Hi guys, I'm back from Hawaii! Okay, so I really got back two weeks ago and I'm just super lazy for not posting pictures earlier...but...Hawaii was so awesome! If you ever get the chance GOOOOOO!!!!!! I would drop everything and move there right now if somebody asked me to. Seriously, I would. It's kind of like tropical version of Missouri...just with mountains, volcanoes, great weather, rainforests, gorgeous beaches...okay, so it's really nothing like Missouri, but I would still be living there right now if I could afford it! I got to snorkel with sea turtles (kicking myself forever because I didn't buy an underwater camera <--fails at life), went on a zipline tour, ate some of the best food of my life and got a 10th degree sunburn! Good times were had by all. :)


Here's a buttload of pictures from my trip...well, more like 20 or so, which I narrowed down from the 1000+ I came back with anyway. I could spew my new found knowledge about Hawaii all day, so if you have any specific questions about what I did or anything in the pictures just ask. I'm going to try to keep the comments to a minimum so I don't annoy the hell out of you guys with my rambling which I'm probably doing right now in fact...


( I TOOK PICTURES OF EVERYTHING BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS WORTH TAKING PICTURES OF THERE! )

So I fail big time at the short commentaries. =P Later all!

Oh, hi more than a month late Acen post! =D Yes I fail horribly at life and updating my livejoural. For quite a while after I got back from Chicago and the con it was nothing but work, work, work around here. Since both my lackeys quit over a month ago and my nonchalant 'I'll get around to it eventually' boss was in no big hurry to hire anyone to replace them I've been working massive amounts of overtime lately. I was working six days straight and crashing on the one day a week I did have off. He finally got someone hired last week and I actually got a whole two days off this week. Gleeeee!

The con was indeed all kinds of ridiculous amounts of fun. A few of the more notable highlights, I confused the guys that were chefs in the hotel restaurant for people cosplaying as the guys from Antique Bakery and almost asked for their pictures...glad I didn't now, but they were kind of cute so maybe I should have. People seemed to really like my costume, amazingly enough. I got a lot of requests for pictures...oh god, I'm probably all over the internet now... I claim deniability! I was never there! The most fun was just hanging out with people in general and getting the chance to meet up with people I've only talked to online before. There's no reason why we need a con to hang though! I'm thinking day trip to St. Louie soon, what do you say guys? 8D *does the 'Call me' thing with her hand*

In other news, I got older and we had an awesome 80s party with 80s cartoons, pizza and coloring books to celebrate the fact Sara and I are now one year closer to death. Thanks to everybody that came btw, it was a blast! 8D We'll have to do it again sometime when we're not celebrating the fact that I'm dying. Back during the first week in June I tired to go to a Testicle Festival, so I could finally get the chance to try some Denver Nuggets, something I've decided I need to do before I die. But by the time I got there, they had already run out of testicles and the town that it was in had effectively turned into a drunken hang out for bikers and biker mamas. Sara said that if I buy some then we can try frying them up at her place and have our own little Testicle Festival. If anybody else wants to be crazy and try some too, let me know and I'll give you a heads-up before we do it.

I'm apparently going to Hawaii next month, don't ask me how that happened because I'm not even sure, which unfortunately means I probably can't make it to AnimeIowa in August, which I had been planing on going to. More then likely I will get a third degree sunburn, fall in a volcano and get eaten by a shark while I'm there, but I'll try to send everyone postcards before that happens though.

I can't think of anything else of importance really going on so...( ON TO THE PICTURES! )

That should be about it for now I think. Countdown to the new Transformers movie, 11 hours 45 mins! Damn it all! If I didn't have to work tomorrow morning I would SO be at the midnight showing tonight for 2 hours and a half of an explosive assault to my scenes by way of Micheal Bay's horrible directing. As it is, I'll probably end up seeing to tomorrow as soon as I get off work. Expect a review of that movie VERY SOON! Later all!

Okay, I admit it, I loled. ^_^

Baby pythons escape during flight in Australia

MELBOURNE, Australia – Four baby pythons escaped from a container aboard a passenger plane in Australia, leading to a search that forced the cancellation of two flights, the airline said Thursday.

Twelve non-venomous Stimson pythons were being transported Tuesday on a flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne in the plane's cargo area in a bag inside a plastic foam box with air holes.

When the flight landed, it was discovered that four snakes had escaped from the package, a Qantas spokeswoman said in a statement.

