Book Review #1

Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives:  The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica by Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the most, if not the most, spiritually beneficial books I have ever read. Elder Thaddeus approaches the indulgence of sin from a seemingly unique and yet patristic angle, giving advice that is burning with love and exemplary of the meekness and kindness espoused by Our Lord.


The only negative aspect of this book was that it was virtually just a  collexion of quotes (though some were quite long), and this sometimes made it hard to read the book straight through. On the other hand, this configuration could in fact be spiritually beneficial, as it forces the reader (and gives them the ability) to stop and consider each individual quote.


View all my reviews

Hello, BLOGOSPHERE

I feel like I should begin actually blogging again, but to be honest, I don't know if I have much of anything to actually write about. Ah, crisis of the twenty-first century! I suppose that all of my time on Twitter has somehow destroyed my capability to communicate in anything past 140 characters, but maybe it's about time that I try.  Then again, though, I probably have nothing interesting to add to the world, and my weblog becomes part of the milliard of bytes in digital clutter that are clogging up the tubes of the Internet.

Oh well, I suppose. Here's to effort!

New Phone, New Problems

For whatever reason, it seems that the last phone I had decided to crap out on me and stop allowing the receiver to work. Basically, this meant that the few people who called me would hear me explaining this problem to them while they yelled 'CAN YOU HEAR ME? NOW? NO? HELLO? NOW?' as I dejectedly told them that I had no idea what they were saying, because I couldn't hear them.

After visiting the Verizon store, I was told that something inside the charge terminal (or whatever spacetalk term they used) broke off and now made my phone thing that I was using a Bluetooth. They also asked if I had tried using the Speakerphone option. Of course, being the infinite hub of wisdom that I am, I replied to them that no, I had not; nor had I even thought of it.

Needless to say, it worked; and for the next week, while my (free!) replacement was being shipped to me, fellow SUNY Buffalo students rejoiced in hearing my family, friends, and I shouting at each other through my confused little phone. Finally the new phone came, however, and oh how excited I was! It could make calls, receive calls, send texts, receive texts, all like my older phone, but newer and shinier (honestly, it is shinier)!

Around Tuesday evening, I decided that it would be a good idea to celebrate having an 8pk of Guinness by drinking one, so I pull out my travel mug (you know, in case I had to drink on the go), and fill it up. My ex-girlfriend had travelled home on train for the weekend for a family emergency, so I decided to text her to see how everything was and when I would be picking her up. It's about this time when my new phone supposed that it was parched.

Not even Michael Phelps could have pulled off so beautiful a dive (probably because he swims and doesn't dive); I was flabberghasted, unsure of what to do next. Some of the Guinness splashed out and soaked everything on my desk: newspapers, homework assignments, my laptop, and probably something else. After long deliberation (probably like a minute), I realised that I should be trying to save the phone.

Off I ran to the bathroom, Guinness in hand, yelling 'awshit awshit awshit awshit', pouring out all of it caramel creamy goodness down the sink to see my poor new phone convulsing in a show of lights that either signified Morse Code or a mini-rave. As anyone familiar with electronics would do, my first instinct was to pull out the battery, so it wouldn't short-circuit. The battery, however, was fiercely locked into the phone and refused to come out. Some finagling finally freed it, after a minute or two of struggle. It was somewhere during this that I yelled 'damn it!' about as loud as I could.

Returning to my room with the damaged replacement, and going to my Clorox wipes to clean off the desk, my roommate, who was this whole time reading a magazine, looks up and says, 'huh? did something happen or something?'

Today, after letting it dry, I've realised that somehow the keypad no longer recognises the B, H, or Y keys properly: B gets me a return with nmb, H a backspace followed by lkj, and Y now equals poiu. The frontscreen works on and off, with a white foam rising over it like a cararact; and the key colour went from bright white to a dull brown. Now that I think of it, some of my punctuations don't work, either. I am in no denial over the fact that the inside of my phone is probably covered by a syruppy residue that will haunt me for the next year or so.

All in all, it could be worse, but it's going to be hard texting. Tis is not a good waj to talk to people for a wole jear; trust me after a daie its gotten annojing.

