The Good, the Bad, and the Chipmunks
Oct. 22nd, 2006 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talkingsoupYay for breaks. Boo for being panicky for two days of the break.
It hasn't even technically been a panic attack (thank god), but two days of the haze--what I call that weird feeling of pre-panic attack-yness--is no fun either. Not that it particularly matters, because I know well enough how to deal with it, and there's always the Klonapin for when things get bad. Pretty much the only problem is that--well, aside from it just not feeling good--is that it kind of fucks up your ability to focus and your sleep patterns. So I haven't really been able to write all break.
It's better tonight (because the Red Eyed Monster is over the hill and falling), and in any case, I know why it's happening, happens every month. I'm glad there was only one panic attack (Friday night) and that it wasn't a Grand Sweeping one (the kind that attack a weak point and fuck you up for months on end) or even necessarily bad. I only took the Klonapin because I wanted to sleep.
But enough about that. It doesn't matter. It's just the way things are.
On Thursday we went hiking. There was some debate over it, as we didn't know where we were going at first, and Julie really wanted to sleep in (which she deserved, considering the hell of last week). But in any case, we ended up leaving at about 10:30ish for the Six Mile Creek trail.
We got off the main trail pretty quick. I kept spotting things that looked like trails, and I'm such a freaking explorer. I think I worried the others since I kept going up to cliffs to see what was there. So we wove and wended through the trees, sometimes on a trail, sometimes on only a hint of a trail, sometimes on nothing at all, until eventually yes we got back to the "main" trail and followed it all the way to the reservoir.
Which was awesome. A waterfall, sheer rock cliffs, afternoon "I'm thinking about raining" light. It was lovely. Many pictures were taken. We wandered along the waters edge, eating lunch, checking things out for awhile. We saw a beaver damn and a great blue heron that took off when we got too close. About then we realized we weren't really on a trail anymore and went back to the waterfall. There we saw a chipmunk in the water, trying to swim across the reservoir. I didn't know chipmunks could swim. I mean--chipmunks, man. They're furry, adorable little rodents. This one swam all the way across the reservoir, while we cheered it on. It even made it, too, and climbed upt he rock wall and disappeared.
Then we took a detour through the woods, along the creek past the waterfall, and ended up by the creek itself where I found the rocks were green and slippery and there was a random firepit that Kate had been hoping was pagan altar (sorry, Kate, our altars are much prettier).
Julie found a trail that went up the side of a kind of cliff, that turned out halfway up to be only pretending to be a trail (a common theme that day) so we went back down, went back to the waterfall and started on back. We headed back down the "main" trail to the "Main" trail which was packed, the kind people actually walk on, yanno. We followed it to Hudson street and then went down to the Commons for coffee.
After that we caught the bus back up to school, ordered Chinese and set about going through with movie night. First up was Hotel Rwanda which I've seen, and which made me cry again and generally sort of hate myself. After that (since we needed cheering up--Max was the only one in the room who had seen it before, and really...genocide and all that...) we watched What Dreams May Come.
Alright, well. This movie has Robin Williams in it, playing a...well, I don't know what he does for a living. He's a general nice guy, with a wife and kids. Tragedy strikes, and both his kids die in a car accident, then he dies in a car accident three years later, leaving his wife alone. It's all about him going to heaven and finding out what's there.
Let me just say that the concept of Heaven and Hell is pretty fugging awesome. Right up there with Dogma for a fresh interpretation of certain religious things. Pretty much, you make your own heaven. The main character, Chris, loved paintings, so his heaven turned out to be entirely made of paint. The more he gets the hang of things, the easier it gets to manipulate his heaven, and eventually the paint becomes real. He ends up making this incredible landscape that was going to be his and his wife's dream world, along with their dream house.
He's taken through all of this by a man who claims to have been his former mentor (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.). In the meantime, his wife, all alone back on Earth, is falling deeper into a depression. She's a painter, and at one point she paints a tree with purple leaves, believing that Chris will be able to see it. Chris sees the purple tree in his Heaven one day, and his guide tells him that his wife is communicating with him through the painting, because the two are soulmates.
Chris has a really hard time letting go of the world and his wife, so then he meets up with this Asian woman who takes him to her own personal heaven, full of people flying and a city on the water. She tells him that everyone actually works in heaven, has a job--like getting lost souls to heaven, that sort of thing. He learns a whole bunch of things.
Then his wife kills herself. After that it's a journey into hell to try and save her. Very Dante-esque. With a limited amount of fire and brimstone, actually.
