![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
spooie's journalLog in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more
| You are viewing spooie's journal Log in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more | Explore LJ Culture Entertainment Life Music News & Politics Technology |
LiveJournal for spooie.
|
|||||||||||
| Friday, August 6th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
Reminder: Power Out... Paycheck... Grocery... Stocking... Tired... |
||||
|
|
| Thursday, August 5th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
Things are going a little better at work the passed few days. Talked out some of my concerns with the Manager of the department and the Store Manager. Meanwhile, the Grocery Manager and the 4th Manager (who is actually the 3rd Manager, because our store is too small for an Assistant Manager), approached me about moving over to the Grocery Department. This is GOOD, because that's what I actually wanted to do, and was SUPPOSED to get back before I originally left. If all goes well and as promised, I'd be replacing the current Grocery day clerk in about 2 weeks, and would get better hours too. Working the loads (Mon, Wed, Fri), and sales (Sat) and tags (Sun) for the most part. We shall see how what happens when it is finalized. After work on Tuesday, I stopped up at Circuit City to get the "Sliders: Season 1 and 2" DVD set which just came out. SRP is $89.99, but CC actually beat out Best Buy by 8 bucks at $59.99. Damn you Universal for making your DVDs so freakin' expensive. And, naturally, I have a few problems with the set. Those of you who may not recall the show, it was a shnazzy Science Fiction series from Fox back in the mid-90s. Four people (Underground Scientist, College Professor, Love Interest and Comeback Singer) get stranded in parallel dimensions of our own earth, ever striving to get back to their home dimension and having a series of misadventures along the way. The first two seasons (pilot movie and 21 episodes) were great, as a mixture of science fiction, satire and black comedy. Lots of character driven and poking fun at social commentary episodes. Then Fox bigwigs screwed it up and brought in some moron producers for the 3rd season, who fired two of the main characters, and turned the show into a "movie rip-off of the week" series with the Sliders being hardass gun-toting mercenaries. The series creator eventually left mid-season because the new production just didn't care anymore. After alienating viewers AND canceling the show for the 3rd time, Sci-Fi channel picked it up and attempted to fix a lot of the 3rd season's craptacular mistakes by re-working the origin of the show into something new, and setting it on a new storyline. For their efforts with a much lower budget, they did an extremely good job at bringing back the science fiction and human elements, and actually turned Maggie (who was despised by longtime fans, myself included), into an actual 3-dimensional character. Season 4 was vastly underrated. Then... then came season 5, and Jerry O'Connell (the star) left the show... and only Cleavant Derricks (the singer) remained from the original cast. They started running out of ideas and ways to re-work the show each season, and the series basically fell apart. It started turning into a lame Star Trek wannabe type show, where episodes were hit or miss, and the series *slid* into obscurity with a cliffhanger ending. Scifi made the mistake of canceling the series after they secured the minimum for syndication, assuming ratings would die when O'Connell left, but it remained the top rated show. Unfortunately, they spent their yearly budget on Farscape and First Wave, and acquiring reruns of Outer Limits and Stargate SG-1, that they didn't have enough to pay for another season. And thus, Sliders simply stopped with no resolution, and fans left wondering whatever became of Remy and the others. BUT... Universal saw fit to release the DVDs, and I decided to jump on board and grab 'em. And, I've got to say, I'm a little disappointed. If you haven't seen the actual boxed set, the discs literally FLOAT in mid-air in the package. The reason is that they are placed inside a piece of foam obscured from sight inside (this is to mimic an effect from the episode "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome"). While they certainly look cool in the transparent window, the execution is rather poor. The discs won't get scratched, but the flimsy piece of foam in mine was all scrunched up in the box when I got it. Hell, the back cover isn't even a back cover. It's a little pamphlet with those rubber glue globs sticking to it. You'd expect that for $90 SRP, Universal could have spend at least 70¢ of that on a decent DVD case. If only I had a printer, I'd make out my own Sliders covers and stick them into individual DVD cases. Another thing that bugged me was