Barack West?

I just had the strangest dream, wherein I was somehow privy to President Obama's friendship and we were discussing religion; but that's not the important part, because it was only a frame for the rest of my dream.

As it turned out in my dream, Obama was actually a very popular rap star, he was kind of like a Kanye West with Dirty South beats. Anyway, he used Hip Hop to fling himself into popularity while spreading his message, and also dabbed a little with politics on the side, until finally deciding to run for President. Of course (as in real life), he won and the rest was mostly the same as in real life, except that he had one last single to release. Well, maybe more like a remix... somewhat.

Basically, after he won the Election in November, Barack Obama released a very popular single that was dedicated to his son (yeah, I don't know what happened to Malia or Sasha; but his son was about Sasha's age - maybe it was just for the music video, but that would still be an awkward choice to make). In the music video, which played in my dream, Obama was walking to the door of his house to leave, rapping to his son about presidential responsibility, being a man, and about America - things of that nature.

Of course in my dream the song was such a hit that it was played non-stop, but for some reason upon taking the Oath of Office, the new President wasted to diversify. Apparently, the song carried very strong Christian undertones; and though not bad, Barack wanted to kind of bridge himself to people of other faiths in the video, too. However, from what I saw until I woke up, it stayed pretty Abrahamic.

Basically, as I said, Obama had walked to the door. From what I remember, in the original he opens it to paparazzi and then something with a limo and the White House or something. In the remix, he has invited over some prominent Black Jewish (he was too American looking to be a Beta Jew, but anything's possible, I mean Barack is related to a Black Rabbi) rapper, who is standing at the door with a large golden menorah and two half-naked girls behind him.

He lets out a Lil' Jon type of 'Yeah!!' and then the screen flashes with rotating 3-D text that says 'Barack Obama MIXTAPE Part 2', and the beat goes from a very intelligent groove to an actually Dirty South thing, with the guest rapper spewing flow like a tidal wave next to his car, crouching by his chrome rims. I think he raps about the struggles of Black Jews and how he hopes that this new Administration brings unity. Also, there is talk about having mad bitches due to his fame.

As his rap is coming to a close, he walks back up the steps to Obama's house, only to meet a new guest. This guest is from Britain, by his accent, but by the look of him, he is definitely originally from some part of Northern Africa (not just skin-wise, you racists, his garb was very traditional). They greet each other, and then ring Obama's doorbell. They ask Obama if they can come in, but the new guy says, 'but could you do me on favour?' 'Sure,' says the Jewish rapper, 'what's that?' 'Change the beat!'

Again 3-D rotating text 'MIXTAPE Part 3', but the beat totally changes to slow lowfi Dub. The new guy, it turns out, is an African British Moslem. The music video is all greenscreen, the rapper sitting like an imam and all around him are mosques and palm trees with the sky something like dawn or dusk (probably dusk, as it is party music). His singing is something like reggae style mixed in with adhan. Before the Moslem singer sits Obama in traditional garb, hearkening back to his days in Indonesia. It was an amazingly chill beat.

At some point, I think they would have wound back around to the original song, and definitely there were probably more artists to come, but I woke up, in a state of disbelief, and decided to share my dream with the Internet. Because I have no other life.

WTMFH

I honestly don't see myself as having a problem with listening to club music (c'mon, people, it's fun to dance to), and also I happen to listen to metal, which has it's good share of growling. However, this... eh..it's like Tokyo Hotel and My Chemical Romance listened to too much Lil' Jon and decided to start a rap group.

Honestly, for the sake of science, just fullscreen this:


It's not even the fact that it sounds horrible. It's just dumb. Either way, someone needs to lunge a bomb at their tour bus the next time they play a show. I think that's an instant qualifier for the Medal of Freedom.

GREATEST REVIEW EVER

shamelessly stolen from the Colorado Springs Independent

NOVEMBER 20, 2008

OMG! Best movie ever!*
Twilight

By MARYANN JOHANSON

The stakes are high (get it?) in this vampire romance.

