Appleseed (2004) semi-review!

First of all, the movie was alright. The action scenes were cool, but they were very few. Well, more like the action scenes highlighting the main character were cool. The story pacing was actual pretty good in about the first thrid of the movie, but then everything slammed into you near the end. There was an attempt at a plot twist, but one of the characters foreshadowed it so hard you’d figure it out if you only saw that one scene only. A bunch of characters were named after Roman gods: General Uranus, Gaea the supercomputer, Nike the Prime Minister’s assistant, and etc. I don’t really feel like doing a plot summary, haha.

The main character, Neunan Knute, is essentially a human Motoko Kusanagi. She is a legendary soldier, she pilots crazy cool mecha, and her love interest is a cyborg. Now Appleseed (2004) is very much like Ghost in the Shell in terms of design. The “walking tanks” move the way tachikoma do with the 3 spider leg things. The “landmates” are almost exactly like the exosuits used Ghost in the Shell by a variety of people. And oddly enough, Ghost in the Shell introduced a “bioroid” in its second season. “Bioroids” in Appleseed are basically artificially created humans, only they are significantly different. They have surpressed emotions (especially love), they are incapable of reproduction, and they age rapidly and die if not treated by a certain procedure every once in a while.

One of the requirements of a cool cyberpunk/sci-fi thing, whether it be book, movie, comic, or tv show, is it’s believability. I mean, even if its ficiton, the mechas and the genetic tampering need to make some form of sense. Appleseed does a pretty good job of making you believe that what you’re looking at is possible, but not if you think about it carefully. And chances are, you aren’t thinking about it carefully, haha. Now that I’m not watching, I can say, “You know, the anatomy of a bioroid doesn’t make any sense,” but while I was watching, it didn’t cross my mind.

All in all, I’d have to say, it’s a movie you’d watch only if you didn’t really have anything else to watch.

Now what’s interesting to me particularly was the resemblence to Ghost in the Shell. Both original mangas, Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell were created by Shirow Masamune. Appleseed manga started first in 1985, GITS started it’s run in 1989. An OVA movie for Appleseed came out in 1988, a year before Ghost in the Shell. So you might say that Ghost in the Shell is the one that resembles Appleseed. Well not quite. The movie I got for Christmas is the 2004 Appleseed, and the first Ghost in the Shell movie came out in 1995. Also, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the TV series, came out in 2002. You could say that each series borrowed from each other if you take all this into account.

They are pretty different thematically though. Appleseed (2004) dealt more about Bioroids, humanity, and the possible passing of the torch of the dominant species. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is more of a “police thriller” and mystery solving. There are themes of humanity, and etc, but it’s not as focused on.

Haha, this post was supposed to be better since I started writing it as soon as I finished watching Appleseed, but my mom called me away to help her put state quaters into her collection ma-bobber. Oh well. Oh, the music for Appleseed is pretty awesome. 2 or more of the songs are actually in English!

Timestamp – 10:05 PM

PS: I’m still sick <.<

Christmas Gifts and the Wedding of 12/27/08

Even though the wedding happened first, the gifts were opened like, 4 hours ago so I’ll just write them out first. So the gift I got to open on Christmas was the $20 gift card to AMC theater. Technically the laptop I use is also a Christmas gift, even though I got it early. Now, an interesting gift I got was a black and white picture of me when I was 10 years old. Someone found the picture and decided to blow it up and frame it haha. It’s interesting to see, but the picture itself is pretty weird. I’m really close to the camera. Speaking of strange gifts, my brother got me a DVD: Ben Stein’s “Expelled.” It’s supposed to be a funny and/or good movie, but I’ve never heard of it, so who knows? Perhaps I’ll pop it in for one of Martin’s movie get-togethers. Keeping on the pulse of odd gifts, I got a set of 4 metal puzzle ring things. They seem to be really easy though; I figured out 2 of them within seconds of getting my hands on them. It’s nothing like the super crazy puzzle Alan got me for my birthday some years ago though. These ones are really small.

I’ve run out of similarities to build off of, so I’ll just talk about the rest haha. I got  an Appleseed DVD. It’s a movie done by some big names: Shirow Masamune (Ghost in the Shell <3) and Shinji Aramaki (Bubble Gum Crisis). Lol, just noticed something but the Chief of Section 9 in G.I.T.S. is named Aramaki. I’ve wanted to see Appleseed for a while now, so I’m pretty psyched about getting it. I got a “Bed Buddy” laptop stand. It’s adjustable, if you can call 3 angles adjustable. My parents got it for me since they knew I was using that self-made stand out of cardboard and a bottle. I don’t like it very much, but that’s just a first impression. Who knows, it might grow on me. I also got a $30 gift card to Target, but it’s a musical card! There’s a button you can press and it makes the sound of jingle bells. Not the song, but just bells lol. It is obviously thicker than a regular card, but I think it’s pretty cool. I got a very interesting book, The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It’s pretty sweet. It deals with a bunch of different scenarios ranging from how to deal with getting a bad gift, how to get out of a collapsed sofa bed, how to survive if stranded on an the ice, and how to get a bird out of your hair. It’s interesting, haha.

