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The Rantinator has moved

2011-03-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

New blog just for rants!

http://the-rantinator.blogspot.com/

Check it out!

You Know What I Hate: People Who Stand on Escalators

2011-03-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

What is with this? People who live or commute into the city daily have probably witnessed this. The rule has always been stand on the right walk on the left. How this confuses and baffles people is beyond me. It's unwritten, no sign is needed. Are people that stupid? You see everyone else standing on the right side and people walking on the left side. So logically one would assume the right is for lazy idiots who apparently think the escalator was invented so they didn't have to walk up a flight of stairs and the left for those who know its true intention, to get up the stairs faster.

My finding standing on the escalator lazy aside if you must why would you block those in a rush? I notice there's 2 main types of people who do this. The biggest offender is tourists, of course. They stand there with their luggage taking up the whole thing. Putting their bags in front of them would be out of the question. They also see a need to stand right next to each other so they can talk while riding the escalator. Riding, fucking riding the escalator. Something created as a simple convenience to help expedite the commuting process has now turned into something we RIDE. Only in America would we do such a thing.

Back on topic couples are the worst. They gotta hold hands and make out. Of all the places to do it they have to pick here. Again a place of expedited travel. It'd be like making out during a marathon. Anyways that's tourists but there's still another group. Before I mention this I want to lay out a disclaimer. No I'm not racist I'm making an observation based on experience. Anyone whose spent extensive time in San Fran has ran into someone similar to who I'm about to mention.

The rude African American man. So in my case he had a cane, clearly had to stand and still chose to use the left side for standing, right in front of me, halting all traffic on the escalator. He purposefully pushed in front of me to get there just so he could stand in my way. After we get off he pretended to walk into a girl and then proceeded to grope her while apologizing. Then on my way home another man did something similar. He was walking out of my path when he noticed I was headed for the Bart stairs. He looks at me and then walks right in my way so I have to go around him or stop for him. He smiled while he did it too so it wasn't an accident. I know Caucasian people did horrible things to African Americans in the past but do we really need to harbor the grudge? All the extra hate gets us nowhere. Course around SF you see that crap all the time. The homeless can be especially pushy, and prone to shouting. I really don't need an aggressive guy yelling at me because I don't carry change.

Then there's the teenagers, oh the teenagers. They all come dressed in their retarded rave outfits. Sporting glow sticks and enough E to fry a sperm whale's brain like an egg. They're rude as hell. They litter, they treat clerks and waitresses like crap, and they're annoying. Its like they have no idea how to act in public. They always ride the rail on the escalator. Its not a seat! I always hope one of them falls off and cracks their head on the marble floor below. Malicious I know but they really get on my nerves.

Earlier today when I got off Bart the escalator was closed. I thought “Oh no! What will they do!” The amount of foot traffic was around half what it normally is. Everyone else opted to use the working escalator on the other side of the platform. You usually take this one because the exit you need is closer to here. I guess walking extra distance on level ground is better then walking up a flight of stairs, lazy asses. Then there's stations like Colma with no escalators going up. So everyone has to walk and of course then you get the people who can't handle the stairs. There is an elevator and obviously they should be using it. Seriously they walk up the steps like retarded penguins. Waddling back and fourth and usually hitting me with whatever bag they have. One guy almost tripped me by hitting my back foot with his lunch box.

Man I'm getting off track. Time for some closing statements. Escalators are for walking, not standing. If you must stand to the right and let us people who have things to do get by. If you can't handle the stairs use the damn elevator!

You Know What I Hate?: Bad Teachers

2011-03-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

You know ranting has become one of those things I miss doing. You'd think an act that in my case is typically driven by anger wouldn't be so fun. I don't always have to be mad to rant, just annoyed by something.

Today that something is lazy ass teachers. This is broad because teachers can be lazy in so many ways. Those of my readers who aren't in college yet have no idea. Sure high school teachers can be annoying too but college is even worse. College professors get paid more then high school teachers and the money they're being paid with is yours. Your cash goes into their pocket and their laziness tends to piss you off more then it normally would. College is also it. Your last line of education before you go into the real world and get yourself a job. You want to learn in college so when you're not getting what you need out of a class you paid 2,500 bucks for you tend to get a little sore.

So what are some ways a teacher can annoy you? Well inconsistent directions for one. Who here has had that teacher who assigns something but never accurately explains it? Or the famous “Check the syllabus” answer when they haven't been following it the entire quarter? I want a break down of what I'm being graded on, how it's to be presented, and what expectations are. I don't want vague examples of past students work or to be told “I'll type one later”. When I hear that it says to me “not much thought has gone into creating the assignment” and you obviously pulled it out of your ass. I've had teachers do this. They want to be like a real teacher and assign homework but they put no work into structuring the class so instead they pull this assignment out of thin air. I love the blank expressions on their faces while they try and think of something. That's when I know it wasn't planned and they just made it up on the spot. With this method we have no idea what we're being graded on we just have this vague outline of what to do.

So then we ask questions. “Email me.” Okay so I do and I never get an answer. Some of them like to do this cute thing where they email you the day of class or an hour before. That's just cruel. If you can't properly create an assignment and rubric to go along with it you shouldn't be having us do it. I think all teachers should have to do their own homework before they assign it. Same with books. I can't count the times I've been assigned a shitty book and the teacher later apologized for it. “Derp sorry I should have read it first.”. Gee you think? I mean the book only cost 100 bucks. I got money to waste. Since it sucks so hard you won't be using it again which means the school will no longer be selling it or accepting buy backs. I have so many books I can't do anything with because they're worth peanuts and I refuse to sell a 100 dollar book for 5 bucks no matter how crappy it is.

