Songs for a better day

Today I was a bit pissed after my financial aid was less than I expected but there's nothing I can do but move on, so that's the plan. I've been in worse situations before, with long stories behind them and music was always there to get me through. So today I thought I might try and get back on track with my blog posts to take my mind off of the day I had and elaborate on the music that made me feel better.

1)The song that immediately came to my mind when I sat down at my computer was Thrash Unreal by Against Me!

There's something about the upbeat nature of the song that always makes me smile, and I would like to contribute this great song find to Laura, because she gave me the album in the first place.

2)The next song that turns a day way better would have to be: Moth's Wings by Passion Pit

I stumbled upon this song from watching a movie trailer and it made me immediately want to download more Passion Pit. The beat is pretty unique with a vocal styling unlike anything that I've heard recently.

3) What's more unlikely as a good song to turn a day around than one about the end of the world, enter: How far we've come by Matchbox Twenty

Another song I found in a trailer, but I'm sure I've heard it before on multiple commercials. It's one of the only Matchbox Twenty songs that I don't mind and it reminds me somewhat of the fast paced nature of R.E.M.'s "It's the end of the world as we know it".

4)After I signed up for Pandora last year I soon found a band that I remembered hearing when I was younger. It was Everclear and this is one of my favorite songs by them, Wonderful:

It seems to be I have a trend developing of having a liking of songs that actually have a terribly sad overtone. It makes me feel like I'm misinterpreting the undertone of the song but hell it definitely makes me feel good. The upbeat sound is set against some sad lyrics but it's my favorite Everclear song by far.

5) I'm gonna end this list here even though I could go on. The final song is I'll be alright without you by Journey.

I mean it's Journey, come on what else do I have to say to convince you how great a song this is. I could have put any Journey song right here but this one is the one that I've listened to the most lately and I like the way Steve Perry basically says "Fuck you" to the girl he had been dating. That's how you do it right there ladies and gentlemen, take notes.

The Return of Crentist

I had to go back home this week in order to make another trip to the dentist to get my permanent crown put in as well as have a filling done. I've been waiting to tell the story of how it went because I think that it really needs to be told with the help of CAPS LOCK. I had to show up to the dentist at 10am in order to get the crown and stuff done and then get my retainer reshaped afterward. As I was sitting in the lobby I was thinking of how bad the procedure could be and didn't really expect it to be much worse than when I got the temporary crown put on. But soon I had found that I was sorely mistaken and underestimated the sheer horror of what I was getting myself into.

The dentist first came in to give me a couple of shots on the right side of my mouth since that was the side which was getting the filling. My crown, however, was being put in on the left side of my mouth and that side was not being numbed. So now that the right side of my mouth was starting to become numb another dentist(or possibly hygienist, i dont know the difference) came in to pull off the temporary crown that was in. OH MY FREAKING GOD(almost my exact reaction when they began pulling off my crown). The dentist that had put on my temporary crown put it on with a super strong cement so that it wouldn't slide off easy, well that just made it harder to get off. So the dentist was now using some tool she referred to as the tapper to tap the crown off, and oh how that hurt like nothing else. She finally got the temporary crown off but that was definitely not the end of the pain.

Why the fuck did that hurt so much?

With the temporary crown off I could feel everything on the tooth that was being fixed. The dentist started scraping off at the left over cement on my tooth and I could feel it all the way to the root, causing me to flinch at minor hits to my open tooth. Even when the dentist used the suction around my tooth it hurt, and the same thing happened when she used water over there. Everything that she did caused some sort of pain in the tooth and all I was hoping for was an end. After a while the dentist finally shaved down the permanent crown enough so that it would fit snug and be in line with the other side of my mouth. Putting the permanent crown on caused an initial surge of pain in my tooth since it was kind of cold, but it adjusted to feel fine.

