The incoherent bloggings of a die-hard Star Wars fan.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Daler Mehndi - Tunak Tunak Tun
Miss Jenji: I am bored. And you have not updated your blog in five days. What's up with that?
hitokirivader: lol blogger's block:-)
hitokirivader: i dunno what to blog, so i don't blog
Miss Jenji: come on
hitokirivader: if something hits me, like inspiration, i do
Miss Jenji: blog about not knowing what to blog
Miss Jenji: it'll be funny
hitokirivader: lol
hitokirivader: i could do that
Miss Jenji: or better yet
Miss Jenji: blog about not know what to blog until i told you to blog about not knowing what to blog
hitokirivader: i have an idea; i could just blog this conversation
Miss Jenji: which means that technically, you didn't write blog about anything.
Miss Jenji: you made a blog entry about not knowing what to blog and then I told you to blog about not knowing what to blog, but instead of blogging you just did a copy/paste
Miss Jenji: which is kinda cool
173 days until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
Warner Bros. has released the trailer for Joel Schumacher's motion picture adaption of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. Yeah, that Joel Schumacher, the man who most people will agree destroyed Warner Bros.' Batman franchise by adding butt shots, nipples to the Batsuit, and most of all George Clooney, a mess currently being swept up by Christopher Nolan. However, this movie does look promising, and I look forward to seeing it. The musical is amazing, so the film shouldn't be too bad. Will it be the next Chicago? Heh, we'll see.
Whether or not you liked the teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, everyone's been talking about one particular shot seen ever so briefly in the 90-second mishmash of images: Wookiees, Wookiees, Wookiees!
I mean, let's face it; Episode III has the potential to totally suck, but what could possibly be bad about seeing an army of Wookiee warriors battling alongside the Jedi Knights and the Army of the Republic, not to mention Chewbacca himself? For decades, Star Wars fans have been waiting for the big screen debut of Kashyyyk, homeplanet of the Wookiees, in all of Industrial Light & Magic's glory (early drafts of the Return of the Jedi script featured Kashyyyk and the Wookiees in the ultimate battle against the Galactic Empire, but George Lucas later replaced them with Endor and the Ewoks).
Those of you who were at this year's Comic-Con have already seen these, but here are some samples of the conceptual artwork for the Wookiee homeplanet and its gargantuan tree cities.
178 days until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
Well, it turns out that my previous convictions about my recent philosophy exam were false. It appears that strategic applications of the equivalence rule of material implication can lead to valid extraneous elements in argument conclusions. Yeah, you heard me. Anyways, the majority of the students failed this exam, and the highest score in any of the classes was 75. I got a 69. My professor doesn't do curves, but in this particular case she let us redo the proofs and turn it in again for partial credit for our corrections, which thus boosted my test score to 75 and my overall grade to barely an A minus. w00t, I suppose.
Bash has a lot of catching up to do. 17467 quotes approved; 21652 quotes pending.
bmloughrin: my day isn’t complete until i’ve fortified a complete stranger
hitokirivader: you mean mortified
hitokirivader: lol
hitokirivader: it’s like you build brick walls around a random pedestrian
bmloughrin: or i instill him with essential vitamins and minerals
hitokirivader: hahaha
And now, time for some miscellaneous Star Wars fun.
Remember poor little Ghyslain, victim of a prank by his fellow schoolmates and the star of one of the fastest-spreading and most popular phenomenons in internet history (right up there with "All Your Base" and "Dancing Baby")? If not, the gist of what happened is that this boy secretly videotaped himself weilding a golf ball retriever like a lightsaber, some of his friends found the tape, they uploaded it onto Kazaa, it was downloaded millions of times within a couple weeks, and then someone within those first two weeks had uploaded a version with full Star Wars special effects and sound, kick-starting a huge internet phenomenon as freelance special effects artists everywhere made hundreds of parodies of the video, most of which can be found here. Well, it would seem the famous Star Wars Kid appears yet again, this time in a hidden cameo in Tony Hawk Underground 2. Check it out here.
In other news, Lucasfilm has made a couple of early tie-ins to promote the final Star Wars film:
Target will begin airing a new TV ad campaign featuring a number of celebrities, including this ad starring none other than Darth Vader and Heidi Klum.
ESPN will air a whole series of ads with Star Wars characters as SportsCenter anchors. The first of these commercials, which features heavyweight boxing icon Lennox Lewis and tennis star Andy Roddick, can be found here.
182 days until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
Wow, lotta things happening on the world front. The Republican Party has regained control of Washington. Fallujah's been invaded. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has died. A man set fire to himself in front of the White House today. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and a number of other Cabinet chiefs have all resigned. Still waiting to hear from Rumsfeld. Come on, man, Powell's doing it! ;)
Not to mention the announcement of Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2. Harvey Weinstein greenlit this "sequel?" He must be in it for the money.
Next and final 3D Design project: "Create a sculpture that is not stable. The sculpture's balance changes in reaction to its environment. The visual balance may also be asymmetrical or changing." The criteria for our projects keep getting more and more vague.