You know what else gets on my nerves? When they grade papers. I swear sometimes they only read them once. I can't count how many times I've read a comment on one page such as “You should address this.” Only for me to have actually addressed it on the next page. Pay attention you lazy asses. Is it that hard to keep the pen at bay until you finish the paper? I know being a teacher at a art based college is so taxing and all. I mean we only have the easiest general ed available. I love that too. When teachers for general ed classes think they're at a university or something. I had this one teacher for Statistics who gave this speech the first day of class about how seriously he takes the subject matter and he expects us to as well. I'm sorry am I here to be a boring data annalist or a filmmaker? When push comes to shove which class do you think I care more about, this one or something actually pertaining to my major?

That's another thing my school treats us all like a dollar sign. We're a consumer school run and owned by a team of lawyers. So because I'm treated like a customer and not a student I treat them like a corporation and not a school. They don't like that very much. I actually had one teacher try and make me sign a contract that said in so many words “If I don't like this class or aspects about I'm not allowed to complain.” Sorry but if you do a shit job teaching I have every right to complain about it. I left that class pretty quickly. That teacher was obviously nuts. They also wanted us to read one book every week. I forgot I was majoring in English. It was a Science class too which was the funniest part. I'm not going to be a Biologist either. They really need to curb these general ed teachers. They go a little too crazy.

Example, we had this one teacher who accused me and my friend of copying each other. We had to write poems and we used similar rhythm schemes. The hilarious part was it was a scheme they taught us. The part that really annoyed me was they accused us in front of the entire class in a manner I personally found to not only be insulting but unprofessional. When we defended ourselves they rudely told us to shut up and wouldn't let us finish a sentence. So we complained to their boss who defended them tooth and nail and basically told us to deal with it. The boss's reason “Their a published author.” Wow so all I gotta do is get two books published and I can do and say whatever I want? Awesome! The best part is both books are pretty buried and you can't even find them on Amazon, published author my ass. The teacher taught a Creative Writing class. Part of being creative is having imagination. Besides writing poems every assignment we got after that involved writing out something that actually happened to us. I'm sorry but am I missing something here? Fiction is the most creative form of writing and you're flat out banning us from doing it? Retarded is the only word that comes to mind.

What was also retarded is how they treated us during finals. My friend and I got into it with them again. We both wrote stories about our Moms for the final assignment, which was to write a story about a dramatic event you experienced. Apparently our stories were too similar. Except in his he finds his Mom dead and mine had to do with my Mom being a loser drug addict. I see one similarity and that's a stretch. We didn't even have a similar writing style. That teacher clearly just didn't like us. I'm sure their boss, who was quick to lick their toes, told them we complained about them. I'm really waiting for the day I completely lose it and go to the dean of the entire school about some of this crap.

Speaking of I almost did once. I had a class where we were had to shoot a PSA. Our group chose to shoot it at night after class. So during class we picked up a Uhaul and when we got back our teacher scolded us like we were 10 year olds. Again this was in front of our peers and they even went as far as dropping our group leader a whole letter grade. I forgot the part where the teacher was my Mother and micromanaging me was part of their job. The stupid part was their argument for why we shouldn't have done it revolved around them giving us time to work on the project the night before. We only have class once a week. The dumb ass thought we were in their other class. Well even if we were it wouldn't make a difference, they're two separate classes and to be kept that way. Get your facts straight before chewing people out moron.

I hate that too. Chewing out the whole class because a few of us are lazy. I don't need a lecture because someone else did something stupid. Again we're not in elementary school and we're sure as hell not in boot camp. I'm here to learn and as far as I'm concerned we're all peers, teachers included. Until I see some credentials that say otherwise. I've rarely seen any work from any of my teachers. This tells me they're either embarrassed by it or they just don't think it's better then what we produce. The teachers who have shown me work have done amazing stuff and seem truly qualified to be teaching. The rest I question how extensive their knowledge is and the lack of examples proves that point in my book. It's not fair to assume someone is shit just because they can't prove otherwise but some of the things they say are completely wrong. I've proven several teachers wrong more times then I can count. My favorite is when I prove them wrong and then they turn around and take credit for my correction. Shameful really but if they want to be idiots and not fess up to it that's only going to hurt them in the long run. I stopped correcting them in hopes they will say something stupid on a job and it will reflect poorly on them.

I truly am ranting. And it's been going on for 2 pages now. If anyone has read this far I congratulate you. You probably have an entire psych profile worth the material here based on my college experience. This is just my issues with teachers I haven't even started with the school itself. That's for another day though. Thanks for reading.

You Know What I Hate? 1

2011-03-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

I need an outlet for all my pent up anger about the crap I deal with on a daily basis. So this is going to be it. I'm going to blog about what I hate and why.

So part one Automated Phone Services and Companies With Poor Customer Service

Everyone hates these right? Well let me tell you a story, one you've probably all heard before. I ordered a product through a company who shall remain unnamed and they messed up my order. I ordered a program for Windows and instead of sending me an order confirmation they send me an email telling me my order was processed. So I don't find out until they send me a shipping receipt that my package is already on it's way and it's the Mac version of the program.

Okay first off maybe I'm old but remember the days when programs came packaged together for both systems? Did the option of two disks labeled Mac and Windows or a check box promoting you to tell the computer which OS you have confuse the user base so much they had to do away with this simple convenience? So now we have this problem where the non-morons order a program, the dealer screws up the order and you end up with something you can't use.

So how does the dealer respond to this error, which is clearly their fault? Before I move on I state it's clearly their fault because even if I didn't triple check before purchasing, which I do now for this exact reason, had they sent me an email confirmation with the product listed in it I would know the error existed before they sent out my package. I know horrible run on sentence but I'm ranting just go with it.

So they tell me this "Refuse the package." What? Refuse the package? I don't know about you all but 90% of the time a package comes I'm not home and they leave it sitting on my doorstep anyways. So that option is out of the question. I tell them that and they get snippy, "Well I guess you can return it." You guess? Wow I was unaware that simple returns were so alien to a company that deals online. You don't want an item refuse the package! Hell why not. I mean that doesn't sound totally shadey, or completely cheap on their part. I wouldn't even know how to go about doing such a thing. "No Mr. UPS guy I will not take your package, I refuse! Send it back." They'd look at me like I'm crazy, and an asshole. Now I have to pay return shipping which is complete BS. On top of that I have to wait until they receive the return package before they send me the right version. So I have around 3 weeks of waiting minimum before I get my program.