the pressing order of the episodes. They went with the airing order, instead of the intended order. Meaning continuity gets destroyed again. You have to watch episode 6 (Summer of Love), which ends with them sliding into the "Tidal Wave" world, and THEN go back to episode 5 (Prince of Wails) to watch them escape the world after the ocean floods the city. Stuff like this irks me. Not to mention the "BONUS" features listed on each disc. Of course, only 2 discs have features... commentary on the first, and an interview and a few pictures on the last. If they're going to put a bonus feature on all of the discs, they should at least have an actual FEATURE to watch and not a still-page that tells you to "Insert Discs 1 and 6". But, nonetheless, the episodes, for the most part, look pretty good. I'm up through episode 12 right now. Finishing "Love Gods" as we speak. And I've only noticed three small video/chapter problems so far. But I can live with them. |
||||
|
|
| Saturday, July 31st, 2004 |
|
||||
| Seriously, I do. | ||||
|
|
|
||||
|
Only two weeks at the new job, and I've called in sick. It is 5:39am here, as of writing this. Went to sleep some time around 11pm. Slept for maybe an hour, if I am lucky. Woke up in a sweat and dying from the heat. The air conditioner was on, a mere 4 feet from the bed. My headaces progressed. Sat in bed, tossing and turning for a few hours, just lying there trying to fall back into slumber. Never happened. Nothing. 4am comes, I get up and take some medicine for the headache. My mind becomes scrambled. I feel sick, I feel worthless. All the while, I think about work. Not being able to get to work, how everyone at work will react, how I don't like this job and I worry about this job. But how it is expected from me that I stay at this job and like this job. I don't want people to think I am unreliable. But I have a problem. I have anxiety attacks and insomnia. I can't do anything to help it no matter what I try. Finally gave into my fears of confrontation and called the Night Manager. He didn't seem so happy. But he gets off easy. I'm the one who is going to have to deal with it from everyone tomorrow. This job is not going to work out for me, no matter what I can offer. I am reverting back to my former, isolated, self. Back on Thursday, I went to sleep at 10:30pm. Took a sleeping pill. One of the few remaining left over from my prescription. The one the doctor said he can't refill because he doesn't want to see me get hooked on it. I woke up at 3:00am or so... and never got back to sleep. I notice a pattern forming. |
||||
|
|
| Thursday, July 29th, 2004 |
|
||||
| ...on the Gazelle for 55 minutes today. Apparently burning 309.2 calories and averaging a total of 2.55 miles. Seems I was supposed to start at 15 minutes, but I decided against it. Wrote up my current "Goals" list too. | ||||
|
|
|
||||
|
So I exercised for about 30 minutes on the Gazelle thing. Actually felt some arm strain for the first time, so maybe it's actually doing something to them for once. Now, if I had a scale that actually worked correctly, perhaps I would know what good it is doing. So I must add buying a new scale to the list of stuffies. I went to make some iced-tea, because I think I'm going to give up the bulk of my soda consumption while at him. Anyway, I found an ant crawling around on the floor of the kitchen near the door. It was either 1/2 dead, or roasting in the sun from the sky-light windows. But with my ever present pacifistic nature with bugs, I picked it up with some paper and tossed it outside. Back on Tuesday I took advantage of Best Buy's "2 movies for $20" dealer and picked up 6 different things. Got Equilibrium, The Hulk, The Crow and Superman: The Director's Cut. That was $40. Also picked up boxed sets of Sledge Hammer! and Kung Fu. So far I've watched the Superman movie, the Kung Fu pilot and 6 episodes of Sledge Hammer!, as well as some supplements. My mother's birthday is 2 months from today. Not really sure what I want to do yet. Must think of something big. Something surprising. Something not quite expected of me. Something that will rock the very foundation of the universe as we know it. Something that, 5000 years from now, mankind will reflect on, looking back at what had become the ultimate in birthday celebrations. It is 1:27pm here on the East Coast... I will be reporting to work at the store I like, and the job I do not, in another 17 hours and 33 minutes. Time to make the best of what little time I have left. Perhaps I will read more of the driver's manual. |
||||
|
|
|
||||
| Things I want to do... Exercise More. Lose Weight. Get License. Oh... get Permit to get the License. Write More. Write More stuff that isn't CRAP. Go back to College for some writing classes so I can write more non-crap. Get another job. Stop doing what is "expected" of me. Get my relatives to shut the hell up about me for once... hopefully in a non-violent manner. Get over my depression. Do something Fun for once, where *I* am the happy person. | ||||
