Weekly picture #5.

Weekly picture #4.

STAR WARS! STAR WARS! STAR WARS! STAR WARS! STAR WARS! STAR WARS! STAR WARS! STAR WARS!

Turns out that Anakin is Darth Vader in the episodes 4-6! That's crazy!

I was surprised that I really liked every bit of this movie. Well done, Lucas. There were some bits and pieces that were just painful like cliche dialogue or cheesy camera shots, but all in all it was great. The story to this prequel trilogy couldn't have ended better. Everything (story-wise) was tied up in a very strong, tight knot. Bravo, Georgey-boy. You didn't screw up this time.

With that said, go see the movie. It's great to see how everything unfolded, and it was truly a tragic story. The character development in this one is the best out of episodes 1-3. Even though you know what happens with Anakin, you feel the emotional pain he's going through in the whole process. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a sad character to watch in this movie as well.

Yup, Padme's "You're breaking my heart" line from the trailer is just as good in the movie as it was in the preview. Probably even better.

It's true.

P.S. I really is 5:06 am right now. Time to end my Wednesday. Good night/morning everyone.

Man-made rainbow.

School right now is pretty cool. I'm only taking one class, and it's quite laid back. The class is Visual Thinking, and it goes more into the essence of photography rather than studying one branch of it (landscape, still-life, photojournalism, portraits, etc.). That being said, what we photograph is a lot of fun because it's what we want to photograph rather than what the "editor" wants us to photograph or how they want it to be photographed. Assigmnments are intentionally vague in its description to help us think about how we want to take the picture. Things like photograph "light" or "focus" instead of a sunset or what have you.

Anyway, so for the heck of it, the teacher assigned us (on a whim) to take a picture of the Chromatic Gate in Santa Barbara. Personally, I think it's hideous. I've talked to other students, and, apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that about it. Take a look for yourself.

However, the assignment was to have the artistic piece of work in the frame somehow, but it didn't matter where or how. The teacher just wanted to see how we would take the picture and how we saw the darn thing. It was fun to look at everyone's stuff and their approach to it. Like I said before, the thing is pretty ugly where it is. Nevertheless, you can make it look pretty sweet like Scott London or Steve Weixel did.

Here is the picture I turned in for class.

Weekly picture #3.

Got it back! (Weekly Picture #2.)

The hard drive (along with a pair of my shoes) came in the mail today. Hurrah!

As promised, here's last week's picture.

Movies!

These are a few movies I've seen in the past few weeks. Some I saw for the first time, some I saw again just for kicks, some are recently made, and some are classics. I just thought I'd write them down.

12 Angry Men: Excellent movie! Go see it. That's it.

Kingdom of Heaven: Not as bad as I thought it would be. It's better than the other epic movies that have come out in the last couple years (ahem...Troy, King Arthur...), so at least Ridley Scott still knows how to make those sword-clashing movies right. I enjoyed the setting, and the story was, I learned later, not too badly twisted from its historical reference...except that whole "Christian and Muslims are the same!" message they had throughout the movie. Well, I guess in context of the Crusades, both the Christians and the Muslims did fight for Jerusalem, so they were pretty similar in that regard. I won't get into all that, though. Such an interesting part of history! Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good movie. Oh yeah, and Orlando Bloom isn't a pretty boy in the movie either, which is cool. He needs to play different types of characters, though.

Red Dragon: I always thought it was funny that Hollywood would decide to remake Manhunter just so they could make a trilogy with Anthony Hopkins being Hannibal Lecter in all three movies. On the other hand, Red Dragon was awesome and much better than the original. It's nice to have remakes do well, I just wish it happened more often. Red Dragon reminded me how great Edward Norton and Hopkins are as actors. Although, I didn't realize that Brian Cox was the original Hannibal Lecter till now (good ol' IMDb!). That's pretty cool.