If that's not enough I ask them if I need to call again or if they will know to send me the Windows copy. I mean will they make a note in the system, do I have to tell them, are they psychic? Another snippy response "You can call and check in if you feel you need to." Well yeah I need to. Your warehouse can't even tell the difference between the words WINDOWS and MAC let alone me trusting some jerk in the customer service department will properly document my inquiry. That rides on a little too much faith given their current track record with me. I had previously ordered from them before, paid extra for 2 day shipping and they screwed me and took a week to send it anyways. Apparently paying 20 extra bucks to get something sent to you doesn't mean it's time sensitive or important you get it sooner rather then later. Their response that time was I still got it earlier then I would have had I picked normal shipping. Well lucky me. Maybe next time label the option "Slightly faster shipping, maybe." or hell maybe "Gamble, you might get it faster."

Anyways I had to jump through hoops to get a refund on my shipping. You might ask why I use them at all but when you're paying somewhere around $1,100 less then market value for software you deal with crap. And before you ask no it's not black market.

Well that's it for today. I had another incident but that ones apart of something really big. I'll save that for a rainy day, oh wait...

2011-02-15T00:18:00.001-08:00

Accusation

2009-07-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

You know I find it interesting when someone has to go out of their way to call me out on my own personal quirks. My best friend and I have an odd bond where we unintentionally look at one another and speak without saying a word. We do it all the time and unless someone points it out we are often unaware of it. I know it sounds weird because how do you forget looking at someone but it's the faces we apparently make while we are doing it.

Anyways the point of this is a teacher decided to talk to us about it. We were sitting in class minding our own business and she asked Daniel what his last name was. He told her and she said she got him checked off on the attendance. So he replied with "Excellent". This apparently set her off and she responded with "I need to see the two of you after class".

Before I go any further I need to describe this person to you. She's one of those weird hippie people who humps trees and likes to sleep on rocks. She listens to music that sounds like it was made by a guy on acid. She also apparently follows every religion ever. She's very strange and has all these weird stories about weird people she's met and spiritual journeys she's gone on. She also told us she gets up at 4:20 every morning...very random time.

So she pulls us aside and says "I'm getting negative vibes from you both. I feel there's disrespect between us." So we asked what it was we were doing. She says "You know what your doing." Actually no I don't and if you can't tell me what it is I'm doing you obviously don't know yourself, idiot. So in the end we squeezed out of her what her issue was.

During both classes we've had with her we watched this horrible movie called Baraka. It's just some music with footage badly edited to it. I fail to see the relevance of it. Anyways there's a part where these guys are doing this Balinese Monkey Chant. It's fucking hilarious. So Daniel and myself start laughing, this is apparently disrespectful. Then at the end of the video there's a guy yelling with no audio and he has this intense look on his face like he's shitting his pants. We also found this to be hilarious, this was also apparently disrespectful. Lastly she engages in this ritual with a Bald Eagle feather. This is where we lost it. She starts running around the room in a circle waving the feather around, it looked like she was trying to fly. Then she gets on her knees in front of every student and starts waving the feather at them with this intense look on her face. Daniel was first so of course he laughed, he was caught off guard. I kept a straight face but I was almost last so I had time to prepare.

So she tells us we have to respect every culture out there and laughing isn't okay. I find this funny because she told us she has the Eagle feather illegally. She took seven of them from some forest she went to and brought them back here. It's not legal to own these but she doesn't care because it's man's law. So it's okay to disrespect man's law but it's not okay to laugh at the Balinese Monkey Chant. That's ass backwards logic. She also can't expect everyone to feel as passionate about this crap as she does.

For reference this is the Balinese Monkey Chant. Pay attention tot he bald old guy he's the one that set us off. Especially towards the end.

And here's the face guy I mentioned. It starts at 1:35. The music was removed because of copyright issues but even without the music it's pretty much the same idea.

As for the looks Daniel and myself tend to just look at each other whenever someone says something retarded and then we laugh. We have some morons in that class. There's one guy who yells everything he says like he turrets or something. He also went off on a tangent about Micheal Jackson in the middle of class.

So yeah that's my rant for today. Don't even get me started on my Creative Writing teacher.

Living Arrangments

2009-07-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

No I'm not moving out. I just finished refurnishing my living room. Actually the correct term would be furnishing, there was literally nothing in there before. I went out one weekend and bought two side tables, a coffee table, a futon, a TV stand, a 42 inch LG HDTV, and a bluray player. Then I bought a bunch of poster frames and my roommates and I began filling them with 27X40 movie posters.

So far we have Gran Torino, Dirty Harry, Iron-man, Ninja Turtles 2, Children Of Men, and Rescue Me. On the way are Rodger Rabbit(The girlfriend), Hellboy 2, and lastly Dark Knight. Amazon decided to mangle the first DK poster they sent me so I had to call them up and get a replacement. By the time all is said and done the place will look pretty spiffy. I'll be sure to post pictures.

This is part of what I've been up to. The rest is homework. I also saw some movies. Busy busy busy.

I have a new idea I've been trying to bring to fruition. If anything comes of it I'll be sure to post about it here first.

Gas

2009-07-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Without a second thought every time I fart, I laugh. However last night that wasn't the case. All the times I farted combined into one giant ball of gas. I felt like I was going to explode. At first it was funny, it smelled bad and I got some funny reactions out of Daniel and Tiffany. Though after about a half hour of horrid smells the pain started. I got up and ran into the bathroom. I sat on the toilet trying to fart out whatever was in me. I kept farting for a good half hour. Then I got tired of sitting on a cold toilet and moved to a bathtub.

