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[22 Dec 2003|12:26am] |
Hey! I think I'm going to move over to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) redlions! I'll go about adding everyone over there in the next few days!
I'll still probably keep this one up for whatever reason. Hooray!
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[18 Dec 2003|01:46am] |
The short and shorter of it:
I saw Lord of the Rings: Return of the King tonight, and I will talk more about it tomorrow. Don't get too giddy now, reader(s)!
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| Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle |
[07 Dec 2003|01:10am] |
I did the unthinkable and watched this. I'm not really in the mood to do a full-out review, and also I don't think this movie really NEEDS a review to get people to see it/not see it/what have you, so I think that consitutes the "don't do more effort than needed" theory, right?
Probably the saddest or scariest (or both?) thing about this is that I finished the movie and didn't have a disgusting taste in my mouth from how stupid or cheesy it was. Because, well, it was REALLY cheesy, the story sucked, most of the acting was sub-par at best, and the CGI was terrible. I wasn't expecting anything more.
I didn't like the new Bosley. Bernie Mac just didn't cut it for me.
There was a LOT of action and I didn't complain. I know that everything was pretty much awful, but the movie got a bunch of laughs from me -- either because the movie was actually funny or because it was so abysmally bad that one couldn't help but laugh at it.
I enjoyed it a lot, but if you don't see it you aren't missing anything at all. I think those who WANTED to see it have already done so when it was in theatres or they've bought the DVD.
Forgive me for the semi-review.
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[04 Dec 2003|12:37am] |
My fifth grade teacher's funeral is later today.
I don't know if I will attend.
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[01 Dec 2003|11:04pm] |
I'll probably delete this in the near future, but I wanted to see how this new icon turned (transparency-wise anyway).
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| The Italian Job (2003) |
[28 Nov 2003|10:51pm] |
-spoilers herein (very, very minor ones you would know if you've seen the previews/trailer/etc.-
This movie can be summed up into three different categories: before thoughts, during thoughts, and after thoughts. My thoughts on each of these included the following:
Before thoughts: this movie looks freaking awesome!
During thoughts: this movie is freaking awesome!
After thoughts: that movie was freaking awesome!
Yep, folks. I think it's safe to say that this movie is, indeed, freaking awesome. I really wanted to see this movie in theatres, and I should have gone with my instict in thinking that it would be a great movie with a lot of great stunts and acting to boot. I didn't go the first time. And I didn't go upon its rerelease in theatres to surpass the $100 million dollar mark. Stupid me.
Unfortunately I haven't bought it on DVD yet (I would have gotten it mid-October but I guess it wasn't released or something -- I hadn't paid too much attention and since this was when I went on that road trip I figured it wouldn't hurt to check. I ended up getting the Lion King SE DVD, but I digress), so I watched it via the wonderful product known as Pay-Per-View (-shrug-). I might end up picking the movie up sometime soon just so I can see how some of those scenes were done. They were amazing.
Anyway, to get back on track, the first thing I noticed when the movie started and kept on with as the movie progressed was that it was just a crisp, clean, fun, action movie. It's really that simple. The directing was very nice -- there weren't anything in err that I could find (although the story and acting captivated me throughout most of the movie so I hadn't been watching for specifics in it). I have half-stupid complaints, of course, as all movies have one or two if you look hard enough. I didn't really have to look for this one: the previews and trailer give A LOT of the story away, so you aren't exactly surprised when it happens. It bugged me. I got over it. We moved on. I enjoyed the movie further.
Something that wasn't really a nit-pick, yet wasn't exactly a problem with the movie was Edward Norton's character didn't feel very villainous. He seemed like he half-assed it with some of his lines... after watching so many of Norton's movies I've been able to pick out the positives of him in his acting abilities. As the movie went on he fit into the role more and more. It was kind of one of those things that rubbed me the wrong way but fixed itself. The acting was very good, too. A huge surprise was the appearance of Jason Statham -- I must have missed his name on the cast list or something because it came as a shock to see him as the (get this) the "demolition driver" (can't remember if that's what they called him in the movie or not, but he was pretty much the guy driving the getaway cars) -- if you don't get what I mean, he played in The Transporter which I love and bought.