I’ve been trying to avoid calling some gifts bad or good, but I saved this one for last because I like it a lot. I got a weather-proof jacket. the kind that’s two jackets, the weather-proof one and a comfy, removable liner inside. It has a removable hood and pockets everywhere. It’s very warm without being too warm or bulky. Some of you may remember the red jacket I wore practically all the time back in middle school. This is very much like that one, only this one is black and gray. I’m kinda sad that the major freeze has passed since I can’t test my jacket against the extreme cold we faced in the middle of December. Only kinda haha.

Onto the wedding. Some of you may recall my complaints about the hardwood floor laminate installation. We had to take everything out again for the wedding. So terrible. A big part of today was moving most of the stuff back in, but we haven’t finished. Compared to most Vietnamese weddings, we rocked the timing. We started the morning ceremony at the bride’s house at 11 AM, on time. It was funny when one of my uncles showed up late. I heard him talking with my dad later saying, “You invited us to be there at 11, so I figured the ceremony would start around 11:30.” Gotta love Vietnamese time: The time you tell them they need to be there, chances are they will leave the house at that time, no matter how far away they are. We didn’t invite a lot of people to the morning ceremony since out house is tiny. The ceremoney finished around 2ish, and we all had to scramble to get everything ready to go to the restaurant. Our basic instructions were: get everything decorated, and if there is time, we’ll go back home and get dressed, but just in case there isn’t time, bring your clothes to the restaurant to change into. I opted to just wear my suit while we were decorating. (Bo Town restaurant in downtown in case you’re wondering.) I got stuck number tables and tying strings to balloons. It was a lot of work and the front my suit was covered with the power they use for balloons. Not cool. I melted chocolate for the chocolate fountain, and I escorted people to their tables. Dudes, I don’t know what my mom was thinking when it came to table arrangements, but they were bad. You had people who didn’t know each other sitting at tables, you had adults sitting in the corner nearby the kids table, you had people wanting to sit elsewhere, and I just felt bad about it all. The guest didn’t seem to mind too much though; everybody complains about the seating really, it just sucks for the people who have to seat the guests.

Haha, I keep thinging about things I don’t feel like typing. It’s not that they were bad or embarrassing, I just don’t feel like typing. Here’s the thing, I am sick. I caught something from my sister, dad, or somebody else, about a week before the wedding. I can’t tell since we were all in close quaters and everybody is sick. Only Dianna isn’t sick because I think she caught it first. I was like, dying haha. I’ve really just pushed it out of my head. The memorable things worth mentioning would include Doug’s (the groom) sister’s arms covered in tattoos. I couldn’t tell when I first met her or during the morning ceremony since her arms were covered with sleeves, but at the wedding I could see her arms, and they were completely coverd in tattoos. Very cool, haha. Also, while they were introducing the family members, nobody could see me since not only was I in the corner at the kid’s table, I was in the corner corner and only like, 4 tables could see me haha. Bo Town’s table set up just sucks. Oh yeah, Ms. Shirkey, my Multimedia teacher for freshman and sophomore year was there. See, Mr. Huynh, my current and last year Multimedia teacher knew my sister before he started teaching at Santa Teresa. I knew him as well. When he starting teaching, he got to know Ms. Shirkey. I knew about this, but I had no idea Ms. Shirkey would be at the wedding haha. It’s a small world. On a smaller six-degrees note, the DJ at the wedding knows my cousin’s boyfriend Jose. Turns out the DJ used to DJ for Jose’s frat parties. Over all the wedding was fun and smooth.

Once again with the timing, we invited guests to come at 6 PM. We started the food around 7:30 Pm. While a 1 hour and 30 minute wait seems like a lot, considering it’s a wedding, and that hardly anyone showed up at 6, that’s damn good. People starting leaving some time from 9 – 10, which is also nice timing. There was dancing, but I didn’t dance haha. I know it’s weird; Alex being a wallflower? I’m just less outgoing when it comes to family, lol.