I filled it with hot water and sat down. After awhile I was laying on my side. I just kept rubbing my stomach as Daniel instructed. If I wasn't in pain the farts would be funny, they were in the water and making huge bubbles. I kept trying to stand but it hurt to much. Finally I just said forget it and I got to the point where I didn't feel like I was going to burst. It was then I stood up and took a shower. After that I sat on the couch for awhile and then went to bed. I had taken some Gas X when the whole thing started and I assume it worked late into the night to get rid of all this built up gas.

I can still feel it brewing inside me. I hope it doesn't happen again. It was completely random when it did, no idea what set it off. I know one thing though, I won't laugh at a fart again for at least a day and I'm probably gonna be eating salads for dinner from here on out.

15 Minutes of Fame

2009-07-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

I made a music video for one of my Dad's old songs and sent it to him. He loved it and e-mailed it to everyone he knew. One of those people was the guy who runs the record label he's on. The guy liked it so much he posted it on the front page of his labels website.

It's under July 11th and the video is called Hot Rod To Hell By RapidFire. Blogger hates the link so your gonna have to copy paste it sorry.
http://www.stormspell.com/label/index.html

I thought I'd share this with you all. It's the first time I've had a solid reaction like this to one of my videos outside of a classroom setting.

Season Finale

2009-06-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy lately I haven't had time to post anything. I'll hop back to it after things cool down. I just caught a breather in between all this chaos I've been dealing with. I finished my Audio final, Motion Graphics final, and I'm almost done with my final for Film and Society. My final for Studio Production got messed up so I don't know the fate of that. What I do know is I need a break and I much look forward to at least a day or two of sitting on my ass doing nothing. I need to be void of responsibility for a day or two to get my sanity back.

The next season will start soon.

The Night is Young and the Moon is Bright

2009-06-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

Alright so after finishing off volume 1 of Moon Knight I jumped into volume 2. Before I did though I took a quick turn down a different road. In one sitting I read through the best selling graphic novel of all time, The Death of Superman. I was just going to review the last 4 issues of Moon Knight I read but I'm gonna toss in my thoughts on The Death of Superman.

I honestly bought this graphic novel for one reason and one reason only.

I wanted that figure of Doomsday. It was easier to obtain it this way then any other. For the price of this set I could have only gotten the figure so why not take the extras? The Superman figure is ass and to be honest the book was as well. After one night of reading it brand new out of the box the fucking cover fell off. That's right the glue came undone and the whole cover just fell right off. Cheap bastards, I didn't even finish reading it when it happened. Anyways onto my review...

The Death of Superman - What's there to say here? If you haven't read it let me just tell you it's boring. Honestly Superman just isn't very interesting and I can't say I care about what happens to him. He has to decide between stopping Doomsday and saving a kid from burning to death at one point and he complains about it, what a prick. He fights Doomsday but it's quite brief. The slug-fest spans across several pages but as the issues get closer to his death less panels are used a page so by the last book everything is a one page spread. The writing is horrid and there's random ass characters in there no one cares about.

Like this guy The Guardian

He looks like a gay hood ornament. Seriously, Captain America called he wants his shield and costume back.

Course Marvel on the other hand had to rip him off. I mean look at this guy.

And I'm not even joking when I say this guy has the exact same name. Like not only the same hero name but the same first name, James, and his last name starts with the same letter, H. To top it all off they both have nicknames based off their middle names. The DC one is James Jacob "Jim" Harper and the Marvel one James "Mac" MacDonald Hudson. What the hell? The DC version came out in 1942 and the Marvel knock off in 1978. Maybe it was Marvels idea of a joke.

Anyways back to Superman, uh he dies but not really and he takes Doomsday with him, but he doesn't die either. So you really gotta ask yourself, what was the point of this whole arc? If your gonna bring back everyone who dies in the same comic series what is the purpose of killing them off? Shock value? Sales? I'll tell you what it was because I was bored enough to watch the special features on the Superman: Doomsday movie DVD. They wanted to have him marry Louis but the TV series out at the time wanted to do it first so they had to wait. So with a year of planning out the window they decided to re-write what that years story arc was gonna be and they finally decided "Fuck it we'll kill him".

Half ass'd, lame, stupid, pointless, a waste of time, the fucking cover fell off, and the Superman toy sucks balls. I might as well have just bought Doomsday by himself.

Back to Moon Knight...

This volume features up to issue #30. There's 38 issues in all so I had to buy 31-38 off Ebay. I still haven't gotten a hold of issue #35 yet. It'll be awhile before I get there though so no worries.

# 11 - To Catch a Killer - Alright so this ones not too bad, except the villain looks like Mr. T. That and his name is Cajun Creed...ugh. Anyways it's about Frenchie's X lover who abandoned him randomly one day. She goes to Steven Grant's Mansion to drop off a package and tells him to give it to Marc Spector who then is supposed to give it to Frenchie. She realizes quickly that Steven is Marc and that Frenchie lives with him. Shows how weak Marc's identities are. Anyways Frenchie and her have a heart to heart. The whole thing baffles me because Frenchie is gay in the new series and tells Marc he only stayed with him all those years out of love for him. Pretty odd he was gay the whole time but loved a woman so deeply, maybe they decided to re-write that as well.

Anyways Mr.T, I mean Cajun Creed kills her and Frenchie and Moon Knight go to New Orleans to catch him. He does and it turns out she was an agent for the government who infiltrated Creed's operation and took a bunch of his drug money. So he hunted her down and killed her. Story was pretty thin but it wasn't that bad, other then how lame the villain was.

# 12 - The Nightmare of Morpheus - The first villain I consider to be super natural, despite him really just being a failed operation. This villain is a guy who got treated for something, I forgot what, and the end result was his inability to sleep. It drives him insane and turns him into a monster. His lack of sleep manifests itself into a psychical form and he uses it as energy to kill people and destroy stuff. The longer he stays awake the more powerful he gets. Like a vampire he recharges during the day light and stalks at night. They never explained why he's deformed but whatever he looks cool. Anyways I enjoyed this story and this character I hope there's more issues with him in it.