Runaway Jury: I've been wanting to see this movie for a while now because it looked interesting to me. The movie is based off of a John Grisham novel, which I didn't know until I popped the dvd in. I really didn't know what to expect from the film, but was pleasantly surprised with it at the end. It was better than I expected, and the story was pretty good. Go see it sometime if you don't have anything else to do.

I think I'm going to start watching some more classic movies. I borrowed 12 Angry Men from the Brooks library and watched it tonight. It was awesome! I also borrowed Citizen Kane from the library since I've been told it could be the best movie that was ever made.

Watching The Godfather series won't be a bad idea either. I want to see a Marlon Brando film. However, Jon believes that On the Waterfront is probably his best performance, so I'll have to watch that first.

On top of that, I still need to watch all five Star Wars episodes before the lastest installment to the story hits the big screen.

I'm sorry that I haven't posted a weekly picture yet, but I left my hard drive at Mom and Dad's apartment. I've been in Ventura all this time without my computer, so I haven't been able to upload any pictures. Do not worry, though, for my hard drive is in the mail! Yes! I could upload the picture from Brooks, I suppose, but that's a long way to drive just to add something to my blog. I'm not that desperate.

Done!

Hooah! (pt. 2)

My day wasn't very birthday-ish. I spent most of it in the apartment writing e-mails or chatting. Heh. I love break. Actually, I spent some time with my sister and her friend...but not that much.

So yeah, nothing really happened to honor my birthday most of the day. Except this evening while Dad and I were sitting on the couch with our own laptops and sucking up wireless bandwidth from the guys upstairs, Rachel runs up to Dad and asks, "Dad, what kind of cake is Mom bringing home?"

Dad responded with a inaudible "shhh" gesture, to which Rachel audibly sounded an "oh."

I love it when the element of surprise is completely destroyed.

Mom didn't come with a cake, but Dad went out to take out the trash that took about 15 minutes. He returned with a chocolate cake with German chocolate icing and coconut in the middle. What a sneaky old man!

So the five of us (Mom, Dad, Rachel, Rachel's friend, and me) got around the table and we had the traditional birthday song and cake eating. With video and pictures and everything! The video is pretty funny, mainly because of the oddness of it. The cake was really hard, and the candle was really huge (see picture).

On another note: I finished reading all of Ctrl Alt Delete today. That was a rather tiresome, yet pleasing, task. I especially like this one.

Hooah!

Keeping up.

I've been thinking...

Since a lot of my closest friends that I hang out with are Torrey students, their level of intellect and conversation is way above mine. The best thing I could think of to solve this problem would be to try to improve my reading habits and actually dive into some real worthwhile books. Of course, that is a lot to do for someone like me: a product of pop culture of today's society where material, celebrity, and shallow entertainment is everything.

I feel it necessary, however, to spend time with some quality reading. From just analyzing myself, I realize how much time I don't spend filling my brain with useful information about Christianity, religion, science, history, philosophy, etc. Well, I could probably stay away from a lot of philosophy because there's just way too much to go through. I'd rather spend more time in theology.

Theology rocks!

Also! I started this blog with a much stronger writing sense and style because I originally wanted this blog to be a place I could practice my writing skills. Going through the first entries, I can see now that my blog has reduced to "teeny bopper" style. Movies, music, and the occasional emotional post about how my life is so pathetic or a rant on something along the lines of romantic sap.

How depressing.

Weekly picture #1.

Luke told me his idea of doing a weekly comic of his own, and it inspired me. But since I can't draw, I decided to do a weekly picture of something from this week. So here goes my first picture:

Liquid

Jars of Clay's self-titled album.

Liquid

Blood-stained brow,
He wasn't broken for nothing.
Arms nailed down,
He didn't die for nothing.

This is the one thing,
The one thing that I know.

You tell me...

There's something terribly wrong with this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Hm....

Third and sixth.