Twilight (PG-13)
Carmike 10, Chapel Hills 15, Cinemark 16, Hollywood Interquest, Tinseltown

Everyone in the world should: See. This. Movie. And not just because Robert Pattinson is the best Edward there could ever be. Because it's not like this is only for people who read Stephenie Meyer's book, Twilight. It's, like, an actual grown-up movie, all serious and important.

Like, you can tell how beautiful the vampires are supposed to be because everything gets slow and sparkly when they walk by. Or, sometimes, when other important things are happening, the music gets real loud and Edward looks like he's gonna cry. Those are the best moments ever, because then it's like the director, Catherine Hardwicke, can't even move the camera from him. He's that gorgeous.

Twilight is all about Bella, who's a junior in high school, so she's pretty grown-up already, LOL! She's smart and beautiful and super-nice and everybody loves her at her new school. She's also really deep and thoughtful, which you can tell because she talks to us through the movie, and tells us her feelings and explains things that are happening. It's like you want to be her best friend, and you wish she was, because she's so cool and perfect. She's not even stuck up about being so pretty! (Bella is played by Kristen Stewart, who is also very pretty and I bet super-nice, too.)

You can tell this is a grown-up movie because of things like this: When Bella says in her voiceover, "Edward was a vampire," it totally sounds like something from a Jane Austen book. That's literature. And when Edward — who is the totally cute vampire teenager she meets at school, I forgot to say that — tells Bella, "We shouldn't be friends," it's like it's because they're in different groups at school, the vampires and the regular kids.

It's like, with everyone else being so nice to each other, the vampires are like the mean kids in a real school. I can't remember the word when something stands in for something else, but that's a literature thing, too.

Oooh, now I remember the word: ironic. I think that's when things are different than you expect, and it's surprising and also makes a theme. Like how one regular kid who doesn't know that Edward is a vampire says to Bella, "He looks at you like you're something to eat." But Edward would never do that. It's ironic because Edward is supposed to be dangerous, but he isn't at all!

He says all romantic things to Bella, like, "Your scent, it's like a drug to me." (Sigh!) But Edward is not scary like other boys, who want to, you know, do stuff. I don't mean in the movie — everyone is super-nice to Bella! — but, like, in RL. Edward can control himself, unlike other boys with "vile repulsive thoughts." That is in the movie! But don't worry, Edward rescues Bella from boys like that. He's like her knight in sparkly armor, LOL! Even though he's a vampire. That's deep.

It's, like, so totally romantic! And it's exotic, too, because Bella's Indian friend Jacob is here. He has Indian wisdom for her about vampires and stuff, and it's so cool. Of course we all know what happens with Jacob in the next book, and OMG, the next movie please!

*If you're a dreamy 12-year-old fan.

— scene@csindy.com

I Finally Did It

I SHAVED AND I LOOK HORRIBLE

You can compare this photo to the one over in the left-hand column. I decided that it would be a good idea for me to shave and see what's been lurking beneath the surface of my beard for the past four years or so: it was a bad idea. Basically, I have come to learn that I no longer own a neck.

This is good for me, however, as I feel that it is the perfect fodder for motivation to lose weight. I've been avoiding creating a work-out schedule for the past while, because I have felt that school work is more important. Although, time-wise, being a college student, schoolwork is of the utmost importance, seeing now the Jabba-esque monster I have evolved into, I must have health advance guard with much haste. Who knows how long I will survive? Hearts can only take so much, and honestly, I must be a nauseating sight to behold.

I mean, I realised I was fat before: who could avoid having a huge gut staring at them? yet, since it has grown over time, I suppose I have been accustomed to it. By shaving, I created a drastic change that rightfully has startled me, not to mention the blight of having something like that hideous double-chin droop from my neck. There is something horrifying more unsettling about affect to the face than any other part of the body (besides genetalia, I suppose). I'm hoping this unsettling action was a step in the right direction....


On the topic of President-Elect Barack Obama, I can only say that I have never been prouder of being an American: he has advanced the movement of Martin Luther King Jr to exactly that, which I believe the Reverend aspired: equality for all people. Honestly, I think I will reserve it for another post in the morning; I don't think it's appropriate to mix such topics and my behemoth size and a Black President of the USA.