Last Post of April

Had a great weekend. Have mid-terms coming up for this next weekend. Wish me luck. Three classes (and hard ones too). So far, I have all A's though and even a 100 average in one class.

So far, things have slowed down quite a bit for Japan preparations. There's nothing I can do now except wait for my placement information to arrive. I really, really hope they put me somewhere in the south like I requested. My first choice was Kobe. It seems like a nice city with a really pretty skyline, interesting things to do, and far enough south as to be only mildly cold in the winter. My second choice was Okinawa and third, a little farther north, Yokohama, which is near Tokyo. I hear Okinawa's really nice and I believe that the US Military base is there as well.

I specifically requested southern places and told them why (on the supplementary information section). I grew up in the south. I can stay in any number of hot environments because I don't sweat (seriously), but in the cold, I can't even sleep because I shiver so much. And no amount of covers can really keep me from being cold either.

Sidebar: I have a problem with the word covers. And bubble gums. And also shrimps. I don't like them because they are improperly used words. I think one is not a word at all.

Spiderman 3 opens this weekend. I cannot wait to see it.

They say it's the most expensive movie ever made, but some critics are already saying it's not as good as the other two films. In my opinion, Spiderman 2, just like X-Men 2, was the best of a trilogy. We'll see if SM3 bombs as badly as X3 did.

I hope not. I'm paying good money to see this.

Update: SM3 on IMAX! Where? I gotta find one of those theaters!

Great Futurama Site

For all you Futurama fans out there, I stumbled across this site a little while ago. It's the show's own Wiki site that, like all wiki sites, you can add your own information to. There's a lot of info there already, but the Futurama universe is so vast, that I'm sure there's something you know that would be useful to note.

I sound like such a fangirl, but I'm not that nerdy. I just really like the show. It was one of those shows that was too brilliant for its time and got canned because of ratings.

Sometimes, I hate the way the system works for television. I, for one, think that television has the potential to beat out the film industry as far as outlets for creative works because of its mandatory churning out of product and the relatively short and cheap nature of the work.

Television has amazed at times, even network television. Some shows that come to mind are Futurama, Arrested Development, Rome, Farscape, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, and many more.

It seems to me that many well known, talented film actors are hanging up their feature film hats and opting for the more stable and flexible fair on television. I think that if the television industry takes the hint (and would stop drowning viewers in reality television crap), they could improve that overall "brand" and knock it up a notch.

I'm starting to think of television as the new theater, though I'm sure there are those that would disagree.

Under the Weather

Was a bit sick yesterday. Some kind of cross between a sinus infection and something like the flu. I felt terrible. But then someone sent me the sweetest e-card telling me to get well and, magically, I felt better.

Well, a little better.

I'm feeling half-way better now and I think by tomorrow, I will have kicked this whole thing.

Recently, I got on board with this new acoustic guitar duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela. They are AMAZING! I heard about them while listening to NPR (All Things Considered, I think) and checked them out on itunes. You should check them out too.


It's like rock, acoustic style, and they're very talented. They sound a little Flamenco, but in an interview they said that they can't get the rhythms right for Flamenco, so real Flamenco artists would not call them such. I guess to the untrained ear, any flairy sounding strums are Flamenco. :)


Unfortunately, their US shows are ALL SOLD OUT. How sucky is that?! I would love to see them in concert. Check them out. Their song "Orion" is now on my MYSPACE page.

Guess Who I'm Hanging Out With Today...

Aisha.

:)

One Post About Virginia Tech

I'll admit that I didn't want to post anything about Virginia Tech's massacre. I work in news. I have seen enough of it for the eight hours I am here every day. I, honestly, wanted to leave any reference to it completely out of this blog whose purpose is a hopeful one.

But it IS important. The tragedy affected me greatly, so much so that I had to take half of a day off of work on Tuesday simply because I couldn't be inundated with it anymore. I spent that half-day working on this blog -- something that made me happy and took my mind off of how screwed up this world can seem sometimes.

So, in this one short post about Virginia Tech, I lead you to another blog that posted something interesting enough to prompt me to post it here.

It seems that one of the posed pictures Cho sent to NBC resembled (and I totally didn't realize this until someone pointed it out) a still from the Korean film "Oldboy". I saw this movie a few months ago and it was very well done. Kind of sad, very violent, with some pretty sick parts thrown in for color. What struck me about the film personally, is that the ending gave justification to the ill-treatment of the protagonist. Throughout the movie, the lead character exacts revenge for a 15-year, solitary confinement that ruined his life.

In the end, he finds out why the main bad guy did what he did, but (not to ruin anything) the bad guy is portrayed as being completely justified in doing it.

I think, with linking this movie to the Virginia Tech massacre, one might draw some pretty strong associations. Anyway, click on the link. Read the post. And that is all I'm putting up here about that tragic day.

A link to this interesting and insightful post about the human psyche and how one's outlook impacts not only how one sees the world, but how one sees others. The implication is that Cho's view of the world (as evidenced by his ranting multimedia manifesto), whether that perception was accurate or not, does offer a plausible frame of mind that would cause someone to not only commit such an atrocity, but to also feel justified in doing so.

International Drivers License

Yesterday, went into the urgent care for the $40 paper transfer (see previous posts). Even the doctor I saw thought the idea was silly. But he certainly didn't hesitate to take my money and do no work for it. Sigh and double sigh.

I'm trying to figure out if I need to get my International Driver's License for the leap across the ocean. Apparently it's really easy to get if you already have a license, which doesn't make much sense to me. Driving rules and norms vary from country to country. What does having an American license have to do with my ability to drive on Japanese roads? They drive on the opposite side for one, not to mention that the road signs will probably be completely foreign to me. I'm sure there will be similarities such as the all-too-ubiquitous stop or yield sign, but still...

The cost is only around $15 and the cost of 2 new passport photos. What they do is translate your American driver's license information into something like 10 or 15 different languages. After using an international license in Japan for a year, you are required to register for a Japanese license.

I don't even know if I really need one. I'm planning on doing the whole bicycle/public transportation thing. But you never know what might come in handy.

Also, this morning I was awakened by Starr calling to tell me that a guy we graduated high school with was stabbed to death in his front yard at 2 AM. I don't even know what to think. I'm really tired of people I know dying violent deaths. What's the point? Sometimes I wonder, what's the point of anything anymore?

Resignation

Yesterday, I gave my unofficial resignation to the station manager. It went surprisingly well. He congratulated me on my new position, and, so far, there don't seem to be any problems. I will submit the official resignation letter tomorrow.

That's a weight off of my chest. Now, I can focus on wrapping things up at work and keeping up with the rest of this semester. Taking three 500-level classes and working full time is no walk in the park.

Having many of the loose ends tied up for the coming move makes me feel excited about Japan all over again. See, that's a pic of me being very excited.