|
|
|
||||||
|
Where it is. Where it is going. What it has become. And that I am to blame for it all. I want to say that tomorrow will start a new day, and something different. But knowing myself, I will do nothing. I will never take a stand for what I should. And I will continue on the downward spiral of my life that everyone has come to expect from me. |
||||||
|
|
| Friday, July 23rd, 2004 |
|
||||
|
One of the pleasures I had working on Night Crew for the store previously was randomly popping in one of the orientation videos. And I'll be damned if Orlando Jones isn't a bag clerk in one of them. I'm going to have to get some screencaps on the net someday. Anyway, I snagged four different videos... "Price Chopper: Custom Cut" - 17 minutes, "Price Chopper: Meat Bone in Primal Cuts" - 12 minutes, "Price Chopper: Seafood Salesmanship" 12 minites, And my favorite... "Surebeam: An Introduction to Irradiated Fresh Ground Beef - Retail Training" - Time Unknown. |
||||
|
|
| Monday, July 19th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
That is correct... another pointless commentary on videogames... So a couple weeks ago, I picked up the MegaMan Anniversary Collection for Gamecube. The one MegaMan game... to define them all! ( Read more... ) |
||||
|
|
| Sunday, July 18th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
No? Not really, you say? Well. I'm back... back with a vengeance and a thirst for drinking the blood of the dead... or something like that. Expect an actual update coming. --No, I'm serious this time. Stay tuned. |
||||
|
|
| Monday, May 24th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
Thing #1... My aunt Rita, in her 90s, passed away yesterday morning. I believe it was due to cancer, which she had been fighting for a while and was sick from. Though, even as I am 23 years old, I'm still looked upon as a "kid" in the family and best I figure, some crazy old Italian tradition preents anyone older than me from discussing this sort of thing with myself. ( Read more... ) Thing #2... Chances are that if you are reading this, it has probably been some months and some years perhaps, since TechTV and G4TV merged to create G4TechTV. Well, one of the shows on TechTV was a call in help series titled, of all things, "Call for Help". ( Read more... ) Thing #3... Now, I didn't really want to get into politics here... really I didn't. The reason being is because I've made some choices that came back to haunt me, and I've supported people who let me down, and wouldn't accept some who would later go on to prove me wrong. ( Read more... ) |
||||
|
|
| Wednesday, May 12th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
Okay, I'll be honest. I didn't get a chance to see the Xbox conference. Not yet. So as far as I know, it could have kicked immense booty. Hell, for all I know, Nokia may in fact own all of our souls. But what conferences I *DID* see were those of Sony, via download from someone's website, and Nintendo, via live feed from their site. What did *I* think of the two? Nintendo stole the show. Plain and simple, hands down. ( Read more... ) |
||||
|
|
| Tuesday, April 27th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
Last month, actually... but I just saw the info about it a few minutes ago. From a heroin overdose. Too bad too. IMDB RESUME |
||||
|
|
| Monday, April 26th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
...Today for her "operation". Waiting to see how it turns out. UPDATE : All is apparently well. |
||||
|
|
| Sunday, April 25th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
I watched the new episode of P&T:BS on Showtime the other night, and I must say that I am becoming increasingly let down with the episodes this season. It seems like the first episode started on a high note and slowly crept down to where we are now. And For those unfamiliar, Penn and Teller have an original series on Showtime where they "debunk" popular myths and general propaganda, giving their side as to what the truth really is. Well, usually. The show is quite fun to watch for the most part, whether you agree or disagree with their take on things. Don't get me wrong, I think the show is good and one-of-a-kind, but the episodes are becoming hit or miss... with EXTREME hit, and EXTREME miss. This weekend's episode, with Penn and Teller debunking the truth behind "The War on Drugs", had them discussing the actual war on drugs for about 2 whole minutes. With the exception of perhaps 30 seconds, the episode doesn't even go into detail about different drugs, because all they talk about is marijuana and alcohol. That's IT! Never once do they go into the effects of the war on drugs, or what it is doing. The point of the entire episode revolved around how marijuana can be helpful to people, for medical relief. And I'm sure we can all agree to the benefits of easing people in pain... but saying the War on Drugs is a failure because people can benefit from them medicinally is not. So, to that I ask... what does the War on Drugs have ANYTHING to do with people using marijuana for medical health? Answer: it DOESN'T. I would really hate to see Penn and Teller go the Michael Moore route by shifting the blame to something else, and then using that to get a completely unrelated point across. Penn and Teller ARE masters of Deception, after all. Here's hoping the recycling episode next week will be good. |
