I said that I would do a full-length blog entry today because I didn’t really have the time, energy, or motivation to make a good blog post yesterday. So here it is, the longest blog post that I’ve ever written.
Quote of the Day
On the bottom of the cardboard base of a birthday
cake, there was a warning:
“Do not flip cake upside-down.”
Photograph of the Day
I actually took this picture yesterday night when I was at the laundromat. About ten minutes before we closed down, my mom and I happened to walk outside and saw this odd spiraling light in the sky. I was going to take a video of it, but realized that my camera was in my bag, which was in the office, which was at the opposite end of the laundromat.
By the time I got my camera, the light had already gone extremely far away, and it didn’t seem like it was moving, so I just took a picture of it instead.
(Click on the photograph to enlargen)
When my mom told my dad about it, he guessed that it was a hot air balloon (which doesn’t explain why the light was spiraling and seemed to be revolving).
My explanation is much more logical: it was an alien riding a spinning spaceship that was landing down on Earth so it could take a sample of our dirt and bring it back to its home planet.
Don’t judge me.
Project Four-Panel Update
Believe it or not, I am done with filming and editing my first song for Project Four-Panel.
Correction: I WAS done with filming and editing my first song for Project Four-Panel, until I was dissatisifed with the results, then was stupid and forgetful.
On a random night, I set up my recording area and recorded everything, then that very night, I finished editing it and exported the video file. This is a sample frame of what it looked like:
While I was editing the audio and video, I noticed that it didn’t really sound as good as I wanted it to sound. I thought the guitar and vocals were fine, but the bucket drum and the cello parts were the biggest problems.
It’s obvious that I didn’t have a real drum handy, so I grabbed a large aluminum bucket, covered the outside with three sheets of letter-sized paper, and put the top back on. When I used that to play the basic beat of the song, I thought it would at least sound decent, seeing as I wasn’t doing any complicated fillers or combos. What I didn’t realize is that when the microphone picked up the bucket drum, it interpreted it as a dying fish flailing against a wall, and recorded it that way. The final product made the bucket drum make a plopping sound instead of a thumping sound.
As for the cello, this was the first time I had even touched a cello for anywhere between three and four years. I couldn’t even get the cello tuned correctly, so everything that I played was either an eighth of a step sharp or an eighth of a step flat. When I rendered the final product of the video, I had to lower the sound of the cello as low as possible so the horrible tuning and my horrible performance wouldn’t detract from the overall playing. It did anyway.
I decided that I was going to keep the guitar and vocal parts, but rerecord the drum and guitar parts. For the drum part, I planned on either using a better container, or to use the surface of my guitar as the drum, and play a few secondary guitar parts when the drum part wasn’t significant. For the cello, I was going to actually get my cello tuned properly, practice a little bit, then actually play it right. Ends up, the drum and cello parts aren’t the only parts that I have to rerecord.
When I finished recording each part, I uploaded them to my laptop and deleted them off my camera. All the files were on my laptop, and after I finished the final product, I didn’t back it up or save it anywhere else. A few days ago, I got myself a new laptop, and decided to give my old laptop to my parents. My parents wanted the laptop in factory condition (without all my random files and software on it), so I saved everything from my My Documents folder to my new laptop, then formatted the old laptop and installed a fresh operating system onto it. After all that was done, I realized that I didn’t save my Project Four-Panel videos in my My Documents folder, but had them in a folder named Proj4P on my Desktop that I had overlooked when transferring files.
Yes, that means the old recordings are gone forever.
If I get some time tonight, I’ll try to rerecord tonight. If not, it should be done within a week or so. There are a few changes I’m going to make before recording the new version. The first one is that I’m probably not going to record in front of a plain white wall, and instead do it where there’s some background scenery. I thought the white walls would make it look cleaner, but it instead made it look more boring. Second, I’m going to wear a darker-colored shirt so my face doesn’t look so dark. And third, my earbud will not be hanging out in front of me, but will be placed inside my shirt through the back, so it doesn’t show up on film.
Finally, I decided to make a note that if I remember correctly, I never publicly announced the title of the second song I’m going to do for Project Four-Panel. If you’re truly interested in finding out what it is, here’s a hint: The title of the song, in its entirety, has already been mentioned in this blog post. It was used in context of the actual word’s meaning, not in the context of a song title.
What I’m Watching
Two days ago, I watched
Jennifer’s Body, a movie starring
Megan Fox and
Amanda Seyfried, written by
Diablo Cody.
The movie centralizes around two “sandbox” friends – friends that have been together since they have played in a sandbox. In the beginning, we learn that one of these friends, Needy, is currently in prison serving a sentence. The rest of the movie illustrates how it all happened.
