Yeah, I know. I'm late again. I can't even claim ignorance since the last time I updated I named the thing "T-minus three weeks". Well, I'm back at Covenant now. Oops. Well, let's dive right in then, shall we?
The last few weeks at home were pretty largely uneventful (with a few notable exceptions). Mostly it was just get up, go to work, veg, sleep, repeat. I did go to see the Expendables with Josh and Adam Bernitt, which proved that while Stallone can do action, he cannot write a very good script. It was basically a lot of explosions, car chases, and gunfights punctuated by the occasional failed attempt to be deep. Good explosions, bad dialogue.
The last week before I left Angela Beall came down from PA and we got the chance to hang out before I left back for Chattanooga. We kayaked on the West River, which was a ton of fun, and then afterward ventured to downtown Annapolis to tour the main drag. From art shops featuring fantastically complicated sculptures to "oriental markets" with lots of Asian kitsch to joke shops selling Bacon tuxedos and mugs with pictures of Henry VIII and wives who disappear as hot liquid is poured into the mug, we discovered that Annapolis is a very eclectic place to be. They even had a shop devoted entirely to hats.
Along the way we met a street painter who told us that Annapolis was the best place for an artist to be compared to other cities, and that "the Mexicans even asked me to leave after I did this." and then proceeded to turn a spray can into a flamethrower to dry his paint. Very talented, mildly crazy? Sounds like most artists I know.
After Annapolis we checked out Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, which although I will refrain from publishing another nerd-rant about, probably beat out Inception as my favorite movie this summer, check it out by all means.
After Angela left Sunday afternoon, I got down to getting the finishing touches done on packing before my flight on Monday. This was pretty easy since my Mom and Emily had already left for Tennessee for totally unrelated reasons and had taken most of my stuff with them. I just had to pack my suitcase and my new computer.
Oh yeah, I didn't mention that in my last post, but about two and a half weeks ago I got a brand new Macbook Pro 15-inch laptop. I'm really really pleased with it and will probably not go back to PC. Sorry Bill.
So Monday morning this amazing machine wouldn't boot up (through no fault of its own, mind you, I messed it up due to ignorance of Mac software) so on the way to the airport I stopped at the Apple store and got it fixed. Funnily enough, the guy who fixed it happened to be someone I was in fourth grade with and haven't seen since. Odd how that works.
Anyway I caught my flight, and since my sister had classes the next day, she got on the exact same plane and turned around back to DC. Mom and I went to Tony's for dinner (great pasta, if you happen to be in Chattanooga). We did some last minute shopping and then Tuesday I moved back to Brethren.
It's been really awesome seeing everybody again, and Dan Rienstra, my roommate, is a really great guy. He had the brilliant idea to buy a very comfortable green folding chair that has made studying so much easier. After Mom left I went to the O-Team (orientation team) skit night and laughed my head off, then re-connected with Liz and Mary Simpson, Ann Jones, Liz Brink, and Alan Cheney.
Classes started on Thursday, continued into Friday, and nothing very eventful or blog-worthy occurred. I'm taking Principles of Management with Dr. Quatro, Intermediate Accounting with Dodson, Doctrine with Kapic, Statistics with Eames, and Microeconomics with Wescher. Fun stuff. Friday night Alan, Liz, Liz B, and I went to go see Scott Pilgrim again, just as good the second time, and then I read a lot of stuff for classes. I continued reading when I woke up and finished just in time not to have anything left to read during the ridiculously cheesy OSHA video we had to watch this morning. Fail.
Anyway, didn't really do much of note today. Hopefully this semester won't be too busy and I'll remember to update more regularly.
As if...
Anyway, arrievederci!
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
T-Minus 3 Weeks
With only a few more weeks left before I return to that brownish-adobe-sorta-looking-castle-thingy on a mountain I take classes in, I'm beginning to feel odd about my whole summer. When I came home from Covenant it sort of felt like I was pressing pause on forward progression in my life. Now, after being home for three months, I'm beginning to think I learned a lot more this summer than I thought I would and have grown a lot. Soon, I'll be back at Covenant and it'll be another lurching jump back to a different reality. Almost like waking up from a dream...or a dream within a dream....
...and with that incredibly forced segway, I want to delve into something I only vaguely hinted at in my last post which was Christopher Nolan's new movie: Inception. I didn't really dwell on the movie at all last week when I saw it, mostly because I knew that the post was going to be long already and that I had a good bit to say about it, being a huge Nolan fan. Now, before I begin I know that several people (one in particular) who read this did not like Inception at all. I'm not going to argue with you about it's merits, I can see how people might not like it. They'd be wrong, but still. (I'm also going to do my best to avoid spoilers for those of you who have been amiss and not seen it yet).
Basically, Inception is about a man named Dom Cobb, an "extractor" who can use an IV like machine to enter your dreams with his team of other extractors and basically pull corporate espionage on people by taking ideas or information out of their heads. In order to clear himself of charges which prevent him from going home to his children in the States, Cobb is given the task of pulling off what most extractors believe to be impossible. Instead of stealing an idea, Cobb's team must plant an idea in someone's head (in this case the heir of a corporate empire) and get that person to accept the idea as his own without knowing Cobb put it there. In other words: Inception.
The plot is confusing if you aren't invested in following it (and you didn't come here to read a movie review, so I'll try to be more concise) so I'm not going to go much further than that. I will say that I really enjoyed the movie and found it to be great food-for-thought. Even better was when I realized the whole movie was sort of like a parable about filmmaking itself. This concept might not make sense if you don't know the movie, but think of Cobb as a director, Ariadne as a screenwriter, Arthur as the film crew, and Seito as the producer. Each fills a distinct role within the creation of the dream (or film) for their audience: Fischer and his subconcious. Think about it. What are the filmmakers/Inceptioniers trying to do? Get a message across to the audience, and get them to accept it. They're bound by the fact that if the audience realizes that it's being manipulated, it'll focus on that and the filmmaker has failed, much like when the subconcious realizes the dreamers are there, it rejects them and drives them out. Anyway, nerdy filmbabble over now.