The movie had a mix of loads of feelings: tension, frustration, sadness, happiness, etc. with a nice touch of humor to relieve these negatives. I think through more of the movie there was kind of a light-hearted feeling to the characters. I really enjoyed it.
If you haven't seen this movie, GO SEE IT SOMEWHERE!
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[24 Nov 2003|12:05am] |
Went 007 hunting today. Results are sub-par.
So I don't have a lot of those amazingly popular stores that tend to have EVERYTHING, and thus am forced to go through Wal-Mart and K-Mart to find the box sets, right? Well I head out this morning in hopes of getting volumes 2 and 3 (I don't have 1 yet either, but I'll pick it up somewhere I think -- even though I own 4 out of the 7 movies in there... -shrug-). I go to K-Mart first because they're pretty good at having new releases. No luck. I search around for a half hour to forty-five minutes and find nothing. So I go over to Wal-Mart. They have volumes 1 and 3. I ask the guy there (who, by the way, takes 10 minutes AT LEAST to open the DVD holder... it's not like I was in a hurry or anything, but sheesh) if he had volume 3 hiding anywhere. He replies with, "it hasn't been released yet".
Uh. Ok. So am I going to trust the internet -- my loving, trustful, third-in-line-best-friend source of information -- or the guy who can't open a case?
Yeah. I'll go with the former on this one.
I hate sounding anal about things like this, so I just kind of acted dumbfounded. I wasn't really mad by any means (maybe a little annoyed that he has to act like the all-knowing electronics-section-of-Wal-Mart master and fill me with these ill-thought-out lies, but not mad). I made little comments under my breath ("geez... it's kind of weird that they'd release volume 3 before volume 2, though...") that I don't think he heard in his anticipation to get me out of that specific section of the store.
I just paid, left, and went back to K-Mart with dreams that maybe I overlooked it. I even rang the help button (something I hardly EVER do -- and it's not because of that stupid 'I can do it by myself' mentality; I simply don't like talking to customer service because they aren't really helpful at all at finding things). The lady that came over insisted on asking me a bajillion questions. Two customer service people later and I'm walking out of the store empty-handed yet again.
It wasn't a COMPLETE loss of a day, though. I managed to get the 3rd volume. And when I got home I ordered volume 2 from half.com. I feel awry about ordering from there, though, since it's a first. And if I wanted to experiment I should have done it with something about $80 cheaper.
They didn't have Everything or Nothing, either. I swear South Dakota is becoming more and more anti-007 by the day. Bugger.
I also had the chance to watch both Willard and Hollywood Homicide this weekend. I fell asleep right before Willard started, and was too absorbed in Yahoo! Towers to give my full attention to Hollywood Homicide. Not saying these movies are bad or anything... just that I was tired and on a roll (something that doesn't happen often for me in Towers).
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[17 Nov 2003|11:46pm] |
New icon! Huzzah!
Now to go drown myself in my mass pile of homework once more.
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[10 Nov 2003|11:54pm] |
So tomorrow marks the last day in my four day weekend. And then back to that hellish place called school. I only sound like half of the student population, don't I?
I got my report card on Friday. Don't think I've mentioned that. I got a B in Physics (I really hate my teacher and the only reason that happened was because she didn't teach us for the first month-and-a-half of school). I don't mean to sound like one of those people who aren't happy with their grades because they aren't all A's, because I'm not. I'm content with a B and since I'll be accepted to the school(s) that I'm going to apply for it doesn't really matter. I've already screwed up my GPA enough as it is. I did manage a B- in Calculus, though. Dear God, I thought I was going to slip through the cracks into C-territory there at the end (which I almost did). I'm starting to get lost already at the whatever-chapter-I'm-in-now chapter, so I'll pray for at least a B. An A would be Godlike though. Just to prove that I can do it.