Found this old picture on my harddrive; it's not even four years old, yet it feels like it was taken a decade ago. That's Ryan, Jesse, Tim, and Jeremy in some sort of wacky boy band (haha, remember when those were popular?).
Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've been having a case of blogger's block, I know. Just bear with me here.
*(sorta; read previous entry... TINSTAAFL)
185 days until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
Well, I just took a philosophy exam yesterday that I either tanked or aced. But I'm not sure which. See, we're studying Propositional Logic and proving the validity of symbolic arguments by using the 8 implicational rules, 10 equivalence rules, and conditional proof. Most introductory philosophy courses only study the first five implicational rules (modus ponens, modus tollens, hypothetical syllogism, disjunctive syllogism, and constructive dilemma), but this class teaches you the whole shebang. Heh heh, shebang. Cool word.
So anyway, I was unable to prove the validity of four problems on this last test, which was basically almost half of the test. But I'm pretty damn sure those were impossible to solve. We had arguments forms something like:
1.) ~A v B
2.) ~B <-> A
3.) (therefore) A -> (B -> C)
Anyone who's studied philosophy, tell me... this is impossible to solve, right? I mean, where in hell did C come from? I understand that a conclusion can introduce an unused element as part of a disjunction, but this was not the case. This is like an argument saying, "If an animal has fur, then it is a mammal. Cats have fur. Therefore, cats are from Texas." And then I have to prove the validity of seemingly invalid argument forms. ARGH.
I think and I hope that they were impossible to prove. Everyone in the class was having trouble with them too it seemed. In previous exams, lots of people including me would finish early and leave; not one person got up to turn this test in until an hour had passed (it's a hour and fifteen minute class). Oh well, if I tanked this one, I have two buffers: everyone else probably tanked it too, and all my previous exams have had stellar scores.
Anyways, help me win a free iPod! This website, which was featured on Wired and CNN, gives away your choice of iPod for free as long as you participate in an offer from their list, and then get five other people to do the same. The offers from the list are all things that have some sort of free trial period, and you can't discontinue until you've gone the entire duration or it doesn't count. I chose Infone, which has a trial period of 5 free calls, so as long as I never use the service I'm eligible. If you don't see Infone as an option, which for some reason Jen and Karl couldn't, you can try Blockbuster's two-week trial period. From what I am told, if you try to discontinue on the last day, they automatically extend your trial for a month.
Yep, that's me pwning people on Gunbound. :)
190 days until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
21st Century called and told me that my car had been totalled. I'm not sure how much the damages cost, but evidentally they exceeded the blue book value of the car. According to them, a 2002 Nissan Sentra GXE with CD player, 8 speakers, rear spoiler, and all the other stuff comes in at $12,825.86.
Recently, my grandfather fell and broke his hip, requiring an operation. The operation was a success, but he'll have to be hospitalized for a couple months. They're looking into moving from the apartment to someplace where he can be well monitered. My hopes go out for his speedy recovery.
That's the bad news, here's the good.
The Incredibles ROCKED. I extremely recommend you go see it; you'd have to be some kinda freak not to thoroughly enjoy it. Hands down, BEST Pixar film yet, better than A Bug's Life, better than Toy Story 2, and *gasp* even better than Monsters, Inc. Clearly, Pixar Animation Studios is at the top of their game (heh heh, George Lucas is probably kicking himself for selling it), and the general trend seems to be that every feature film is better than the last in story, creativity, and visual magnificence. The flawless CGI in The Incredibles (as well as Finding Nemo I might add) looks good enough to throw into a live action film. The first Pixar film to be rated PG, The Incredibles is action-packed, creative, poignant, and hilarious; I found myself not wanting it to end.
GRRR... For some reason the Episode III trailer did not play with the midnight showing of the movie.
Pixar is unstoppable. They began as a division of Lucasfilm, joined media supercorporation Disney, and is now their own independent company. Pixar's next feature film and the last film to be made under Disney, Cars, releases November 4, 2005.
195 days until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
The really good news? Out of the 16 California propositions and Measure A, only two didn't go my way (61 and 63, but I think I'm ok with 63 passing; 66 went down! w00t). The really bad news? The deceiving liar we call president has been re-elected. Four more dreary years of Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld.
My only consolation is that John Kerry, while he was IMHO clearly the lesser of two evils, was a gamble I wasn't entirely faithful with taking. But it's not my place to bitch and moan about this, since George Bush is our president for another four years whether we like it or not. He uttered a lot of hefty promises throughout the deceptive haze he concocted during his campaign (and his term, I might add), promises that I personally would like to see fulfilled. I sure do hope he follows through. Hopefully, by 2008, Bush will have earned the trust not only of the American people (which he claims he has right now) but of the world. Now before you Kerry-haters start screaming about the whole "world test" thing, let me remind you... there are reasons that while Bush's actions have brought 3/4 of Al Qaeda's leaders to justice, anti-US sentiments have been on a steep rise. There are more ways to fight terrorism than bombs alone. Whoever is the Democratic candidate in 2008, I hope they forget a lot more than just Poland. We'll be watching, Mr. Bush.
1 day until the debut of the teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
2 days until The Incredibles!
197 days until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith!