And the ending is very nice.
I'm not...entirely sure what the movie was about. It might have been about love conquering all, or about heaven, or about...philosophy? I'm not sure. The visuals in the movie were stunning. As Kate said afterword, the movie sucks without color. When Chris lands in his paint-world it's like *omgcolormeltdie* The storyline with him and his wife is very cute, too.
Not much character development, and like I said, I'm not sure about the plot, but it's okay. The movie is lovely overall.
Score: 7 out of 10
The next two days were cold and wet and they didn't turn on the heaters in the dorms and Molly was gone, so they ended up being "do-nothing" days. We went to Wegmans on Friday and spent an inordinate amount on chocolate, and Julie and I watched inordinate amounts of Naruto and nearly died from very incredible chocolate (chocolate with goji berries...chocolate with ceylon spice and chipotle...oh my holy god) while Kate spent time with Max.
Julie and I went from episode thirty-something to episode eighty over the course of the last two days. In other words, a very good amount of the Chuunin exam.
Well now I'm doubly fuxored. Watching everything over again, anything with Gaara's backstory, anything with Sasuke and Naruto, anything with Asuma-sensei, it's just like--gah, I want to say something but Julie hasn't seen it so I can't.
Worst was when Sasuke's all like, "Naruto, you have to save Sakura" because he was all cursified. And Naruto is like, "I get it...you're only truly strong when you have friends to protect." I'd forgotten about that line. FUCK. I was this close to yelling, "Sasuke you little fuck-head, why the fuck didn't you LISTEN to him, you avenging shit-tard!" I mean, yeah, he ended up not killing Naruto in the end (though the second time around he would have done it without hesitation, FUCKER) but still. Sasuke doesn't get it. Even if Orochimaru takes him over, it's not strength. And it's not like Orochimaru's going to go kill Itachi for him. He won't kill Itachi, just to spite Sasuke.
It's interesting, also, to see just how similar the three of them are (and why the HELL didn't Sasuke take anything away from the confrontation with Gaara, aside from jealousy of Naruto?). Like, little things in their past defined exactly who they became. If Gaara had had family, people he gave a shit about, and then lost them to a power-hungry brother, he would have become like Sasuke. If Iruka had betrayed Naruto, he probably would have become like Gaara. They come from the same starting point and their paths diverged from there.
Well, Sasuke doesn't have a demon in him, but still.
They're like the Trifecta of Loneliness or something.
Anyway. The Chuunin arc is over, which means the Sandaime is dead (*tear*) and Akatsuki is rearing its foul head. You know, I don't care how fucking badass and awesome they are, they killed Asuma and fucked up Sasuke among other things, they MUST DIE.
But at least the Tsunade arc is beginning. Tsunade just doesn't get enough loving. She's the most badass girl in the whole anime. There aren't enough badass girls in this anime. The girls really get the short end of the stick. Sakura was pretty awesome from the get-go, but everyone else other than Temari are either ignored or sad little things. Ino has her moments and I *love* Hinata, but no love for how Tenten is treated, especially in the manga. At least they actually showed her fight in the anime. Even Sakura only got really strong after meeting Tsunade, so really. *feminist fist of doom!*
It's okay, though. I can forgive the misogyny (Shikamaru's one of my favorite characters, after all--heh). Can't have everything. Just goes to show that you don't have to be PC to create something wonderful.
(That might have sounded weird. I'm really not all that big on political correctness anyway.)
Anyway, Sakura killed someone, which is more than the other two can say, though I'm not sure about Sasuke at this point.
God-fucking-DAMN immortal Akatsuki assholes!
Yes, well. Back to homework, I suppose.
It hasn't even technically been a panic attack (thank god), but two days of the haze--what I call that weird feeling of pre-panic attack-yness--is no fun either. Not that it particularly matters, because I know well enough how to deal with it, and there's always the Klonapin for when things get bad. Pretty much the only problem is that--well, aside from it just not feeling good--is that it kind of fucks up your ability to focus and your sleep patterns. So I haven't really been able to write all break.
It's better tonight (because the Red Eyed Monster is over the hill and falling), and in any case, I know why it's happening, happens every month. I'm glad there was only one panic attack (Friday night) and that it wasn't a Grand Sweeping one (the kind that attack a weak point and fuck you up for months on end) or even necessarily bad. I only took the Klonapin because I wanted to sleep.
But enough about that. It doesn't matter. It's just the way things are.