Oh, so about my Physics teacher and her.. um... lack-of-teaching-us (I'm on a roll with the hyphens aren't I?). Basically Physics II is a new class this year; we're the first group of kids to take it and so she wanted to experiment with new things. Understandable. She gives us these CPU labs (huge packets filled with predicting and testing... all having to do with shadows and light). She does NOTHING but hand these out to us and tell us to get into groups and work on them, giving us deadlines at random times. So we do these for a month and a half, when my teacher decides she needs to have surgery on her shoulder. We're all excited because she won't be there for a week and we can slack off. Wrong. The substitute we had... ugh. On the first day, we worked normally... well, I take that back. The foreign exchanged student and I worked on it... or tried, rather, since they were all talking so friggin' loud. The next day we had THREE quizzes. Everybody failed. Now, you have to realise that this isn't just because we're a bunch of idiots who don't care about our grades in that class. The class includes the valedictorian, the saluditorian (awful spelling, shhh), along with the third ranked student in our class and about every other kid in the top ten (or twenty). THEY ALL FAILED. EVERYONE.
I'm getting ahead of myself though. The substitute gives the papers to the teacher to correct at her house. The next day, you can tell that the teacher had given a lot of angsty, lecture-filled speeches to the sub, and the sub obviously went home and rehearsed this until she had it down well enough to act like she knows what she's talking about. The sub was yelling at us... like she has any room to lecture us about anything. I'd like to see her take that test and pass. Or those tests. Yeah. And half of the directions said to "predict". Last I checked predicting could never get you a wrong answer! Bwahaha. Needless to say we had a big fight. This happened around the end of October, so it doesn't really matter now. I just needed something to fill the void of my oh-so-boring life.
Doot doot doot.
Oh, so I have to do this paper on Robin Hood. Four pages in the APA style (after everything you state, you have to say where you got the information, what page, the author, EVERYTHING). Four pages isn't too long (especially with citing everything), so I'm not that worried. The only thing I'm half worried about is organising all my information into neat piles. Oh, my topic is easy, too, so it's a matter of getting up from my indolant ass and reading and writing. Yeah.
I'M SORRY MY LIFE IS SO BORING! I'LL WRITE ABOUT MOVIES MORE WHEN I ACTUALLY SEE SOME NEW ONES!!! I'm pathetic... still haven't seen Matrix Revolutions. Probably the only one in America who hasn't. Can't wait for Return of the King, though. Waiting in line all day.
Yeah, I'm not really looking forward to that part. It's going to be freezing.
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[06 Nov 2003|07:40pm] |
Remember how I said everything seems to go wrong at once? Well, it does. And BOO to that theory.
In National Honor Society we have to sell candy. A bag (or, if you want to be specific about things, two boxes of 30 pieces of candy in each), to buy, costs roughly $45.00. So far I've collected $20.00 or so (maybe a little more), so I'm halfway to my goal of getting enough to get a kid some toys for Christmas. Well, that's not the bad thing. The bad thing is that a lot of my candy was STOLEN. I'm not sure how much as I have yet to count it, but I know that I didn't sell any Snickers Crunchers and they were ALL gone today. Either I'm not observant enough to notice people coming around and just taking these without me noticing, or they're breaking into my locker. Either way I'm going to have to put in the difference when I finish selling it. And that's not counting the (roughly) $10.00 I put in there just making change for people.
And I have SO MUCH HOMEWORK. Earlier this week, my English teacher decides that it's necessary that we have a lot of homework this week. To keep us busy, I guess. First we have this APA paper (if you don't know, an APA paper is.... well, it's Hell in a formal-paper form). My topic: Divergences and Corollaries Between Disney's Robin Hood vs. Howard Pyle's story of Robin Hood. (I just made that up). Just a fancy way of saying "comparing and contrasting the Disney version of Robin Hood to the old literature form". Don't you love how I oversimplify these things for myself?
I have to do my word of the week. My learning log. An essay for these scholarships:
#1: The Frances and Walter Green Scholarship: Essay of 100-150 words covering: a) future educational plans and career goals, b) why you want to be considered for this scholarship.
#2: Kam Leung Wong Memorial Scholarship: Essay (approximately 500 words) covering "The History and Impact of Early Chinese and Wing Tsue in Deadwood". Yep, there's just sources upon sources of information flowing around on that.
I'm not good at these sort of things. But I have to have a rough draft of something done for tomorrow. Probably the first one.
I have to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and explain the significance of the color green and the number three (3) for Wednesday (she switched the due date from tomorrow to Wednesday... thank God). I think I have a general idea of what it is, but clarifying it couldn't hurt.