# 13 - The Cream of the Jest - Holy shit is this issue lame. It ranks a 99 on the suck-o-meter. One of Daredevil's enemies gets out of jail at the same time some nobody crook Moon Knight put away. So of course they just happened to be cell mates, and just happened to want to team up. So This Jester guy dresses up like a retarded looking clown and has evil toys he makes, like robots with exploding air planes that come out of them I'm not even making this shit up.

He's seen here with the most unoriginal assembly of villains ever.

Mr. Hyde, Cobra, and JESTER WOOOO THE TRIO OF DOOM! Beware...
And for good measure a better body shot

Yeah he sure looks cool. So check out his menacing powers. Aside from being able to create evil toys he's a bad stage actor, skilled gymnast, and swordsman. He spouts off corny lines of dialogue and like a Shakespeare villain he announces everything before he does it.

Enough about him, the story is balls, Daredevil is a stupid character, he's blind yet he can see. What is he a fucking bat? Moon Knight kicked his ass proper like he should so at least they got that right.

Alright that's all for now. Next time I do a comics review I'll hit the next few issues of Moon Knight, it might be awhile though. I read the first few pages of the next issues. The villain in it is named, and I'm not making this shit up, Stained Glass Scarlet...

Moon Knight Reviews Part 2

2009-06-11T14:38:00.001-07:00

Recharged, refreshed, and ready continue. We left off with issues #1 which I said wasn't horrible but wasn't good either. The stories boarder being decent and being ass from this point on. The main problem is the writing, characters spout off stupid lines of dialogue that either state the complete obvious or make them look retarded.

# 2 - The Slasher - Sounds interesting at first, it's about a killer who murders hobos and it turns into a mystery. It's fun for awhile but the bad writing really gets to me. It's like they had these great ideas and couldn't figure out how to do them. Anyways in this issue he randomly decides to tell everyone he's Moon Knight. Know how most heroes try to avoid that? Well not Moon Knight, fuck no he tells everyone.

# 3 - Midnight Means Murder - Another cool cover with a stupid story. It's about an art collector who steals shit for cheap thrills. It also takes like 5 seconds to figure out who he really is. Then he gets shot with rubber bullets by Moon Knight's dumb girlfriend and falls into a river. Gee he's not coming back.

Speaking of his girlfriend let me touch on her for a second. Her names Marlene and guess what? Marc Spector*Moon Knight* was the reason her father was murdered. He was apart of a raid on an archeological dig for ancient Egyptian artifacts. Bushman and Marc's crew took everyone hostage and stole all their stuff. So Marlene's dad puts a gun to Bushman's head and Marc stops him. Then Bushman rips the guys jugular out with his teeth. So after seeing that you'd imagine Marlene might not like Marc very much. She acts like she's pissed off at him for like 5 minutes and then when Bushman dumps him in the desert and leaves him for dead after Marc disobeys him she feels bad for him. Then she becomes his girlfriend and always acts like she's horny for him all the time. A lot of sense that makes.

# 4 - A Committee of 5 - A bunch of assassins go after Moon Knight. He pissed off the Committee by jacking their money during the werewolf issue. They explain in this issue that Frenchie, Moon Knight's partner, is a member and he talked them into hiring Marc Spector for the job. He pretended he came up with the Moon Knight costume to trick them and that the whole thing was really just a big sting operation. Anyways the assassins suck and end up killing each other like morons. Also let me make a quick note that they love to make him look like he's in more peril then he really is on these covers.

# 5 - Ghost Story - Ghosts my ass. This is about some crazy bank robbers who end up getting double crossed by one of their mates. They chase him to his parents old house and end up getting fucked with by the guys Mom. There's no ghosts in it at all despite the cool cover. It turns out to be a skeleton in a chair with a shotgun attached to a string that fires when you open a door, original...

# 6 - White Angels - Okay let me make a simple request for a moment here. For the love of god make a cover that reflects what happens in the story, it's not fucking hard. They knew however if they did that no one would buy the issue because nothing interesting happens at all. The cover has a Skeleton hand, that's cool, Moon Knight getting his ass poked by a voodoo needle, and fire. There's none of that, not even fire. It's just a story about this asshole rich white guy who uses voodoo myths to scare a bunch of black people into helping him traffic heroine. It's funny they added these black kids into it as sidekicks so it doesn't appear racist. It also marks my final straw with characters need to announce everything they do as their doing it. I can see your reaching for your radio you don't need to say it out loud you moron.

# 7 - The Moon Kings - This was a two part story I actually liked, what a surprise. It's about these guys who poison the water supply in Chicago and the drug convinces everyone their on the moon. That's not all however, it also makes them see everyone around them as demons, called the Moon Kings I guess. Anyways the ring leader dresses up like a werewolf and convinces everyone that they're werewolves too. Then in the mean time he makes ransom demands. Moon Knight ends up getting poisoned and almost run over by a train.

# 8 - Night of the Wolves - Here's another cool cover that makes the story seem like it contains more then it really does. Anyways in the second part Frenchie has had the water and his girlfriend. Both of them go ape shit. Marlene especially who gets tried of Moon Knights four personalities and wants to kill him. Honestly it surprises me the plan worked so well, I guess no one drinks bottled water in Chicago. Anyways Moon Knight gets attacked by Marlene and after dealing with her he takes out the ring leader in like 4 seconds cause the guy was a pussy. The story hardly does the cover justice, made it look like he goes nuts or something.

# 9 - Vengeance in Reprise - I both like and dislike this story. The parts of the story that play on Moon Knight losing it after trying to keep himself going with multiple personalities is cool but the Midnight Man returning part was retarded and very Saturday morning. Bushman is in it too for like a second and he just goes "ha ha ha you'll never catch me Moon Knight" and runs off after springing a trap. But back to the part of the story I care about Moon Knight has four personalities.