I thought that the crown being put on was going to be the worst part of my experience that day at the dentist because of how sensitive the uncovered tooth was but putting in the filling was bad as well. I had already had a couple of shots put into the right side of my mouth to numb it up but by the time that they actually started working on the filling it had been an hour and the numbness had started to wear off. So the dentist gave me a couple more shots in that side and started to clean away at the tooth(MY TOOTH WAS NOT FULLY NUMB). I started to cringe as she scraped away at the cavity because I could feel it, even with the shots that she had put in. She ended up putting a couple more shots into my mouth in order to make sure that the roots were numb. I still felt her scraping at the tooth somewhat after that last set of shots but I was willing to suffer through it(since I was told it wasn't a deep cavity) and I really wanted to get out of the dentist's(I was already there for 1.5 hours.

Getting my bottom retainer reshaped was the easiest part of the whole day. All they had to do was make a new mold and then I was able to leave and come back later to pick it up. After my whole ordeal at the dentist it made me wish that that tooth in which the crown was being put on was just removed because of how bad the pain was. Essentially though I never have to deal with it again because it's hidden away. The one thing that this did make me realize is that I never want to have a crown put on ever again. The exposure of the tooth's roots is some of the worst pain I have ever felt, and I've broken an arm. I can only think that the dentists who actually get to perform such a painful procedure are doing it to help the patients and not really to get a kick out of it. I'm sure they've all had their own horrible experiences at the dentist that they want to prevent other people from experiencing.

Back to School

Ok so I have a legitimate excuse this time for not having a blog post since last week. Going back to school has taken up a lot of my time, packing and getting all settled in has taken a little while but now that I'm all setup and maybe I'll be able to get back to blogging more often(I keep saying that but I have lingering doubts). Anyway, I just recently bought netflix since I'm not getting cable this semester and I can now stream shows and movies right to my computer. Before I bought netflix I started watching Arrested Development on hulu because I was bored and heard from somewhere(everywhere) that it was a great series, and then I got netflix and it was on there too(YAY FOR NO COMMERCIALS). So far the show is really awesome, I'm like 13 episodes into the first season and don't really see why it was canceled yet, but soon I may find out.



It's been tough trying to actually come up with something to blog about. I feel like I've had a sort of writing block for a couple weeks, just barely being able to come up with the above paragraph. But now that I'm back on campus I also get access to free movies which will allow me to review more movies like I've been wanting to do. And starting tomorrow I plan on going to see Greenberg and reviewing it either tomorrow or on Wednesday(depending on when I have some free time. So look for another post in the next couple of days that actually has a center of focus to it. The movies are going to be a couple months past the initial release date, but what the hell, they're free.

FIGHT!

I thought that I might write something up after I came back from Busch Gardens last week but I was busy being lazy and preparing to go back to college. I managed to kick my fear of heights in the nuts when I went to Busch Gardens and rode all of the roller coasters. Yes, you heard that correctly, I rode every single roller coaster, even The SheiKra. It only happened because I was really tired from getting about 4 hours of sleep the night before and I was on a "so what if i die" kind of feeling that day, but I did it none the less. Today's subject though is a bit more awesome than me going on a bunch of roller coasters, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.



I'm going to start off by saying that I have yet to read the series of graphic novels on which this movie is based but I plan on doing so rather soon, as the movie definitely peaked my interest. Some people's initial reaction to the film may be one of disappointment because they think that it's just another Michael Cera film where he plays "the awkward teenager", but to assume that about this movie is way off. Michael Cera actually kicks some serious butt, and it's believable when he does so. I like the way that Edgar Wright made the film an homage to old video games and comic books with his way of combining video game elements to fights and comic book elements to the way he cut the scenes together. I went into this film not really expecting it to be too great, I mean I really like the other work that Edgar Wright has done with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz but I just wasn't sure what he could do with Michael Cera.

The movie was one of the most original things that I've seen in a while. The writing was great and the character development was definitely deep, even though there was a large amount of action involved. The action and comedy mixed well together and it makes me think that the target audience was very broad. I'm extremely disappointed that this movie didn't do so well when it opened this weekend, because after seeing it tonight I would go see it again in a heartbeat. It lives up to it's tagline of being "An epic of epic epicness", since it is truly that epic. I can't wait to get this movie on dvd or even see it again in the theaters. I'm giving it a 10/10 for how awesome it was visually and how well Michael Cera did in the role, definitely go see it if you get the chance.

Why are you on stilts?