On Thursday we went hiking. There was some debate over it, as we didn't know where we were going at first, and Julie really wanted to sleep in (which she deserved, considering the hell of last week). But in any case, we ended up leaving at about 10:30ish for the Six Mile Creek trail.
We got off the main trail pretty quick. I kept spotting things that looked like trails, and I'm such a freaking explorer. I think I worried the others since I kept going up to cliffs to see what was there. So we wove and wended through the trees, sometimes on a trail, sometimes on only a hint of a trail, sometimes on nothing at all, until eventually yes we got back to the "main" trail and followed it all the way to the reservoir.
Which was awesome. A waterfall, sheer rock cliffs, afternoon "I'm thinking about raining" light. It was lovely. Many pictures were taken. We wandered along the waters edge, eating lunch, checking things out for awhile. We saw a beaver damn and a great blue heron that took off when we got too close. About then we realized we weren't really on a trail anymore and went back to the waterfall. There we saw a chipmunk in the water, trying to swim across the reservoir. I didn't know chipmunks could swim. I mean--chipmunks, man. They're furry, adorable little rodents. This one swam all the way across the reservoir, while we cheered it on. It even made it, too, and climbed upt he rock wall and disappeared.
Then we took a detour through the woods, along the creek past the waterfall, and ended up by the creek itself where I found the rocks were green and slippery and there was a random firepit that Kate had been hoping was pagan altar (sorry, Kate, our altars are much prettier).
Julie found a trail that went up the side of a kind of cliff, that turned out halfway up to be only pretending to be a trail (a common theme that day) so we went back down, went back to the waterfall and started on back. We headed back down the "main" trail to the "Main" trail which was packed, the kind people actually walk on, yanno. We followed it to Hudson street and then went down to the Commons for coffee.
After that we caught the bus back up to school, ordered Chinese and set about going through with movie night. First up was Hotel Rwanda which I've seen, and which made me cry again and generally sort of hate myself. After that (since we needed cheering up--Max was the only one in the room who had seen it before, and really...genocide and all that...) we watched What Dreams May Come.
Alright, well. This movie has Robin Williams in it, playing a...well, I don't know what he does for a living. He's a general nice guy, with a wife and kids. Tragedy strikes, and both his kids die in a car accident, then he dies in a car accident three years later, leaving his wife alone. It's all about him going to heaven and finding out what's there.
Let me just say that the concept of Heaven and Hell is pretty fugging awesome. Right up there with Dogma for a fresh interpretation of certain religious things. Pretty much, you make your own heaven. The main character, Chris, loved paintings, so his heaven turned out to be entirely made of paint. The more he gets the hang of things, the easier it gets to manipulate his heaven, and eventually the paint becomes real. He ends up making this incredible landscape that was going to be his and his wife's dream world, along with their dream house.
He's taken through all of this by a man who claims to have been his former mentor (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.). In the meantime, his wife, all alone back on Earth, is falling deeper into a depression. She's a painter, and at one point she paints a tree with purple leaves, believing that Chris will be able to see it. Chris sees the purple tree in his Heaven one day, and his guide tells him that his wife is communicating with him through the painting, because the two are soulmates.
Chris has a really hard time letting go of the world and his wife, so then he meets up with this Asian woman who takes him to her own personal heaven, full of people flying and a city on the water. She tells him that everyone actually works in heaven, has a job--like getting lost souls to heaven, that sort of thing. He learns a whole bunch of things.
Then his wife kills herself. After that it's a journey into hell to try and save her. Very Dante-esque. With a limited amount of fire and brimstone, actually.
And the ending is very nice.
I'm not...entirely sure what the movie was about. It might have been about love conquering all, or about heaven, or about...philosophy? I'm not sure. The visuals in the movie were stunning. As Kate said afterword, the movie sucks without color. When Chris lands in his paint-world it's like *omgcolormeltdie* The storyline with him and his wife is very cute, too.
Not much character development, and like I said, I'm not sure about the plot, but it's okay. The movie is lovely overall.
Score: 7 out of 10
The next two days were cold and wet and they didn't turn on the heaters in the dorms and Molly was gone, so they ended up being "do-nothing" days. We went to Wegmans on Friday and spent an inordinate amount on chocolate, and Julie and I watched inordinate amounts of Naruto and nearly died from very incredible chocolate (chocolate with goji berries...chocolate with ceylon spice and chipotle...oh my holy god) while Kate spent time with Max.
