LOST-1/21-Because You Left/The Lie

Holy Crap! What a great way to start of the second to last season of LOST. Starting off with Dr. Marvin Candle filming a Dharma video sometime in the past, we see Daniel Faraday working for Dharma. Let the gigantic Mind-F^^k begin.

• The Oceanic Survivors and the science team from the freighter are traveling through various points in time on the island. Alpert and the rest of the Others do not travel through time, but Alpert realizes that Locke is, and gives him a compass that seems to be the one from when Alpert gave Locke a Buddist Test.
• Lawyers appear at Kate's house in 2007 to take blood samples from both her and Aaron. This causes her to leave and go find Sun. Who sent the lawyers to Kate's house?
• Jack and Ben need to get everyone from the island back to the island. Kate and Sun are now together, though it appears they are under watch of Charles Widmore. Hurley and Sayid are together, but Sayid took a couple of darts to the back and is now a vegetable. Hurley is accused of murdering three people, and instead of going with Ben and making things easy, he gives himself over to the LAPD.
• Faraday finds the past Desmond, and tells him he needs to find his mother at Oxford. Desmond wakes up in the future, now remembering this, and tells Penny they need to go to Oxford.
• Dr. Candle lives on the island in the past, and he seems to have a healthy baby with an alive wife.
• Best line: "Why is there a dead Pakistani on my couch?"
• Hurley spills the beans to his mom about the island, and she tells him she believes him.
• Ben is told he has 70 hours to bring the Oceanic 6 back to the island. Is the show now going to be like 24 set in real time?
• The woman who tells Ben he has 70 hours is the woman who sold Desmond his engagement ring from the episode where Desmond was flashing in and out of time.
  

Twilight 2

Spoilers On

So I enjoyed Twilight and its sequel, New Moon. Eclipse, the third in the series, was the obvious next book. Where Twilight deals with Bella’s relationship with Edward and New Moon deals with Edward’s absence and Bella’s friendship with Jacob, Eclipse deals with the confrontation of the two. Of course, Edward is a vampire and Jacob is a werewolf, and they happen to be mortal enemies. By now, Edward and Bella are madly in love and Bella wants to become a vampire. Jacob’s friendship with Bella has made Jacob fall in love her. And, of course, an evil vampire named Victoria has developed an army of young vampires to raid the town of Forks and kill Bella.

Now, the story line did not bother me. I enjoyed the build-up to the battle and for the most part the battle itself.

What bothered me was the way that Jacob turned out. Jacob is in love with Bella, but Bella made it clear that she was in love with Edward. Jacob wasn’t about to take “no” for an answer. His actions are borderline assault. After forcing her to kiss him, and then getting into her sleeping bag, he tells her that if she does not choose him he will run into the battle and have himself killed.

Now, two things bug me:

A) Edward did not rip Jacobs jaw off and then force him to choke on it.

B) Bella, still loving Edward, played with Jacob’s emotions and basically gave him the idea that she could leave Edward and choose him.

As much as I grew to hate Jacob, I really started to dislike Bella. Actually, I really hate Bella. I feel she is begging for constant attention and companionship. And it is annoying. Even though Jacob is turning into a sexual deviant, she still needs his friendship and does not want to let him go.

Now, I used to think Edward was creepy and controlling, and now I feel that Edward is very classy. He should have every right to rip off Jacob’s arm and beat him to death with it, but he stays calm and collective. Even though Bella is too eager to lose her virginity (which Meyer goes out of her way to not say by name), Edward sticks to his morals and holds off her advances, making deals of his own to hold off Bella’s need to become a vampire.

I still enjoyed the book itself, but I was not a fan of the character development.

Twilight

Twilight.

When my cousin got married this summer in St. Louis, I decided to walk over to the Borders across from our hotel around 11:00 at night. I knew Border stores were open late, but I thing had not crossed my mind. It was August seventh, and at midnight the fourth book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, was to be released. To get to the Graphic Novel section I had to adventure through the different covens of high school girls dressed all in black, camped out so they could be the first to read the newest adventure of Edward and Bella. I knew the feeling from the Harry Potter days. I picked up a couple copies of New Avengers, used my Borders Rewards card, and started on my way out, hoping that I would not have my blood drained by the floor full of vampire wannabe’s. An older worker with a bag full of buttons caught my attention. He was handing out buttons to the campers that read, “I was bitten by Breaking Dawn.” I snuck into the crowd of girls and was handed a button. As I walked out with my button, I told myself that I would not read Twilight. I would not be sucked into the cult.