First thing I want to do is to apologize to my countless readers(countless because I have no idea who freaking reads this) for taking so long to get another post up. I've been getting pretty lazy with the end of the summer coming around and I had a block of any type of creativity. Anyway I finally thought of something that I could write about while discussing my upcoming trip to Busch Gardens. Since there's obviously going to be a lot of roller coasters there, I was reminded of my fear of heights. It's a pretty reasonable fear, I mean come on you're like 5 times as likely to die when you're up higher off the ground. Just think about it, you're probably up higher off the ground because you're doing something dangerous(climbing a ladder, riding a roller coaster, skydiving, walking on stilts). I plan on going on as many roller coasters as I can though when I go to Busch Gardens because why the hell not. I guess my whole attitude about heights has changed as I've gotten older, I only have one life I might as well have as much fun before I die.

Picture maybe related
He had a reasonable fear of a bats for a while

While we're on the subject of fears, I also have a fear of spiders mainly, but also smaller bugs. I've heard the "They're more afraid of you, than you are of them" argument many a time but fuck that. When I was younger my mom mentioned a story she had heard about a kid who was sleeping and woke up screaming with blood coming out of his ear. So the kid's parents take him to the hospital and they find that a bug had broken his eardrum. My reaction, being a child at the time, was probably something along the lines of "Oh shit, that better not happen to me". Why the hell would my mom mention a story like that when I was around, obviously to scare me into never looking for my Christmas presents early or something. So from that point on I have always had this sort of obsessive behavior where I check the sheets on my bed before I go to sleep as well as the ceiling(for spiders because they're sneaky bastards). And while I'm falling asleep I cover my ears with my sheets to make sure no bugs get in.

That first fear is pretty justifiable being that if I'm walking on stilts I'm more likely to die than if I'm just walking around normally. But that second fear is pretty much just something that came around from a story I heard that managed to stick around in my brain. So hopefully one day I don't end up living in a Cloud City type place that's infested with spiders and small bugs, that would basically be my worst nightmare.

Wait, what?

It's been a couple of days since I made a post and I attribute that to my laziness in combination with not being able to find a good blog topic. Yesterday I decided to watch a movie that I had heard about several times as being the most confusing movie ever made, Primer. Since I kinda made this blog as a way that I could review movies in the hopes that someone would read what I had to say I went back to that idea for this post. Alright now let's get down to business, and this review will probably contain spoilers but they won't ruin the movie because this is one of those movies that can't be spoiled.

"What happens if it actually makes sense?"

So the movie opens up on 4 guys working in a garage and someone narrating to them working. There's no explanation really as to what these guys do or why they're spending their time outside of work working. From this point on the movie only gets more and more confusing. I think that the movie was pretty well done for the meager budget of $7000, but the plot kind of throws me off the whole time I'm watching. I found myself second guessing what I had just seen and heard and actually having to go back a couple of times in order to try and figure out what exactly was going on. The movie turns into a film about time travel and clones but doesn't really explain too well how the whole system works. At the beginning of the film 2 of the guys go off on their own constructing some sort of box(that the audience has no idea what it's supposed to do) and it ends up being a cloning/time travel device. Don't ask me how the hell that happened because fuck if the movie explains it.

Overall, I've never really seen a movie like this before. I approached it because I was told that if I liked movies about mindfucks like Inception then I would like Primer. Well, Primer is way more confusing then inception and it definitely doesn't have the intense action sequences. I think I'd have to give Primer a 6/10. I mean I like the innovative idea behind the story but I don't like the lack of explanation and elaboration on why some of the characters did the things they did. I think it's a great first film for the director but definitely not one of the greatest films I have ever seen. Don't get me wrong, it will have you thinking about what you just saw for a while, but you'll probably never get a definitive answer.

Not today ghost

It's pretty obvious from the title that this is going to be a nice detailed explanation of the what the fuck moment that I experienced earlier, and the possible explanations for said event. So as I was laying around earlier watching Cops(or something just as mindless) my tv changed the channel without me touching the remote. I decided to google "when did tv's develop minds of their own?" to determine if other people might have had similar experiences. What I came up with was that the tv most likely changed the channel because of another infrared signal it received or something, but that answer was no fun. My tv had tried to infringe upon my ability to watch mindless television and it wasn't gonna get away with it that easily. Since it's a pretty old tv I can naturally assume that it doesn't have a mind of it's own(YET) so that could be stricken from my list of possible subjects for changing the channel. The next most logical choice of what happened was that a ghost was fucking with me.