It brighter news I got an email from my friend in Germany. She was supposed to be here for the rest of the year but something messed up with her passport and they brought her bad. Sigh.
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[02 Nov 2003|03:28am] |
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!
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[31 Oct 2003|11:18pm] |
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
I didn't do anything tonight. I was going to watch 28 Days Later... but it was all rented out so I just figured I'd hang out at home and improvise. Well I did hang out at home, but I didn't do anything improvise-worthy at all. I watched TV and that's about all. I may still watch one of my Indy DVDs that I picked up last Saturday (haven't had the time to watch any of them yet; even the bonus disc).
I did watch some of the TGIF shows on ABC - Hope and Faith (which wasn't so much Halloween related as it was about one of them trying to find a guy... yadda, yadda) and Life with Bonnie. Oh Lord, I'm so glad I caught all of that episode (only caught it about 3/4 of the way through earlier). It was one of the best episodes of the show I've seen to date (and it's a great show anyway, with a very witty sense of humor that I love) - I'm so glad they went all out with the Halloween show -- everyone having a different major character from The Wizard of Oz with the rest of the people on the show being munchkins. Mwahaha. I was looking for something to make it feel at least a little like Halloween, and this helped out a little bit.
Maybe next year I'll dress up.
I'll tell you, though. There's this foreign exchanged student in our school that a friend and I were going to take trick-or-treating since they don't do it where she's from. I decided not to go because I'm a party pooper and I felt like I was intruding a little bit. Since I kind of invited myself and all. That and I didn't really have a costume and I wasn't about to let her go up to the doors by herself not knowing what to do. I had a half idea to wear my Australia hoodie and after they answer their doors just say "trick or treat...mate" in one of my oh-so-horrible, lame Aussie accent. Heheh. I'm eager to hear about how they did. I want stories of her first Trick-or-Treating experience. Because I'm a geek like that.
Anyway, I'll wrap this up by saying... uh... hope your Halloween was more activity-filled than mine!
Addendum [11:32 pm]:
I couldn't resist.
| My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul |
|---|
| aestivate goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as an aussie. | | bittersweet182 gives you 9 purple coconut-flavoured gumdrops. | | dalnya gives you 11 green spearmint-flavoured pieces of chewing gum. | | djtwelve tricks you! You lose 1 piece of candy! | | frenemy gives you 13 light yellow blueberry-flavoured pieces of bubblegum. | | hamsterwheel tricks you! You lose 20 pieces of candy! | | ktkid tricks you! You lose 1 piece of candy! | | microscope gives you 7 teal cinnamon-flavoured gummy bats. | | paddedlily gives you 14 blue cola-flavoured pieces of bubblegum. | | redautumn gives you 12 teal passionfruit-flavoured gummies. | | thevillainkelly gives you 5 tan coconut-flavoured wafers. | | aestivate ends up with 49 pieces of candy. | | Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern. |
Not bad!
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| The Texas Chainsaw Massacre |
[19 Oct 2003|10:06pm] |
Well on Friday night, we had our Homecoming game. Earlier that week I had the (ingenious?) idea of getting a group of people together and watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I figured it would be fun because, hey, the original scared the hell out of me when I saw it. Although I don't remember any details, I do remember enough to know that I'd be hidden down in my chair for the majority of the film. Having no recollection of the details in the original was more of a good thing than a bad, if you believe that. For one, I didn't really have anything to judge the remake on, and almost everything that happened came as a real surprise to me.
If you've been living under a rock since 1974 (if you were even alive), this movie is about a group of kids making their way through Texas to attend a concert in (I think) Mexico. After driving for a few hours, their trip is interrupted by a lone hitchhiker walking down the road. It's explained that she's the only survivor of a mass killing that took the people she was with the night before. When the kids pick her up, they decide to bring her to the nearest town. However, when she kills herself, the group of kids are caught by surprise and rush to get to the nearest town to call the sherriff. Hours later, he comes and the "game" (for lack of better terms, I guess) begins. One by one, the kids disappear (and, thus, killed) by a psychotic, chain-wielding maniac known to us as "Leatherface" for his creation of masks from the skin and faces of others. Gruesome? I think so. The movie then jumps off into the kids struggling to survive the night when they're essentially being played by residents of this small Travis County. I might've spoiled some things already, but I've tried to keep a few things hidden. You know, because I'm thoughtful.