That was August 7^th, 2008.

January 7^th 2009 I drank the Kool Aid and started reading Twilight. It is now January 13^th, almost a week later, and I just finished New Moon.

What happened to me? I am now halfway through this tale of Vampires that I promised myself that I would not read. Because they are actually good. Of course the books have faults, but still. The first thing I like is how Stephanie Meyer has taken the myth of the Vampire and the Werewolf and made them more real-life. Gone are the crosses and coffins, garlic, wooden stakes, bats, full moons, and as far as I can tell, silver bullets. The same basic myths apply. The Vampires are basically immortal. They drink blood and are “undead.” Beside the mythology, the book is well written. Meyer captures emotion very well. The story is a love story and every emotion is very descriptive. But, even though the emotion is captured well, other story elements were fast and not as drawn out. It might just be me, but the fight scenes and chase sequences could use a lot more detail. And it seemed that characters were thrown into sudden peril. Were it seems it most books the amount of danger gradually builds; in Twilight it seems that everyone is hopping around la la la and then you turn the page and they are racing the clock for their lives.

Even with its faults I have found myself given my full attention to this book. I want to know what will happen to Edward and Bella, and now Jacob. But with the first book about her falling for a vampire, and the second almost falling for a werewolf, I am half expecting the third to involve a trip to Egypt to met the Mummy, and then running into Frankenstein’s monster. That would cover all the Universal movie monsters. But seriously, I am finding myself excited to pick up the third book, when just five months ago I had sworn myself off of them completely. I have drunk the Twilight Kool Aid, and I like it.

Mannequin

I recently acquired the coolest thing ever: a mannequin from Steve and Berry's. The Steve and Berry's in the Quad Cities is going out of business, and Aaron Wells and I both picked up mannequin's. In order to get mannequin's that we could bring home day of, we had to follow one of the workers into a back room full of mannequin's that was like Jefferey Dahmer's basement. An arm there, a torso there. As we were leaving, Aaron carrying the top of a female mannequin, myself carrying the top of a male, a small boy was being lead by his mother. He asked, "Mommy, what are they doing with those?" She replied, "That's none of our business now, is it honey?"
The mannequin is now in the window of my dorm room, dressed. Every now and again it startles me or scares the crap out of me. Sometimes I catch it's reflection in my TV like the alien at the end of Signs.

My Top 5 Christmas Films

Elf

Released in 2003, Elf became an instant Christmas classic. Will Ferrell plays Buddy, a man who was raised by Elves after he was accidentally taken by Santa as a baby. The story plays almost as an alien first experiencing human culture. Buddy heads to New York to find his father, (James Caan) and meets his new family (Mary Steenburgen.) Of course Buddy falls in love, with a department store employee (Zooey Deschanel), and ends up having to help save Christmas and help Santa(Ed Asner).

What I like about Elf is that when I am older it will be considered my generation’s holiday classic.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Narrated by the great Boris Karloff, Dr. Seuss’s how the Grinch Stole Christmas is a great adaptation of the book. Of course they made a live action movie staring Jim Carrey, but it does not compare with the original. The Grinch lives in a mountain near Whoville, and is not a fan of the Who’s yearly Christmas celebration. He dresses as Santa Claus and takes his faithful dog Max, and goes to steal Christmas. Of course he has a change of heart at the end and becomes a friend of the Who’s.

A Christmas Story

The definitive Christmas classic. So much so, that TBS runs it for 24 hours straight on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. There are so many iconic scenes. Flick sticking his tongue to a pole. Randy not able to put his arms down in his snowsuit. Ralphie with soap in his mouth. The old man getting his award. Santa pushing Ralphie down the slide. The pink bunny suit. The turkey with its head still on. I know that I will watch it a least once during the 24 hour marathon.

Home Alone

Some might not consider the adventures of Kevin McCallister a Christmas movie, but it is. Kevin’s family goes to Paris for Christmas, and accidentally leaves Kevin at home. Two house burglars, the Wet Bandits Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, plan to rob the McCallister’s house, but they don’t realize Kevin is inside and has a bag of tricks up his sleeve. The film is loaded with great quotable lines and is always a fun watch.