When the flashback begins, the other one of the friends, Jennifer, gets involved with a mysterious band, and since that day, has had a dual personality – the first being her normal self, and the second being a vicious monster ruthlessly but secretively killing and eating other humans. Needy quickly finds out that there is something wrong with Jennifer, and tries to find out what is going on.
The movie is moderately good in the sense of comedy, but resembles a failing attempt at horror. There are some surprise and shock scenes throughout the movie, but none of them are that frightening. As for the plot development, the events seem a little redundant and repetitive; nothing significantly new or influential is introduced with every individual portion of the movie.
I watched this movie based off recommendations by friends and random strangers; I was also told that it was necessary for every male to watch every movie starring Megan Fox to be culturally literate. I would recommend it to anyone who is obsessed with Megan Fox, and to anyone else that is undisturbed by bloody and cannibalistic scenes.
And as a final note, I decided to share my favorite part of the movie, which, unexpectedly, wasn’t a part of the movie, but a song featured in it. I’ve liked Panic! at the Disco since they released their first album in 2005, and I was glad to find out that they also had a song in
Jennifer’s Body called
New Perspective. If you check out the music video, you can also see a handful of scenes from the movie integrated into it. I have also added that song to my list of songs that I may end up doing a cover of after I finish up my first song from Project Four-Panel.
What I’m Reading
I’m not actually done with this book yet, but I feel like I read enough of it to get a solid opinion on it. I originally decided to read this book because of all the controversy about it – being featured on
Oprah Winfrey‘s show, then being criticized for not being a 100% truthful memoir. Also, during a class conversation, my senior year high school literature teacher told us that he refuses to read this book; I thought it would be a small accomplishment to have read a book that my book-loving teacher had not. The book I’m referring to is
A Million Little Pieces by
James Frey.
Although I heard a lot about how this book was deceiving, and that the publisher even offered refunds to everyone who felt tricked by this book, I didn’t do any in-depth research about this book before starting to read it so I could get as neutral and unbiased of an experience from the book. However, even if this book was 100% truthful, I still probably would not have liked it, and do not know how this book became so popular that it was feautred by Oprah.
The main story of the book revolves around the author, James Frey, in his quest to become drug-free. Supposedly, Frey had been a drug user and addict since he was ten years old, and has been arrested multiple times for various reasons. Frey is placed in one of the best rehabilitation centers in the country, and is put on a schedule to help him remove his dependancy on substances.
Throughout his time there, he states that the drugs he used have induced severe memory loss, and he does not remember many specific details about things that happen in his daily life. On the contrary, the book is written in extreme detail and covers events that seem like ordinary happenings.
Apart from the questionable and insignificant plot, the style of the book’s writing makes it seem like the author was in elementary school when he wrote it. There is no indentation or quotation marks, and sentences are short and choppy. I realize that this was most likely done for effect, but it was done so excessively that it detracts from the overall reading experience. I’m not sure if James Frey did this for this novel only, or if he did this for all his other published works too; I’m afraid to even find out how the other books turned out.
Another noticeable thing about the writing is that particular phrases are randomly and unnecessarily repeated. I know it is a writing technique (called parallel structure or anaphora) to repeat particular statements for emphasis and effect. However, there is no scheme and no apparent reason for the things Frey repeats; sometimes, entire sentences are repeated in places so odd that I have to read back a few lines and wonder why that sentence was important enough to be repeated.
I probably wouldn’t really recommend this book to anybody, unless they are a third-grade teacher and are used to reading this kind of writing, or just want to read the story that incited so much arguing.
The Daily Shoot Assignment of the Day
Pavement comes in many flavors. Asphalt. Concrete. Bricks. Stones. Make a photo of some pavement you see today.
This is actually part of my neighbor’s property, but I had a clearer and less obstructed view from my office of their driveway and sidewalk area than I did of my own.
Question of the Day
“Is this really the longest blog post that you’ve ever written? If so, how long is it?”
Believe it or not, this is, in fact, the longest blog post that I have ever written. When I measure the length of the blog post, I take the source code of the blog content (whatever is inside the main white content box) and see how many bytes it is. As of yesterday, the longest blog post I had was from April 01, 2010, and it was 10301 bytes in length. Today, I wrote a blog post that is 13126 bytes in length, beating the old record by 2825 bytes (27.4%).
When we got to the vet’s office, we had to put a muzzle on him so he wouldn’t bite anyone. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a long pointed nose like most other dogs, so we had to put a cat muzzle on him. Which ended up not working very well.
This is where the vet checked him. As you can see, he was shedding a lot of fur, so the entire counter was covered in a thin layer of dog hair. Also, the vet decided that the muzzle was serving no purpose, so she took that off.
