Wow, this is a REALLY LONG entry. x_x
Mar. 8th, 2005 02:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gogmagogWarning: big-ass LJ post ahead. I've been saving it up for a couple of days. You have been warned.
A baby wasp got into my house yesterday and I had to stomp it. WTF, folks? It's early March, and as of a week or so ago it was still getting below freezing. How did the stupid thing even survive? Edit: And I just had to kill a mosquito buzzing around my monitor. WHAT THE FUCK.
When I was playing Suikoden IV today, my mom made fun of Hot Pants' running animation. I looked at it and sure enough, he runs rather like he has a thong riding up his ass. He raises his knees really high when he runs, kind of like Steve Urkel. But then, the hot pants probably chafe and/or bunch. XD
Anyway, we left Hot Pants and crew rushing to report the attack on Iluya. When they get back to their HQ in Obel, the guy who hired them on their first mission (Ramada) attempts - along with his flunkies Akaghi and Mizuki - to assassinate Hot Pants, on the orders of the Kooluk bigwigs. They fail miserably, of course (bwahaha, they're such weaklings!), and sing like canaries to avoid death. Then, when they discover that killing the hero would have meant the Rune of Punishment moved to one of them, guaranteeing an imminent death, their loyalty to their clients kind of evaporates (surprise, surprise) and they offer to join the ever-expanding Suikogang.
After this, it becomes clear that it's only a matter of time before Obel is captured. So King Lino (you know, the one with the denim hot pants) orders the people of Obel to be evacuated to the headquarters, which it turns out is actually a gigantic ship. Most of the people evacuate, but a few decide to stay, including Lino's daughter Flare. (She pretty clearly has a thing going on for the hero, which is kinda sad. Sweetie, if you didn't have boobs, he might be interested.)
Immediately afterwards, Kooluk (led by the skilled general Troy) attacks the island. Fortunately, the new ship HQ manages to escape just in time. Not far from Obel, it's met by Kika, who takes them to her headquarters and decides to join forces. (After all, with Kooluk and the Cray Trading Company joining forces, it means bad business for the pirates too.) So I recruit Kika,The Ambiguously Gay Pirate Duo Sigurd and Hervey, Dario and his son Nalleo, and a couple of others. Kika kicks ass in battle, and so she immediately takes the rotating fourth party member slot in my party (along with Hot Pants and his knight friends Tal and Keneth). Her Combo attack with the hero rocks, and her Falcon Rune kicks ass as well.
One other cool thing about Suikoden IV - once your ship takes off, you can create two extra four-member parties that you can switch to while fighting sea battles. It makes it much easier to level other characters up and keep them at consistent levels, and just generally rocks. I hope they'll do this in all the Suikodens from now on; after all, with 108 characters to choose from (generally about 50-60 of whom are playable), it makes sense to be able to use more than six (or four, in S4) at a time without going to change party members.
At this point I decide to go on a recruiting spree. I manage to recruit Taisuke, the bath builder (I'm only sad that apparently the bath scenes aren't as fun as those in Suikoden III); returning from the previous Suikodens, Viki (whose teleportation skill makes me weep in joy at not having to navigate the tortuous sea map system every time I need to go somewhere); also returning, the runemaster Jeane (who's now playable, with a hefty amount of jiggle, natch; she immediately replaces Keneth as my Lightning magic user); Bartholomew, the wanted man who looks like Donald Trump as a bodybuilder (it's the hair); and Mitsuba, a feisty little girl, and her companion Reinhold.
Oh, and Rita. How could I forget Rita? You see, she's a cute little girl who also happens to be a CHEATING HOBAG. She invents a game that's a cross between mah-jongg and gin rummy. It's poorly explained, so it takes about three losses before you even get a basic handle on the rules of the game (for quite a while I thought the discard pile was where you were building points, where it's actually from your hand). And even then, she gets a ridiculously high number of good tiles like Lightning runes, which allow you to draw 3 tiles in one turn. However, I persevered, and finally whipped the CHEATING HOBAG at her own game and recruited her. >D
Anyway, they return to the pirates' island, where they find that Glen's second-in-command, Katarina, has washed up on the island. She reports that Kooluk took over Razril, aided by the turncoat Snowe. She was tortured in order to gain information about the pirates, whom she had battled in the past. Immediately afterwards, Snowe attacks - as a reward for his treachery, he's been made the head of the Kooluk Anti-Pirate force in Razril. Hot Pants whups his ass at sea battle soundly, though, and sends him skulking off with hispenis tail between his legs.