What did I think about this movie? I really liked it. I love horror movies and, in the case that they get a few jumps from me, it's usually not a bad one. With the slew of horrible, horrible "horror" movies out lately, a remake to arguably one of the scariest couple of hours ever was the answer. Some people refuse to see it because they're afraid it ruins the greatness that was trapped within the first one.
Let me tell you: this movie scared the hell out of me. Yep, it stayed true to the original. Take that as you will, because as I mentioned before, I hardly remember the first one. And I'm pretty easy to scare, too, so most of the scenes that were intended to take the viewer by surprise, usually did. A lot of the scare-factor was due to the gore added in. The house was not exactly clean. So the slow camera shots getting the viewer familiar with the family's living conditions were disturbing. And each killing was very, very detailed. Yuck. As a whole the scary scenes were a mix of the quick, attention-grabbing kind as well as the visually disturbing kind. All in all, not bad. There were some funny things added in to help ease the tension. I liked that.
To rate the acting, when clumped together, I'd say it was really good. I'm in love with Jessica Biel now. Yum. The rest of the people, while not entirely rememberable, weren't exactly forgettable either. The guy who played Leatherface sucked. He didn't have to say ANY lines and still managed to somewhat screw up. And the guy showed his face. How can the guy be haunting when they add that in there? That scene really should've been left on the cutting room floor. But oh well.
The cinematography was brilliant. I've never heard of the director in my lifetime. But some of the shots were simply AMAZING! They were so beautiful. My favorites were the reoccurring long distance shots. In my opinion, in movies released nowadays, there aren't enough shots like that. And for some reason the director added them in in the perfect spots. Excellent, excellent, excellent.
That's about all. I know that some of the things that happened were sort of predictable. The music kind of gave those away. Which is usually the case, I would expect. Yeah, that's about all.
I say see it, but I think once is enough.
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[15 Oct 2003|12:28am] |
Dear Lord I think I'm going to explode. I haven't had time to write anything since I got back. I just want a few freaking hours to do what I want to do without worrying about crap that I should be doing. Right.
The trip was fun. We had a seven hour rave on the way down there. Not seven hours continuously of course, but off and on it was about that. My neck hurt so much when we got down there it was pitiful. In a good way though.
Person I came down with = person A. Person I went down to see = person B. There. No more confusion.
When we got there I saw my friend. It was fun for a few minutes, but the person I came down with kind of cliqued up with her right away (attached herself to the other I guess you could say). This was fine right away because, hey, they haven't seen each other for awhile. Yadda yadda, blah, blah, blah. We left and went to person B's dorm room (which was... outrageously small). This entertained us for an hour (if that). Then I came up with arrangements of where I was to sleep that night. Got that all figured out.
Did I mention I had to meet this new kid? Kiel. Yeah, like Kyle, but he spells it weird. The only reason I mention this is because I spent, like, a lot of time hanging out with him. Against my will. I have nothing against meeting new people, but when I'm forced to hang out with them it kind of defeats the purpose in a way, doesn't it?
So after we got ready we went cruising. Oh boy! That seven hours coming down here sure wasn't enough! Gee golly gosh, let's all go drive around now and listen to music and act cool when we all know that we look like jackasses. I have nothing AGAINST looking like a jackass you have to realise, but... well, I wasn't in the mood. We went and ate at this awesome restaurant (Z'kota's or something) where I got a hot ham and cheese. Best hot ham and cheese EVER. After that we went and cruised some more. Did I mention I loooove cruising?
What was really funny about that night was when we were cruising around, though. We were looking for a place where we can listen to music and get out and dance. So we get this brilliant idea to go out to the country (a corn field to be exact). Right when we stopped in the middle of this dirt road, everyone except Kiel and I got out of the car and started dancing around. I don't know what was so funny about it exactly, but it just was. So we drove off while they were dancing. Yeah. We didn't have the heart to leave them though, of course, so after playing a quick game of hide-and-seek in the corn field we went back to the dorm. Where we played board games. Girl board games. Called "Slumber Party" and "Girl Talk". I hate my life.