Marc Spector, a mercenary for hire and who he was before Moon Knight, Steven Grant, a millionaire identity he uses to get himself into high brow places and to show why he has money, Jake Lockey, a cabbie who he dresses up as to get street info, and Moon Knight, which we can guess what he does. The issue I've always had with this is everyone calls him what they want to and he yells at them "Rawr I'm Jake Lockey now don't call me Steven". Like really does it matter you ass? And then he says all 3 live at the same address. Gee no one who knew Marc Spector before this is gonna figure out he's Steven Grant by looking at him. Also no ones gonna piece together that three guys who look a lot alike are all seen leaving the mansion separately and not together. Their also never seen together. There's actually a part in a later issue where he puts on a fake mustache and compliments himself on how much better his new disguise is, what a douche. I guess since he throws his secret identity around like it's nothing he doesn't need to worry.

Anyways back to the rest of the issue. Midnight Man steals Moon Knight's Khonshu statue and breaks it in front of him. This makes Moon Knight go nuts cause he thinks all his power lies in the statue, which makes no sense being as how he knew it was from the werewolf bite. Anyways it turns out the Midnight Man got deformed cause like a dip shit he stuck his face under a pipe leaking out toxic crap and now his face looks all saggy. So long story short it turns out Bushman hired Midnight Man to lure Moon Knight to a sewer chamber and then, here comes the plot twist, he betrays Midnight Man floods the chamber and leaves them all to die. Wow gripping.

# 10 - Too Many Midnights - This is the last issue in the book, and the last one I'm gonna do for now. It starts where the last one left off. Long story short, he escapes the chamber that's being flooded with water and goes crazy cause the statue was broken. He lives on the street for awhile, in his costume with no mask mind you, until some of his friends find him. Then he becomes mentally sane again after Marlene shows him a statue. She tells him it's the real one and the one the Midnight Man stole was made out of plaster. Which makes a lot of sense cause there's no way that asshole could have lifted that out of the mansion by himself. Then he asks her if she had the copy made after the real one was broken. That's really a stupid question cause that'd be pretty hard without any pictures of it or the real thing there as a scale reference. I might add though that he ran around with the head of the statue talking to it while he was crazy he didn't notice then it was a fake? What a retard.

Alright that's all for now, I pray they get better.

Fear the Fist of Khonshu

2009-06-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

So I have a guilty pleasure, comic books. I've been collecting them since I was a kid but it wasn't until recently that I found myself enjoying reading them. I know that sounds odd but all I cared about was how cool they looked as a kid. As I got older I didn't collect anything except Ninja Turtles. Eventually I collected every issue and have read most of them. I needed to try something else.

I decided Batman was a great place to start. So I grabbed a few Batman trades and went to town. After several of those I thought I might switch series up a bit. I remembered I always liked Moon Knight so I got a trade of his newest series. I read through the first book and half the second one. It took place in the present and made references to stuff that happened in the previous series. So I decided to pick up this little book to clear up my questions.

As the cover states it contains Moon Knight issues #1-10 and all of his appearances before he had his own series. Some of them were in Hulk magazine and the others were randomly throughout other characters comics. It's a massive book and it took me longer to read it then any of the trades thus far. It's also all in black and white which can get to someones eyes after awhile.

I just finished the book recently and I thought I'd write a little review on it. It's been awhile since I read the earlier parts of the book but I remember it well enough. I'm gonna do a break down of each issue and my thoughts on it.

Werewolf by Night #32-33 - This is the first comic he's ever appeared in. It features him as a villain at first and then later he redeems himself. This story is okay but since I had no interest in the Werewolf or any of his friends I found myself skimming till I got to the parts about Moon Knight. I also thought The Committee were lame villains.

Marvel Spotlight #28-29 - Here Moon Knight fights a guy named Conquer Lord. He gets all his dialogue from the book "What to Say if Your Evil". He's really lame and I found this story to be pretty stupid.

Spectacular Spider-Man #22-23 - I forgot what happened in these issues. I think Spider-man acts like a twat and they fight some lame dude named Cyclone if I remember correctly.

Marvel Two-In-One #52 - Here he teams up with The Thing. They fight some dude named Crossfire. He's pretty lame, apparently someone Moon Knight knew before he was MK. Honestly in all these issues Moon Knight is pretty one dimensional. He has no depth to him he just flies around in a helicopter and acts like a rip off of Batman. We get to see his cross identities a bit which is what helped me like his character but he wasn't fully developed yet. Also may I add The Thing must be retarded. He rides in a cab driven by Moon Knight's cabbie identity Jake Loceky all the way to the warehouse the bad guy is in. Moon Knight shows up inside and they beat the bad guy. Then he goes outside and Jake just happens to be there waiting for him. Hmmm he couldn't possibly be Moon Knight no way, all cabbies like to sit outside warehouses in bad parts of town for several hours, yes hours they get knocked out at one point.

Hulk Magazine #11-15, 17-18, and 20 - Here is where Moon Knight started to get good. It took some patience on my part to get this far but I did. The first story was a mystery that wasn't to bad. My main issue is it lasted way too long. However the second arc is where it really shined. The artwork got gritty and the story was just great. It profiled a serial killer who was obsessed with murdering nurses. It got inside the killers head and the plot twist is good, even if predictable. It explains more about Moon Knight's past. That was the kind of Moon Knight story I had been looking forward to.

Marvel Preview #21 - This one was about guys who have neural emitters in their brains that causes them to go psycho and their strength to increase. It's alright but too long and boring.

#1 - The origin is explained. Not a bad story. Bushman is a wicked villain but he gets captured a little too easily. The Khonshu aspect is neat but my problem lies in that they changed his origin later. In this story he is powerful according to the phases of the moon because he got bit by the werewolf in the first issue he's in. Later they changed it to when he dies he's brought back by Khonshu and gets his moon powers from that. They tried to keep the super natural elements, besides the werewolf, out of Moon Knight. It's not until many issues into his series that they even scrap the surface of it.