||||
|
|
| Saturday, April 24th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." Lucky Numbers: 3, 6, 12, 24, 36, 42. I find it strange that all of those numbers are a multiple of 3, that the first 4 in the sequence are multiples of 2, the 3rd, 4th and 5th are multiples of 12, and that 42 is 36 plus 1 for each number in the sequence. Hmm... |
||||
|
|
| Friday, April 23rd, 2004 |
|
||||
|
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Overrated. I didn't much like the character in the original X-Men movie. I always felt he was too forced. However, I did rather enjoy him in X2. But still, he has been the main focus for both movies and it is about time that certain OTHER characters get a little more screentime. *cough*cYcLoPs*cough* Sure, Rouge shared the spotlight in the first movie, and Jean Grey shared the spotlight in the second, but they were still both about a guy with ginsu knives running around making julienne fries out of the baddies. After "X-Men: Introducing Wolverine" and "X2: X-Men United, with Wolverine"... I'm hoping we won't be stuck with "Wolverine and his Amazing X-Pals!" for the 3rd movie. Here is hoping that the Phoenix Saga and Dark Phoenix Saga pan out, with Cyke and Jean at the core of the story, as it SHOULD be. |
||||
|
|
| Thursday, April 22nd, 2004 |
|
||||
|
For those who are not familiar, Roger Ebert does a bi-weekly "Movie Answer Man" column, where he responds to reader questions. Well, I decided to write this up and send it in... The Christmas before last, I received the Letterbox edition of the "Back to the Future" Trilogy on DVD. Shortly thereafter, it came to my attention that the initial LBX release had a printing error on discs 2 and 3, which stretched out and cut off part of the screen, and Universal offered to replace them. Further inspection lead me to a website, showing what the DVD, Laserdisc and Pan-n-Scan versions looked like side-by-side. And I was shocked to see that the PnS versions of the trilogy actually had twice the actual movie on screen than the LBX version did! When part 3 re-aired on TV, I set up the DVD to switch back and forth so I could compare them, and sure enough, the PnS version was the more "complete" one. The sudden thought that the LBX version I had could be "inferior" took me off-guard, until I heard in a supplement that BTTF was actually made for Full Frame. Well, a few nights ago, I installed a new video player on my Mac that allowed me to cap screenshots off my DVDs. I pulled out my copy of "Return of the Living Dead", a Flip-disc that has both the LBX and PnS versions included. Again, I was surprised to see that the PnS version had more footage on screen than the LBX version, which was apparently cropped directly from it. So then I started checking over other DVDs with both versions included and noticed, too, that many of them feature more footage on screen in the PnS versions than the LBX prints. Now, Isn't the point of releasing Letterbox editions to get the "Full effect" and the filmmakers' visions, as presented in theaters? So why then does it seem many companies are cropping those versions down into Full Frame and then re-cropping into a faux Letterbox? Is there any way to know which versions of DVDs actually have the whole, or "intended", versions on them? I'm a very strict advocate for widescreen prints, but I'm starting to wonder now if some of these Full Frame DVDs I passed up over time would have been the better choice to make. |
||||
|
|
| Wednesday, April 21st, 2004 |
|
||||||
|
Dunno what it is... but after 2 hours of tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep... I got up and immediately felt the sickness. I don't know if it is the acid reflux, from the food I ate shortly before going to bed, or what... but I have literally no energy and the phrase "blow chunks" is coming to mind. Tried to take an acid reflux pill, but I couldn't even swallow it, or the water to drink it... so I had to chop the fill up into 4 pieces and have some peanut butter, the secret pill swallowing ingredient, with it. Either way, my temp is 96.5 degrees... so I shouldn't be dying soon. Must go back to sleep. sleep... sleep... sleep... PS: At least I get to try out the smiley faces. |
||||||
|
|
LiveJournal for spooie.
|
|||||||||||
depressed.
sick.