A reptile expert searched for the 6-inch (15-centimeter) -long snakes but did not find them. It was not known if the snakes were still on the plane or if they had somehow escaped outside after the plane landed.

In the meantime, the plane missed two flights it had been scheduled to fly and the passengers were transferred to other flights.

When the snakes were not found, the airplane was fumigated and it returned to service on Wednesday.

Stimson's pythons, which can grow up to three feet (one meter) long, live in western and central Australia and are not an endangered species.

First off, ( LiveJournal PLEASE stop showing me this ad! )

Not much to report going on here on my end, except for the fact that my cat is apparently a man-whore, or used to be anyway. Virgil's eyes had been getting worse than usual lately, so I took him to the vet. They said he had eye ulcers due to Herpes and probably Chlamydia also. I feel like making a commercial about how your cat can live a happy, healthy, normal life with Genital Herpes now since cat Herpes are more or less a life long condition that he's always going to have. Virgil's also going to cause me to go broke real quick because the vet keeps insisting on seeing him every week to check if his ulcers are getting any better. I should have the vet that usually looks after the animals over in our building call over to the teaching hospital and tell the vet student who's on the case that I'm trustworthy and knowledgeable enough that I would bring him in if I noticed his condition getting any worse before I rack up any more vet bills. Ah well, whatever. They've obviously been told at some point not to trust the pet owner, even if they are an animal lab technician. How very House M.D. of them.

( I have a backlog of movie reviews I need to get to, so here's a few two or three line reviews for each of them. )

Reviews still yet to do: Peaceful Warrior, Eight Days a Week, Children of Men, My Name Is Bruce, Death Race (2008) I'll get around to them...at some point. =P Until then, later all!

So I hemmed and hawed about what to give up for Lent this year because I just don't eat enough as it is to be able to give up a specific food group, and giving up video games wouldn't be much of a sacrifice because I haven't had time to play them lately anyway. I finally settled on giving up snark for the next 40 days and 40 nights. No more reading or watching stuff just to make fun of it (which is going to be hard because I just got the 3rd Twilight book yesterday and it’s hurting that I can’t read it now) no more reading my snarky LJ communities (sf_drama, ontd, stupid_free, any of the child free comms, etc) and no watching romantic comedies just so I can make fun of how stupid and overly emotional the characters in them are. That's right; I'm probably going to be a complete and utter kill joy for the next 40 days so here is your heads up as to why. I'm going to, try to anyway, use this time to try to be more sincere in general. Since I usually never take anything seriously we'll just have to see how this turns out. Personally I think I may go insane before the month is out. 0_o Later all!

So last night's Oscars were filled with both awkward laughs and Hollywood taking itself way to seriously as usual. All the winners were horribly predicable, which hopefully means I might win the contest the local paper has every year with guessing the winners for 50 free movie passes because all the people I marked on my ballot won I think, which is pretty amazing considering the only movie I actually saw this year that was nominated for anything, besides the movies nominated for special effects, was Slumdog Millionaire. Here's some of what I thought was the good and the bad highlights of last night's show.


Good:

Hugh Jackman: I really like the guy, even if he isn't the best actor in the world, or the best singer, at least he's easy on the eyes and seems to have a sense of humor about his job. I'm still waiting for X-Men the Musical there Hugh.

Ben Stiller: I don't even like Ben Stiller but his impression of crazy mountain man Joaquin Phoenix was full of win! I love Joaquin Phoenix to death, but even I'll admit he's pretty wacked right now what with the beard and the glasses and wanting to be rapper. Not everyone watching may have gotten the joke, but I sure as hell did. XD

Queen Latifah: Her singing during the powerpoint presentation of all the people in film that had died this past year I thought was quite moving and beautiful.

Best Twilight Crossover: Rob Pattinson brought that sparkling undead charm of his to the Oscars by glaring at the audience the entire time. Seriously, someone needs to tell him he doesn't have to be in the character of Edward all of the time! Good try to get the younger crowd to watch your boring awards show Oscar producers.

Best Unexpected Showstopper: Wirewalker Philippe Petit, the absolutely entertaining subject of documentary Man on Wire, balancing an Oscar on his chin while a billion people watched and wondered if it would fall. But for a man who once spent 45 minutes walking between the Twin Towers, well, that's probably no big deal. I had no idea who this guy was before last night but rest assured I will be watching his documentary now!