While the vet was off doing tests on some gunk she found in his ear to check for infections, he sat on my lap and started staring at the doorknob.
After his check-up was over, he returned home and jumped up my recliner to take a long, relaxing nap.
Quote of the Day
I came across this when I was reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and decided to share it:
“Consider … the following puzzle. I give you a large piece of paper, and I ask you to fold it over once, and then take that folded paper and fold it over again, and then again, … until you have refolded the original paper 50 times. How tall do you think the final stack is going to be? … the real answer is that the height of the stack would approximately be the distance to the sun. And if you folded it over one more time, the stack would be as high as the distance to the sun and back.“
Thank you for letting us know that if you double the distance it takes from Point A to Point B, you can also make it from Point B back to Point A. Because that wasn’t obvious at all.
What I’m Watching
Earlier today, I watched Brüno, a movie produced in a documentary style featuring Sacha Baron Cohen as Brüno, the main character. I initially chose to watch this movie because of how funny Borat turned out, and because I heard there was some controversy over a scene that Baron Cohen used regarding a Middle Eastern man falsely depicted as a terrorist lord, and I was interested to see what role that scene played in the movie as a whole.
Brüno is about a homosexual Austrian man who was involved in fashion until he was released from his position due to his unconventional and undesirable behavior and attitude. In search of fame, he moves to California in the United States to produce a television show he hopes will become popular and make him famous. His wishes don’t come true, however, and now he sees a negative future ahead of him. The remainder of the film follows Brüno as he strives to climb to the top with the little that he has.
Although the movie was overall comedic, I thought it focused too much on Brüno’s homosexuality; in my opinion, centralizing a movie’s theme around homosexuality isn’t very appealing, and leads to some intriguing scenes when it comes to illustrating Brüno’s personality and hobbies. I don’t have a strong general opinion on if I want to recommend or not recommend this movie, but if you’re into sex jokes, this is the movie for you.
Yes, you are seeing that correctly. In the dead center of that picture is a CLOWN sitting in Divorce Court, listening to and watching the case unfold. He even came in full uniform with the white face paint, red puffy curly hair, a clown suit, and a bow tie. I don’t even know how he convinced the court that he was wearing his “formal” clothes.
Then, for I think the first time in my life, I watched a second movie, to make it two movies watched in one day. More on the second movie tomorrow.
After that, nothing significantly exciting happened. I cleaned a little bit and went home when it was time to close. My life is boring. The end.
What I’m Watching
Last summer, when this movie came out, I was told that it was one of the funniest movies ever released, and that I particularly would enjoy it. Although I ended up not watching this movie last summer, I got a chance to watch it this morning. The movie I’m talking about is The Hangover.
The main plot of the movie is the story of four men spending some time at Las Vegas before attending a wedding. The only problem is, one of the four men is the person that’s getting married at said wedding. They expect everything to go just fine, have a little fun, and get back on time for the wedding, but things don’t work out as planned. After mistaking roofies for ecstasy, the four men black out and have to find out what exactly happened – and where their soon-to-be-husband friend has disappeared to.
Just as everyone said, this movie was funny. The idea of going to Las Vegas a few days before a wedding is funny in itself, but becomes much more interesting as the unexpected twists and turns both help and hurt the three men in their search for their friend.
No, that is not a woman. That is a man dressed as a woman.
He competes in beauty pageants on a regular basis. He failed to rank in the most recent beauty pageant he participated in, and he is blaming the failure on the designer’s poor dress making instead of his hideous looks.
That person made me 
The movie begins at an archaeological dig site where a group of people find a note asking for help written by someone from the modern day, but with ink that was carbon-dated to be over 600 years old. After doing some investigations, the archaeologists find out that a professor used a time machine to go back into the 1300s, and now is stuck back there and cannot return. The archaeologists are told to go back a group, rescue the professor, then use the time travel technology to return to the modern day. It seemed like a simple task until they found out that they happen to be in La Roque on the day that it burns down.
Using their knowledge studying history, the archaeologists maneuver the area and outsmart the people, attempting to accomplish their goal. It’s not as easy as they originally thought, however, when they start encountering opposition and begin losing their friends.
Surprisingly, when I looked up some background information on this movie after watching it, many people criticized it when it first came out, and it failed to make more than the $80 million it used for its budget.
I thought the movie was pretty interesting, even though the beginning started off slowly, uneventful, and slightly randomly. I also liked the connections that were slowly made throughout the movie that connected things that happened in the past and what the archaeologists were able to find in the future. My favorite quote from the movie is “That’s me!” which comes from a memorable scene and is spoken by an archaeologist after realizing that he found a fossil of his own body in the future before coming back in time. I would recommend this movie to people who are interested in unconventional medieval movies and movies involving time travel or science fiction in general.