Next time: chasing Snowe back to Razril and liberating it.
...you know, I wish real life were like Suikoden. I could deal with having a massive headquarters of my own filled with 108 flunkies who jump to fulfill my every wish. Of course, that would also involve bearing a True Rune; however, I think I could live with the oh-so-onerous burden of incredible power and immortality. XD
And finally, speaking of, here's a cool Flash tribute to the Suikoden series. Very well done, although the Engrish could use some work.
Yesterday I took my parents to see Bride and Prejudice. I highly recommend it to any of you who are in the mood for two hours of pure, unadulterated fun. As you might guess from the title, it's Pride and Prejudice transplanted to modern day India. It's directed by Gurinder Chadha, the director of Bend It Like Beckham (which was also quite good).
Aishwarya Rai (a.k.a. Miss World '94) plays Lalita Bakshi, the second of four daughters. Her family lives in Amritsa, which is apparently kind of the Indian equivalent of Columbia or something - decent-sized, but not a whole lot to attract tourists or anything. Her mother is a tactless gold-digger, her older sister Jaya is beautiful and nice, and her two younger sisters are uber-traditional and dorky (Maya) and flirty and immature (Lakhi). Lalita herself is inclined to be quite impassioned and preachy on subjects dear to her heart, but generally a lot of fun otherwise.
Then the rich British-Indian Balraj Bingley (Lost's Naveen Andrews) comes to town to attend a wedding, bringing his sister Kiran and his American friend Will Darcy (Martin Henderson, who's no Colin Firth but still quite a bit better than he was in The Ring). The wedding happens to be of one of Lalita's best friends and relatives, so she and her family attend as well. Sparks fly between Jaya and Bingley, and an entirely different kind of sparks fly between Lalita and Darcy. If you're familiar with Pride and Prejudice (and by God, you should be) then you pretty much know the rest. All the familiar faces show up as the action moves from India to London to L.A. and back to India: Mr. Kholi, their socially inept distant relative who lives in L.A. as an accountant and acts like an American Austin Powers; Johnny Wickham, the handsome young drifter who romances Lalita but has less-than-honorable intentions towards Lakhi; Darcy's snooty and arrogant mother, Catherine; and his engaging sister Georgie (Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls fame). I could have done without the tacky Ashanti cameo, though.
The reviews for the film have been mixed, but so far the big thing I've seen in them is that they're complaining that it's not "real Bollywood." Which is deeply stupid, because that's not what it's SUPPOSED to be. It's supposed to kind of be at the intersection of Bollywood film, Hollywood film and literary adaptation; and as that I think it succeeds quite well. And actually, even just looked at as a literary adaptation, it's quite well done; I've never seen any other film that was able to take Pride and Prejudice and compress it into two hours, staying relatively faithful and not leaving out anything major. The only other film that's ever succeeded at that is the A&E miniseries version, which while wonderful had about 6 hours to do it in and so can't really be compared. But this managed to do that AND add massive musical numbers.
It's also wonderfully synchretistic: while the colorful musical numbers aren't surprising in India, when we get an American one complete with gospel choir and singing/dancing surfers and lifeguards, it's delightfully unexpected and quite funny. And the musical numbers are good; I've found myself humming "No life without wife, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" quite a bit over the last day or so. XD
I did have a distressing experience while going to see it though. There were two elderly ladies in front of us as we came up to the theater entrance, who had obviously come to see the movie as well. They took one look at the movie poster and said, "Oh, this isn't the kind of Pride and Prejudice I thought it would be." Then they looked at the line to get in to the theatre, which was exclusively people of apparently Indian descent, took a beady-eyed look at each other, then turned on their heels and walked away.