So I'm just standing there(since I can't draw in paint at all) watching tv then all of a sudden

A ghost decides to show up and get all up in my business. Ghost properly labeled with a stereotypical "boo"

So at this point I'm getting pretty pissed because I know he's gonna fuck with something

Look at him just float/standing there

And then that's when the ghost obviously decided he hated Cops

My face at the end of it all

So that's why you can see that the most logical explanation for my television changing the channel its' self is because a ghost did it. A ghost that's a real jerk, hates Cops, and has no sense of awesomeness. Of course it's always likely that it was something boring like interfering infrared waves, but that's not as entertaining as the story that I just illustrated.

Crentist the Dentist

I was gonna write this earlier when I had a dentist appointment but I felt like crap. I had to get a crown put on so like half my face was numb. The dentist came in with this huge needle and gave me like 3 shots in my mouth, my attempt to make any kind of expression had been thwarted. And then she starts asking me questions like how I'm doing, I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to answer questions when I can't talk(maybe hand signals or sign language), but since I know neither of those I was stuck talking with a weird lisp. Then the dentist will start asking you questions when they're messing with your teeth. I would love to answer your question about how my weekend was but for some reason I can't seem to move my mouth at all.

I'm not a big fan of the dentist, I think it's the fact that even when you're numb you can hear them working on your teeth. The sound just travels right up your jaw(makes me cringe just thinking about it), just think about that next time you're at the dentist.

Picture completely unrelated

Enough of that discussion of HORRIBLE THINGS. Instead I'm now gonna talk about how awesome the show The Venture Bros is. My sitting at home wallowing in my own pain allowed me to catch up on the first 3 seasons that I just bought on dvd. It's a smart show with a lot of action and comedy, GO WATCH IT NOW(and it's animated, BUT THAT SHOULDN'T BE A DETERRENT). Anyway, I think that's about all I can come up with for this post BUT THERE WILL BE MORE, OH THERE WILL BE MORE(tomorrow or the next day, and possibly with drawings, but no guarantees there.)

Spoiler Alert(Bruce Willis is a ghost)

As I sit here writing this post, I'm also watching Shutter Island and I can't focus on writing at all. PREPARE FOR GROSS AMOUNTS OF MISSPELLINGS(I actually misspelled misspellings at first but didn't want to look like an idiot) AND GRAMMAR ERRORS. This movie is definitely worth checking out if you haven't already, even if someone ruined the plot for you(if so punch that person). I'm not a big fan of people spoiling movies, but there's a certain length of time that a person has to see the movie before everyone should know the plot. Like if someone hasn't seen The Sixth Sense and still doesn't know that BRUCE WILLIS WAS A GHOST THE WHOLE TIME that's their own damn fault for being so slow on the pickup.

The look on that one person's face as I just ruined The Sixth Sense

I completely understand not seeing a movie for like 2 years, maybe even 3 but come on, over a decade get with the program and update your netflix or blockbuster queue more often. But there are some movies, however, that are impossible to spoil no matter how hard you try. One of the more recent ones that comes to mind is Inception. That movie has so many twists and turns and such an indefinite ending that I could tell you the entire plot of the film and you would still be confused(but I'm not gonna do that though because 2 years hasn't passed, BUT WHEN IT DOES, prepare for some confusion).

As you've seen in the past couple of paragraphs I love The Internet Movie Database, and can wonder around that website for hours. But one think that's a little annoying is the message boards. Sometimes I might go there before I see a movie and look thru the message boards to see if it's any good but the chances of finding spoilers there is close to 100, even just in the titles of the messages. DON'T GO TO THE MESSAGE BOARDS OF A MOVIE YOU WANT TO SEE LOOKING FOR NO SPOILERS, because you'll find'em and then you'll be all disappointed about a movie being ruined. At least that's the way I would feel, since I try and see as many movies as possible.