As for what actually happened in my real life this week, I hung out with some friends over the weekend since I didn't have to work for a good couple of days in a row. I did a little bit of back-to-school preparation Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday afternoon my sister was accidentally given a full-caffeine coffee, which is bad since she's rather allergic to caffeine, and got really ill very fast. This resulted in her getting off of work an hour early, but not being able to get home since I couldn't leave my job until my shift was over and nobody else could come and pick her up. Eventually I got her home and now she's feeling better, but at the time I thought she was going to faint in the middle of the napkin section.
Today I relaxed a good bit since I didn't have to go to work until 5pm. Once I got to work I found out that I was going to be in the Bedding section for the first time. "No big deal," I thought. It wasn't. Bedding was perhaps the easiest and most boring assignment I could have gotten. Almost nobody needs help doing anything, since they just walk in, grab what they want, and leave to buy more complicated things. Bedding is the only thing we have fully stocked on the shelves, meaning that they don't have to interact with me at all to buy it, and since there isn't a cash register in Bedding, unless I'm specifically helping someone, they usually just go somewhere else to pay and I just continue to hope somebody needs me to help them. There are also a ton of mirrors over in Bedding, which is creepy. Everywhere I look, four of me are staring back. I swear that one of them kept winking at me.
So yeah. That was this week. I played video games with friends, bought some new clothes and books, worked, and read a book called "The Book of General Ignorance." From this amazing tome, I have learned of the existance of and become gripped by an intense desire to visit the city of Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. This translates to The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma. Look it up, it's real.
Alrighty then. The Countdown to Covenant has officially begun. Until next week, Adios! And go see Inception!
(I should get an advertising stipend from Warner Bros.)
...and with that incredibly forced segway, I want to delve into something I only vaguely hinted at in my last post which was Christopher Nolan's new movie: Inception. I didn't really dwell on the movie at all last week when I saw it, mostly because I knew that the post was going to be long already and that I had a good bit to say about it, being a huge Nolan fan. Now, before I begin I know that several people (one in particular) who read this did not like Inception at all. I'm not going to argue with you about it's merits, I can see how people might not like it. They'd be wrong, but still. (I'm also going to do my best to avoid spoilers for those of you who have been amiss and not seen it yet).
Basically, Inception is about a man named Dom Cobb, an "extractor" who can use an IV like machine to enter your dreams with his team of other extractors and basically pull corporate espionage on people by taking ideas or information out of their heads. In order to clear himself of charges which prevent him from going home to his children in the States, Cobb is given the task of pulling off what most extractors believe to be impossible. Instead of stealing an idea, Cobb's team must plant an idea in someone's head (in this case the heir of a corporate empire) and get that person to accept the idea as his own without knowing Cobb put it there. In other words: Inception.
The plot is confusing if you aren't invested in following it (and you didn't come here to read a movie review, so I'll try to be more concise) so I'm not going to go much further than that. I will say that I really enjoyed the movie and found it to be great food-for-thought. Even better was when I realized the whole movie was sort of like a parable about filmmaking itself. This concept might not make sense if you don't know the movie, but think of Cobb as a director, Ariadne as a screenwriter, Arthur as the film crew, and Seito as the producer. Each fills a distinct role within the creation of the dream (or film) for their audience: Fischer and his subconcious. Think about it. What are the filmmakers/Inceptioniers trying to do? Get a message across to the audience, and get them to accept it. They're bound by the fact that if the audience realizes that it's being manipulated, it'll focus on that and the filmmaker has failed, much like when the subconcious realizes the dreamers are there, it rejects them and drives them out. Anyway, nerdy filmbabble over now.
As for what actually happened in my real life this week, I hung out with some friends over the weekend since I didn't have to work for a good couple of days in a row. I did a little bit of back-to-school preparation Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday afternoon my sister was accidentally given a full-caffeine coffee, which is bad since she's rather allergic to caffeine, and got really ill very fast. This resulted in her getting off of work an hour early, but not being able to get home since I couldn't leave my job until my shift was over and nobody else could come and pick her up. Eventually I got her home and now she's feeling better, but at the time I thought she was going to faint in the middle of the napkin section.
Today I relaxed a good bit since I didn't have to go to work until 5pm. Once I got to work I found out that I was going to be in the Bedding section for the first time. "No big deal," I thought. It wasn't. Bedding was perhaps the easiest and most boring assignment I could have gotten. Almost nobody needs help doing anything, since they just walk in, grab what they want, and leave to buy more complicated things. Bedding is the only thing we have fully stocked on the shelves, meaning that they don't have to interact with me at all to buy it, and since there isn't a cash register in Bedding, unless I'm specifically helping someone, they usually just go somewhere else to pay and I just continue to hope somebody needs me to help them. There are also a ton of mirrors over in Bedding, which is creepy. Everywhere I look, four of me are staring back. I swear that one of them kept winking at me.
So yeah. That was this week. I played video games with friends, bought some new clothes and books, worked, and read a book called "The Book of General Ignorance." From this amazing tome, I have learned of the existance of and become gripped by an intense desire to visit the city of Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. This translates to The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma. Look it up, it's real.
Alrighty then. The Countdown to Covenant has officially begun. Until next week, Adios! And go see Inception!
(I should get an advertising stipend from Warner Bros.)
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