I, of course, was fuming. What the fuck was up with those bigoted old bitches? In this day and age, racist attitudes like that shouldn't even still be around! Anyway, we went in and got our tickets, and when we got into the theater found another surprise. We hadn't been surprised that the line was entirely folks of Indian descent; what did surprise us was that once we got into the theater, there were no other people of non-Indian descent besides my parents and I and two other people. I don't want to think that attitudes like those racist old biddies' are widespread, but I don't understand why this seems to be perceived as an "Indian people only" film by people. And I'm afraid if it's seen as that kind of a "niche" film, it won't get decent box office numbers, and I'd really like it to do well because I like Gurinder Chadha and would like to see her do more in the future.
Another interesting IMDb factoid: apparently Alexis Bledel is Latina! Her mother is Mexican and her father is Argentinian. Spanish was actually her first language, she didn't learn English until later. :D
Today I did my first driving on an actual street with traffic. I only drove several blocks from our house, but there was a ridiculous amount of traffic for our neighborhood (like, 5 cars in 3 minutes) that I had to deal with. And while it may not seem like a whole lot, I didn't kill anyone or crash the car, so I consider it a personal triumph and a good day's learnin'. XD
Stolen from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eikitty:
The Socially Retarded Purity Test
You answered "yes" to 44 of 100 questions, making you 56.0% socially retarded pure (44.0% socially retarded corrupt).
It amuses me that it thinks thateikitty is more socially retarded than me, because the total opposite is true. XD
...I've spent the past several hours looking up people I knew in grade school (the now-defunct St. Francis Xavier, which is right across the street fromrathershady's house) on the Internet, for no apparent reason. What floors me is that for about 85-90% of the people I look for I'm coming up with nothing. Dammit, how can so many people LIVE in this day and age and not have their names SOMEWHERE on the Internet? O_o
Still, if there's anyone reading this who knew me (Joseph Rodriguez, I went there from, I think, 1988-1996) then and wants to e-mail me or something to get in touch, feel free to do so. It would be cool to talk to someone who I went to grade school with again after all this time.
However, I did find this article. Though this is the year after I left school (and hence I'm not mentioned; there was an article the year before in which I was though), I was in Mr. Bloch's algebra class the year before. He totally rocked as a teacher, and we adored him. (Plus he drove a Lexus, so that kinda wowed us inner-city kids.) I really admire him for doing that - I don't think I could stand to take a 98% pay cut from $600,000-some a year to a measly teacher's pittance. x_x
A baby wasp got into my house yesterday and I had to stomp it. WTF, folks? It's early March, and as of a week or so ago it was still getting below freezing. How did the stupid thing even survive? Edit: And I just had to kill a mosquito buzzing around my monitor. WHAT THE FUCK.
When I was playing Suikoden IV today, my mom made fun of Hot Pants' running animation. I looked at it and sure enough, he runs rather like he has a thong riding up his ass. He raises his knees really high when he runs, kind of like Steve Urkel. But then, the hot pants probably chafe and/or bunch. XD
Anyway, we left Hot Pants and crew rushing to report the attack on Iluya. When they get back to their HQ in Obel, the guy who hired them on their first mission (Ramada) attempts - along with his flunkies Akaghi and Mizuki - to assassinate Hot Pants, on the orders of the Kooluk bigwigs. They fail miserably, of course (bwahaha, they're such weaklings!), and sing like canaries to avoid death. Then, when they discover that killing the hero would have meant the Rune of Punishment moved to one of them, guaranteeing an imminent death, their loyalty to their clients kind of evaporates (surprise, surprise) and they offer to join the ever-expanding Suikogang.
After this, it becomes clear that it's only a matter of time before Obel is captured. So King Lino (you know, the one with the denim hot pants) orders the people of Obel to be evacuated to the headquarters, which it turns out is actually a gigantic ship. Most of the people evacuate, but a few decide to stay, including Lino's daughter Flare. (She pretty clearly has a thing going on for the hero, which is kinda sad. Sweetie, if you didn't have boobs, he might be interested.)