On some other unrelated news, I’ve gotten back into watching Gintama. It’s not super funny, but they have their highlights lol. It’s kinda disappointing when you can tell they are doing some kind of parody/tribute/reference but you can’t what it is they are parodying. Also, I’ve decided to stop playing the Japanese FF Dissidia. Let me break it down: my best character is Warrior of Light (FF1). I’ve played him to level 39, whereas the other characters are like, 1-14. I had been spending a lot of time going through Story Mode, so I hadn’t had a challenge for my best in a long time, so I turned the difficulty up in the Free Battle mode to 5/9 and fought a level 39 Warrior of Light. I got my ass handed to me. Again and again. I lost over and over again, even though I was using my favorite set of attacks, with my favorite summon. I began to notice a trend when I would full combo him multiple times with my brave attacks scoring around 50-100 brave damage, only for him to hit me with one full combo and eat all of my brave. His combo hits for like, 300-700 brave. The enemy had approximately the same stats as me, with negligible differences. His summon wasn’t overpowered, and his moveset was worse than mine. So what was the difference? Accessories. He had a slew of accessories equiped that I could not make out what they did since it was all in Japanese. The only thing I could tell was a lot of them had the word B R A V E in them. There’s no point in me trying to unlock everything, and amass PP points or etc. I’m not stopping entirely, but I’m slowing down a lot with it haha. I’ll re-immerse myslef into the game when I have English haha. Come quicker Q2(not really sure) of 2009!!!

In perhaps the sweetness news of all, I get my room back : )

Timestamp – 10:29 PM

Merry Christmas 08!

Honestly, it hasn’t really felt like Christmas at all since we’ve all been trying to get things ready for my sister’s wedding on the 27th. I mean, we came really close to not putting up the Christmas tree this year. It was actually decided that we wouldn’t, but the decision was overturned a few days after the decision. So far I haven’t done much over the break. I have to worry about my next speech, my English outside reading project, and my French “contract” thingy. That last one mean I have to do 10 hours of French work via tutoring or movie watching. Tutoring time is doubled, and 1 movie nets you 2 hours, no matter its actual length. For the movie though, it has to be a French movie (not English with French language enabled), and you have to write a summary for it. I can’t remember is that summary is supposed to be in French or not, but the main thing is, the due date is most likely the end of the semester. I haven’t started yet, haha.

I’ve hung out with Martin a lot. We played SSBM, and I watched him play Kingdom Hearts 2. I’m so curious about the storyline of the KH series, but for unknown reasons I can’t stand to play it haha. Martin, Victoria, Maily, Nahida, Tejinder and I all went to see Yesman together, and I’ll say it again: funniest movie ever. It’s not so much that I laughed so hard that my sides hurt or anything like that, but they just keep you laughing. Sometimes there’s build up, and other times it’s just random shock value funny. It felt as though I had been laughing the entire time. It was nice hanging out with the SC crew, but I haven’t done any sort of thing with my ST or EV friends. I want to plan a viewing of Yesman with my ST friends, but I haven’t picked a day yet, haha. As for the EV people, I only really hang out with Dustin. He’s been trying to get me to read Katekyo Hitman Reborn for the longest time now, and he’s on the verge of doing it haha. I also hope to go over to his house sometime after my sister’s wedding, but once again, nothing’s been finalized.

I finished my Runescape goal! I dredged through 12,033 silver ore to finally arrive at level 68 Smithing and level 70 Crafting. It was a tedious process, but I actually paced myself. I worked out a method that I would smelt 25 silver ore into bars, then craft those bars into tiaras. This was to save a slot of bank inventory since I wouldn’t be storing silver bars, and it saved trips back and forth between the bank and the furnace. Even though I could have been carrying 27 with each trip, I stuck to 25 that way I could easily gauge how quickly I was working, which helped a lot. Now I’m working on my Prayer and Mining. I raised my Prayer from 38 to 40 using regular bones. I had intended to use regular bones all the way up to 43 to save money, but halfway to 39 I realized it would take way too much time. On the Grand Exchange I have a sell order to get back my money for a majority of the bones and a buy order for big bones, which are just over 3x as fast as normal bones. Call them the Red Comet bones! : )

I don’t think I’ve blogged about it much, but I’ve been having lower back pain recently. Well, more like starting around October, but recently enough. It’s not constant pain, but it flares up when I do heavy lifting or when I run too much. I’m getting old <.<. My sister Julie recommended that I work out my core, especially the abdominals, since they would take some strain off of my back muscles. It makes sense in that the abs pull your body forward. I’ve started a mini-but-not-really-workout regimen now. I do 30 crunches, 15 of those elbow to opposite knee crunches for both legs, then I do the bicycle ab thingy to 40 counts. On about the thrid day of doing it, I decided, “oh hell, why not add onto the exercises?” Ive added 10 push-ups, 30 bicep curls with 5lb weights, 15 tricep thingys with the weights, and a lot of leg stretches. As I get used to the workouts, I plan on adding more simple stuff like: jumping jacks and/or jump rope, squats, and maybe more ab work. I get the feeling that my exercises are working only the upper abs, but I’m not 100%. I hope this isn’t just one of my short-lived impulse deals that I frequently do. My goal is to engrain the regimen into my daily habits so that it carries over to the start of school without a hitch. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, and etc.