Action Movie Montage: Most of the night I was sitting there going, "Haven't seen it. Haven't seen it. Haven't seen that one either." That was until they got to the montage of movies that people have seen which was a very nicely put together series of action scenes from all the movies that actually made some money at the box office last year. I laughed harder than I should have when Will Smith said something about how he liked to be in movies that there were actually fans for. Too true, Will. If more actors thought like him there might be more entertaining movies in Hollywood these days.

The Credits: While they were running the credits for the show they gave previews of movies that would be coming out this year and I must admit I think that was the best part of the show because a lot of those I hadn't even heard they were making. But what's up with not having a Transformers 2 trailer in there!? Lame. =P

The Bad:

Bizarre Random Musical Numbers: I'm all for giving homage to musicals, I really am, but when you have Hugh Jackman with Beyoncé, Zac Efron and the rest of the cast from High School Musical 3, sorry but I'm just not going to take your singing ability that seriously. This is not including the numbers who were up for best song, two songs from Slumdog and one from Wall-E. Those were actually very nice numbers and I'm glad Slumdog won for song and musical score because I think it did deserve that at least.

The super long and boring awards for best supporting/best actor/actress: It took what must have been at least an hour just to give out these four awards alone! Even though Kate Winslit's shout out to her Dad when she won for best actress was pretty funny, I think I fell asleep just waiting for the presenters to say the nominees names during these awards.

Slumdog Millionaire winning for best director, cinematography and editing: I tend to think any movie that's filmed with a steady cam the entire movie doesn't deserve to win for anything because, to me anyway, it's just lazy film making. Slumdog was better than most with the steady cam, at least it didn't make me motion sick, but to say it was the best cinematography is a real punch in the stomach to all those directors who set up their shots so to give the most emotional impact while Danny Boyle just shoves the camera in his actors faces and up their noses and calls it art.


Overall it wasn't a bad show really. It went on longer then it needed to, and Hollywood still hasn't figured out if you want people to watch the Oscars you need to actually nominate movies people have seen, but it could have been a whole lot worse. There was a lot less 'let’s pat ourselves on the back because we're so beautiful and awesome' than there usually is considering it was a Hollywood party. Don't worry though because when I win best original screenplay for the horror movie I'm writing, Even More Snakes on a Plane, I'll be sure to mention all you all in my acceptance speech. ;P Till later then!

So in my new year's resolutions I said I wanted to keep up with my movie reviews better this year. Well I'm already WAY behind so here's most of what I watched in January.

( Where to even start... )

I started typing up these reviews last Saturday and tonight I’m finally done! For February I had better either type reviews up as I watch the movies or watch fewer movies so I don’t have to have a review marathon like this again. Somehow I doubt I’ll have that much forethought though. ;P Until later all!

Stolen from eikitty
The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!

My choice for you.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make you. But I certainly will try.
- What I create will be just for you.
- It will be done this year (2009)
- You have no clue what its going to be,it may be a story (lol I don't know if I would be THAT cruel), a painting, a drawing (again lol) or I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!

The 'catch' is that you post this in your journal as well (which, of course, means making things yourself). Go on, I dare you!

Keanu Reeves to play Spike Siegel in the live action Cowboy Bebop movie. You do NOT screw up the most popular anime ever made by casting Keanu Reeves in your movie, you just don't. Quite possibly the worst casting choice since Jake Gyllenhaal scored the Prince of Persia role. Hollywood, why do you suck so bad?

Slightly impromptu, we did it at a day's notice, New Year’s Waffles and Wii party at my place last night wasn't too bad. I tried to light a fire and almost burned the condo down, again, but I eventually contained the fire to the fireplace then proceed to move burning logs around with my bare hands. I should really get a fire poker I suppose. The fire looked nice and festive anyway. Picked up Boom Blox and Mario Kart for the Wii for Christmas and those both got some screen time last night. Stephen Spielberg is a genius because he invented Jenga for the Wii in the form of Boom Blox. We also watched Resident Evil: Degeneration which was far more amusing than it was suppose to be after we started adding in inter-monologs for Leon. The rest of the movie was sadly forgettable but not the worst zombie movie I’ve ever seen by a long shot.

I feel like I've been lagging behind on everything, especially LJ posts, since Halloween, but here's some very quickly derived New Year’s resolutions for 2009.