So I went over to my brother's house (coincidentally living about a mile away). What's great about this is that he was having a party. With so many people there. I HATE PARTIES! So I make my way across the living room -- the most embarrassing, horrible, crappy way I've ever made across in my life -- and locked myself in my brother's room and watched TV until I fell asleep. I didn't even brush my teeth because I think the bathroom upstairs was used nonstop for people puking. I hate parties.
The next day I wake up at such and such time. We were SUPPOSED to go to the senior day at the college, but guess what? We blew it off. This pissed me off. It's no big deal in the long run, but... that's one of the bigger reasons why I went across the state. Whatever.
I can't remember what we did that day. I think we went bowling. I did horribly bad. 99/117/89. Eek. I hadn't been bowling in ages though if you couldn't tell by the scores. This was the first fully enjoyable part of coming. The rest of the day went to shambles though. We did nothing that I can remember. Maybe we did something that wasn't worth remembering? Oh, I think we did end up going to the grocery store because we wanted donuts. And we didn't want the kind that come in boxes, so we had to search out a deli. We all got a few... I paid for them. Then we got some pop and a cake for person B. A late welcome home present from us. Totally awesome.
Sunday, we went to a movie. The two girls went to School of Rock and I went to Kill Bill. Which was beyond amazing (I'll review it when I get an hour or two this weekend). When I bought my ticket the craziest thing happened ever. I was carded for the first time in my LIFE to see a rated R movie! Ha! Isn't that CRAZY?!?!
Then Monday came and we left at 11:00 (central time). I voted to leave early and go to the mall but nobody ever listens to me. Ever. We stopped by Wal-Mart so person A could get a hoodie from the college. Upon watching her buy this I realised I hadn't gotten ANYTHING yet. So to make myself a memory I bought the Lion King SE DVD. It was a very, very sporadic buy for me. I had no intention of getting it. Had it been the next Tuesday (yesterday) I'd have gotten Matrix Reloaded and the Italian Job DVDs, but alas.
So now I'm here. And I left out a LOT of the small tid-bits that I wouldn't mind sharing but I don't want to go through and add them to this in chronological order. So I'll just blurt some of them. We went to this miniature mall where the two girls spent, like, HOURS getting earrings. Stupid earrings. And this mall sucked. It had like two stores in it. And we went to a car wash. A car wash - THAT's how exciting the trip was. Throughout the weekend they kept saying "if you guys just speak up and say what you wanna do we can go do it" and junk. Meanwhile I'm over here TELLING THEM WHAT I WANT TO DO. But noooo, car washes are more fun than watching Minority Report and ordering pizza.
Dolts. They're all dolts.
Yesterday my Nightmare Before Christmas DVD came in the mail. I was tres excited. Now I have a few movies to watch this weekend. And Homecoming has kicked off and I'm about to go insane.
I'm behind in a few classes. I missed a test today (two actually). One in Calculus and one in Government. I'm fucking screwed because I have to do them both tomorrow and cramming for two classes that I'm lost in is difficult. Difficult to the max. And I HATE IT.
I got my senior pictures done today. That makes me feel a bit better, seeings how it'll probably snow in two days (it always snows on our Homecoming game). I didn't see all of them but the ones I did see were pretty... horrible. A few were good; definite keepers in my opinion.
And on Friday a big group of us might go see Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And if they aren't playing it in our local (by local I mean it's about 20 miles away) theatre we're going to see Kill Bill because I've been spreading the word about how awesome it is. I think I'm alone in the school as being the only one who's seen it so far. Except for one other that I know of right now.
Aaaaaanyway. I'm getting lazy on this (notice the lack of links on the movie titles), so I'm going to bed. So I can wake up and have another fun filled day of getting yelled at, failing tests, stressing out, and making memories that I'll spend the rest of my life trying to repress.
Bye.
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[13 Oct 2003|07:22pm] |
I'm back. And it's nice to see nobody cares that I left. Hmph.
Hehe.
I don't feel like updating now, but I saw a few movies I'll talk about later.
Kill Bill. Sweet November (hey, shut up!). From Hell. There might be more.
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