Alright I'll do the rest later that's enough for now.

Winning

2009-06-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

Have you ever shut someone up? Ever shut someone up whose super nit picky? Well today I accomplished that. I turned in my final project early for extra credit in motion graphics. Now while I didn't entirely shut the teacher up I watched him for but even a few moments try to think of something to say about it, but only 3 things came out. Two were fixes I made in less then a few minutes. The other is the lack of music, which I thought was an issue myself.

He obviously didn't grasp the humor behind it, I mean yeah he laughed, but I don' think he really got it. Every question he asked I had a smart ass literal answer to. One was "So he can fly?" I said "Yeah he shoots laser beams too just like the song says."

I'm almost done with it. In the event I can get music to actually work you can see a version like that, but if not then you will see what I have. I think it's pretty close to perfect.

Transcending

2009-06-08T20:12:00.000-07:00

The new computer is up and running. It's pretty fast. It took awhile to get used to Vista, it's probably the worst OS of all time. Transferring and installing new files was difficult but after I did it all and got it working it started to kick ass. I was able run After Effects, Premiere, and Photoshop all at the same time with enough RAM left over to run Firefox and Windows media player with no slow down what so ever. So I haven't maxed it out yet.

All those adobe programs can use 4 GIGs of RAM, except Photoshop I have CS3 which I believe can only handle 2. After Effects can render a complex 30 second comp in a minute or less, my old computer couldn't. I can also play most effects in real time or close to it. I couldn't do that before either. It's pretty slick.

I installed a DVD burner drive in it as well. The tool-less system is genius. It was pretty easy to install once I figure it out.

All in all I'm happy. I guess ask me how I feel about it after I've spent more time with it but for the time being I couldn't be more satisfied.

More updates will come soon. I spent all day yesterday working on this computer and all this morning finishing off my intro for Motion Graphics. Can't wait to show you all, it's awesome.

Update Or Lack There Of

2009-06-06T05:19:00.000-07:00

When I started this I wanted to do a blog everyday. That however isn't happening because I've been very busy. The thing I'm working on is so awesome I can't wait to show everyone. I'll be keeping it under wraps. I spent the whole of today fine tuning what I have worked on and it's looking great.

I'll give you one hint to what it will be about the rest can be a surprise. It in some way shape or form involves Dolphins.

Oh and like I promised...Bananas...
Banannas

Stop Motion Maddness

2009-06-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

Back a long while ago I thought it'd be fun to do a stop motion film. It was short and Robbie and me made it with Star Wars action figures I had laying around. We took around 250 pictures I believe it was all together. It wasn't hard to construct just time consuming getting all the frames. During the dance scene I moved everyone and Robbie focused on making Boss Nass break dance haha

A little later we decided to try it with Legos. So while at Robbie's house we pulled out all his Legos and went to town. I stuck a octopus Lego on a guys head and called him Cthulhu. From there our movie was born. It made no sense but it was the best Lego shark attack ever.

Lastly a friend of ours came over, Tony, and wanted to try making a video in stop motion. We used Spider-man and Star Wars figures. It makes no sense but whatever it was more practice then anything. Nothing we made made a lot of sense anyways.
Spider Warz

Next time I'll post the Banana video.

The Lament of Cross Program Editing

2009-06-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you something right here right now, Final Cut is NOT industry standard. This common misconception has caused me numerous hours of pain and turmoil. I prefer Adobe Premiere but it isn't industry standard either. However it is used on a number of TV programs, mainly BBC. However Premiere doesn't parade around that it's industry standard and isn't being force fed to me.

FCP however is. Here's a list of actual movies that were edited in FCP.
* The Rules of Attraction (2002)
* Full Frontal (2002)
* The Ring (2002)
* Cold Mountain (2003)
* Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
* Open Water (film) (2003)
* Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
* The Ladykillers (2004)
* Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
* Super Size Me (2004)
* Corpse Bride (2005)
* Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (2005)
* Happy Endings (2005)
* Ellie Parker (2005)
* Jarhead (2005)
* Little Manhattan (2005)
* Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
* The Ring Two (2005)
* 300 (film) (2006)
* Black Snake Moan (2006)
* Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
* Happy Feet (2006)
* Zodiac (2007)
* The Simpsons Movie (2007)
* No Country for Old Men (2007)
* Reign Over Me (2007)
* Youth Without Youth (2007)
* Balls of Fury (2007)
* "The Tracey Fragments" (2008)
* "Traitor" (2008)
* Burn After Reading (2008)
* The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
* The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
* Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
* Alien Raiders (2009)

Not that many, and anything not on this list you can assume was edited before editing software or was done on AVID. The only reason people like it so much is because Walter Murch, to most the undisputed god of editing, endorses it. All it is, is simply AVID. A much better program formatted for easier use by Mac users. It's the same interface Apple just ripped it off.

So why did I bring this up? Well we have a music video project to do and long story short our partner doesn't use Premiere. So we have to make him a Final Cut file. Well no problem we've done it before. Not so easy this time.

To make a Premiere file work in Final Cut you must make something called an EDL. This is a text document that details where cuts are in a timeline. This save file had 16 video tracks so we had to make 16 EDLs. Well the new Premiere, CS4, doesn't make EDLs that show the names of the files in the timeline. This means that if anyone wanted to reconnect media in a different program they couldn't because the names not there as a reference. We had to edit in CS4 because Pro 2, which is what I had on my PC at the time, can't interpret HD footage, it's too old. So this was quite a pickle.

After hours of work Daniel came into my room trying out a few ideas. Nothing worked. After searching myself for awhile I discovered a file type called AAF. It's like an EDL only 1000 times better as it saves the whole timeline in one file. So I saved our CS4 timeline as an AAF, opened it in Premiere Pro 2, and converted all the video tracks to EDLs. Then Daniel constructed the timeline in Final Cut. We tried to open the AAF in Final Cut but it wouldn't work.