Immediately afterwards, Kooluk (led by the skilled general Troy) attacks the island. Fortunately, the new ship HQ manages to escape just in time. Not far from Obel, it's met by Kika, who takes them to her headquarters and decides to join forces. (After all, with Kooluk and the Cray Trading Company joining forces, it means bad business for the pirates too.) So I recruit Kika,
One other cool thing about Suikoden IV - once your ship takes off, you can create two extra four-member parties that you can switch to while fighting sea battles. It makes it much easier to level other characters up and keep them at consistent levels, and just generally rocks. I hope they'll do this in all the Suikodens from now on; after all, with 108 characters to choose from (generally about 50-60 of whom are playable), it makes sense to be able to use more than six (or four, in S4) at a time without going to change party members.
At this point I decide to go on a recruiting spree. I manage to recruit Taisuke, the bath builder (I'm only sad that apparently the bath scenes aren't as fun as those in Suikoden III); returning from the previous Suikodens, Viki (whose teleportation skill makes me weep in joy at not having to navigate the tortuous sea map system every time I need to go somewhere); also returning, the runemaster Jeane (who's now playable, with a hefty amount of jiggle, natch; she immediately replaces Keneth as my Lightning magic user); Bartholomew, the wanted man who looks like Donald Trump as a bodybuilder (it's the hair); and Mitsuba, a feisty little girl, and her companion Reinhold.
Oh, and Rita. How could I forget Rita? You see, she's a cute little girl who also happens to be a CHEATING HOBAG. She invents a game that's a cross between mah-jongg and gin rummy. It's poorly explained, so it takes about three losses before you even get a basic handle on the rules of the game (for quite a while I thought the discard pile was where you were building points, where it's actually from your hand). And even then, she gets a ridiculously high number of good tiles like Lightning runes, which allow you to draw 3 tiles in one turn. However, I persevered, and finally whipped the CHEATING HOBAG at her own game and recruited her. >D
Anyway, they return to the pirates' island, where they find that Glen's second-in-command, Katarina, has washed up on the island. She reports that Kooluk took over Razril, aided by the turncoat Snowe. She was tortured in order to gain information about the pirates, whom she had battled in the past. Immediately afterwards, Snowe attacks - as a reward for his treachery, he's been made the head of the Kooluk Anti-Pirate force in Razril. Hot Pants whups his ass at sea battle soundly, though, and sends him skulking off with his
Next time: chasing Snowe back to Razril and liberating it.
...you know, I wish real life were like Suikoden. I could deal with having a massive headquarters of my own filled with 108 flunkies who jump to fulfill my every wish. Of course, that would also involve bearing a True Rune; however, I think I could live with the oh-so-onerous burden of incredible power and immortality. XD
And finally, speaking of, here's a cool Flash tribute to the Suikoden series. Very well done, although the Engrish could use some work.
Yesterday I took my parents to see Bride and Prejudice. I highly recommend it to any of you who are in the mood for two hours of pure, unadulterated fun. As you might guess from the title, it's Pride and Prejudice transplanted to modern day India. It's directed by Gurinder Chadha, the director of Bend It Like Beckham (which was also quite good).
Aishwarya Rai (a.k.a. Miss World '94) plays Lalita Bakshi, the second of four daughters. Her family lives in Amritsa, which is apparently kind of the Indian equivalent of Columbia or something - decent-sized, but not a whole lot to attract tourists or anything. Her mother is a tactless gold-digger, her older sister Jaya is beautiful and nice, and her two younger sisters are uber-traditional and dorky (Maya) and flirty and immature (Lakhi). Lalita herself is inclined to be quite impassioned and preachy on subjects dear to her heart, but generally a lot of fun otherwise.
Then the rich British-Indian Balraj Bingley (Lost's Naveen Andrews) comes to town to attend a wedding, bringing his sister Kiran and his American friend Will Darcy (Martin Henderson, who's no Colin Firth but still quite a bit better than he was in The Ring). The wedding happens to be of one of Lalita's best friends and relatives, so she and her family attend as well. Sparks fly between Jaya and Bingley, and an entirely different kind of sparks fly between Lalita and Darcy. If you're familiar with Pride and Prejudice (and by God, you should be) then you pretty much know the rest. All the familiar faces show up as the action moves from India to London to L.A. and back to India: Mr. Kholi, their socially inept distant relative who lives in L.A. as an accountant and acts like an American Austin Powers; Johnny Wickham, the handsome young drifter who romances Lalita but has less-than-honorable intentions towards Lakhi; Darcy's snooty and arrogant mother, Catherine; and his engaging sister Georgie (Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls fame). I could have done without the tacky Ashanti cameo, though.