Oh, did I mention we can only open 1 gift on Christmas? Yup, you heard me. Each family member can only open 1 of their gifts on Christmas morning. Why? My mom decreed that if we opened too many we all get distracted and that the gifts would clutter up space we need for the wedding. You can’t argue with that logic, but it sucks either way. I’m going to open one of those envelope thingys my sister Linda got me. Why? So I can put it in my wallet and avoid the distraction I’ll have if I open something big.

Also! Good news: Apparently in Vietnamese culture it’s bad luck for the bride to return home after the wedding ceremony. The bride can return home afterwards, but not on the day of the wedding ceremony. Thus, Julie and Doug have booked a hotel room and will be out of the house after the wedding ceremony. I’ll (maybe) get my room back! In other sibling related news, my brother’s fiance Thi has moved into our house. Technically we (my family) were a little late on that. Phong and Thi had like, the ceremony that signifies the wedding in Vietnam, and after that the bride-to-be should move in with the groom’s family. This is because the groom’s family is supposed to be able to support the bride or something similar. We didn’t do that earlier since we have space problems in our tiny 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1 story house. But now she’s here!

In other news, our dog Cherry has been having some leg problems. A few weeks ago she began to walk oddily and would yelp in pain if pressure was applied to one of her hind legs. Initially we didn’t think the problem was serious, so we didn’t bother examining her until today (December 24th). We discovered that the leg is very, very swollen and pinkish. We gave her some medicine (human medicine, but it wasn’t anywhere near an entire pill) and now we wait. I personally don’t the medicine will do anything, but it will probably have to wait until after the wedding before we take her to a vet.

Well, I can’t think of anything else to say, so Merry Christmas folks! If you don’t celebrate Christmas then just enjoy the spirit of the times: goodwill, cheer, and warmth in winter.

Timestamp – 2:34

Not dead, just been too lazy to update.

• Trying to finish smelting and crafting my 47oo silver ore in Runescape
• New laptop works great
• Getting pissed off at the attitudes of my PE class, especially one of my hangout buddies
• Saw Yesman with Jim Carrey. Funniest movie ever!
• Final Fantasy Dissidia is soooo addictive, although the fun is starting to wear off due to frustrations with certain enemies
• Been feeling cooped up even though break has just started
• Getting tired of having no privacy at home
• Cherry (my dog for those of you who’ve forgotten) is less crazy and has taken a liking to staying indoors
• My right index finger hurts for reasons unknown
• Started my MUGEN character project, but a lack of Windows Movie Maker 6.0 has put the project on indefinite hiatus

Happy holidays everyone! I’ll try to keep updating.

Techno-fear

I am afraid for my laptop. My old one was completely fried. the desktop came home with a new problem, so we had to take it back upto the repair dude. The laptop I use now is a new one. A Dell XPS or something. My sister Julie planned on giving me this for Christmas, but when my laptop completely fried she gave it to me early. Here the thing though. My sister Dianna’s laptop caught what we believe to be a virus. A password was somehow placed onto her harddrive. Her computer cannot access the harddrive without the password, and since computers never do that, it must be a virus. So her computer went down. Here’s the kicker though: my sister Julie’s computer caught the same thing. So over the course of 2-3 days, a desktop PC and 3 laptops got destroyed. The PC has its own bios problems whereas my laptop had a fried chip. But Dianna’s laptop and Julie’s laptop got hit with the same problem. The common demoninator was Dianna’s use of the laptops. However, I think the danger lies in our wireless net. I could be 100% wrong, but that’s the common thing I see. In short, I’m worried that something will happen to my computer. I just moved my MUGEN and some other things, and I’d be pretty pissed off if I lost my things.

The good news, is that this laptop is pretty kicking. It’s got a small screen, but its got nice processing power. Also, my old laptop had a 32 GB harddrive. My brother has a flashdrive that is 32GB. This laptop has 182 GB. It’s very nice. The keys are nice and have a nice feel, but the keys are really close together. It’s a 12 in screen. It so small and light I feel like taking it places, even though I don’t have anywhere to take it. All of this lack of computer access has made me realize two things: 1) I need an external harddrive. I’ve got too much crap I’d hate losing. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much. I’ve lost so much anime, archived school work, my graphics design workfiles, and just etc. 2) I’m a really wired person. Most of the things I do in my spare time deal require electronics of some kind haha.

Sigh, I had some things to blog about but the anger has since subsided. Happy holidays folks and send me some prayers that my laptop doesn’t get killed.

Timestmap – 11:14 PM