It was a stressful process but it's done. Troubleshooting is such a pain in the ass.

Fun With Audio

2009-06-01T11:45:00.001-07:00

For my first audio class we had an assignment where we erased the audio from a movie trailer and re-did it. I did Robocop and basically made it about Robocop being a dance robot who wants to enter the Detroit dance off competition. Someone finds out and orders him to be killed so they can win instead. It was pretty fun to do and it didn't take me very long, a few hours tops. The teacher liked it so much he showed it twice, only one he did that with.

Being Critical

2009-05-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago I thought it would be fun, and funny, to try doing my own review series. I only ever did one episode though. I reviewed this horrible anime I had on DVD. I owned a lot of bad DVDs at the time and I thought I would review them before I got rid of them. I only had time to do this one and now that I live with my girlfriend it's hard to kick her out of the room just to do it or find time when she isn't home. I shot this with a digital camera. I have a DVX100B now so if I ever do decide to do more they will be higher quality.

The intro is beyond ridiculous. I just basically took as many over the top scenes I could think of at the time, about 5 AM, and put them in there. The song I got from a friend and I found it very fitting.

This angered some anime fans, and I don't blame them I basically say anime is garbage, but it's all in good fun. I don't really hate all anime, just most of it.

Part 1

Part 2

Mise En...Aw Fuck It

2009-05-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

So for an entire quarter Daniel and myself had the words Mise En Scene rammed down our throats. It got extremely annoying that people didn't grasp the concept. It's the simplest thing, it's literary everything you see and hear. It's what the director lets you and wants you to see. Any professional film has it, even student work does usually even if it's by accident.

So we had a project to do with Mise En Scene. We had to make a 90 second opening scene with no dialogue. Most people look like they spent 5 minutes on theirs, and maybe mines not much better but the only complaint I had on mine was there was a light in the shot. However I wanted the light there. The teacher also complained that I made it full screen and said adding bars would fix the light in the shot, the light that's in the middle of the frame that I put there. So here's mine, Assassin.

And with that we have my partner in crime's. Daniel got the same amount of stupid complaints. The main one was that his character had a door stop behind his head and the stoners in our class thought a door was gonna open and hit the guy in the face. I'm sorry but meth addicts don't only smoke in convenient places, they do it where ever they can. Also Daniel's was the only one that had a proper use of drugs in it. Everyone else has some seriously warped views on what a drug addict looks and acts like.

Motion Graphics

2009-05-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm being forced to take this motion graphics class as a part of my course matrix. I'm a film student so this is a bit off for me. I guess it can come in handy for title sequences and stuff. Anyways one my assignments was to make a 30 second ad for a snack food. It could be anything as long as it was snack food. I chose to make "I Can't Believe it's Not Kitten Biscuits" a fake food for Robots that like to eat kittens but can't because it's illegal.

The End of a Titan

2009-05-25T23:15:00.001-07:00

So in 2006 when I graduated from High school as a special combo birthday graduation present my family got me a computer. It was a super editing machine called a Dell XPS 600.
It was a great computer. It lasted me only three years though sadly, almost to the day. Last week my computer decided to randomly stop booting to Windows. I tried everything I know and after hours of trying work I turned to my Father for help. He worked on it for an entire day and the man whose been doing IT for many many years now couldn't even solve the problem. After almost a day of working on it however my Dad managed to get Windows to work. However it only worked alone with no other drives attached to the computer, unless external. I found out my Terabyte drive is fried as well on top of it.

So stuck with a computer that can't do what I need in terms of video editing anymore and a dead drive I had to make a decision. I bought a new computer. Picking a company to go with was difficult, I had to pick a PC that could handle what I needed, basically a computer with a fast processor and lots of RAM. I went with a gaming PC because games now a days require more RAM then video editing programs.

So I got this sucker, an Alienware Area-51 750i One of the coolest features I think is it has a tooless system, meaning no screws. That means when I bust it open I don't have to worry about stripping or loseing any screws. It also means less wires which allows for better air flow. Check out the specs I got on this baby.
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz 12MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Alienware P2 Chassis: Alienware® P2 Chassis with AlienIce™ 3.0 Video Cooling - Space Black
AlienFX®: Alienware® Standard System Lighting - Plasma Purple
Alienware P2 Chassis Upgrades: Alienware® Approved Liquid Cooling
Power Supply: Alienware® 750 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 250 -Superclocked Edition - SLI Enabled
Memory: 8GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 x 2048MB
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved NVIDIA® nForce 750i SLI Motherboard
Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit Edition) with Service Pack 1
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 250GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200RPM 16MB Cache
Optical Drives : Single Drive Configuration - 20X Dual-Layer Burner (DVD±RW)
Enthusiast Essentials: Single High Performance Gigabit Ethernet Ports
Sound Card: High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio
Keyboard: Standard Keyboard - Standard Keyboard
Mouse: Standard Mouse - Standard Optical 3-Button Mouse with Scroll Wheel
Warranty: 3-Year AlienCare Onsite Service and 24/7 Toll-Free Phone Support

I was going to pay for this out of pocket but my Dad decided to ask my family to pitch in and buy it for me as a birthday present. He said 21 is a special benchmark. It's really great they're doing that for me.

It'll be built by June 1st and has a 3-5 day shipping on it so I'll have it in 2 weeks I think. Can't wait.

Let's Get Started

2009-05-21T08:06:00.000-07:00

Alright folks so I have no clue if anyone is gonna read this, or care what I have to say, but I figured what the hell. So here's my blog. I'll be posting videos I've done and all that such jazz. So to start I figured how about a video? We all like a little visual stimulation now and again don't we?

So the first video I'll be showing is my final project for my Intermediate Editing class. It's called "Turtle Fan" and it pokes fun at extreme fans of any base really. I just picked turtles because I'm a big turtle nerd myself and I had the background.