The reviews for the film have been mixed, but so far the big thing I've seen in them is that they're complaining that it's not "real Bollywood." Which is deeply stupid, because that's not what it's SUPPOSED to be. It's supposed to kind of be at the intersection of Bollywood film, Hollywood film and literary adaptation; and as that I think it succeeds quite well. And actually, even just looked at as a literary adaptation, it's quite well done; I've never seen any other film that was able to take Pride and Prejudice and compress it into two hours, staying relatively faithful and not leaving out anything major. The only other film that's ever succeeded at that is the A&E miniseries version, which while wonderful had about 6 hours to do it in and so can't really be compared. But this managed to do that AND add massive musical numbers.
It's also wonderfully synchretistic: while the colorful musical numbers aren't surprising in India, when we get an American one complete with gospel choir and singing/dancing surfers and lifeguards, it's delightfully unexpected and quite funny. And the musical numbers are good; I've found myself humming "No life without wife, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" quite a bit over the last day or so. XD
I did have a distressing experience while going to see it though. There were two elderly ladies in front of us as we came up to the theater entrance, who had obviously come to see the movie as well. They took one look at the movie poster and said, "Oh, this isn't the kind of Pride and Prejudice I thought it would be." Then they looked at the line to get in to the theatre, which was exclusively people of apparently Indian descent, took a beady-eyed look at each other, then turned on their heels and walked away.
I, of course, was fuming. What the fuck was up with those bigoted old bitches? In this day and age, racist attitudes like that shouldn't even still be around! Anyway, we went in and got our tickets, and when we got into the theater found another surprise. We hadn't been surprised that the line was entirely folks of Indian descent; what did surprise us was that once we got into the theater, there were no other people of non-Indian descent besides my parents and I and two other people. I don't want to think that attitudes like those racist old biddies' are widespread, but I don't understand why this seems to be perceived as an "Indian people only" film by people. And I'm afraid if it's seen as that kind of a "niche" film, it won't get decent box office numbers, and I'd really like it to do well because I like Gurinder Chadha and would like to see her do more in the future.
Another interesting IMDb factoid: apparently Alexis Bledel is Latina! Her mother is Mexican and her father is Argentinian. Spanish was actually her first language, she didn't learn English until later. :D
Today I did my first driving on an actual street with traffic. I only drove several blocks from our house, but there was a ridiculous amount of traffic for our neighborhood (like, 5 cars in 3 minutes) that I had to deal with. And while it may not seem like a whole lot, I didn't kill anyone or crash the car, so I consider it a personal triumph and a good day's learnin'. XD
Stolen from
eikitty:The Socially Retarded Purity Test
You answered "yes" to 44 of 100 questions, making you 56.0% socially retarded pure (44.0% socially retarded corrupt).
It amuses me that it thinks that
eikitty is more socially retarded than me, because the total opposite is true. XD...I've spent the past several hours looking up people I knew in grade school (the now-defunct St. Francis Xavier, which is right across the street from
rathershady's house) on the Internet, for no apparent reason. What floors me is that for about 85-90% of the people I look for I'm coming up with nothing. Dammit, how can so many people LIVE in this day and age and not have their names SOMEWHERE on the Internet? O_oStill, if there's anyone reading this who knew me (Joseph Rodriguez, I went there from, I think, 1988-1996) then and wants to e-mail me or something to get in touch, feel free to do so. It would be cool to talk to someone who I went to grade school with again after all this time.
However, I did find this article. Though this is the year after I left school (and hence I'm not mentioned; there was an article the year before in which I was though), I was in Mr. Bloch's algebra class the year before. He totally rocked as a teacher, and we adored him. (Plus he drove a Lexus, so that kinda wowed us inner-city kids.) I really admire him for doing that - I don't think I could stand to take a 98% pay cut from $600,000-some a year to a measly teacher's pittance. x_x