Christmas Vacation

My absolute favorite Christmas movie and one of my favorite comedies. Chevy Chase plays Clarke Griswald wants to have the ideal family Christmas. Of course everything goes wrong. Like A Christmas Story, this movie has iconic scenes. The house covered in lights. Uncle Eddie(played by the hilarious Randy Quaid). The cat being electrocuted. The giant Christmas tree. The Christmas tree on fire. The squirrel running through the house. The sled ride. The police breaking through the house. Every line in the movie is quotable and hilarious.

My New Hero

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28241264/

So, in Texas, a 4 year old boy left his home in the middle of the night and broke in to a Family Dollar store in order to play with the toys.
First of all, a 4 year old broke into a Family Dollar store.
Second, I still wish I could leave my house in the middle of the night to play in a toy aisle. That would be the coolest thing ever.

It looks like the parents might be in trouble for this one, but I hope everything turns out alright. I feel bad for the manager of the store who is probley now unemployed.

How cool though.

16 Things

I do not own one pair of jeans. I only wear khaki’s. One time, when I was in Cedar Rapids, I tried on a pair of jeans and Erin took a picture of me in them. It can be found on my Facebook.

My favorite foods are Circus Peanuts, 2% Milk, Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup, Angelo’s Pizza, Giordano’s Pizza, Oreo Fluff, Scotcharoos, Apple Pie, Lasagna, Homemade Macaroni and Cheese, and a good Bacon Cheeseburger. I have very particular tastes and there are a lot of foods I do not eat. I do not use condiments and usually won’t put syrup on Pancakes.

I am going to school to become a History Teacher, but my dream job would be making Documentaries. I would love to be a film maker who brings important things to the forefront. Or, I would love to be like Barbara Walters, someone who ask people tough questions, but people still want to talk to me.

Due to my hearing loss I am not a fan of talking on the phone. I would rather text, message, of talk face to face with someone. Also due to my hearing loss I have a hard time controlling the volume of my voice, and I cannot locate were sounds are coming from.

Though I was a very vocal supporter of Barack Obama, I do not consider myself a Democrat. I don’t consider myself a Republican either. I think that the government needs to change depending on the times, and having a one track mind does little to help this. Some other politicians I enjoy are Jim Webb, Chris Dodd, and Chuck Hagel.

I like to plan things out way ahead of time just in case. I already know who my groomsman would be if I were to ever get married. (Ankit, Aaron, Marty, Casey) and I know who I would want my pallbearers would be if something was to ever happen to me. (Chad Jensen, Grant Wells, Rich Matzen, Phil Cunningham, Keith Nylin, and John Knoble)

I have noticed recently that I have been repeating words a lot, and I think I have discovered the origin. This summer at work I would stop in to the lunch ladies and say, “Good morning, good morning.” Because there was two lunch ladies. And from that it has stemmed that I repeat words.

The two things hygiene-wise that I am the most concentrated on are my teeth and my hair. I probably brush my teeth about five times a day, sometimes more, usually every time I leave the building. I use shampoo and conditioner on my hair and both are for brunettes. Dyeing my hair pink senior year was the worst thing for my hair. The bleaching killed its texture and it took a while for it to go back to normal.

I own probley 250+ DVDs. I have most of them in my dorm room. If I get a movie that is part of a series, I need to have the full series. If I get one James Bond movie, I need to have them all. I love TV on DVD almost more then when it is on TV. I sometimes buy DVDs before I have seen the movie, especially if its in the five dollar bin.

I am trying to be more green, though it is not working out the best right now, it is something I hope to get better on. I am not going to be Ed Begley Jr., but I will be better then I am now.

I am also trying to live healthier. I have stopped drinking soda, and I eat little candy and sugar. Another thing I hope to get better on in the near future.

If I could have dinner with five dead people: Groucho Marx, Andy Warhol, Tim Russert, Teddy Roosevelt, Lee Harvey Oswald (I would ask him if he did it and what not.)

I don’t really believe in aliens, but I feel that we need to get attacked by aliens because it would be the only thing that could bring our country together. Watchmen-style.

I hope that when I die, people (presumable a grandchild) continue to bring it to places and around the world. It needs to continue on. And if I ever get cancer or something, it would be cool to turn it into a symbol. Lance Armstrong-style.

I honestly feel that this is the best time in American history to live. I think that we are at the center of American history and America only has about two hundred and fifty to three hundred years. I hope I live until the Tri-centennial in 2076.

I have not eaten at a McDonalds since I saw Super Size Me in 2004. The only exception is when I was in Poland I had a Royal with Cheese just to say I did. The overload of grease to my system made me sick.