( 2008: Not so great )

( Movie Meme stolen from missakitti )

EDIT: Apparently thequestionclub has decided I look like Rupet Grint in a wig.
( I don't know what they're talking about. =P )

( Welcome to the Obama-Nation! ) (of course my brother doesn't spell it like I do)


I knew it was going to be a good day yesterday when gas dropped below 2 bucks a gallon. ^_^ I'm about 12 hours late to the party I realize, but it's not really my fault. I was going to stay up until Missouri was called one way or another last night, but I gave it up around 1 a.m. and woke up to find it's still so close (49% both ways) final results still haven't come in yet! McCain is winning Missouri by about 7,000 votes at the moment I think. What the crap Missouri?! You're making me look all southern if McCain wins here and I demand you stop that at once! I would demand a recount, but since Obama doesn't need our electoral votes to win no one is going to do it. I can't believe we got shown up by Iowa. Ouch. Well the end result is the one we wanted anyway so I can't really complain. Now if we could only get a women in the White House in 8 years I think I could die with a little more hope for the future. =P

It's been a crazy last couple of days and I'm dang glad I took off on Friday because I never would have been ready for Halloween if I hadn't.

The Obama rally on Thursday was pretty cool. I waited in line for about 3 hours, I didn't know where the line actually started but I would guess it was about 2 miles long, I kid you not, and wrapped all the way around campus practically. I did get in though and managed to hear him speak. I'm not sure my point of view was the best, it took me 15 mins just to figure out which direction the stage was in (lol), but I did get pictures!

( You can totally tell that's him =P )

Halloween yesterday was pretty awesome too, regardless of the fact I only got one trick or treater, but my condo is off the street so I'm not too surprised by that. Ellen, Clay, Jenn, Sara, and even Ellen's friend/my backdoor condo mate Diane stopped in for a visit, she probably thinks she's living next to a crazy person now after meeting all of us.

Pumpkin carving went rather well this year, despite the fact that I changed my mind about what I wanted to carve at least five times. I have one rule with pumpkin carving; I have to try to one up myself from last year.

( Pumpkin Smack Down 08! )

( The Halloween party was like most parties at my place, bad movies and lots of food. )

Overall it’s been a great Halloween season this year despite being super busy trying to keep up with the up coming election and being way behind on my horror movie reviews (I’ll get around to them eventually). Here’s hoping we’ll have something else to celebrate come Tuesday! Until then, Happy Halloween and later all!

I had my whole week of baking, horror movie watching, cleaning and pumpkin carving all worked out, and then what happens? BARACK OBAMA decides to drop in for a visit! Now my schedule for the week is all messed up because my Thursday night is totally going to be taken up by being an Obama groupie. Maybe I'll just take Friday off so I can get drunk (drunk meaning 2 glasses of wine and I'm sloshed since I hardly ever drink) uptown after the speech. Of course I was going to do that next Tuesday night too... Halloween and presidential elections are way too much work. =P

So I finally broke down and decided to get a pet because I figured I needed something to worry about besides myself and all the empty room in my condo going to waste was driving me nuts. I looked around and decided a cat would probably suit me best so I found a guy giving away a couple of cats on Freecyle last week. Because of poor health he couldn't look after them anymore but he said they were brothers that had always been together and really wanted them to go to the same home if they could. I figured two cats aren't much more trouble than one so why not. Now I've got two males living in my house mooching off me but for some reason I don't mind all that much.

But what people really want to see are pictures I'm sure. So here they are,

( Dante (formerly Trouble) )
and
( Virgil (formerly Sneezy) )

They're both actually really good cats and we're getting along well, though I'm still at the stage where I'm always wondering what they're doing when I'm not there. If they're out of the room too long I always have to get up and go see what they're up to. It's a good thing I'm probably not going to have kids, I'd probably never let them out of the house! lol Their former owner said they were in a indi movie called Saving Grace B. Jones when they were kittens. I don't know if it was a small role or a big one since the movie isn't out yet but as soon as it is I'll let everybody know and we'll have a movie night to watch my cats big screen début. And before anyone asks if I named them after the classical Italian poets or the characters from Devil May Cry 3 the answer is I named them after both, because I'm a big dork like that. =P

In other news Halloween 08 Update!