Julie and I went from episode thirty-something to episode eighty over the course of the last two days. In other words, a very good amount of the Chuunin exam.
Well now I'm doubly fuxored. Watching everything over again, anything with Gaara's backstory, anything with Sasuke and Naruto, anything with Asuma-sensei, it's just like--gah, I want to say something but Julie hasn't seen it so I can't.
Worst was when Sasuke's all like, "Naruto, you have to save Sakura" because he was all cursified. And Naruto is like, "I get it...you're only truly strong when you have friends to protect." I'd forgotten about that line. FUCK. I was this close to yelling, "Sasuke you little fuck-head, why the fuck didn't you LISTEN to him, you avenging shit-tard!" I mean, yeah, he ended up not killing Naruto in the end (though the second time around he would have done it without hesitation, FUCKER) but still. Sasuke doesn't get it. Even if Orochimaru takes him over, it's not strength. And it's not like Orochimaru's going to go kill Itachi for him. He won't kill Itachi, just to spite Sasuke.
It's interesting, also, to see just how similar the three of them are (and why the HELL didn't Sasuke take anything away from the confrontation with Gaara, aside from jealousy of Naruto?). Like, little things in their past defined exactly who they became. If Gaara had had family, people he gave a shit about, and then lost them to a power-hungry brother, he would have become like Sasuke. If Iruka had betrayed Naruto, he probably would have become like Gaara. They come from the same starting point and their paths diverged from there.
Well, Sasuke doesn't have a demon in him, but still.
They're like the Trifecta of Loneliness or something.
Anyway. The Chuunin arc is over, which means the Sandaime is dead (*tear*) and Akatsuki is rearing its foul head. You know, I don't care how fucking badass and awesome they are, they killed Asuma and fucked up Sasuke among other things, they MUST DIE.
But at least the Tsunade arc is beginning. Tsunade just doesn't get enough loving. She's the most badass girl in the whole anime. There aren't enough badass girls in this anime. The girls really get the short end of the stick. Sakura was pretty awesome from the get-go, but everyone else other than Temari are either ignored or sad little things. Ino has her moments and I *love* Hinata, but no love for how Tenten is treated, especially in the manga. At least they actually showed her fight in the anime. Even Sakura only got really strong after meeting Tsunade, so really. *feminist fist of doom!*
It's okay, though. I can forgive the misogyny (Shikamaru's one of my favorite characters, after all--heh). Can't have everything. Just goes to show that you don't have to be PC to create something wonderful.
(That might have sounded weird. I'm really not all that big on political correctness anyway.)
Anyway, Sakura killed someone, which is more than the other two can say, though I'm not sure about Sasuke at this point.
God-fucking-DAMN immortal Akatsuki assholes!
Yes, well. Back to homework, I suppose.
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-23 03:31 am (UTC)Sounds like an Emo-Rock Trio.
I'm willing to bet that Orochimaru would kill Itachi, mostly because he's clearly out to stop Akatsuki and would have to kill Itachi anyway. That is, if Sasuke even lets Orochimaru take over his body. It's possible he's just using the obedience thing as a front and intends to kill Orochimaru as a final test of his ability before he takes on Itachi or something. He seems to have very little patience for Orochimaru.
"Sakura was pretty awesome from the get-go"
Uhh... Are we talking about the same Sakura here? Her first moment of coolness wasn't until the Forest of Death where she took a kunai to her arm to stab that Sound-nin, and even then she promptly ruined it by just BITING THE GUY. Ugh. She doesn't start kicking ass until the 3-year jump.
Temari has always kicked ass. Sure she got her ass handed to her by Sasuke and kind of by Shikamaru, but she also saved Shikamaru's ass later and buried an elite Sound-nin in logs. She also took down Tenten with no difficulty whatsoever.
Granted, the girls don't really have as much awesomeness as the guys, but they're still pretty cool (except for Ino and Tenten... they suck).
no subject
Date: 2006-10-23 04:01 am (UTC)Haha, actually you're right. She didn't start being awesome until the Forest of Death, but I suppose what I meant was that she was showing potential pretty early on. She was flat-out useless during the Country of Wave arc, aside from revealing her chakra skills. But I suppose as an influence on Naruto and Sasuke, and as always being the one who had to watch as they fought (and thus feeling useless) she was pretty awesome. It's all kind of suckage to feel useless (especially when you actually are, lol), but she stuck it out and kept trying. Which is why I'm so happy she met Tsunade.
And yeah, Ino and Tenten are lose. The others are pretty awesome.