I listened through the third album by Lifehouse on my way down to my parents' from Biola. It's a pretty good listen, though I think I like the second one better (Stanley Climbfall), but they still haven't topped their first one (No Name Face). Like always, their first few songs on their (self-titled) album were really strong, though it seemed to sort of drone through the rest. I'll have to give it a few more listens, but from what I heard, it's pretty good.

I also noticed that this album is more upbeat and has a lighter mood in its sound. Is it just me, or is Lifehouse progressing as a band? Their first album was so depressing and a terrible downer, their second seemed to give off some kind of "I'm searching for something" type of message, and they found that hope they've been looking for in their third album. Maybe I'm just being way to analytical, but I appreciated that in their third album. Not that I didn't like their first at all; in fact, their first is probably their best.

I just got done watching Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It's still as good as it used to be. I will probably say that this movie was the best Star Trek movie ever made. The story was incredibly well-written. Nothing over the top like time-traveling (IV and VIII), but nothing mediocre in the grand scheme of things (II and IX). Plus it had all that conspiracy stuff that can be great if done well. This movie did it well, especially for a sci-fi set film.

It's awesome that the original series' cast could go out with such a bang. I'm so sad that the TNG cast didn't have that fortune. Boo on Star Trek: Nemesis!

Sigh.

Life can really kick you in the arse at times, and then rip your balls off while you're still trying to recover. Ain't that just dandy?

Random things.

Referring to Kelly Clarkson's video Since U Been Gone: "Maybe her boyfriend broke up with her because she wore slutty clothes on stage." -Eric Holloway

On a different subject, did you ever get into the game Minesweeper (usually found in Windows)? Jon and I were talking about the times when we were into the game as kids, and we would pretend to be sweeping the "mine field" to clear it from one end to the other so the soldiers could get across. This way, we were finding and marking the mines for a greater cause rather than just mere entertainment. It was a great victory to clear on side and then another and create a pathway for the troops, though it was such a tragedy to die when clearing out the rest of them (I never beat Expert). A sacrifice I was willing to take for my brothers in arms. March on, soldiers! Win that battle for our country!

P.S. Sorry, Phil, that I linked to Microsoft in this post. Oops! I did it again! Doh!

In the musical sense.

A friend once asked me in a random conversation what song would best describe my life. Great. You know how that goes. One song, eh? The first song that came to my mind was She Gathers Rain by Collective Soul. I thought of this song because, firstly, I love Collective Soul and I listen to them quite a lot. Secondly, the song is about someone needing to adjust to a completely new life that she has chosen - a life that is much better. I interpret it as a song of one finding salvation, and that person has a new found hope to live. To me, it speaks volumes for how I live and how I need to keep in perspective the life I need, and was called, to live.

She Gathers Rain by Collective Soul

Today she dresses
For the change she's facing now
And the storm that's raging
A safe haven she has found
She doesn't care
What the prophets say anymore
For the love she had
She has no more

So she gathers rain
She gathers rain
To rinse away all her guilt and pain
She gathers rain
She gathers rain
To wash and cleanse and make
her whole again

Her imagination
Has started stretching wide
And her new conviction
No longer will she hide
She's not branded
When prophets speak words of fire
The same love she gives
She requires

So she gathers rain
She gathers rain
To rinse away all her guilt and pain
She gathers rain
She gathers rain
To wash and cleanse and make
her whole again

Also, I believe that the lead singer and his brother (another member of the band) were raised as Christians, which would explain a lot of the religious overtones in their music. Except they aren't "Christian," they're "spriritual." Heh. Whatever. Anywho, I find them much better than a lot of Christian bands out there, sort of like how Mac feels with U2 and other Christian bands. (On his blog, the post is titled "Another U2 post" dated Wednesday, April 13, 2005.)

Latter.

You would think they would choose a new pope who would last longer. But then again, maybe that's exactly what they didn't want.

You need variety.

C'mon, Orlando! Can't you do anything else besides medieval type, sword fighting movies?