The theme for this year is vampires, not because I'm really into vampires or anything but just because I read that horrible, terrible, very bad, Twilight book and thought it was the most ridiculous thing ever and needed to remind myself there are some actual good vampire books/movies out there. Seriously though that book was like, clumsy girl meets perfect boy vampire, girl and vampire get addicted to each other, boy vampire sparkles in the sunlight (um...what?!), girl and vampire repeat, "I love you," and "Stay with me forever" about 50 million times. Gag me with a spoon, please!

So far this year we've got Bloodhound: The Vampire Gigolo - a live action Japanese show about a real vampire who works in a vampire themed host club (only in Japan =P) and, with the help of a girl who works there part time, solves supernatural murder mysteries. The funny thing is the vampire is about the most useless vampire ever who likes to give dramatic speeches and looks like he's having a seizure whenever he transforms into a vampire, which is what makes the show worth watching. I know it's a corny show and kind of stupid, but there's just something about it that I like.


Feast - This movie was bad on so many levels it's not even worth going though why it was so bad. They tried to do it as a parody but they just filled it with so many horror movie clichés to the point it was outright stupid. It was like a more serious version of the Scary Movie franchise. Luckily I had the cats there to distract me while I was watching it so it wasn't as painful as it could have been. I was watching the credits roll trying to figure out who to blame for this steaming pile of crap, and then I saw "Executive Producer: Ben Affleck". That explained a lot. 1 star just for the fact that when they introduced the characters with a profile they gave Life Expectancy as a category, it was about the only funny thing in the movie.


The Wolves of Wallstreet - I swear the director really wanted to make a gay porn film here but got confused about the subject matter because there were lots of hot guys running around in their underwear for no apparent reason on nights when there was suppose to be a full moon. This movie was supposed to be about stockbrokers who were werewolves; yeah it didn't make any sense to me either. They never actually turned into wolves though and as far as I can tell never really did anything wolf like. Apparently being a werewolf just means you have a really bad libido on the full moon and have to have sex with multiple women. 2 stars because the guys were hot and they made at least a lame attempt at a plot, in other words it could have been worse.

And as an added bonus review, I know it's not a horror movie but, Death Note 3: L Change the WorLd is an awesome movie! I was always more fond of live action L than I was of anime/manga L, but this movie, despite being rather silly on so many levels, is all for the L fans. =) It's about what L decides to do during his last 20 or so days before he's suppose to die because he wrote his name in the Death Notebook at the end of the last movie in order to catch Light. During the course of an investigation about a new killer Ebola/Influenza virus, L picks up some kids related to the investigation and most of the movie is spent running around with them in a pink Angel Crepe van. L's interaction with the kids is what really makes the movie work since he doesn't know what the hell to do with them. The movie doesn't really have the Death Note feel to it, but it's fun and surprisingly well done. 5 stars from me, and a wish that they would at least make another prequel L movie because the actor that plays him is fantastic.

So here's the debate run down thus far:

Obama vs. McCain round one!


Mc: I'm so old I can tell you stories from storming the beach at Normandy

O: Look it's George Bush in disguise!

Mc: (don't look at the black man, don't look at the black man...)

O: Explain again how this credit crisis isn't your party's fault please.

( It looked something like this. )

Next we had Palin vs. Biden, complete with exploding volcano/dinosaur ice cream cake! (pictures of that forthcoming)


B: Amtrack baby!

P: I'm just your average hockey mom givin' a shout out to my 3rd grade homies in Alaska, don't ya know.

B: My new BFF Obama is so much better than my old BFF McCain.

P: I don't know what the question is but I'm sure it relates to energy somehow.

Queen Latifah can make anything awesome.


Obama vs. McCain round two Tuesday night. I haven't got plans to party that night but if anybody wants to join me in watching the debate you know where I live.

( HAPPY B-DAY 2 U JENN! )

I've just been waiting for an excuse to use this picture. (snicker)

Man this week is sucking! I'm missing everything! First I missed Heroes, then House M.D., 15 mins of America's Got Talent because of the President's speech and now I missed Don Cheadle (actor from Hotel Rwanda) speaking on campus today!

In other news, debate party is back on for tomorrow! Assuming McCain doesn't change his mind...again.

Well crap.
McCain suspends campaign, wants to postpone Friday's debate.

Dude knows he's going to get served in the debate. Postponing isn't going to help any Johnny boy. Debate party still on? As of right now I'm not sure. I'll let people know as soon as I do.

Damn it John McCain! Why do you deny me my crispy treats!?