all around, I wouldn't care, but to have everything so good, and purposely fuck up the structure is just cruel. I honestly don't anticipate new episodes in the slightest. Theres no point. But I do watch, and I'll admit to the world that even though its a shitty show because it can't tell a story, I watch because I'm hooked on the characters.
Damn it. I admit it, I am a poser Lost-hater. I do like to watch the show. But I don't like that I like it, because they don't deserve to have me like it even though they made something I like to watch and I don't like it because of that. Just to be clear.

 Funeral

  This past weekend was tiring, but good. As much as I tried to prepare myself, things caught me off-guard. Like how hard it was to watch my grandmother accept the flag, and be saluted. I stood in front of the casket, listening to the gunfire as I watched the snowflakes bounce off. It was impossible for me to hold back tears. One thing I was wrong about was how I would feel going back to my grandparents' farm. I expected that as difficult as the funeral and wake were, I would have an even harder time going to the farm. I thought that being there again, all the memories would push their way into my head at once, along with countless triggers that would lead to more tears and remorse. Surprisingly, this wasn't the case. My grandpa was very quiet, and very active. Much of the time, you never really knew where he was, but he would be around somewhere. He was like some sort of farming ninja, in that respect. The guy just blended in with the place. Being there felt strangely the same as before. I just felt like he was around. Not in a spiritual, ghost way, but the same way I felt when he was alive. The surroundings made me much more comfortable and actually curbed my sense of loss.
  I loved visiting with relatives I rarely ever get to see. The only thing I regret now is that we don't all get together more often.

 Death

  A great man has passed away. Honestly, the most influential person in my life. We are not men of faith. When I visited him, if it was a Sunday, we would always talk about our views on religion, life and death, when everyone else went to church. Our conversations would briefly encompass other areas, but alone on Sundays was primarily faith-centric because we knew we were definitely alone, and could talk about it freely without offending (at least that's how I felt).
  I'm left now, struggling over how to mourn this horrible loss. I feel like it shouldn't hurt as much as it does. I feel ripped up inside, and don't understand why something that's a known inevitability for all of us, feels so wrong and unnatural. Do all/most/other animals know they're going to die at some point? I wonder when the time was that I realized I would someday die. There are certain things all people are born knowing, even though we can't understand or explain them when we're young. Like, the need to eat and breathe. Maybe we have so many experiences with pain and sickness before we can even talk, that by the time the issue of mortality is brought up, we aren't surprised and perhaps even assume it.
  I'm not sure if death is something we are born knowing, but I can't come up with a time I realized I would die. Understand that I'm not talking about understanding the concept of an afterlife, or the intricacies of how and why death occur, but only the fact that life is fatal. Maybe I learned about death before I knew how important life is, so it didn't shock me at the time. Maybe death is the only thing that makes life precious. Or maybe life makes us appreciate death more, depending on what angle you look at, or if you think there's an afterlife.

  I think I'll always feel like I have a missing piece of myself somewhere with him. And hope that the rest of my life I will do a good job of carrying the little amount of his knowledge I am so lucky to have.

 All New for 2008

  Yes, the website has changed. I have hated the old site for a long time now. Now that I have been getting more into photography and find myself having the need to publish shit, I decided to start rewriting the entire thing properly. I think I made a decent go of it. There are still changes I want to make, and a main problem with the old site was that changing the birth-defected code was so painful. So... Welcome to the FUTURE.